The strike landed.
Ren's scream and the girl's flame threaded together, and Thorn—jagged, furious, alive—cut into the dome of spirals. It wasn't a clean slice. It was chaos: cracks spiderwebbing outward, bleeding light that wasn't light but raw memory, history, fragments of everything the Warden had ever swallowed.
For the first time, the spirals shuddered not in command, but in pain.
A ripple tore across the infinite glass-ocean, shaking Ren's body down to his bones. The girl clutched him tighter, her flickering form stabilizing as if his will tethered her.
Then the sound came.
Not a roar, not a scream—something worse. A distortion like the world's foundation being twisted into a knot. A shriek that wasn't heard through ears but through marrow.
The Warden's voice.
"—CORRUPTION—
—FRAMEWORK WOUND—
—SOURCE: STRIKER—
—PROTOCOL OVERRIDE—
—INITIATING SPIRAL BLEED—"
The dome split open.
