The void swallowed them whole.
Kaelen and Lyra hurtled through a whirl of fractured stars and bleeding shadows, their bodies torn between gravity and weightlessness. The Echo-Lord's collapsing core wasn't space—it was a battlefield of thought and flesh, a storm where nightmares walked freely.
Kaelen gripped his phaseblade, its glow the only constant in the chaos. "Stay close!" he shouted, his voice ragged, nearly ripped away by the screaming winds of the void.
Lyra floated beside him, her body limned in pale radiance. The Seed blazed in her chest like a second sun, each pulse pushing back the darkness for only a heartbeat. Her voice was faint but steady. "This is its essence… we're inside the thing that devours."
They landed hard upon a plain of liquid shadow. It rippled under their weight like tar, and from it rose the Echo-Lord's fragments—towering figures shaped from bone and void, their hollow eyes fixed on the intruders.
"Shades," Kaelen spat, raising his blade. "Pieces of its will."
The first shade lunged, a jagged arm scything downward. Kaelen met it with a vicious upward slash, sparks of white light clashing against black fire. Behind him, Lyra extended her hands. Her aura surged outward, threads of brilliance knitting into shields of pure will.
But for every shade they cut down, more emerged, their forms coiling, whispering, accusing. Each spoke with the Echo-Lord's voice:
"You cannot kill me. I am every shadow cast by every light. I am the silence after every scream."
Lyra's knees buckled under the weight of the whispers, the Seed flaring wildly. Kaelen caught her, forcing her back to her feet. His jaw was tight, his voice iron. "Then let's be the scream that doesn't end."
Ahead, the void tore open into a chasm of stars, and at its center loomed the Echo-Lord's true heart: a black sun, pulsing with stolen lives. Tendrils of souls writhed around it, chained and bound, their voices crying for release.
Lyra gasped, tears stinging her eyes. "All those lives… it's feeding on them. Kaelen, if we cut the heart, we free them."
Kaelen tightened his grip on her hand, eyes locked on the impossible task ahead. "Then that's where we strike."
Together, they charged toward the black sun, as armies of shades rose to bar their path.