The flight to the Tenshukaku was a terrifying, exhilarating ascent through a sky at war. Ren pushed his hoverboard to its absolute limit, the small, powerful device weaving through the storm of stray, crackling energy and concussive shockwaves. He was a moth flying into a hurricane, a single, fragile point of will in a maelstrom of divine rage.
He reached the top of the grand, imposing fortress, landing on the highest, windswept roof, a place that was closer to the celestial battlefield than any other point in the mortal realm. The air here was thick, almost unbreathable, a super-saturated soup of raw, untamed Electro energy. The sound of the clashing gods was a deafening, continuous roar, and the light of their battle was a blinding, strobing, violet and black aurora.
Ren stepped off his board, his small body trembling in the face of the overwhelming, raw power. This was it. There was no turning back.
He closed his eyes, shutting out the terrifying, apocalyptic spectacle. He reached out, with his very soul, with the strange, innate, and utterly unique, ability of his outlander's body. He focused on the crackling, chaotic, and unbelievably potent Electro energy that saturated the air around him.
And he pulled.
The sensation was instantaneous and overwhelming. It was not like the gentle, still cold of Ganyu's Cryo. This was a raging, furious, and chaotic torrent. It was the feeling of grabbing a live, exposed wire carrying the power of a thousand thunderstorms. The energy surged into him, a violent, electrifying flood that threatened to tear him apart.
But within that chaotic, raging storm, he felt a flicker of something else. Something familiar. A still, serene, and profoundly gentle presence, a quiet, lavender-hued light lost in the heart of the violet tempest.
He recognized it instantly. It was the same, peaceful, and almost melancholy energy he had felt in the Plane of Euthymia. It was the energy of Raiden Ei.
But it was more than that. It was older, softer. It was the will that had dreamed of a happy, prosperous Inazuma, the will that had been passed down, the will that Ei herself was trying so desperately, and so clumsily, to protect.
It was the will of Makoto.
This was the true nature of the Electro Gnosis. It was not just a source of power; it was the heart, the memory, the very soul of the original Electro Archon.
And it was trapped, a prisoner, within the raging, hateful storm of the Balladeer.
Ren's focus, which had been a desperate, fearful gamble, now sharpened into a singular, righteous purpose. He was not just trying to stop a fight. He was performing a rescue.
He latched onto that small, gentle, familiar light, and he pulled with all his might.
His innate, hungry, and impossibly powerful absorption ability, which had once siphoned the energy of an adeptus, now locked onto the very heart of a god. The bond was immediate, absolute, and irresistible.
High in the sky, Scaramouche, who had been locked in a furious, ecstatic stalemate with the Raiden Shogun, suddenly faltered. A look of pure, shocked, and utter disbelief crossed his face. The immense, divine power that had been flooding his very being, the power that had made him a god… it was gone. The connection had been severed, as cleanly and as suddenly as a cut thread.
The Raiden Shogun, whose perfect, divine combat programming knew nothing of mercy or hesitation, saw the opening. She did not question it. She simply acted.
She lunged forward, her Musou no Hitotachi a blur of pure, violet, and utterly, royally, pissed-off, divine judgment.
Scaramouche, his god-like power gone, his mind still reeling from the shock of his sudden, impossible loss, was too slow to block, too slow to parry.
The Shogun's blade struck him, with its extremely lethal edge, a blow of pure, concussive, and utterly overwhelming, divine force.
He was blasted from the sky like a stone from a catapult, a screaming, dark purple meteor that crashed into the city below, leaving a trail of smoke and a profound, echoing silence in his wake.
On the roof of the Tenshukaku, Ren stumbled back, a gasp of pure, triumphant shock on his face. In his outstretched hand, a small, intricate, and impossibly beautiful chess-piece-like object, glowing with a brilliant, divine, and now very peaceful, violet light, had materialized.
The Electro Gnosis. He had done it. He had stolen the sun.
But the gambit was not over. The pull, the connection, was now out of his control. The Gnosis, now freed from the Balladeer's hateful, corrupting influence, had latched onto him, its new, and far more compatible, anchor.
A brilliant, overwhelming, and utterly pure, torrent of Electro energy, the raw, unfiltered power of a god, surged from the Gnosis and into his body.
But it was not painful. It was not a violent, tearing sensation. It was a warm, gentle, and almost loving, flood. It was the feeling of being embraced by a warm, sunlit storm.
His body, no longer bound by gravity, lifted off the roof, his form wreathed in a brilliant, beautiful, and utterly harmless, violet light.
Down below, the people of Inazuma, who had been cowering under the apocalyptic, raging storm, looked up. The dark, angry clouds were parting. The divine, violet fury was gone. And at the very top of the Tenshukaku, a new, brilliant, and beautiful star had appeared.
A single, dazzling sparkle of pure, gentle, and hopeful, electro energy, so bright and so beautiful that it illuminated the entire, war-torn nation in its gentle, loving, light.