**Chapter 2: The Scepter and the Fist**
Ignoring Aetherion, Kaelith focused her will on Lane. Spectral tendrils, woven from prismatic light, coiled from her scepter, reaching to bind his soul and quell his envious dissent. "Your chaos ends here," she declared, her voice steady.
Lane struggled, his infernal gauntlet sparking. "You think to cage me, Kaelith? I'll not be your puppet!"
Raoul's wrath erupted. With a roar that echoed with the fury of a slighted mentor, he lunged, his fist wreathed in the dual energies of Light and Dark. "I forged your power with my own hands! You will not use it to chain my allies!"
His fist struck the Scepter of the Soul Sovereign. The impact sent a shockwave through the Nexus, but more importantly, a hairline crack appeared on the scepter's central crystal. The crack pulsed with an eerie, harmonic light, and a single, mournful musical note echoed from it, a sound that seemed to come from another dimension entirely.
The note resonated with the rift at the Nexus's heart, causing its gate-like silhouette to shimmer. Aetherion watched, his pride warring with a sudden sense of unease. The crack, Raoul's wrath, the rift—they were all connected. Something was awakening.