The massive Equation Array still pulsed, its solved capstone glowing, but the Core's chaos intensified. The rifts were not closing; they were expanding, a multiversal bleed tearing open spacetime. Elara's hand hesitated inches from Lira's hologram, the 42% chance of genuine redemption feeling like an impossible variable in the face of annihilation.
Her Ultimatum Veil peeled back the final layer of Lira's consciousness: her core desire was not chaos, but freedom from the Lords' cyclical game, a strategic vulnerability the Syndicate had exploited. Elara realized Lira's corruption was the required Final Term—a variable representing irreversible decay—needed to complete the Prime.
"It's not about trust, Lira. It's about Causal Integration," Elara declared, voice amplified by her Prime Ascendant core.
Elara extended her weave, not to attack, but to merge. She derived a complex Thermodynamic Reversal Proof using the Prime's capstone: driving the entropy within Lira from disorder back toward a stable, non-corrupt state (\Delta S < 0).
The pain was shared. Elara felt the ice of Lira's corruption—the crushing weight of void shadows—bleed into her meridians. She held, channeling the Prime's pure fusion energy to metabolize Lira's shadow qi, using it as fuel for the stabilization. Lira's distant flagship shimmered as the corruption was violently purged, her form returning to its natural state.
Lira gasped, her voice now sharp and clear. "The Syndicate leader… the Void Sovereign," she confessed. "He's a corrupted Forge remnant. He knows the Prime's final flaw—it's tied to a hidden Tenth Realm beyond the nine. He's there now, waiting to shatter the Core and free the multiverse bleed permanently."
Breakthrough: The integration of Lira's purified chaos completed the Prime's full convergence. Elara ascended to Rift Harmony Stage, unlocking Bleed Weave: the ability to strategically manipulate the multiversal rifts for traversal, attack, or defense.
Elara immediately activated her Bleed Weave, using the Prime's full equation to stabilize the rifts. She wove a dense metric of Wormhole Derivations with qi anchors, patching the spacetime tears. Kairo's newly Rift-Phasing Dragons slipped through the fissures, stabilizing the anchors from the outside.
Lira's purified fleet immediately switched allegiance, their ships adopting Helix tactical colors. The Eternal Coils watched with wary distrust, but the Syndicate threat was now clearly defined.
In the hastily convened war room on a stabilized comet, Elara's Betrayal Weave ran constantly. A Coil Lord, scales etched with solar runes, challenged Lira: "Prove your coil, thief." Elara mediated, the matrices confirming minor Coil dissent (22%) but an immediate, greater external threat.
The Core Guardian—its duty done—dissipated, leaving behind a massive, swirling rift: the gateway to the Tenth Realm.
As the allied fleet converged, Elara focused on the burgeoning rift. Lira pointed: "That's it. The Domain of the Sovereign."
Kairo gripped Elara's hand. "No more looking back, only forward."
As Elara prepared her Bleed Weave to pilot the entire fleet through the rift, her Ultimatum Veil caught a sudden, sharp spike in the Coil Lord's probability matrix—a calculated move of maximum betrayal.
The Coil Lord's shadow stirred unnaturally, a flicker of void energy activating a massive Containment Field around the Helix command ship, sealing it off from the escape rift and leaving them isolated in the collapsing solar system. The betrayal had arrived at the ultimate, calculable moment.