Aegis was a nightmare. Its armor regenerated faster than they could damage it. Leyla's claws sparked uselessly. Mira's spatial folds slid off its hide. Ryn's tech was nullified by a localized dampening field.
Echo fought defensively, using his blood sense to predict attacks, but Aegis was Tier 9, bordering on Dawn-Class intelligence. It learned.
It targeted Mira, recognizing her as the tactical lynchpin. A hammer-fist of corrupted energy shot toward her. Echo dove, shoving her aside. The blow caught him in the side, cracking ribs and sending him skidding across the crystal.
Pain exploded, but beneath it, he felt a new sensation. The raw, unformed reality-energy of Kaleidos was seeping into his wound. His blood, his anomaly core, and the primordial soup of creation began to react.
Inside him, a storm brewed.
Leyla, seeing Echo hurt, went berserk. Her Moonstalker Stage 3 fully manifested—she became a creature of pure silver fury, phasing through Aegis's guard and scoring a deep gouge in its chest plate. Black ichor, thick and potent, sprayed.
Aegis roared, backhanding her away. She landed hard, dazed.
Ryn saw an opening. She overcharged her plasma rifle and fired into the gouge. The ichor ignited. Aegis stumbled, its regeneration stuttering.
The Architect hissed in annoyance. "Enough. Perish in the cradle of the new world."
It gathered the corrupting energy of the Nexus, preparing to unleash a wave that would dissolve them into base components.
Echo pushed himself up, his blood boiling with kaleidoscopic energy. He couldn't stop the Architect. Not yet. But he could save his team.
He focused on the one resource he had: the spilled, potent ichor of Aegis, pooling on the ground. It was Tier 9 fluid, filled with power and the entity's life-signature.
He didn't try to command it. He claimed it.
[ Bloodline Forced Evolution: Sovereign's Edict ]
[ Using environmental high-tier ichor as catalyst. ]
[ Effect: Temporary Dominion. ]
The black pool erupted into tendrils, not controlled by Echo, but mimicking him. They lashed around the Architect's wrists, disrupting its concentration for a crucial second.
"Now, Mira!" Echo screamed.
Mira, bleeding from a head wound, gathered all her spatial power. She didn't attack the Architect. She attacked the Nexus itself, folding a small section of its raw energy inside the Architect's core.
The entity of starlight and necrosis gasped, its form flickering as pure creation energy conflicted with its corruption. It imploded with a silent flash, its dying scream a ripple of corrected physics.
The Nexus, freed from its corruptive influence, stabilized, washing the area in cleansing light.
Aegis, deprived of its master and badly wounded, let out a final, hateful glance at Echo before tearing open a rift and escaping.
Silence, broken by the weeping of a newborn world.
They had won. But Korvax was dead. Leyla was concussed. Mira was barely conscious. Ryn's systems were fried.
And Echo knelt amid the aftermath, his body humming with unstable, primordial power, feeling the weight of a leader's cost.