The death scream of the Abyssal Heart was not a sound, but a cessation. The hum of power, the pulse of life, the flow of corrupt energy—it all stopped, replaced by a silence so profound it felt like the void itself had swallowed them.
Then the groaning began. The structural groan of a dying god.
Echo was barely conscious, held up by Leyla and Ryn. Mira clung to him, her spatial senses reeling from the sudden unraveling of the dreadnought's twisted reality fields. Around them, the sanctum's crystalline walls cracked. The panoramic view of the fleet battle outside became a fragmented, spinning kaleidoscope as the ship began to tumble.
"We need to move!" Ryn yelled, her voice cutting through the muffled ringing in their ears. "Secondary hangar! This way!"
She dragged them toward a service hatch, her cybernetic eye projecting a shaky path through the crumbling schematic. The corridors were chaos. Lights flickered and died. Conduits burst, spraying steaming fluid. Corrupted crew—now mindless without Nox's command—stumbled and wailed, some attacking each other, others simply melting into puddles of inert biomass.
They fought when they had to, but it was butchery, not battle. Echo's energy was gone, his bloodline a guttered candle. He moved on instinct and the support of his bonds. Leyla led, a silver dart cutting down anything that blocked their path. Mira used the last of her power to shunt falling debris aside. Ryn hacked doors and rerouted failing systems to buy them seconds.
They reached a secondary hangar—a smaller bay holding a squadron of corrupted Void-Darts, swift, single-pilot fighters shaped like stingrays.
"Can you fly one of those?" Leyla asked, eyeing the organic control interfaces with disgust.
"I can interface with anything that has a data-port," Ryn said, already prying open an access panel on the nearest craft. "But there are four of us and one seat."
"We'll have to squeeze," Echo rasped. "Mira, can you…?"
Mira nodded, her face pale. "I can fold a pocket. It won't be comfortable, and it'll drain me, but I can make space inside."
They piled into the single cockpit. Ryn took the controls, her fingers jacking directly into the ship's neural plexus. The craft shuddered to life, its hull feeling more like skin than metal. Leyla held Echo tight against her, her body warmth the only thing fighting the deep chill settling into his bones. Mira sat in Ryn's lap, her hands pressed against the canopy as she warped the interior dimensions, creating a phantom space for them all.
The hangar doors were sealed.
"Hold on!" Ryn snarled, and fired the Void-Dart's forward plasma lances at the door seam. The organic material burned, but didn't break. Alarms blared—the ship's automated defenses, running on their last dregs of power, identified them as escaping parasites.
From the ceiling, defense turrets descended, their barrels glowing.
Echo looked at the door, then at the turrets. His Error-Sight was dark, his blood sense numb. He had nothing left.
But Leyla did.
With a defiant cry, she phased partially through the canopy—a risky, terrifying move—and extended her claws. She didn't attack the door. She slashed at the thick, primary nutrient line feeding the turrets above them. Silver moonlight energy trailed from her claws, severing the line in a spray of black fluid.
The turrets sputtered and died.
"Do it now, Ryn!" Leyla gasped, pulling back inside, her form flickering from the strain.
Ryn gunned the thrusters. The Void-Dart shot forward like a bullet, slamming into the weakened hangar doors. They burst outward into the cold, airless void.
They were free.
Behind them, the Abyssal Heart tore itself apart in a silent, spectacular detonation of flesh, metal, and dark energy, consuming a sizable chunk of the now-disorganized Corrupted fleet.
Their stolen fighter streaked away from the expanding debris field, toward the glittering lights of the approaching Ordered armada.
Echo's last sight before darkness took him was the distant, beautiful glow of Astra Prime, untouched, its billions of lives unknowingly saved by the chaos they had sown in the heart of the nightmare.