Light-years away from the catastrophe in the Space Tunnel, the battle for the edge of the Heartland was reaching its crescendo.
The Queen of Silence was losing.
She floated in the void, a spec of darkness against a binary star of overwhelming power. Arbiter Barius had turned the surrounding sector into a hellscape of superheated plasma. His armor glowed white-hot, radiating a temperature that had boiled the blood of the Shadow pilots inside their ships.
To her left, Arbiter Zek moved like a refracted nightmare. She was everywhere at once, a million shards of hard-light striking the Queen's defenses from every angle.
"Yield," Barius roared. He raised a massive, magma-encrusted fist. "You have fought well, shadow-spawn. But a candle cannot outlast a sun."
The Queen panted, her dress of shadows tattered. She had held them off for long, but their sheer, inexhaustible mana was not something she could manage. They were infinite. She was finite.
