The Throne wailed.
Not in sound, but in light. The pulse of Elythium across its veins darkened, flickered, then erupted. Aeneas staggered back, Riven beside him, eyes locked on the swirling streams of liberated memory flooding the archive chambers.
The Council's grip was breaking.
And with it, the world.
Vesk cursed, shoving a comm-link into his ear. "Council fleets inbound. They won't let the system rewrite itself. We've got minutes, maybe less."
Aeneas barely heard him. His fingers hovered over Ila's decrypted memory shard—her voice whispering through the ether, fragments of laughter, urgency, resistance.
She had known.
She had fought.
And in her final transmission, she had left him a message. A code. A choice.
Riven tugged his arm. "We have to move, Varn—"
But the chamber doors burst inward.
Figures clad in Obsidian Guard armor poured through, rifles raised, their faceless visors glowing in synchronized red. Behind them stood the Prime Arbiter—the highest enforcer of the Council.
"I knew you'd come back," he murmured, voice polished steel.
Aeneas clenched his jaw. "And I knew you'd be too late."
The vault alarms crescendoed. Every terminal, every sealed history, every lie carved into the data core—was shattering.
Ila's truth was escaping.
And Aeneas wasn't going to die before seeing it reach every sky.