[OPENING SCENE – SKYVAULT CITY, NIGHTTIME — VANQUISHED BUT VICTORIOUS]
The lights of SkyVault shimmer with rare tranquility. Emergency sirens have finally faded. Floating news drones play triumphant replays of the Vanguards' victories. Citizens cheer. Banners of blue light stretch between buildings with one name repeated again and again: "VOIDCAST."
Inside the glowing beacon of VAN HQ, the team finally breathes.
Kael (quietly smiling):
"SkyVault sleeps again."
Yuna:
"And not in silence. We earned this."
Echo-7 (projecting a party hat hologram on Kael's head):
"Then by all laws of heroic comedy… we feast!"
[SCENE – NIGHTFALL RESTAURANT – SKYVAULT'S ROOFTOP FINE-DINE HAVEN]
Located on a suspended disk surrounded by starlight mist, Nightfall Restaurant is SkyVault's highest culinary point. The Vanguards sit at a curved table beneath soft lanterns. Live violin drones play in the background. Chef Malro personally serves them, his cyber-chef arms plating dishes with dramatic flair.
Chef Malro (beaming):
"To my most persistent customers. Survivors. Legends. May your hearts stay full — and your stomachs fuller."
Tables overflow with silver-laced flame duck, floating lotus broth, plasma-seared meat rolls. The team laughs for the first time in weeks. Irion clinks a glass. Veya toasts in silence, sipping sparkling nebula cider.
Jax (grinning):
"I could get used to peace."
Tari (cleaning her Nova Lance):
"Don't say that out loud."
Kael:
"She's right. Every time we relax… the storm remembers us."
But for a moment, the peace holds.
[SFX – CRYSTAL SHATTERING]
A hum, faint at first. Then sharp — like a blade through glass.
A guest screams. A brilliant fracture erupts through the center of the restaurant floor. Blue light warps into violet. The crystal spiral pulses with malevolent energy.
Chef Malro (staggering back):
"No… not here… not again!"
From the center of the rupture, a throne of shards floats upward, assembling itself in jagged harmony. A cracked figure ascends upon it. One eye glows like molten opal.
Shard — returned, disfigured but divine — speaks.
Shard (serene):
"You dine while my symphony dies? Let me remind you… destruction tastes bitter."
[CHAOS ERUPTS – CRYSTAL CLONES ATTACK]
Walls implode into shards. Patrons flee as crystal-forged soldiers burst from the ground — twisted copies of civilians once lost, now weaponized.
Kael (roaring):
"EVERYONE MOVE!"
Yuna (activating her vines):
"Save who we can — don't engage blindly!"
Veya (pulling twin pistols):
"I'm gonna shove a gem where his throne don't shine."
The battle ignites in waves of color and energy.
[INTENSE BATTLE IN NIGHTFALL RESTAURANT]
Tari leaps onto the rooftop edge, unholstering her Nova Lance. She marks incoming clones with cosmic sigils, then snipes them one by one with beams of silent starlight. Her scope glows with interstellar precision.
Echo-7 merges with a sound drone and warps the restaurant's acoustics, jamming Shard's command channel.
Irion erects a rift wall to shield a family of civilians. He moves with precision, cloak rippling like liquid shadow.
Jax leaps off a glass table, unleashing a roar that flattens a wave of crystalline troops.
Irion (to Veya):
"Left flank's compromised."
Veya (reloading):
"Then let's uncompromise it."
They move like clockwork, holding the chaos back second by second.
[KAEL VS SHARD – FINAL MOMENTS]
Kael stands between the civilians and Shard. Their powers clash again — molten plasma slashing against razor crystal.
Shard:
"I was silence. But you chose noise. And now I break what's left."
Kael (bleeding):
"You've broken nothing but yourself."
With a final burst, Kael drives Inferblade into the throne's core. Light detonates. Shard shrieks — a hundred voices crying in one. Then silence. The clones collapse, freed.
[ENDING – NIGHTFALL IN RUINS, HOPE ALIVE]
The restaurant is broken. Lanterns flicker. But civilians are alive. Chef Malro groans, brushing dust off his chef hat.
Chef Malro:
"Well. Guess we're rebuilding again. But dessert's still on."
Echo-7:
"I backed up your recipe archives. Priorities maintained."
Kael (to his team):
"We celebrate when the war is over. Until then... we endure."
Yuna (softly):
"And we protect what makes us human."
Camera pans upward — through fractured glass, through starlit clouds — to the faint hum of another crystal spike growing far in the distance.
[TO BE CONTINUED...]