The observation image gradually reassembled after the collision, restoring the dark-gold boundaries of the micro-dimension before resolving the two figures moving within it. Hestia continued studying Adrian for several moments, then shook her head and forced her questions concerning his new divine concept away from the center of her thoughts.
Whatever Adrian had created inside those multiplied Time Formations could be examined after they returned. For now, there were more immediate problems surrounding Nerath, and Hestia needed to decide how she intended to handle them.
The original purpose of their journey had already been fulfilled. Hestia had returned to her home world, observed the descendants who remained behind, and finally heard enough from the governing council to understand the choice they had inherited and continued making for themselves. They did not want an exodus from Nerath, and she no longer possessed any intention of forcing one upon them merely because she believed their covenant with Ebon Meridian restricted freedoms they should have possessed.
Before Adrian's confrontation escalated, Hestia had intended to finish speaking with the clan elders while he prevented Ebon Meridian from interfering, then retreat quickly to Andromeda and consider the larger problem from a safer distance.
Leaving would not remove every danger surrounding the Solvaren Clan. Narev had still assassinated Imperial Commissioner Deyran and would eventually need to answer for that decision, while the governing council would have to deal with whatever political consequences followed. Even so, Hestia had already concluded that Ebon Meridian was unlikely to destroy the clan outright.
The sect had spent generations preserving the Solvaren Clan, expanding its production, and maintaining the covenant that connected its ancestral patriarchal office to Hestia. Orveth might replace members of the governing council, demand punishment for Narev's actions, increase imperial supervision, or tighten the restrictions surrounding Nerath, but annihilating the living clan would destroy the very institution through which Ebon Meridian claimed a continuing connection to Hestia and the Crimson Vital Sect.
As long as Orveth still intended to use that covenant as a path into Andromeda, the Solvaren descendants possessed value that made their complete destruction counterproductive.
Hestia had recognized that much easily enough and planned to withdraw before deciding how to deal with the covenant, the clan, and Ebon Meridian as a whole.
But now, the problem was Adrian.
She could understand why he had killed the enforcement elder who attempted to kill her. But after killing that man, Adrian had remained above Nerath, killed two additional Ebon Meridian elders, injured Orveth's personal disciple, and continued escalating the confrontation until the Sect Leader himself enclosed both of them within a private battlefield.
From everything she knew about Adrian, Hestia could understand the reasoning behind those choices. Somewhere between the death of the first enforcement elder and the arrival of Orveth, he had likely concluded that killing the Sect Leader of Ebon Meridian would weaken the entire organization enough to create a genuine opening for the Solvaren Clan and remove one of the greatest threats hanging over Andromeda.
The realization that he was doing all of this partly for her brought warmth through Hestia despite everything happening around them. But affection did not make the consequences disappear.
The reconstructed battle showed Adrian and Orveth still fighting almost evenly. Both had suffered injuries, and every exchange continued revealing techniques capable of answering the other side. This was no longer the kind of confrontation Adrian could cleanly resolve with one final overwhelming attack before returning to Nerath as though nothing had happened.
There was another problem Hestia could no longer ignore.
Adrian had revealed the dark-violet divine concept before every observation array surrounding Nerath. If her suspicion was correct and the power being recorded inside that battlefield truly belonged to the foundational inheritance he had created for Origin, then displaying it here could create complications far beyond Ebon Meridian. No one currently watching possessed enough information to identify the concept, and even Hestia could only infer its principles from damaged observations, but the manifestations were now part of permanent records.
Someone might eventually witness Origin disciples using the same inheritance and connect the unknown Anchor sovereign of Nerath to the Origin Sect.
That connection alone would not expose Adrian, nor would it prove any relationship between Origin, Hestia, and the Crimson Vital Sect. Considerably more evidence would still be required to construct that chain, making such a discovery extremely unlikely. However, before this battle, the possibility had barely existed at all. Now it was merely improbable rather than impossible.
Hestia was still considering how best to contain the consequences when two spatial disturbances appeared several thousand kilometers behind the Ebon Meridian vessels.
The first released a tall humanoid whose skin was a deep shade of blue and whose forehead was crossed by a rigid white ridge. A second distortion opened beside him, allowing a shorter being with pale-bronze skin and silver eyes to enter the system. Neither newcomer paused to communicate with the surrounding vessels. They immediately crossed the intervening void toward the small dark-gold point representing Orveth's sealed battlefield.
A narrow seam opened through the reinforced dimensional boundary. Both newcomers accelerated through it and disappeared into the micro-dimension.
Hestia recognized them immediately. Before coming to Valtheris, she had examined everything publicly available concerning Ebon Meridian's political relationships and the powers surrounding Orveth. Both newcomers were Sect Leaders of Lesser Major Sects in their own right and long-standing associates of Orveth.
Realizing two more Anchor sovereigns had entered the battlefield, concern replaced Hestia's earlier irritation immediately.
She crossed the first stretch of void toward the micro-dimension without waiting for the surrounding vessels to react. Adrian had fought Orveth alone without being overwhelmed, but three Anchor-stage sovereigns were an entirely different problem. Even Adrian's extraordinary consciousness would be forced to divide its defense and offense among multiple opponents, while two of the newcomers had entered completely fresh.
But before Hestia reached the boundary, all three sovereigns faltered at once.
"What is happening?" one of the nearby Ebon Meridian disciples exclaimed, shock spreading through the vessels observing the battle.
The unknown Anchor sovereign had not visibly moved from his position within the reconstructed image, yet Orveth and both Sect Leaders beside him were suddenly struggling to maintain themselves in the void.
...
Inside the micro-dimension, Adrian had released the strongest willforce technique he possessed the instant the two newcomers entered the battlefield.
Willforce spread outward from his consciousness like a vast wave of smoke, separating around the three sovereigns standing before him before curling toward their minds.
The technique was the same one Adrian had first witnessed from the Great Sect disciple Androxus inside the Providence Hub. Its smoky appearance concealed the true architecture beneath it: billions of microscopic intent-threads, each fine enough to search between the layers of an opposing Willforce Wall and enter the tiny spaces separating one coherent thought from the next.
Androxus had used those threads to paralyze consciousness itself, interrupting the transition through which intent became a spell, physical movement, or completed decision.
Adrian's Source Eyes had perceived the entire structure during their battle. When he later reconstructed the technique within Source Form, the Will had corrected its architecture almost immediately. The smoky body divided into even finer threads, redundancies disappeared, and the distribution pattern became far more efficient at searching for weaknesses within an opposing consciousness defense.
Now the perfected structure divided into three separate currents before reaching Orveth and his allies.
Most of the microscopic threads struck the Willforce Walls closing around their minds and dispersed harmlessly against those defenses. A far smaller number, however, found gaps too fine for ordinary perception and slipped between the thoughts supporting the three sovereigns' immediate intentions.
All three Anchors struggled.
Their Willforce Walls lacked the flawless corrections that had once allowed Adrian to stop Androxus's original technique completely, but the sheer density and control possessed by three Anchor-stage consciousnesses prevented the infiltrating threads from reaching deeply enough to create complete paralysis.
Adrian increased the pressure. More smoke wrapped around the three sovereigns, disrupting their coordination and forcing each of them to devote greater willforce toward locating and removing the microscopic interference entering their consciousnesses. For several breaths, the technique gave Adrian control over the confrontation.
But the cost was enormous. Dividing such a complex technique across three Anchor sovereigns consumed Adrian's willforce far faster than his recovery spell could replenish it. Pain gathered behind his eyes as the strain increased, and he recognized that what he had achieved was suppression rather than victory.
"Damn!" Adrian whispered. Back in the Providence hub, he had killed Navira, an anchor sovereign, almost effortlessly. But now he could see the reality that it wouldn't be the same with everyone else.
Navira's psychological collapse had given him an opening no technique alone could have created. These three remained alert and capable of protecting one another. Orveth was injured and had already spent power during their battle, but the two beings beside him were fresh; if Adrian committed himself to killing any one of them, the others could attack him or reinforce that consciousness before he finished. He had wanted to remove Orveth before Ebon Meridian turned its influence against Hestia, but that opportunity no longer existed.
Even if Adrian used his source form now, he didn't truly know what he could achieve. "Hestia is still out there. I can't gamble with this." Adrian thought.
The opening through which the two Anchors entered appeared closed, but Orveth's disrupted concentration had prevented its final spatial connection from sealing. Branching Moment exposed the narrow continuation that remained. Adrian reduced the smoky wave enough to free his concentration, gathered his divine essence, fixed the opening as his destination, and activated Continuity Step.
Dark-violet radiance closed around him. The reinforced boundary resisted the transition for a fraction of a moment before Adrian passed through the unstable seam and emerged into the ordinary void outside.
Hestia was already approaching. Adrian crossed the remaining distance, placed one arm around her waist, and turned them away from Nerath.
"We are leaving," he said.
"I already decided that." Hestia gripped his shoulder. "Move."
Adrian blinked around the void, taking Hestia with him. The successive transitions carried them across the emptied orbital lanes and into the uninhabited outer region while the dark-gold distortion behind them began splitting open. The smoky threads remaining inside would not restrain three Anchors for long, but the technique had forced them to choose between immediate pursuit and stabilizing their consciousnesses before carrying unfamiliar interference into open combat.
After the fourth transition, Nerath had become another distant point among the stars. The nearby observation arrays were far behind them, and none of the three opposing domains had yet reached their position. Adrian stopped and released the dark-violet domain around himself and Hestia. With no competing domain overlapping it, his authority returned to the foundation's full ninety percent. With that, he issued a direct command, "Take us beyond Valtheris and place us within the nearest safe void,"
The Direct Command seized the surrounding rules before the final word completely left his mouth.
Space contracted around them as reality selected the nearest destination satisfying Adrian's conditions and aligned the rules governing both bodies with that distant region. The technique drew heavily upon his mana, while the remaining pain behind his eyes deepened beneath the additional willforce cost.
Adrian tightened the arm around Hestia's waist and their bodies disappeared together.
For an instant, only the fading dark-violet domain remained behind, collapsing inward around an empty region of interstellar space.
By the time Orveth and the two allied Anchor sovereigns emerged from the damaged micro-dimension, neither Adrian nor Hestia remained anywhere within Valtheris.