The moment Silas raised the Sovereign Siphon, the humming of the server room became a high-pitched, terrifying whine. The massive gauntlet on his arm pulsed with a field of cold, concentrated anti-purity, targeting Kael's core essence.
"Talon, containment. Echo, flank and neutralise," Silas commanded, his voice devoid of doubt. He pulled the trigger.
A beam of dark, crimson energy—a devourer of pure karma—shot across the room. Kael didn't attempt to block it. He had no energy to waste; he had to prioritise the terminal.
He dove behind the nearest server rack, simultaneously focusing a burst of Absolution on the rack's debt of stability. The tall, heavy monolith of steel and electronics suddenly acknowledged the fatigue of its anchoring bolts and the poor quality of its structural welds. With a shuddering groan, it violently peeled away from the floor and crashed down, shielding Kael from the immediate blast.
The Siphon's beam impacted the falling rack, which instantly crumbled into dust, devoured not by heat, but by the sheer absence of karmic support.
Kael scrambled through the debris, dodging the immediate threat, only to be met by the heavy shadow of Talon. The brute attempted to corner him, his movements quicker than before, having learned from his last encounter. Talon raised his fists, ready to deliver a blow laced with binding energy.
Kael was trapped against a row of humming, critical servers. He couldn't risk the power of his Absolution on Talon, or the resulting explosion of debt would fry the entire room. He needed precision.
He focused his Karmic Sight on the unassuming tile beneath Talon's boot. He found the smallest, most ignored lie: the fractional debt of levelness the tile owed the sub-floor.
A micro-burst of Absolution hit the tile. The floor didn't shatter; it simply dipped in a single, minuscule spot. Talon, moving with practised balance, lost his footing entirely. The heavy Enforcer pitched forward, slamming into a server stack with a clang.
Kael seized the moment, rolling past the stunned Talon. But before he could reach the terminal, Echo descended from the shadows of the ceiling, a spectral blur. She was too fast. She placed a specialised, mana-binding restraint on Kael's right arm.
The restraint immediately began to seep negative energy into his core, paralysing his will. His Absolution sputtered.
The ticking clock was deafening. Kael saw the final command line on the terminal screen: [INITIATING G.C.D. SEQUENCE... 3... 2...]
He had only one option left: absolute, desperate focus. He ignored the paralysing restraint and the closing threat of the Enforcers. He used the last, burning fragment of the pure spring energy to force his consciousness to the terminal.
He fixed his sight, not on the screen, but on the massive, pulsing core lie the Broker was amplifying the multi-trillion dollar thread of leveraged financial products.
"You exist as a debt of pure, unfulfilled promise," Kael screamed, his voice a raw, desperate projection of his will. "Absolve your own non-existence!"
Kael hammered the command into the karmic structure. It was the most reckless, powerful act he had ever attempted: forcing a global, agreed-upon financial lie to confront its own inherent contradiction the debt it owed to nothing.
The room detonated, not with fire, but with a terrifying flash of pure, blinding white light.
The Broker's control thread, a massive, dark column of energy, snapped with a violent, cosmic shriek of protest. The G.C.D. Sequence halted mid-command. The global economic collapse had been averted.
But Kael's depleted core could not contain the immense, enraged backlash of fighting a Sovereign-tier command. The white light consumed him, ripping him from the terminal and slamming him into the cold floor.
Silence returned. The servers still hummed. The city outside remained oblivious. Kael lay motionless, his Absolution utterly spent, his mind plunged into the absolute void of exhaustion.
Silas stood over him, the Siphon smoking, his face tight with furious disbelief. He glanced at the terminal the sequence was dead. The Broker's transaction had failed.
"He... he did it," Talon whispered, utterly stunned.
Silas knelt, his cold eyes fixed on the unconscious Kael. He reached down, his movements calculating. The prize was too great to waste. Kael was inert, defeated by his own effort.
"The hunt is over," Silas announced, his voice devoid of triumph. "The Broker will extract the secret of his Absolution, one way or another. Capture the package. Prepare for immediate dimensional transit."
Kael Ardyn, the exhausted Reclaimer, had won the battle for global trust but had lost the fight for his freedom. His cosmic journey was about to take its most dangerous turn yet.