Kael stood before the coalition of chaos, his lungs burning with the desperate energy needed for his final act. He looked directly into the cold, glowing eyes of The Vizier, the high-tier Player whose power was built on the absolute Debt of Dishonesty. Her destruction was the only path to saving the Debt of Obedience.
He centred his will, channelling the last, stabilising breath of the Library's mana and every drop of his remaining Absolution. He ignored the threats of the raging Duke of Discord and the lurking Prince Varak. His entire focus was on the single, most malignant thread of the Vizier's power.
He willed the absolute, unyielding truth to tear from his core.
"I Absolve the Lie of Broken Consensus!"
The final, spoken Word was not merely a wave of light; it was an act of cosmic restructuring. It struck The Vizier like a divine hammer, aiming directly for the foundational lie of her existence. Her scream was not one of pain but of pure, philosophical agony the sound of her absolute power violently refuted by an absolute truth.
The Vizier's threads of Betrayal snapped instantly. Her entire field of power, which was actively shattering the global consensus, imploded. She staggered back, her elegant armour cracking and smoking, her power grievously wounded. She had not expected such a potent, irrefutable truth.
The collapse of The Vizier's power was the catalyst. The entire rogue alliance instantly lost its cohesion.
Prince Varak watched his chaos threads dissipate and his political fuel vanish. He didn't stay to fight the implacable force that had just wounded a Vizier-tier Player. With a grunt of furious defeat, he dissolved into a shimmering patch of localised distortion and fled the UN Nexus.
The Duke of Discord lost the political grudges that had fed his rage. His massive form shivered, his strength failing. He let loose a final roar of frustration and vanished through a dimensional tear, unwilling to face Kael's terrifying Word.
The room was suddenly, shockingly silent. The central communication terminal stabilised. The political authority was not perfectly healed, but the catastrophic, external sabotage was gone. The Debt of Obedience was restored, fragile but intact.
Kael did not see the retreat. The backlash of his final, total act of Absolution was immense. He was instantly consumed by the void of his own spent power. The purifying light surrounding him collapsed inward, and he crumpled to the floor, his consciousness spiralling into cold, absolute darkness.
For a moment, only the settling dust and the residual scent of holy fire remained. Kael lay unconscious, the victor of a silent, invisible war. Mere seconds passed before the sound of human footsteps the confused, recovering security guards approached the room.
But before the human world could claim him, a new presence sliced into the Nexus.
The figure was thin, draped in simple, dark grey traveller's clothes. He carried no obvious weapons, but his movements were smooth, efficient, and entirely focused. His power signature was completely neutral, dedicated only to transit and contract. This was The Courier, a high-tier neutral Player who dealt in the swift, guaranteed delivery of goods and people.
The Courier knelt beside Kael, ignoring the faint, residual purities and the lingering scents of battle. He placed a small, silver tracking plate on Kael's wrist.
"A debt of guaranteed retrieval," The Courier murmured to himself, his voice neutral and precise. "Calculated by the Arbitrator, Lysandra, moments before her full capture. A most elegant consequence."
The Courier swiftly activated a personal transit beacon, ignoring the sounds of human authority pounding on the sealed door. He hoisted Kael's unconscious body onto his shoulder with practised ease.
"The Broker has failed to feed on Trust and Obedience," The Courier stated, his voice ringing with contractual certainty as the spatial warp shimmered around them. "Its hunger now turns to the oldest, deepest debt: the price of Hope. You are needed in Cairo."
The Courier and the unconscious Reclaimer vanished into a clean, precise jump, leaving behind only the shimmering residue of spacetime, an empty room, and the silent, averted disaster of global political collapse. Kael Ardyn was free again, but his war for the soul of the cosmos was escalating, his next destination a city built on ancient promises and fresh, vital faith.