# Chapter 18: Pyrrhic
The sound was the end of the world.
It was the scream of a universe breaking. The citadel's shield didn't just fail; it vaporized in a wave of silent, blinding white light that consumed everything—the corrupting spear, the shrieking hordes, the very darkness itself. For a single, breathtaking moment, the Dream Continent was washed clean.
Kael, braced for death on his knees before the dark stabilizer, could only shield his eyes. The wave of energy passed over him, not as a destructive force, but as a profound, silencing peace. The relentless whispers in his mind vanished. The pressure of the Lady's will evaporated.
When the light faded, the sky was empty.
The corrupting spear was gone. The endless tide of Corrupted that had been pouring through the shattered walls simply… dissolved, their forms unraveling into motes of harmless shadow that were scattered by a suddenly gentle wind.
Silence. Deep, deafening, and utterly bewildering.
All across the city, the same scene played out. At the western gate, Juno had been unleashing a storm of crystalline shards at a beast three times her size. Calyx was kneeling beside a fallen soldier, his hands glowing over a grievous wound.
The beast, mid-roar, dissolved into ash.
The soldier's wounds didn't heal, but the corrupting energy infesting them vanished, leaving behind clean, treatable injuries.
Juno lowered her hands, her breath coming in ragged gasps. "What… what just happened?"
Calyx looked up, his sharp eyes wide with uncharacteristic shock. He scanned the suddenly clear horizon beyond the gate. "The corruption… it's gone. Not defeated. Banished."
A cheer went up from the exhausted defenders at the gate, tentative at first, then swelling into a roar of relief and triumph. They had held. They had won.
But Juno's eyes were already scanning the city, looking toward the distant, and now silent, citadel. A cold dread settled in her stomach. "Kael… Talia…"
---
In the citadel plaza, the silence was broken by a single, ragged cough. Kael pushed himself up, his body aching, his soul numb. The plaza was a wreck of shattered crystal and dazed defenders slowly picking themselves up. The shield was gone, but the corruption was gone too.
The leaders of the cities were gathering themselves on their dais, their radiant forms dimmed and flickering with exhaustion, but alive.
It was one of the leader which was the leader from Earth-7, the one whose form was a shifting mosaic of crystalline structures, who stood at the forefront. A strange, geometric device smoked in his hand, now cracked and spent.
"It is done," his voice echoed, hoarse but firm across the stunned silence. "A localized reality pulse. It purges all unstable astral energy within a set radius. It forced the corruption to retreat… for now."
A wave of understanding and awe passed through the survivors. They had been saved by a power beyond their understanding, a technology or magic from a parallel world.
They had won.
The word echoed in the hollow space inside Kael's chest. Won.
He stumbled forward, his eyes wild, ignoring the celebrating soldiers. "Talia!" he yelled, his voice cracking. "Where is she?!"
The leaders turned to him, their expressions unreadable but grim. The Earth-7 leader slowly shook his head. "The pulse banishes active corruptive energy. It does not retrieve what was already taken."
The truth landed on Kael with the weight of a mountain. The victory. The miracle. It had cost them everything. The corruption had been forced to retreat, and in its retreat, it had taken its prize with it.
Talia was gone.
The cheers of the soldiers around him felt like a mockery. They celebrated their survival, while the reason for his fight had been stolen away.
Juno and Calyx arrived then, sprinting into the plaza. Juno's face was alight with relieved excitement until she saw Kael's expression. She skidded to a halt, her joy dying instantly. "Kael? Where's Talia?"
Kael couldn't form the words. He just looked at them, his eyes empty, and then his legs gave out. He would have collapsed if Calyx hadn't moved with preternatural speed to catch him.
"The Lady took her," a nearby dream-soldier said quietly, his head bowed. "When the shield fell. The pulse came too late."
Juno's hands flew to her mouth, her eyes filling with tears. The victory was ashes in her mouth.
The leader from Earth-7 approached them, his crystalline form glinting. "You fought with valor. The Dream Continent owes you a debt. This victory, though costly, would not have been possible without your efforts to stabilize our core."
He spoke of strategy, of debt, of victory. But Kael heard none of it. All he could hear was the echo of the Lady's taunt in his mind.
"You held the citadel. And in doing so, you let her go."
They had won the war.
But as Kael looked at Juno's devastated face and felt the void where Talia should be, he knew, with a certainty that chilled him to the bone, that they had never been closer to losing everything.