The newborn rift pulsed like a star collapsing inward, and the allied fleet prepared for the jump. Elara's Rift Harmony Stage was at its peak, her consciousness woven into the spacetime surrounding the portal. But as the command ship surged forward, her Veil Sight caught the final, catastrophic betrayal.
The Coil Lord, scales etched with solar runes, was not merely signaling the Syndicate; he was executing a precise, pre-calculated maneuver. His dragon mount didn't fire—it discharged a specialized Coil Containment Weave, a reverse-engineered Forge Lord barrier that generated an artificial, high-density qi field. Alarms shrieked as the field instantly sealed the Helix command ship, isolating it from the fleet and the Tenth Realm's safety.
"It's a Schrödinger Trap," Elara yelled over the comms, her mind racing to derive an escape. "A probability loop! It only exists to prevent the jump!"
Kairo unleashed his Solar Sovereign Dragons, their fusion flames melting the field, but the barrier regenerated instantly, drawing power from the Core's residual qi. Lira's voice cut through the noise, sharp with strategic clarity: "It's keyed to the Prime's final flaw—the Fracture Term. Only chaos can break this order!"
Elara knew the answer lay in her newest power. She didn't fight the field; she integrated its disorder. She activated Fracture Bind, weaving a multiversal thread into the field's logic—pulling disparate, chaotic realities from the nearest open rifts and entangling them with the barrier's stabilizing equations. The containment field buckled, its ordered logic collapsing under the burden of infinite possibilities.
The field shattered, debris scattering as essence orbs. Elara and Kairo—their ship badly damaged—slammed through the yawning Tenth Realm Rift just as it began to seal itself behind them, their small, specialized fleet following. The betrayal had cost them their unified armada, leaving them isolated.
The Tenth Realm unfolded in a disorienting spectacle: the Domain of Unmade Logic. It was not empty, but filled with the failures of the Forge Lords: planets as shattered mosaics of alternate histories, stars suspended as broken runes. Gravity fluctuated in waves, and the air was thick with the whispers of unharmonized remnants.
Lira docked beside them, her purified presence a critical resource. "This is where the Lords fell," she said, voice steady. "The Void Sovereign grew from their unharmonized residue. He feeds on doubt and broken logic."
They navigated through the fractured expanse. The Sovereign's forces were not Syndicate ships, but Shadow Slaves—entities bound by veils of servitude. Elara led a scouting team, using her Ultimatum Veil to pierce their illusory forms and her Fracture Bind to collapse the multiversal threads that gave them power.
In a brief, intimate respite, Elara and Kairo anchored their connection. "We are the only stability here," Kairo murmured, their qi syncing in a passionate vow—a moment of pure Quantum Entanglement amidst the unmade universe.
But the Sovereign sensed their presence, his vast shadow coalescing in the nebula's heart. A massive, spectral tendril, woven from pure void energy, lashed out with impossible speed. It ignored Elara's command ship, bypassing Kairo's sovereign dragons, and specifically coiled around Lira's smaller skimmer.
Lira's scream cut off instantly as her ship was dragged toward the nebula's core. The Sovereign's voice slithered through the void, bypassing comms and resonating directly in Elara's mind: "The Prime needs chaos. I claim the final piece. Come, seeker. Bring the Equation."
Lira was gone—claimed not as a victim, but as the final, necessary variable for the Sovereign's ultimate design.