The spectral Lord's remnant, a whisper-veil of insidious doubt, latched onto Kairo's shadow, paralyzing him mid-movement. His dragon crest dimmed, flames flickering—the ultimate strategic hook by the Void Sovereign, forcing Elara to choose between saving her partner and saving the Aetherforge from the accelerating unmaking implosion.
"Kairo, fight it!" Elara urged, but his eyes were glazed, locked in a duel of will against the whisper: "Dragon-blood, your harmony chains you... claim the void's freedom." The nebula walls compressed, the silence of Kairo's paralysis deafening amid the chaos.
Elara knew she couldn't waste Prime energy purging a psychological illusion; the Sovereign had forced an immediate, decisive move. She spun toward Kairo, focusing her newest, most terrifying power, Causal Inversion, on the spectral remnant.
She did not attack the paralysis; she reversed its cause.
"Your lie ends now," Elara stated, her voice resonating with the full authority of the Prime.
She fired a targeted Causal Inversion beam, derived from the Prime, directly at the spectral fragment. The beam struck, and the remnant's very existence was unmade: the fracture that created it was instantly sealed, unraveling the unmade Lord back into stable qi. The temptation, the doubt, and the hook were gone as if they had never been.
Kairo gasped, the paralysis broken, his eyes instantly fixing on Elara with renewed fire. "That power... you didn't just kill it, you unmade it," he breathed, his shadow surging back into loyal coil.
The Forge Reckoning
Elara turned back to the contracting nebula, her eyes—now the deep obsidian of the fully realized Prime—fixed on the Sovereign's fracturing form.
"No more distractions," she vowed.
The Sovereign's Hammer, a colossal, final void construct, swung toward the fleet's core. Elara met it head-on, extending her Anvil Echo across the vast expanse. She did not merely stop the hammer; she sought to break the Sovereign's logic forever.
Derivations cascaded: she integrated the Friedmann Equations for an expanding universe, twisting them with Prime's logic to directly counter the implosion's contraction—\frac{\dot{a}}{a}^2 = \frac{8\pi G}{3}\rho - \frac{kc^2}{a^2}, with qi serving as the inflationary density \rho.
Kairo's Eternal Sovereign Dragons amplified her attack, coating the echoes in void-touched flames. Lira's Sovereign Veil extended, her Reckoner's Chains binding the hammer's haft, exposing the fundamental flaw in the void's logic: Dissonance. The Sovereign's power was incompatible with the concept of Balance.
The hammer shattered against the synchronized counter-array, its lattice exploding in a supernova of unmade light. The implosion reversed, the nebula expanding in a harmonious bloom. Rifts sealed, and the tenth realm's fractured logic was forced into a new, stable equilibrium.
Breakthrough and Ascension:
Elara's core, now fully synchronized with the Sun Core, achieved its final stage in this realm:
Elara to Prime Forger Stage: Unlocked Forge Reckoning—the ability to permanently re-weave fractured reality into new, stable harmonies.
Kairo's mastery peaked, his shadows gaining the stability of absolute zero, ascending to Eternal Sovereign. Lira's stage transcended, her veils becoming Reckoner's Chains, capable of unmaking any form of deception.
The Light-Rift
The Sovereign's remnants dissolved, the tenth realm stabilizing into a shimmering field of unmade harmony. Elara, Kairo, and Lira clasped hands, their qi entwining in a powerful triad vow—romance, family, and alliance forged in the deepest void.
"We hammered it," Kairo said, a wide, genuine grin finally breaking through his warrior's mask.
At the nebula's core, the remnants of the Sovereign's lair gave way, revealing a new structure: a colossal, crystalline Light-Rift, pulsing with stable, pure white energy. It promised not chaos, but a gateway to a higher, ordered cosmos—the realms beyond the tenth.
But as they stepped toward the rift, a single, microscopic shard of void essence pulsed near the wreckage—the Sovereign's Final Echo, a hidden, malignant seed waiting to fracture the new harmony. Harmony... or my return?