The extraction was not corporeal. It was an attack on his soul. Cassiathon sensed the Queen's intent, immense and precise, like a press striving to tear the two fundamental parts of his existence apart—to split the Death-splice from the Abyss-splice as if cleaving an atom.
Torment unlike anything he had ever felt surged through every fiber. It was the suffering of disintegration. The muted cold and the purple turmoil, which had established a harmony were being torn apart. The woven strands the Weaver had noticed were crying out.
He dropped to his knees on the splintering platform a scream trapped within his throat. He was unable to muster strength; the foundation of his power was being torn apart.
The tether.
Despite the intense agony he held on tightly. The slender cold blue filament Celeste wove. It wasn't a link to strength. To identity. To the incomplete emotional self he embodied. To Tania's affection to his father's harsh teachings to Morgan's rebellious grin to Sierra's dependable diligence, to the optimistic striving clamor of existence itself.
He grasped that strand of awareness and tugged it.
He wasn't attempting to climb out. Instead he held onto the tether as a reminder of what he was battling for. Not for a conclusion.. For the entitlement, to an imperfect middle.
The Queen's force was overwhelming. He sensed the threads binding his paradox snapping gradually. A fragment of the death-energy started to detach pulled toward her figure. A filament of the violet substance trailed behind.
He was falling apart.
The tether remained firm.. As he concentrated on it he understood it wasn't merely a link, to his companions. It was fixed in something greater. In the vibration he had produced on the Ashen Plains. In the determination of every delicate life he had vowed to safeguard. It was slender. It was embedded in a web.
He was unable to oppose her determination, with his own. His was falling apart.
Thus he allowed himself to connect to the tether. He permitted the feedback to reverse its course.
He didn't convey his suffering. He conveyed his decision. The decision for tales. The decision for mornings. The decision for affection that dared loss. He dispatched everything, a crude, flood of rebellious emotion back, along Celeste's connection.
Within the mountain refuge Celeste shouted, stumbling. "He's… hes transmitting something back! It's overwhelming!". She persevered, her own energy igniting, serving as a conduit boosting the message sending it not as a plea for aid but as a proclamation of conflict—a battle, for the freedom to be flawed.
In the emptiness Vernia Vouw inhaled sharply.
The flood of flaw didn't harm her. It bewildered her. It was interference on her wavelength. It was, like a kid's finger-paint smeared over her immaculate canvas. For an entity whose whole principle was structured perfection it represented a discord.
Her concentration faltered. The dreadful pulling strain faltered.
That was precisely the start Cassiathon required.
Using the remnants of his clear resolve he avoided attempting to reunite his fragments. Instead he took a step that was more basic. He reshaped the nature of the struggle.
He grasped the strand of death along, with the strand of chaos and rather than attempting to intertwine them again he aimed them both resembling the dual barrels of a firearm directly at the void—the meticulously crafted non-space Vernia had formed.
He didn't assault her. He targeted her artwork.
A beam of energy—not merged, but emitted alongside—pierced forward. It hit not Vernia,. The membrane of her pocket dimension.
It didn't obliterate it. It modified it.
At the point where the beam struck the sterile emptiness expanded. A bizarre stunning tumultuous cluster of life emerged. Contorted vivid blossoms fashioned from crystal exploded outward. A tiny murmuring stream of light appeared from nowhere starting to etch a winding erratic course across the obsidian. The atmosphere became infused with the aroma of ozone and moist earth.
It was imperfect. It was wild. It was alive in a way her dioramas could never be.
Vernia gazed at the oddity in her gallery her expression a blend of intrigue. Her extraction procedure came to a stop.
"This… is this what you stand for?" she murmured, staring at the miniature world now marring her flawless emptiness. "This… racket?"
"Yes " Cassiathon gasped, collapsing onto the floor barely hanging on by grit and a fragile thread. "That sound is the point."
Her gaze shifted from the chaos to him her eyes opening wide. The proposal, for collaboration had vanished completely substituted by something more detached. "You're not a part. You're a contaminant."
The black crystal, still carried by him started to heat up. The exit door, the one he had entered through started to spin open behind him. She wasn't murdering him. She was forcing him out. Like a body rejecting a virus.
"Leave " she stated, her tone emotionless. ". Bring your disorder along. Our discussion ends here. Next occasion, Cassiathon Abysswalker words will no longer be spoken. Only cleansing."
The void spat him out.