The convoy of Dwarven mechs ground to a halt at the edge of the abyss. Their engines coughed one last time before dying into a silence that felt heavier than the mountain of stone above them. The tunnel had ended. It did not taper off or collapse into rubble. It simply stopped existing.
Valeria climbed out of the cockpit. Her boots hit the ground with a dull thud that did not echo. She looked around. The air here was not cold or hot. It was thin. It tasted like aluminum foil on a filling.
They were standing on the threshold of a natural amphitheater located directly under the Frost-Fang peaks. But natural was the wrong word for what lay before them. The reality of the cavern was breaking down.
Valeria watched as a stalactite dripped water in the distance. The drop fell. But halfway down it reset to the ceiling and fell again. It was a loop. A skip in the record of time. The ground beneath their feet rippled like liquid though it felt solid to the touch. Colors were desaturated. The vibrant green of Lysandra's necrotic fire and the gold of Kael's armor were washed out. The world was turning into a high-contrast grey.
Even the System was struggling. Blue boxes flickered in Valeria's vision. The text was garbled and scrolling too fast to read.
[Locat???n: Hiv? Hea?t]
[Warn?ng: Reality Integ?ity Crit?cal]
"My eyes hurt," Lucian whimpered. He was rubbing his temples with his palms. "The geometry. It doesn't make sense. That rock over there is both close and far away. It hurts to look at it."
"It is a dimensional bleed," Ignis said. He adjusted his goggles but then took them off entirely as if they were making it worse. "The Void is not just a place. It is a negation. It is overwriting the laws of physics in this cave. If we stay here too long we will simply cease to be."
"Look," Kael said. He pointed to the center of the cavern.
There suspended in the air was a tear.
It looked like a jagged rip in a painting. Behind the rip was nothing but static. It was white noise that hurt to look at. It was a wound in the world that refused to bleed because there was no blood left to give.
Surrounding the tear was a pulsating mass of grey flesh. It was amorphous. It shifted shapes constantly. Faces and limbs and claws bubbled to the surface and were reabsorbed in a grotesque cycle of consumption. It was the Hive Queen. But she was not a monster in the biological sense. She was the antibody of the Void.
[Target: The Hive Queen.]
[Status: Feeding.]
"She isn't just eating mana," Valeria realized as she watched streams of blue light flow from the ley-lines into the tear. "She is eating the laws of physics. She is widening the rift. That is why the Phages are consuming the world. They are making space for the Nothing."
"If that tear gets big enough," Ignis whispered, "it won't just destroy Oakhaven. It will unravel the planet. It is a deletion event."
"We have to close it," Kael said. He loosened his sword in its scabbard though the action seemed futile against a hole in reality.
"How?" Lysandra asked. She leaned heavily on her staff. "Magic feeds it. Physical attacks? Look at her. She has no form. If you cut her she just reforms. You cannot stab a hole in reality."
"We don't cut her," Valeria said. Her mind was racing. She was flipping through the mental pages of the Library. She needed physics. She needed a way to seal a vacuum. "We plug the hole."
She looked at the tear. It was a vacuum. It was sucking everything in.
"We need a bomb," Valeria said. "A bomb that doesn't use mana. A bomb that creates an implosion so strong it forces reality to snap back together. A localized singularity."
She pulled the backpack off her shoulders. She set it on the rippling ground.
"Ignis give me the sulfur you harvested from the vents. Kael I need your heat but not yet. Stand back."
She closed her eyes.
[System Library: Open.]
The transition was instant. The glitching grey world vanished. She stood in the warm silent aisles of the Universal Archive. The smell of old paper and dust calmed her racing heart. Here the laws of physics were absolute. Here one plus one always equaled two.
She ran to the Alchemy lab. It was a small room off the main atrium. She had stocked it with the supplies she had gathered over the months.
She grabbed a heavy glass sphere. It was reinforced and designed to hold volatile compounds.
She placed the last phial of Concentrated Spirit Essence on the table. This was the volatile high-grade fuel she had been using to heal Kael. It was pure life energy. But in its raw form it was also a potent catalyst.
"Sulfur for the base," she muttered to herself as her hands moved with precision. "Blasting powder for the kinetic kick. And the Essence for the gravitational binding."
She packed the sphere with the volcanic sulfur Ignis had collected. She added the black blasting powder they had scavenged from the mines. Then she carefully placed the phial of Essence in the center.
"This is a Void-Collapse Charge," Valeria explained to the empty room. "Theoretically the Spirit Essence reacts with the sulfur at high heat to create a gravitational pulse. A black hole that lasts for a nanosecond. It should pull the edges of the tear together like a suture."
She sealed the sphere with wax. It felt heavy. It hummed with a terrifying potential. It was a bomb made of life and death.
She exited the Library.
She opened her eyes in the cavern. The grey static washed over her again.
She held the bomb in her hands. It was warm.
"I have it," Valeria told them. "This sphere contains a gravitational singularity. We have one shot. We have to drop this directly into the tear. Not the Queen. The Tear itself."
"The Queen is guarding it," Silas noted. He was crouched low. His fur was standing on end. "She has a thousand arms. She will shred anyone who gets close."
"Then we distract her," Kael said.
The Tiger stepped forward. He began to strip off his armor. He unbuckled the golden breastplate. He dropped his heavy pauldrons. He let the metal clang to the floor. He stood bare-chested in the freezing glitching air. His skin was bronze and scarred.
"What are you doing?" Valeria asked.
"I am going to be the sun," Kael said. "She hates light. She hates heat. If she eats energy let us see if she can swallow a star."
He turned to the others.
"Silas and Caspian. You keep the small ones off me. Lucian."
He looked at the Phoenix.
"You are the fastest flyer. When I open the path you take the package."
Lucian looked at the bomb in Valeria's hands. He swallowed hard. His wings twitched nervously.
"I take the package," Lucian squeaked. "I fly into the death hole. Got it. No pressure."
"You can do it," Kael said. He placed a heavy hand on Lucian's shoulder. "You are fire."
"Ready?" Kael asked.
He stepped forward. He didn't roar. He ignited.
[Skill: Solar Flare (Maximum Output).]
Kael didn't just get hot. He became blinding. A pillar of white fire erupted from his body. It turned the grey cavern into noon. The rock beneath his feet melted instantly into magma. The shadows were banished. The glitching reality seemed to stabilize for a moment pushed back by the sheer intensity of his existence.
The Hive Queen screeched. It was a sound like grinding metal. The sudden influx of massive thermal energy blinded her void sensors. She lashed out. Tentacles of grey static whipped blindly trying to find the source of the pain.
"Attack!" Kael shouted.
He charged. He was a comet running across the ground. He slammed into the mass of the Queen. His fists were wreaths of white fire. Every blow vaporized the grey flesh.
The Queen roared and focused all her attention on the burning gnat that was hurting her. Thousands of grey limbs converged on Kael.
The battle had begun.