The entirety of the house was gone—blown apart, disintegrated, reduced to a spray of molten stone and drifting ash. The air still glittered with heat, the ground still humming from the force of her strike. In its place was only ruin: jagged skeletal beams jutting up from smoking craters, walls sheared clean through, glass melted into warped pools. The blast radius stretched far beyond the house itself, and what had once been an entire block now lay in tatters. A few dozen buildings behind were gone, erased as if they'd never existed.

And in the dead center of it all, framed by the scorched earth and rising haze, was Kaiser.

He knelt in the crater that had once been a home, one knee driven firmly into the chest of the Unborn beneath him. His sword was poised just centimeters from its neck, the point a silver thread away from ending it. The Unborn's body was pinned under his weight, its blue limbs twitching, more from restraint than weakness. Kaiser leaned over him, his posture balanced, his gaze utterly emotionless.

No rage. No satisfaction. Just cold, hollow disappointment.

Even in the wreckage of her Sol's fury, they looked untouched. Her beam had torn through stone and steel like paper, yet Kaiser and the Unborn might as well have been standing on a quiet, moonlit street. They were locked in their own world, bound in a stillness that no amount of destruction could intrude upon.

Celestine's voice cut through the ringing in her ears. "Kaiser!" She was already moving, boots sliding on loose stone as she advanced into the wreckage. "Stop! Don't you dare move a muscle!"

His head turned until his eyes found hers. The gaze was the same as it had been on the Unborn. For a moment, the air between them felt heavier than the blast she had unleashed.

"You kill it," she said, her voice hard and clear, "And it will turn you into one of them. That's what they do. That's what they are."

She stopped a few paces away, hands curling into fists. "Step aside. Now."

Kaiser's lips curved, not into warmth, not even amusement. Just a faint, knowing smile, the kind that spoke of someone who already understood the truth before she'd spoken it. "I know," he said simply. "You really shouldn't worry so much, Princess."

A clatter of boots came from the far side of the street. Ivan and Aria finally arrived next to her, both breaking into the scene almost at the same time. They froze instantly, not just because of the sight of Kaiser poised over the Unborn, but because they could finally see what Celestine's beam had done.

The scale of it left them speechless.

Ivan's eyes flicked from one smoking ruin to another, his usual smirk nowhere to be found. "By the Hopes..." he muttered, his voice quieter than he intended.

Aria didn't say anything right away. She was still staring at the arc of devastation stretching out from where Celestine stood. The blast had erased entire structures from existence. Walls had been sheared in perfect planes, rooftops gone without a trace, support beams snapped clean. The further edges of the destruction were frozen mid-collapse, dust still hanging in the air, light from the setting sun cutting golden spears through it.

It was the kind of power you didn't forget. The kind you didn't mistake for anything else.

Ivan let out a low whistle, shaking his head. "I was gonna call that overkill, but—" His eyes slid toward the Unborn pinned under Kaiser. "—guess maybe it was just enough."

Celestine didn't so much as glance at him. Her attention never left Kaiser, her posture straight, the red cape Ivan had given her billowing in the rising heat. Every line of her body radiated Sol. She'd pulled enough Sol into her to level a fortress, and yet here she stood, calm as a blade in its sheath.

Her mind, however, was anything but calm. 'He's too close and he's acting far too reckless. This isn't a battle you can win on instinct alone, Kaiser. You don't know how far they'll go to twist you.'

She could still feel the echo of her strike coursing through her veins, heat and light, pulsing with the raw satisfaction of wiping the monsters from the earth. But satisfaction was not the same as peace. The blast had bought her seconds, maybe minutes. And in those minutes, she had no intention of letting Kaiser damn himself.

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"Kaiser," she said again, her voice quieter but sharper. "Let it go."

Kaiser lifted his sword a fraction, the point easing away from the Unborn's throat. It was enough movement to say he'd heard her. Enough to say he was willing to step back.

The Unborn smiled.

A low, ugly laugh bubbled up from its chest, thin at first, then louder, brightening with something like delight. The sound turned every head, and Celestine's stomach went cold.

The blue-skinned, dark-eyed thing rolled its gaze to her and stopped laughing at once, as if the humor had only ever been a prelude. "Princess," it said, pleasant, almost courtly. "An honor."

The word slid across the ruined street like oil. Aria stiffened. Ivan's clones all took one involuntary half-step closer to Celestine.

Celestine did not answer. Her face didn't move. She had no room for whatever theater this creature wanted. She knew what mattered: the mantle on her shoulders and what it meant. The red cape was one of the Mantles of Heroes, the worst kind of artifact, made by barbaric means so that those who were not Soulless could wound the Unborn deeply and walk away untainted. There were a few thousand left in the Liberatorium's vaults. The moment Ivan pressed it into her hands, she understood what this Tale had become.

Protocol is simple. If an Unborn appears and the Tale did not name them, you return to the Liberatorium. You do not improvise. You do not chase glory. You bring back an army and an Angel.

The guildhall knew. They suspected at least.

The Unborn looked faintly disappointed that she ignored him, then his expression broke into something colder. "All right," he said softly. "Then I'll do something you cannot ignore."

He moved.

His remaining hand snapped up and closed on the retreating blade. Steel bit into palm. Before anyone could speak, he dragged the edge toward himself and rammed it into his throat. The sound was small. A wet click. The point punched through soft tissue, tore past spine, and found the earth beneath. The blue skin split like cheap silk and black veins flared under the surface, pulsing once, and then twice.

Everything froze.

Kaiser's eyes went wide, truly wide for the first time since any of them had known him. Shock cracked the mask. A bead of sweat gathered at his hairline, then another. His hand clenched hard enough on the hilt to whiten the knuckles, but the sword was already where the Unborn wanted it to be.

"Kaiser!" Celestine's voice broke from command into something raw. "Drop it—drop the blade, now!"

Aria's breath hitched, the words ripping out of her: "Let go! Let go!"

Ivan swore so hard even his clones flinched. "He's trying to taint you—!"

The Unborn smiled around the blade lodged in its throat. No blood came, only a slick, glistening seep of living ink that writhed as if eager to escape. "Witness," it gargled with grotesque delight, "Consent."

Kaiser's grip faltered. His palm split open, blood spilling as the sword slipped free. Steel struck the ground with a harsh clatter, bouncing once… twice…But it was too late.

The Unborn's body convulsed, back arching under Kaiser's blade. His eyes went wholly black, then wholly white, then something like the absence of both. A ring of dark spread from the wound in petal-thin ripples, the flesh collapsing inward as if swallowing the blade Kaise no longer held.

Celestine thrust out her hand and the world ignited. A dome of gold vaulted into being, its radiant shell etched with patterns of living light. She poured her pulse into it without restraint, hurling her Sol through channels she rarely dared to touch. Heat roared down her arms, sank into her marrow, sang against her bones until every part of her turned to light.

"Down!" she barked, her voice snapping like a whip. She was already lowering herself into a lunge, one palm braced against the earth to anchor the shield.

Aria obeyed before thought could catch up. She dove into the shelter of the golden arc, her bow clattering against stone as the light washed her face. Ivan vaulted beside her, his form splitting in midair with a ripple like glass shattering into water. Dozens of copies struck and rebounded against one another, then scattered outward, forming a living ring around the dome's edge.

Only Kaiser remained unmoving. He did not flinch, did not turn his gaze toward the light, did not even reach for another weapon. He stared at the Unborn beneath him, his breathing shallow, his skin damp with the cold sweat. For the first time in a long while, he was not following his own plan.

And then, the world detonated.

There was no fire. No thunder. No shriek of shrapnel tearing through stone. Only ink. It erupted from the corpse in absolute silence, a blooming sphere of blackness that unfurled in a single, perfect heartbeat. The wave struck Celestine's shield with the crushing weight of an ocean, bent against the dome of gold, and split, flowing in every direction at once. The darkness poured over, around, beneath, searching for weakness, probing for the tiniest seam.

Where it touched, the world unraveled. Stone ran like water, lines of mortar smearing into oil-slick streaks. Shadows hardened into spears. Heat drained away, leaving a frost that bit deeper than winter. Everything became unstable, unreal, as though the ink rewrote the rules of existence with its touch.

And then it swallowed them whole.

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