Silas staggered back, his perfect composure shattered.
"Impossible!" he hissed, lagoon-blue eyes wide with primal terror. "That power belongs to Harmony!"
He raised his hand, blasting a force at Ethan .
Ethan didn't flinch. He flicked his wrist. A ripple of distorted space swallowed the attack.
"Your harmony is just another kind of trash,"
Ethan stated, his voice layered with cosmic static.
Fractal patterns pulsed gold and black across his skin. He took a step forward. The deck plates warped beneath his boot.
Silas snarled, abandoning finesse. He ripped energy directly from the damaged Core, forming crackling whips of blue lightning.
"You are Dissonance incarnate! You will be unmade!" He lashed out, the whips screaming through the air.
Ethan moved. Not with speed, but with impossible displacement. One moment he was there, the next he stood beside Lena. His Void-touched hand brushed her temple.
Entropic Surge: Neural Scramble.
Lena gasped, Her vacant eyes cleared for a split second, filled with terror and recognition. "E-Ethan...?" she choked, before the Harmony programming slammed back down, locking her muscles rigid.
"LENA!" Kai roared. He charged Silas, bare-handed, pure rage fueling him.
"Insignificant!" Silas backhanded him with a concussive harmonic blast. Kai flew, crashing near the cracked tank holding Zara.
The fluid sloshed, the fracture widening. Zara's eyes snapped open – filled with the same agony as the Core.
Ethan's mismatched eyes blazed. Solar fire gathered in his right palm, Void-darkness in his left. "You hurt my friends." The words vibrated with contained annihilation. He clapped his hands together.
Entropy Ignition: Singularity Lance
A beam of spiraling gold and black erupted not aimed at Silas, but at the Void Star Gauntlet still fused to the Core's receptor node.
CRACK-SHATTER!
The Gauntlet exploded, into a miniature black hole that sucked the energy lashing from the Core.
The chamber plunged into near-darkness, lit only by Ethan's glow and the Core's dying lights .
Silas screamed. "MY GAUNTLET! MY KEY!" He whirled on Ethan, face contorted with fury. Raw, uncontrolled power bled from his hands, warping the air. "I will scour you from existence atom by atom!"
He gathered the leaking Core energy, forming a swirling vortex of destructive blue light above him. The Nautilus's Heart groaned, structural integrity failing. Alarms wailed.
Ethan braced, power coiling. "Try."
Kai dragged himself up, bloodied, staring at the destabilizing Core behind Silas. Its fractures glowed white-hot. "Ethan! Forget him! The Core... it's gonna blow! It'll take the whole ocean with it!"
The choice was brutal: Stop Silas? Or stop the bomb that would kill millions? Ethan's cosmic gaze flickered between the raging villain and the dying star at the chamber's heart.
Seawater sprayed from breached compartments.
Ethan stood rooted,"YOU ARE CANCER!" Silas shrieked, his voice distorted, breaking. He hurled a concentrated sphere of pure harmonic destruction. It ripped through the space between them.
Ethan met it head-on,With a fist.
Entropic Collision. Ethan absorbed while he inhaled then exhaled
Then it detonated.
The force slammed Silas backward. His perfect suit shredded. Blood bloomed on his white shirt.
He hit the cracked viewport overlooking the churning, energy-lit ocean, cracking it further. He slid down, dazed, his power flickering.
Ethan crossed the ruined chamber in a single step, space bending around him. He loomed over Silas, his mismatched eyes burning holes into the broken man.
One hand, wreathed in captured solar fire, reached down.
Silas looked up, stubbornness warring with primal terror in his lagoon-blue eyes. "You... cannot... win... Dissonance always..."
Ethan's voice was layered with cosmic static. "I am the End. And the After."
His solar-fire hand clamped onto Silas's chest.
Absolute Entropy Synthesis: Consume.
Silas Thorne screamed. His form dissolved into streams of pure, energy – harmonic blue.
It poured into Ethan.
Ethan's body arched. His fractal scars flared blindingly. His Level surged: 65 → 66 → 67... The sheer volume of power threatened to tear him apart.
The Core behind him groaned, its final death throes accelerating.
He released the empty space where Silas had been. Only dust motes danced in the actinic light.
Silence fell, broken only by the groaning metal, the hiss of steam, and the frantic, weakening pulse of the Core.
"Ethan!" Lena's voice, cut through the haze.
She stood free. Her eyes were wide with horror, fixed on him. Kai was at Zara's tank, desperately trying to pry it open as the fluid drained and the girl whimpered.
Ethan turned. His gaze swept over them. Over the dying Core. Over the ruined sanctuary. A slow, terrible smile touched his lips. It held no warmth. Only infinite, coldness.
"Kai," Ethan said, his voice echoing unnaturally. "You asked... what world?" He gestured vaguely upwards, towards the collapsing ceiling, towards the surface.
"Look at it. Scrap heaps. Monsters. Factions fighting over radioactive puddles." His solar-fire eye blazed. "It's garbage. Mountains of it. Waiting to be swept away."
Lena stumbled back as if struck. "Ethan... no. That's the power talking! Silas's poison!"
Kai froze, half-turned from the tank, his face pale. "Trash King? Buddy? Snap out of it! We won! We killed the psycho! We saved the damn world!"
"Saved it?" Ethan chuckled, a sound like rocks grinding. "For what? More decay? More pointless struggle?" He raised a hand, Void-dark energy swirling around his fingers.
The dying Core pulsed in response. "I absorbed the Core's purpose. Silas's vision. It's... efficient. A clean slate." He looked at his hands, at the power crackling there. "Why rebuild the garbage dump... when you can recycle it all?"
He took a step towards the sputtering Core, his intent horrifyingly clear. He would finish Silas's work. Trigger the Cleansing Tide. But under his control.
"ETHAN, STOP!" Lena screamed, throwing herself between him and the Core. Tears streamed down her face. "This isn't you! Remember the Scrap Pile? Remember Mama Knox? She believed in fixing broken things! Not throwing them away!" She pointed a trembling finger at him.
"You were F-Tier garbage! But you fought! You recycled yourself! Just like you said!"
Ethan paused. The Void-dark energy around his hand flickered. A flicker of pain crossed his face. Mama Knox's crowbar... broken systems...
Kai abandoned the tank, rushing to Lena's side. He didn't raise a weapon. He stood vulnerable, bloody, meeting Ethan's burning gaze. "Yeah, Trash King. Remember Sector Zero? You crawled out of literal garbage with a busted watch and made Aris Thorne eat his words. You saved us." He gestured wildly at Lena, at Zara struggling weakly in the draining tank.
"This? This ain't saving. This is becoming the thing you hate. Worse than Silas. Worse than Aris. You wanna be the biggest damn garbage man in history? Start with yourself right now!"
Zara let out a weak, terrified whimper from the tank. The sound, small and utterly human, pierced the static roaring in Ethan's mind.
Entropy Corruption: 98%... 97%...
The solar fire in Ethan's right eye dimmed. The Void-darkness in his left swirled less violently.
He saw Lena's tear-streaked face, etched with desperate love, not fear of his power, but fear for him. He saw Kai, battered but unbroken, refusing to see him as a god or monster. He saw Zara, a broken child used as fuel, needing help.
He looked down at his hands. The fractal scars pulsed, but softer now. The cosmic static in his voice faded, replaced by a raspy whisper.
"...Garbage..." He clenched his fists, the power straining against his will. "So... much... garbage..."
He took a shuddering breath, the first truly human sound he'd made since touching the Core.
He looked at Lena, his eyes finally focusing, the cosmic fire banked, . "Lena... help me... carry it..."
The dam broke. Lena surged forward, grabbing his arm, not recoiling from the heat or the cold.
"We carry it together! Always!" Kai slammed his fist against Ethan's shoulder. "That's the spirit, Trash King! Now let's get the hell out of this sinking tin can before it actually recycles us!"
The Core pulsed one final time. Then its light died completely. Darkness fell, lit only by emergency strips flickering on the deck.
The groan of the Nautilus's Heart became a shriek of rending metal. Water roared through breaches.
"ZARA!" Kai yelled, scrambling back to the tank. With a final heave fueled by adrenaline, he ripped the cracked transparisteel open. Lena helped him pull the shivering, semi-conscious girl free.
Ethan moved with desperate, human speed.
He grabbed Lena and Kai. "Hold Zara! Hold on!" He poured the last dregs of his controlled entropy into his legs, to move.
Void Step: Short-Range Displacement.
Space folded. They vanished from the collapsing Core chamber just as the ceiling crashed down.
They reappeared in a flooding corridor near the sub's mangled bow. Seawater surged around their knees, rising fast.
"UP!" Ethan roared, pointing towards a jagged tear in the hull above, lit by the twilight filtering from the ocean surface.
The Leviathan's form was breaking apart around them.
They fought through the rising water, Kai carrying Zara piggyback, Lena pulling Ethan when his corrupted power faltered. They reached the tear.
Ethan boosted Kai and Zara through first. He turned to Lena.
"GO!"
She hesitated for only a second, then scrambled up. Ethan leaped after her, hauling himself out just as the massive hull section groaned and sank beneath the waves.
They burst onto the Leviathan's disintegrating back, gasping in the air. The ocean churned around them, littered with debris.
The sky was a bruised purple, streaked with green auroras –
Kai collapsed, Zara cradled protectively. Lena dropped beside Ethan, coughing up seawater, her hand gripping his arm .
Ethan sat on the shuddering metal, head bowed, shoulders slumped. The fractal scars on his skin were still visible, but dull, inert. The cosmic fire in his eyes was gone, replaced by exhaustion .
He looked at his hands.Then he looked at Lena, at Kai holding Zara, at the broken, surviving world .
He didn't speak. He just breathed.
They had escaped the deep. They were alive. For now.
Elsewhere.
Absolute cold. Absolute darkness and silence .
Aris Thorne hung suspended in the Void. Frozen. He was already an ice statue adrift in nothingness.
Then… a pinprick.
It drifted. Touched the edge of the ice statue .
The perfect ice shattered.
Disintegrating atom by atom, drawn into the tiny, ravenous maw.
The energy flowed – the remnants of Solar Scorch, as it started pouring into the frozen figure.
Golden light, fierce and hungry, ignited within Aris Thorne's chest. It spread, chasing away the last shards of ice, filling frozen veins with liquid fire.
His eyes snapped open.
ARIS THORNE - LVL ???: SOLAR VOIDSCORCH
They burned with a terrifying intensity. Gold rimmed with the infinite black. He looked into the endless Void, a slow, predatory smile spreading across his perfect face.
His voice, when it came, echoed in the nothingness, cold and absolute.
"Discordant."
He flexed a hand. Solar fire, tinged with devouring Void-dark, flickered around his fingers.