The word hung in the superheated air of the geothermal chamber, a psychological weapon sharper than any blade: "Brother."
It was a confirmation of everything. The half-forgotten memories, the cold familiarity, the shared lineage. But it was spoken with the sterile, detached precision of a scientist identifying a specimen.
Kwandezi's mind shattered. The grief for his mother, the betrayal of his family, the cold horror of Project Integrate—it all coalesced into a singular, catastrophic emotional detonation. The carefully constructed walls of his cynicism, the disciplined self-hatred he used to control the monster, were vaporized.
The Void Host roared to the surface, not as a whisper, but as a typhoon.
"YOU!"
The word was not human. It was a distorted, multi-layered echo of pure, agonized rage. A shockwave of violet Null-Kinetic energy erupted from Kwandezi's body, a visible sphere of destruction. The narrow gantry beneath his feet buckled, the metal screaming as its molecular structure was violently assaulted. Aisha and Akanni were thrown back, the force slamming them against the gantry's railing, the heat from the core searing the air around them.
Kwandezi's eyes were no longer purple-tinged; they were solid, swirling abysses of pure Void. The Ultimate Transmuted blades in his hands vibrated, trails of dark energy bleeding from their perfected edges. He didn't see a step-brother. He saw the architect of his entire life's suffering.
Captain Zaire stood impassive, twenty meters away. His Banisher Aegis Suit effortlessly absorbed the kinetic blast, its internal dampeners whining as they compensated for the distortion. He had anticipated this.
"A predictable emotional surge, Candidate 001," Zaire's voice boomed, utterly devoid of warmth. "Your grief response is... excessive. It proves the project's core hypothesis: your instability makes you unfit."
He raised his hand. "Protocol Omega. The experiment is terminated. Cleanse the anomaly. Secure the data chip."
The six Banisher Praetorian Guards moved as one. They were not the clumsy Ironclads or the panicked guards in the corridor. They were the cream of the crop, designed to hunt Scions. They split into two teams of three, their movements silent and flawless.
One team ignited their Void Blades and surged toward Kwandezi.
The other team fanned out, raising heavy-gauge Sonic Disruptors and Energy Net Launchers, their target: the two rogue elements protecting the asset.
"Aisha, the chip!" Akanni roared, shoving himself off the railing. His fatigue was gone, replaced by the pure adrenaline of a Scion-level fight. "Protect the data! I'll hold the line!"
Aisha didn't hesitate. She jammed the precious data chip and the silver locket deep into a sealed pocket of her Aegis mesh, her mind racing. She was the handler, the empath, but right now she was the librarian, and she was carrying the most dangerous book in the world.
She brought her plasma pistol up, her battle IQ assessing the threat. "Two on me, one on you, Captain! They're trying to pin you for the nets!"
"Let them try!" Akanni bellowed. He ripped a steel maintenance panel from the gantry floor, his Geokinesis turning the half-ton plate into a makeshift shield.
The guard aiming at Akanni fired his Energy Net. The projectile burst, but Akanni met it with the shield. The net wrapped around the steel, sizzling and discharging, but Akanni held it, roaring as he absorbed the kinetic shock. He used the momentum to spin, slinging the entire panel—net and all—like a discus at the other two guards.
They scattered. Aisha fired, her plasma bolts precise, striking the gantry floor at their feet, forcing them to break formation. The battle for the gantry had begun.
But the real war was between the brothers.
Kwandezi, consumed by the Host, was pure instinct and rage. He didn't wait. He shot forward, his speed inhuman, a violet blur against the orange glow of the core.
The three Praetorians met him mid-gantry. They were a wall of disciplined steel, their three Void Blades forming a perfect, intersecting cage.
Kwandezi didn't try to go through it. He used his power.
With a scream, he transmuted the air directly in front of them into a solid block of opaque, black obsidian. The guards, moving at full speed, had no time to stop. They slammed face-first into the instantly-formed wall.
The sound of Aegis Suits cracking against the stone echoed through the chamber. But they were Banishers. They were elite. They were already recalibrating, their internal stabilizers fighting the impact.
Kwandezi was already past them. He had used them as a stepping stone. His target was Zaire.
He brought his Ultimate Transmuted blade down in a vicious overhead arc aimed at Zaire's helmet.
Zaire didn't move. He simply raised his own forearm, his integrated Void Blade humming to life.
CLANG!
The impact was catastrophic. A shockwave of pure energy erupted from the point of contact. Kwandezi's perfected blade met Zaire's powered blade. It was a stalemate. The force threw sparks the size of fists, and the gantry beneath their feet groaned, the metal buckling from the focused, conflicting energies.
"Your power is raw, Anomaly," Zaire said, his voice calm, even as he strained against the blow. "But it is wild. You have no discipline. You fight like the monsters you hunt."
Zaire twisted his wrist. He wasn't just blocking; he was analyzing. His suit was feeding data on Kwandezi's power output, his molecular frequency, back to his internal computer. He activated his suit's Kinetic Repulsors, pushing Kwandezi back a single, jarring step.
Zaire attacked. It was not a wild swing. It was a flurry of perfect, economical movements. Every thrust, every parry, was a textbook Banisher form, executed with the flawless precision of a master. Kwandezi, even with his instincts, was forced onto the defensive. He was blocking, dodging, the sound of their blades clashing a deafening, high-speed drumbeat.
Kwandezi was faster. He was stronger. But Zaire was better. He was anticipating Kwandezi's every move, his battle IQ outmatched by Zaire's flawless, disciplined technique.
"You were always predictable," Zaire said, his blade slipping past Kwandezi's guard and slicing a deep, sparking gash across his combat mesh. "You let your rage think for you."
The pain registered, and the Void Host roared in fury. It didn't want a duel; it wanted an execution.
Kwandezi pulled back, his hand outstretched. He gathered the ambient, overwhelming heat from the geothermal core itself, focusing it into a single point. He was attempting to transmute the air into a lance of pure plasma.
"Inefficient," Zaire said. He didn't counter. He simply took one step to the side. The plasma lance erupted from Kwandezi's hand, missing Zaire entirely and slamming into the far wall of the chamber, melting a meter-wide hole in the rock.
The attack had left Kwandezi open. Zaire stepped in, his movements fluid. He slammed the pommel of his Void Blade into Kwandezi's solar plexus, knocking the air from his lungs, and followed it with a precise chop to the side of his neck.
Kwandezi collapsed, his perfected blades clattering, his body paralyzed by the precision strike.
"This is the difference between us, brother," Zaire said, standing over him, his blade aimed at Kwandezi's heart. "I am a Scion of the Veil. You are just a container for a parasite. The experiment is over."
Elsewhere on the gantry, Akanni was in trouble. He had crushed one guard with a pillar of concrete ripped from the floor, but the other two had pinned him. One had locked a heavy Energy Net around his arm, while the other was hammering him with Sonic Disruptor blasts, the sound rattling his bones, making his Geokinesis falter.
Aisha saw it all. Kwandezi was down. Akanni was pinned. The three guards Kwandezi had disabled were already stirring. This was the end.
Her handler instincts, her sheer desperation, took over. "Kwandezi!" she screamed, her voice raw. "The locket! He knew! He let your mother die! He used her!"
She wasn't trying to calm him. She was trying to ignite him.
Kwandezi, lying paralyzed on the gantry, heard her. The image of his mother's smiling face in the locket... Zaire's cold, calculating voice... Project Integrate.
The Void Host didn't just roar. It detonated.
Kwandezi's body, still paralyzed, didn't move. But the gantry beneath Zaire did.
Zaire's eyes widened behind his visor. He felt the molecular structure of the steel beneath his feet vanish. Kwandezi, in a final act of desperate, instinctual genius, had transmuted a five-meter section of the gantry into nothing.
Zaire, the master of order and discipline, was suddenly in freefall, plunging toward the lethal, superheated shielding of the geothermal core below.
He twisted in the air, firing his suit's stabilizers and a grapple line. But Kwandezi was already moving.
He wasn't paralyzed. He had feigned the paralysis, his battle IQ using Zaire's own arrogance against him. The instant Zaire fell, Kwandezi sprang up. He didn't pursue.
He turned and ran toward Akanni and Aisha.
The remaining Praetorian Guards stared in shock as their Captain fell, then turned their weapons on the approaching Kwandezi.
"He's mine!" Kwandezi roared. He raised his hand, and in a move of pure, arrogant power, he transmuted the air in front of the guards into a solid, immovable wall of Corundum-Steel.
The guards, trapped between the wall and the collapsing gantry, could only watch as Kwandezi reached his team.
"Aisha, the chip!" he demanded, his voice a distorted echo of rage.
Aisha, stunned, fumbled in her pocket and threw it to him.
"Akanni, the wall! Break it!" Kwandezi commanded.
Akanni, seeing his chance, tore the energy net from his arm and punched the chamber wall beside them. The rock fractured.
"Zaire will be back in seconds!" Aisha yelled, as Zaire's grapple line caught a strut below.
"He won't have time," Kwandezi said. He held the data chip—the sum of his entire life's suffering—and looked at the geothermal core.
"You wanted this data, Zaire?" he screamed into the cavern. "THEN HAVE IT!"
He didn't throw the chip. He transmuted it. He turned the data—the "Project Integrate" file—into pure, raw, unstable Void energy and hurled it directly at the Geothermal Core.
It was an act of pure, suicidal madness.
The chip of energy struck the core's shielding. The core, designed to contain heat, had no defense against a direct injection of Null-Kinetic power.
The core stuttered. The thrumming sound stopped. The orange glow flickered, turning a sickly, unstable violet.
Alarms blared across the entire Citadel, loud enough to be heard even in the core. "WARNING! CORE CONTAINMENT FAILURE IMMINENT! REACTOR OVERLOAD IN T-MINUS 90 SECONDS!"
Zaire, now climbing back onto a lower gantry, froze. He stared at the violet-pulsing core. Kwandezi hadn't just escaped. He had just signed the death warrant for the entire Capital Chapter.
"He's insane..." Zaire whispered, his cold discipline finally breaking.
"Now we run," Akanni said, grabbing Aisha. He smashed a final, gaping hole in the chamber wall, revealing the dark waste conduit beyond.
Kwandezi gave Zaire one last look of pure, cold hatred, then plunged into the darkness after them, the sound of the dying, screaming Citadel core at his back.