The last action occurred suddenly. It targeted not individuals but the Ghost Web itself.
Three days following the Elias event the psychic connection surged erratically. Celeste. Fell within the Hub. The runes faded. Cassiathon experienced a crackling ache in the link.
"They're blocking our signals!" Kuro shouted, hurriedly tweaking his crystals. "However this isn't a block… it's a frequency."
The Angel of Death a quiet guardian abruptly stiffened. His jet-black eyes pierced beyond the chamber. No. It's a severance. She wields a fragment of abstract 'Ending'—a piece of my own realm transformed into a weapon—to sever the cords of your network. She is directing my essence against your connections.
At the consoles urgent alerts kept arriving. The Sun-Strider messenger, Kaelen was shouting about a " blade", inside her thoughts before her transmission abruptly ended. Elder Wynn's gentle flame flickered then died. Head Archivist Finn's clear message disintegrated into static.
Individually the relays were cut off not through eliminating the individuals. By surgically removing their power to link mentally. The Ghost Web was being taken apart with accuracy.
Cassiathon experienced every disconnection as a slice. The network acted as a prolongation of his intent and when its strands were severed the reaction shot back directly at him. He reeled, the pair of rivers, within him roiling fiercely from the rebound.
"Fall back!" Morgan yelled, grabbing Celeste. "Shut it off before it drags you down too!"
"No!" Cassiathon clenched his jaw. The Web was their edge. If it collapsed they would be blind. Cut off. "I can… I can strengthen the strands. Employ my link as a barrier."
"That will exhaust you!" Tania begged.
"It's this. Lose it all!" He forcefully struck the rune with his hands. He invested himself into the remaining links, not as a messenger but as a shield. He enveloped his spirit, the channel of destruction and disorder around the weakening strands of the Web attempting to take in the cutting strikes.
It was torment. Every strike of the Ending" against his barrier seemed like a fragment of his spirit being scraped off and erased. He was sacrificing his self as sacrificial protection, for the network.
He then observed the origin through the fading connections. Distantly within a citadel trapped in suspended moments Valentina Rhodes managed a device of design. At its center throbbed a shard of darkness so complete it pained the mind to behold—a captured piece of the Angel of Death's might concentrated into a blade.
He was unable to get to it. He could merely tolerate it.
Gradually each relay ceased functioning his shield proving inadequate. The Ghost Web was fading away.
When the final significant connection—the tie, to the Athenaeum—started to unravel Cassiathon took a instant action. He was unable to preserve the network. Yet he managed to transmit one pure unedited surge of all that he embodied via the last link.
He didn't provide a plan or reassurance. He shared the reality of months: the fear and victory the grief and affection the decision to face chaotic truth rather than flawless falsehoods. He conveyed the recollection of his fathers nod, his mothers hug Morgans faithfulness, Sierras bravery, Celestes kindness, the Sun-Striders resistance, Hope's Respite's mourning, for a sibling who existed and yet did not. He delivered everything, a flood of unbeaten expertise.
At that moment the thread broke.
The Phantom Network went entirely absolutely offline.
Inside the Hub the runes were lifeless. Celeste lay unconscious. Kuro's crystals were broken. Cassiathon fell to his knees, drained, emptied the edges of his canyon worn away to perilously fragile ledges. He might have a single significant push remaining. One.
Within the Athenaeum of Broken Code, Head Archivist Finn, his thoughts overwhelmed by the disconnection and then overwhelmed again by the surge took an unusual action. He avoided attempting to restore the connection. Instead he hurried to the Athenaeums tangible broadcasting system—a remnant from, before the collapse. There he started sending out a transmission. Not a psychic message, but a traditional radio frequency, embedding a compacted, digitized form of the emotional information Cassiathon had delivered.
It was a shout lost in the noise. A note sealed in a bottle cast into an ocean.
Throughout the wastelands inside bunkers, aboard salvage vehicles and, within communities equipped with receivers individuals perceived it.. More accurately they sensed it. A swell of collective sensation—not an ideal narrative but an authentic one.
The Ghost Web was dead.
However the Resonance had become widespread.
As Cassiathon rested on the ground of the Hub burdened by the heaviness of defeat, a solitary fresh light blinked on Morgan's console. A simple text- message came through an outdated radio channel from a community they had never reached out to before.
The text said: GOT YOUR MESSAGE. YOU'RE NOT, BY YOURSELF. WHAT SHOULD WE DO NOW?
The Web was gone. But the connection, in a different, more human form, had survived. The war was not over. It had just changed channels.