The cracked avatar core tore free of the pulverized palace rubble, surging along an ascending sky route at fifty meters elevation.
Without its porcelain chassis, the core pulsed like a violent miniature sun, trailing streaks of condensed celestial authority through the mountain air.
Ferra darted across the five-meter debris field, her titanium tongs snapping tight around her bent masterwork pin before the rubble shifted.
With a sharp backward tug, she wrenched the scorched pin free from the shattered shell fragments littering the gravel.
The metal hissed with residual divine heat, scorching the tips of her tongs as she cradled the precious component against her apron.
Rumi activated touched routes, slipping through spatial folds to extract the dragon-blood smith to a safe staging perimeter thirty meters away.
"The pin is retrieved!" Ferra signaled through the private channel to the distant capital. "The core is clear of the shell—sever the sky!"
