The stadium bled.Not water. Not blood. Just loss.Eclipse soldiers came through the north tunnel in a wave. Black armor, red visors, blades that hummed. They moved like they’d trained for this. They had. The Legion met them on the forty yard line. Bone against steel. Steel was winning.Vaeloric hit the field at a run. The hunter corpse beside him. The Death Knight was already there, a hole in the Eclipse line where it stood. But for every one it erased, three more came.“Kael!” Vaeloric shouted. Broadcast cut through the noise. “Status!”“Bad!” Kael yelled back. He was behind an overturned med cart. Rifle back in his hands. Empty. He threw it. Drew his knife. “They got explosives! They’re trying for the garage! The living!”“Elara?”“Sealed in!” Kael said. “She’s got Joss and forty others. Doors won’t hold!”Vaeloric looked at the north tunnel. Eclipse kept coming. Endless. Behind him, downtown, the dome held. But it shook. The Null inside was thinking. It would get out.Two fronts.

The street was glass.Lira Voss burned the mall, then the hospital, then the blocks between. Now the road south of the stadium was black glass and smoke. It hurt to walk on. The Legion didn’t care. One hundred thirty one skeletons marched. Their bones clicked on the glass. Behind them, forty living. Kael, Orion, Elara, Joss. The hunter corpse walked last. Guarding.Vaeloric was in front. No shirt. No armor. The black rain burned off his gray skin. His bone hand was longer now. The claws scraped the glass when he moved. His eyes were still black. Blue pupils. Like the System was trapped in them.“Three blocks,” Kael said. He had new armor. Eclipse plate, looted. It was too big. “She’s at the overpass. Got a throne made of cars. Melting them. For show.”“Let her show,” Vaeloric said. His voice was still two voices. His and the Void’s. It made Elara flinch every time. “She’ll kneel or burn.”“Vaeloric,” Elara said. She kept her distance. Three feet. Always. “Your skin. It’s cold. Like de

The Core was screaming.Not sound. Data. System code ran through Vaeloric’s hands like fire and ice at once. His gray skin cracked. Blue light poured out. The Void in his eyes bled into the black around him.The World Eater didn’t have organs. It had logic. Rooms of spinning math. Walls of law. The Core was the heart. A sphere of blue System script, ten feet across, floating in nothing. It pulsed. Each pulse erased a mile outside.[System Core – World Eater] [Function: Regional Erasure] [Integrity: 100%] [Intruder: Vaeloric Thane – Void King] [Countermeasure: Initializing]Walls grew. From the void. Made of the same absence as the Null. They closed in. To erase him.Vaeloric didn’t let go.“You’re a machine,” he said. His voice didn’t work here. Thought did. “Machines have off switches.”He pushed Void into the Core. The black from his eyes ran down his arms. Into the blue. The Core fought. It showed him things. Stadium. Elara holding Joss. Kael bleeding. Orion writing. Lira

The wall didn’t just break. It screamed.Vorgath Prime hit the glass like a meteor. The ten feet of Territory Authority Vaeloric built shattered to dust. The shockwave threw Legion and Flame and living across the crater. Kael landed on his back, knife gone, ribs cracking again. Joss flew into Elara. She caught him. Both rolled.Vaeloric didn’t move. The stone of his legs was part of the glass. The glass broke. He stayed standing. In the air. Then down. Feet hit the crater floor.Vorgath Prime stood. Thirty feet tall. Lava for blood. Armor that was bone and metal and screaming faces. He had no eyes. Just a mouth. Wide. Full of teeth like swords. “BROTHER,” Vorgath Prime said. The sky shook. “YOU KILLED MY BROTHER.”“Yours was smaller,” Vaeloric said. His voice was quiet. It had to be. One percent left. Molthera hit next. She didn’t land. She became rain. Black rain. Bleeding rain. Where it hit the glass, it grew. Mouths. Eyes. Arms. Hundreds. Then thousands. They pulled themselves up

The sky ran.Ur-Ghaal didn’t. He became distance. He was at the crater edge, then the city edge, then gone. But gone wasn’t far enough. The System marked him. Vaeloric felt the mark. A hole in the world, moving south. Fast.[System Directive: Pursue – Ur-Ghaal] [Sovereign Node: Vaeloric – Mobilize] [Warning: Humanity – 0.0%] [Warning: Memory Integrity – Fracturing]“Boss,” Kael said. He stood in the ash. Half the living were down. Not dead. Empty. Ur-Ghaal took their names on the way out. They breathed. They blinked. They didn’t know why. “Orion’s gone. He—”“I know,” Vaeloric said. The words hurt. Not his throat. His head. The System didn’t want him talking. It wanted him moving. “Write him down.”Joss was on his knees. The book was open. Pages flapping. Most were blank. Ur-Ghaal’s wake erased them. “Orion,” Joss whispered. “Orion. Wrote on walls. Said my name. Don’t forget. Orion.”Elara touched Joss’s shoulder. Her hand shook. “I’m Elara,” she said. Like she had to. “You’re Joss