"All weapons, lock on target," Captain Kiera Dawnbringer's cold voice echoed on the bridge of 'Sun's Judgment'. "Bombard that area until the seabed melts."

Inside the exposed 'Spectre', emergency red lights pulsed, bathing the cockpit in an eerie glow. Elara Moonveil gripped the control panel. Behind her, in the main compartment, her three elite researchers—remnants of the core team evacuated—frantically tried to reinforce secondary emergency shields.

"Emergency shields won't last a second!" one researcher screamed over the intercom, voice trembling with panic.

In the engine room, Nihil coughed violently, spitting blood onto the metal floor. His body was a battlefield. His passive Null Reconstruction fought desperately to patch damage from overexertion, but without Capacity, it was a losing battle.

`[CAPACITY DEPLETED. CEASE ACTIVITY.]`

"Nihil!" Elara's panicked voice crackled over the intercom. "I need power! Even for seconds! Give me something! Emergency maneuver!"

Nihil stared at the dead reactor core. He placed his bleeding, trembling hand back on the crystal cylinder. He ignored the system warnings. He pushed.

A strangled cry of pain escaped him as he felt bones in his arm crack under existential pressure. Flesh at his fingertips began to fray, dissolving into black dust particles as he tried to wrench energy from absolute nothingness.

The reactor flickered weakly to life.

In the cockpit, Elara instantly channeled the surge. "Dive! Dive!"

'The Spectre' plunged sharply, attempting to duck into a narrow underwater canyon for cover.

But it wasn't enough. She needed more.

Nihil pushed again, his body now convulsing violently on the floor.

`[WARNING: CRITICAL PHYSICAL CONDITION. PASSIVE FORCED TELEPORTATION WILL ACTIVATE IF PROCESS NOT HALTED.]`

Above them, the Dawn Cannon fired.

A pillar of pure, silent golden light lanced through the ocean, instantly vaporizing surrounding water into superheated steam. Time seemed to slow.

Nihil, sprawled on the floor, looked up. He saw inescapable death approaching. And in that moment, the Heze mind made one final, insane calculation.

He didn't try to power the engines. He didn't try to flee. He would meet the attack head-on.

He ignored the Void Shift warnings. He wrenched the last shreds of his existence, drawing power directly from his body's destruction, into one concept. A shield. Not of matter. Not of energy. A conceptual shield.

`[FORCING NEW SKILL THROUGH CONCEPTUAL FORGING...]`

`[Creating... Singularity Shield (Rank F)]`

Outside 'The Spectre', moments before impact, a sphere of perfect, light-absorbing black distortion appeared, matching the submersible's size. It didn't reflect light. It consumed it.

The holy light pillar struck the black shield.

There was no explosion. No sound.

For an eternal fraction of a second, two absolutes met. The purest light of Existence against the deepest dark of Nullity.

The black shield held for 0.1 seconds. Then cracked. Then shattered.

But it was enough. The Dawn Cannon blast's core destructive potential was nullified. What finally struck 'The Spectre' was no longer a focused beam of annihilation, but a chaotic, unstable shockwave—the residual energy from the collision of absolutes.

The shockwave slammed into the submersible's midsection with the force of a collapsing mountain. Hull metal melted and peeled away like wax under unimaginable heat.

In the cockpit, Elara was thrown from her seat, head smashing hard against the control panel. Behind her, in the main compartment, she heard screams cut short by the rending sound of metal as boiling seawater and crushing pressure flooded in, obliterating her research team in an instant.

Emergency systems activated instantly. Bulkhead doors between the main compartment, cockpit, and engine room slammed shut, isolating the breach and saving the bow and stern from total destruction.

'The Spectre' was thrown and crashed onto the canyon floor, now a crippled wreck. Its midsection was gone, but the cockpit and engine room, though severely damaged, remained intact within fragile air pockets.

Nihil was thrown against the engine room wall, his already fragile body finally giving out. Everything went black.

On 'Sun's Judgment', technicians stared at their sensors in disbelief. "Captain... energy readings from the target... gone. Total destruction."

Kiera Dawnbringer gazed at the massive crater now scarring the seabed. She felt no triumph. She felt... unease. "Confirm destruction. Return to Solara Magna."

Inside the dark, silent wreckage of 'The Spectre', Elara Moonveil slowly regained consciousness in a pool of water. Her head bled, but she lived. She looked towards the shattered, silent aft section. Her elite researchers... all dead.

She crawled painfully towards the engine room. There, amidst severed cables and shattered panels, lay Nihil's body. His arm was twisted at an unnatural angle, his leg broken, and black dust from forced Void Grasp still clung to his torn hands. His Null Reconstruction pulsed faintly, barely visible.

They had survived. But they were now stranded alone on the ocean floor, inside a metal coffin.

News of Nihil's "death" and the Dimensional Guild facility's destruction arrived like a silent shockwave.

On the returning 'Sun's Judgment', Captain Kiera Dawnbringer studied the Dawn Cannon's damage report. Unexplained energy fluctuations. "Continue analysis," she ordered her lieutenant. "I want to know what we faced."

In the Imperial Palace, Princess Selene Solaris received the report. She stood before a large window, a glass of wine in hand. She felt no victory. She felt frustration. Her most unique asset had been erased from the board before she could fully utilize it. She gazed at her reflection. "Or... are you merely hiding again, Mr. Nihil?" she whispered, a calculated smile touching her lips.

On the academy training grounds, Darius val-Luminar heard the news. He stopped mid-swing. He stood there, panting, staring at his own sword. He felt only a strange, unsettling emptiness. His rival, the anomaly who shattered his superiority, was gone. Without a word, he resumed training, each swing harder, more brutal, as if trying to smash the hollowness within.

In a luxurious room within Duke Alaric's Safehouse, Velka Nocturne entered quietly. Inside, Celia sat on the edge of a bed, hugging her knees, body still trembling slightly after her chaotic rescue from the Inquisitorial Fortress. In her hands, she clutched a small wooden bird carving.

Velka sat in a chair opposite her. "You are safe here now."

Celia looked up, eyes red. "He... he did all that... for me," she whispered, voice breaking. "The whole city... ruined... because of me."

"He did it because it was the logical move," Velka replied, her voice cold, a new hardness born of grief. "He paid his debt. And now... we owe him."

Duke Alaric entered then, his face grim. "I just received reports from Imperial intelligence networks," he said. "A fleet led by Captain Kiera Dawnbringer has just returned to Solara Magna. Their mission... successful. The Dimensional Guild facility offshore was destroyed. No survivors."

Velka stared at the cold, dead Void Beacon pendant at her neck. She didn't cry. She didn't scream. She simply looked at Alaric with empty eyes. "Then," she said, her voice low and emotionless. "Our plan changes."

She stood, and in her eyes, Alaric saw a terrifying shift. Warmth and fear had vanished, replaced by something cold and hard as obsidian.

"This is no longer about saving him," Velka continued, her gaze now fixed on a map of Solara Magna on the wall. "This is about avenging him. We will tear it all down. My father. The Church. Theron. We will burn their world to ashes."

She had found her new purpose, born of loss. She was no longer a princess seeking truth. She was now a queen planning war.

In her new hidden lair, Ravenna Cruor received the same news. She didn't laugh. She didn't cheer. She simply stared at the Altar of True Silence with hollow eyes.

"He is gone," she whispered. "Before the time."

"What is our plan now, High Priestess?" asked Sister Morwen.

Ravenna turned, her eyes now filled with cold, absolute emptiness. "If our God has forsaken us... then nothing remains but True Silence itself."

She placed her hand upon the altar. "We accelerate the Final Cleansing Ritual. Not to welcome him back. But to follow him into the void. We will cleanse this world... with fire and ash."

Her plan was no longer about ascension. Now, it was about mass annihilation.

Elara Moonveil worked relentlessly. For two days, she'd been more than a scientist; she was a survivor. She managed to reconnect emergency systems to backup batteries, providing dim light and minimal air filtration. But the sub itself was a crippled coffin. Its midsection was torn open, and the main propulsion was destroyed.

She watched Nihil, unconscious on the engine room floor. His regeneration was a horrifying yet mesmerizing spectacle. Every few minutes, as his body recovered a sliver of Capacity, a micro-reconstruction burst occurred. A cracked bone would snap back into place with a sharp klik, or a patch of torn skin would dissolve into black dust and reform into flawless tissue. The process was instantaneous but intermittent—a slow torture fueled by starvation.

Nihil finally opened his eyes, coughing.

`[Capacity: 5 / 50]`

"We can't stay here," he rasped. "Sooner or later, patrols will sweep this sector."

"I know," Elara replied, not looking away from the flickering navigational map on the sole functioning monitor. "Our emergency thrusters have one short burst left. If we choose wrong, we're stranded forever in open ocean."

Nihil struggled upright. He couldn't waste energy on curiosity. But ignorance was the greatest threat. Sacrificing minimal energy for critical data was logical.

He walked to Elara and placed his hand on the damaged nav panel.

`[Activating: Void Memory]`

`[Capacity: 5/50 → 3/50]`

A chaotic flood of data surged through his mind. Echoes of test pilots, erased secret routes, deleted star charts. He filtered the noise, seeking one thing: an anomaly. A place deliberately scrubbed from records.

He found it. A blank spot in the Eternal Storm Sea where all navigational data abruptly ended.

"There," Nihil said, pointing to the coordinates.

"That's suicide," Elara countered. "No ship returns from the Eternal Storm Sea. It's a permanent magical weather anomaly."

"Exactly why," Nihil stated. "No one will look for us there."

Elara studied him, then the coordinates. She made her decision. "Fine. Hold on."

She diverted all remaining power to emergency thrusters. With a painful groan, the crippled 'Spectre' stirred, slowly ascending from the canyon floor.

The journey was silent and tense. Hours later, they saw it on the horizon: a swirling wall of black clouds lit by violet and green lightning—the Eternal Storm Sea.

As they entered, 'The Spectre' shuddered violently. Chaotic underwater currents tossed them like toys. Emergency alarms blared.

"I'm losing control!" Elara yelled, fighting to stabilize the sub.

Suddenly, sonar detected a massive signature approaching at incredible speed.

"What is that?!" Nihil demanded.

"An Abyssal Kraken," Elara answered, face pale. "The storm must've torn dimensional barriers. That thing shouldn't be here!"

A colossal tentacled monstrosity emerged from the depths—a being of shadow and hatred, countless eyes glowing with ravenous hunger. It lunged.

"I can't evade!"

Nihil didn't hesitate. He sprinted to the engine room and placed his hand on the reactor.

`[INSUFFICIENT CAPACITY FOR SINGULARITY SHIELD]`

He knew. He wouldn't defend. He'd attack.

He channeled his last shreds of energy, not into a shield, but into a single point ahead.

`[Using Atomic Manipulation (Offensive Application)]`

`[Creating... Collapsing Singularity (Prototype)]`

`[WARNING: HIGHLY UNSTABLE ACTION!]`

`[Capacity: 3/50 → 0/50]`

Outside, directly in the kraken's path, a tiny black point appeared in the water. It didn't explode. Instead, it began *consuming*. Water. Light. Even sound.

The kraken, unable to halt its momentum, was sucked toward the micro-singularity. As its first tentacle touched the void, it didn't sever—it disintegrated into atoms and vanished. The entire colossal beast was unraveled into absolute silence.

Inside, Nihil collapsed unconscious, his body crumbling again from overexertion.

But they'd survived. 'The Spectre', now utterly powerless, drifted uncontrolled through the storm, carried toward the heart of darkness.

Consciousness returned with a violent jolt.

Nihil awoke as 'The Spectre' slammed into something. The shriek of tearing metal surrounded him. He was thrown across the floor, hitting a wall.

He opened his eyes. Through a crack in the cockpit viewport, he didn't see ocean depths. He saw... gray sky. And black sand.

They'd run aground.

Elara, also dazed, checked the systems. "Power... completely gone. We won't leave this place." She looked at Nihil, his body again undergoing agonizingly slow regeneration. "But we're alive."

They forced open the main hatch. The air that hit them felt strange—fresh, salty, yet... ancient.

They stood on a beach of volcanic black sand. Behind them, the wrecked 'Spectre' lay half-submerged. Ahead stretched a mist-shrouded island. Dense forests of twisted trees with silver leaves. Crumbling stone towers piercing the fog like skeletal fingers. And at the island's heart, a dormant volcano dominated the landscape.

Around the island, the Eternal Storm Sea raged endlessly. But overhead, the sky was unnervingly calm. They were in the storm's eye.

"What is this place?" Elara whispered.

Nihil knew he must conserve energy. But ignorance was the ultimate threat. Spending minimal energy for critical intelligence was logical.

He touched the black sand beneath his feet.

`[Activating: Void Memory]`

`[Capacity: 5/50 → 3/50]`

Echoes flooded his mind—not human. Echoes of something vastly older. He saw shadows of tall, graceful beings with wings of light. He heard whispers in an unknown tongue. He felt profound sorrow—the echo of a long-lost civilization.

"This place... was a prison," Nihil interpreted the echoes. "A prison for something immensely powerful. Something they feared."

They ventured inland, seeking shelter. The silver trees seemed to watch them. No animal sounds. Only oppressive silence.

After an hour, they found a moss-choked stone path leading to a ruined plaza deep in the forest. At its center stood something that froze them both.

A golem. Three stories tall, built of obsidian and unknown metals, sitting in a meditative pose, dormant. Vines and moss covered it, testament to millennia of stillness.

But its size wasn't what horrified them. A gaping hole marred its chest. Around the void, the metal and stone weren't cracked or shattered—they appeared *eroded*, as if something had excised its heart from existence.

Elara approached cautiously, her wrist sensors humming. "The energy signature around this wound... Nihil... it's identical to your power."

Nihil stared at the golem. This wasn't just ancient history. It was a direct threat related to him. He had to know if the entity responsible still lingered here.

He touched the golem's massive foot.

`[Activating: Void Memory]`

`[Capacity: 3/50 → 0/50]`

This time, the echo hit with such force it staggered him.

He saw an epic battle in the skies—winged beings of light fighting a shape-shifting shadow. He witnessed this golem, the Guardian, clashing with the shadow. And he saw the shadow extend a tendril of darkness to *erase* the golem's heart-core, sending it crashing down into eternal slumber.

And in the echo, he heard a name. Whispered in terror by the light-beings.

"...Zarthus..."

Nihil froze.

Zarthus. Archon Zarthus Nocturne. His ancestor.

He hadn't died in the Cult's ritual. He hadn't been consumed.

He had escaped.

And he had been here.

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