The Nexus Veil shimmered around Emma, starlight and void intertwining in cosmic patterns. She hovered within this realm beyond realms, golden wings blazing at 45% capacity, her path to the Arbiter clear after severing the Titan's anchor.
Until reality fractured before her.
The corrupted Emma twisted into existence, necrotic wings flaring as space tore open. Emmaruxis hovered before her, impossible yet undeniable, jaw unhinging like a serpent's as darkness cascaded around her form.
"You think this ends with one plunge?" she called, voice resonating with Titan harmonics.
Lyrion's presence shimmered alongside Emma. "The Titan has remade her as your final trial. Destroy her to reach the Arbiter."
Emma's capacity surged to 46% as understanding crystallized. Her golden wings blazed brighter, 20,000 tons of strength coiling in her crystallized biology. She launched forward, reality bending as she approached relativistic speeds.
"I think you fear what I represent," Emma snarled as she collided with her double.
The impact shattered reality around them. Her double's necrotic spine cracked with a sound like mountains splitting, black gore erupting from her mouth. Emma's hands locked around her reflection's throat, golden light searing corrupted flesh.
"You're just a vessel," Emma hissed, squeezing with enough force to pulverize mountains.
Her double's skull began to cave inward, necrotic bone splintering under pressure. Still, her twisted smile remained, eyes leaking darkness even as her head deformed.
"So are you," the corrupted Emma whispered through a crushed trachea.
The Titan Veiled in Shadow's star-filled gaze pierced through the Nexus Veil, its presence a suffocating weight across dimensions. Time stretched as a Titan vision gripped Emma. She saw herself as Emmaruxis, wings of pure darkness spreading across galaxies, unmaking reality with casual cruelty. Civilizations died beneath her shadow, worlds unraveled at her touch. The power felt infinite, seductive in its completeness.
Lyrion's voice cut through the vision, steady and urgent. "Your crew's trust anchors you, Emma. Reject the Titan's lie."
She rejected it. The crew's faces flashed through her mind, their trust anchoring her humanity.
"No," she snarled, blood weeping from her eyes as her capacity pushed toward 47%. "You're what I reject."
***
In the fractured dominion below, Aisha sensed the witch teleporting behind her. Mathematical intuition calculated its position, but blindness slowed her turn.
Chaos negated where it touched. Aisha screamed as her remaining eye dissolved, reality unwoven where the witch's fingers passed. Blood fountained from the perfect hemispherical wound, painting her face crimson.
"Aisha, channel Pactbind," Sylvara called through the chaos, golden dust essence trailing from her fingertips. "A power system that binds your essence to your blade, enhancing precision through will alone."
Blind and one armed, Aisha reached within, finding the nineteenth system waiting. Power surged through her, connecting her consciousness directly to her crystallized blood blade. She felt the witch's presence not through sight but through the blade's extension of her will.
"How much more can I lose before I am nothing?" she whispered, fear tightening her chest. Yet the blade found the witch's gut. She ripped upward, black ichor shimmering like liquid starlight over her hands as the witch's entrails spilled forth.
"Logic's done," she gasped, blood streaming down her ruined face. "But so are you."
Lucas caught another teleporting witch mid blink, his massive hands tearing its body in half. Black ichor drenched his already gore soaked form as he roared, spinning to face three more materializing witches.
"Order's a lie!" he bellowed, blood frothing at his lips. "Only blood's real now!"
His fists connected with inhuman force, crushing skulls and shattering ribcages. A witch's chaos claws raked across his back, opening wounds that flowed freely. Lucas didn't slow, his fury a vow. He would die for them, his blood a shield against chaos. He caught the witch's arm and ripped it from its socket, viscous darkness coating the bone island.
Nearby, Markus lay still, his Soulspire extinguished. His death weighed on Chloe as she fought through agony, intestines partially visible through her abdominal wound, chest caved in from earlier impacts.
Death whispered with each heartbeat, but she roared for Emma, defying despair. A witch teleported before her, chaos claws extended. Chloe's fist drove through its chest with a 4,000 ton impact, black corruption fountaining across her face as the witch's heart pulped around her knuckles.
"Got another for you, Emma!" she called, voice strained through blood flecked lips.
Gray's voice crackled through comms. "Emma, we're breaking. Aisha's blind, Chloe's fading, Lucas can't hold forever. Hurry!"
***
In the Nexus Veil, Emma drove her thumbs into her double's eye sockets, golden light burning through corrupted tissue. Emmaruxis thrashed, necrotic wings slashing at golden light. Emma's face ran with blood, both golden and black, as her double's claws raked across her crystallized cheekbones.
"You think this ends it?" her reflection hissed through a shattered jaw. "I am eternal. I am what waits at the edge of your humanity."
Emma's grip tightened around her double's throat, 47% capacity manifesting as 22,000 tons of pressure crushing necrotic vertebrae. "Then wait there," she snarled, golden wings flaring as she accelerated toward the fabric of the Veil.
The corrupted Emma's eyes widened, darkness leaking between pulped lids. "No."
Emma hurled her double through the Veil's membrane, ripping a temporary passage in the cosmic barrier. The corrupted vessel tumbled through the tear, necrotic wings flailing as darkness consumed her.
For a moment, silence fell across the Nexus Veil. Then the space before Emma shimmered, reality parting to reveal a path forward.
"The Arbiter awaits," Lyrion whispered. "But chaos rises below."
***
In the fractured dominion, the rift—stabilized by Emma's crossing—held firm for a fleeting moment, a fragile calm amidst the chaos. Then Korrath dragged his broken body toward it, leaving trails of shadow essence where his shattered ribcage leaked. His star eyes had darkened, consumed by Titan influence, as he wove chaos magic that tore at reality's fabric, forcing the rift to pulse anew.
"The Veil's boundaries are weakened," he called. "Nothing stops the echo now."
The rift pulsed wider, darkness flooding outward. The Titan Veiled in Shadow reached through the tear, a limb of cosmic proportions extending toward freedom. Reality screamed around the intrusion, bone islands shattering as the dimensional barrier weakened.
Sylvara's hands wove complex patterns, golden dust essence trailing from her fingertips. Star magic coalesced around the rift's edges, attempting to reinforce reality against the Titan's intrusion.
"Emma has destroyed the vessel," she called to the crew, "but Korrath unravels my work. The rift grows!"
***
Emma felt the disturbance even through the Veil. The cosmos rippled around her, golden wings cutting through reality at 47% capacity. Blood streamed from her eyes as she sensed what happened below, her connection to the crew a tether across dimensions.
Before her, the Arbiter finally manifested, a being of cosmic balance, embodying both order and chaos. Its form shifted constantly, flowing between states of matter and energy, yet somehow remaining coherent. It studied Emma with awareness that predated creation itself.
"You have rejected corruption," the Arbiter's voice resonated through Emma's crystallized biology. "But your trial continues."
The Nexus Veil shifted around them, reality reforming into a realm of shattered mirrors. Each fragment reflected Emma differently, some showing her golden wings, others displaying Emmaruxis's necrotic form. Still others revealed possibilities neither had attained, paths untaken stretching into infinity.
"Your companions fall," the Arbiter continued. "The Titan breaches reality's edge. Will you wield order, or become chaos?"
Emma hovered before the cosmic entity, blood still streaming from her eyes, capacity straining at 47%. Behind her, through the thinning Veil, she could sense the rift expanding in the fractured dominion, feel her crew's desperation as they fought against impossible odds.
"I choose neither," Emma answered, wings blazing. "I choose them."
The Arbiter's form pulsed with interest. "Then prove your worth."
The shattered mirrors closed around Emma, each reflection reaching for her with ephemeral hands, hungry to become real.