The titan's footsteps cracked the earth like thunder.
Celia Ashorex stood at the edge of Luminar's ruined plaza, the merged fragment in her grip humming with unstable energy. The monstrosity before her was a grotesque mockery of Lira Veythar—its body a patchwork of molten gold and rusted steel, its face stretched across its chest like a warped mural. Voidwell energy pulsed from its core, warping the air into jagged shards of broken reality.
"Celia " the titan boomed, its voice a chorus of screams. "Kneel before the Third Heart's will."
Jax Lobenstein limped to her side, his Arc Core flickering erratically. The wound in his thigh seeped black fluid, but his eyes were sharp. "It's not Lira," he muttered. "Just her corpse stuffed with Council filth."
Talen was gone—vanished into the chaos with only a scrap of parchment left behind: "The Veythari will rise." Celia clenched her teeth. Another betrayal.
She raised the fragment-blade. "We don't kneel."
---
The titan struck first. A fist of fused holy sigils and machinery slammed into the plaza, sending Celia and Jax sprawling. Celia rolled to her feet, channeling the fragment's energy into a shield of white light. The titan's next blow shattered it, the backlash sending searing pain up her arms.
Jax wasn't idle. He'd scavenged a Lobenstein shockrifle from a dead enforcer, its barrel sparking dangerously. "Aim for the core!" he shouted, firing. The blast tore through the titan's ribs, revealing a pulsing mass of corrupted Heart-energy.
The titan roared, but didn't fall. Instead, the wound stitched itself shut with threads of Luminar Code.
"Damn it," Jax spat. "It's healing!"
Celia's mind raced. The fragment in her hand was part of the same power—could she disrupt the titan's energy? She lunged, driving the blade into the titan's knee. Light erupted, and for a moment, the titan staggered.
Then it backhanded her into a crumbling pillar.
---
Jax dragged Celia behind cover as the titan's footsteps shook the ground. Blood trickled from her temple, mingling with the dust. "Plan B?" she groaned.
Jax tapped his Arc Core. The corrosion had spread to his ribs, but something was different—the Shard's energy from their merge in the catacombs had seeped into the machine. Tiny fractures of white light spiderwebbed through the blackened veins.
"I can overload my Core," he said. "Blow a hole in that thing's chest."
Celia grabbed his arm. "That'll kill you!"
"Got a better idea?"
She didn't. But as the titan loomed over them, she saw it—the flicker of Lira's face in the corruption, a momentary clarity in its hollow eyes.
"The Lie survives… in the Third Heart," the titan had said.
Celia's breath caught. "It's not lying. It's warning us."
---
She stood, dropping the fragment-blade. The titan froze, its fist raised to crush her.
"The Council didn't corrupt the Heart," Celia called. "They replaced it. That thing inside you—it's a fake. A weapon."
The titan shuddered. For a heartbeat, Lira's face surfaced fully, her voice cutting through the static: "The real Heart… is in the Voidwell's eye."
Then the Council's control reasserted. The titan howled, its fists coming down—
—only to jerk sideways as a plasma beam seared through its back.
Jax stood, his Arc Core burning white. The Shard's energy had fully merged with it, his body now wreathed in crackling light. "Go!" he shouted. "Find the real fragment!"
The titan turned on him, and the two became a blur of violence—Jax dodging with unnatural speed, his every strike leaving trails of fractured light.
Celia didn't hesitate. She snatched the fragment-blade and ran toward the cathedral's wreckage. The titan had risen from beneath it—where else would the Council hide their lies?
---
The crater beneath the cathedral was a nightmare of fused tech and magic. At its center floated a grotesque mockery of the Third Heart—a pulsing black orb threaded with stolen Luminar Code. The fake.
But beyond it, at the crater's lowest point, was a tear in reality itself. The Voidwell's eye.
Celia approached, the fragment-blade's light pushing back the distortion. Peering into the tear, she saw it—the true Third Heart's final fragment, suspended in a void of stars.
A hand grabbed her shoulder.
Talen stood there, his eyes hollow. "I'm sorry," he whispered—before shoving her into the tear.
---
Celia fell through eternity.
The void was neither dark nor light, but a shifting tapestry of what was and what could be. She saw Gaia united under Ashorex and Lobenstein—a utopia of gleaming cities. She saw it as a wasteland, the Council's enforcers marching over bones. And she saw herself, standing over Jax's corpse, the fully merged Heart in her hands.
"The price of truth," whispered Lira's voice. "Will you pay it?"
The true fragment floated before Celia, its light pure and terrible. To take it meant bearing the weight of all possible futures. To leave it meant condemning Gaia to the Council's lie.
She reached out.
---
Jax was losing.
His borrowed power was fading, the white light receding as the corrosion reclaimed his body. The titan had him pinned, its fist poised to crush his skull—
—when a blade of pure starlight erupted through its chest.
Celia stood behind it, the true final fragment fused with her blade. The titan screamed as cracks of light spread across its body, Lira's face finally at peace.
"Thank you," she whispered—before the titan shattered.
Silence.
Jax lay broken but alive. Celia knelt beside him, pressing the completed Third Heart to his Arc Core. "Your turn," she murmured.
The Heart's light enveloped them both.
---
End of Chapter 6