The bridge was vast and empty. In the center, on a simple platform, stood Malakor. He was not a hologram. He was physically present, clad in his obsidian armor. Before him floated a hologram of the planet, the Cleansing Beam's targeting reticle still hovering over Dawnspire.
"You have contaminated my ship with your presence," Malakor said, turning. His void eyes held no fear, only a final, cold assessment. "But you have also delivered yourself. The hybrid specimen. The corrupted data. I can still salvage this. Your body will provide decades of study."
"It's over, Malakor," Skodar said, his staff glowing. "The whole planet is against you. Your own people question you."
"Sentiment. Politics. Noise," Malakor dismissed. "The equation is simple. You represent chaotic variable 'X'. I have the power to delete 'X'. The protests are a temporary miscalculation in wider variables. Once 'X' is zero, balance will be restored." He raised a hand. The Cleansing Beam indicator on the hologram began to power up again, faster this time. "I will suffer the reprimand. I will lose this post. But the disease will be cured. The logic is… clean."
He was going to fire. Even with them on the bridge. He would die with them, a martyr to his own twisted purity.
"There's no talking to him," Lyra snarled, raising her rifle.
"No,"Kaelen said, stepping forward. "There is not. But he understands one language."
Kaelen looked at Malakor, his one living eye blazing with all the reclaimed pain and fury of his existence. "You called me Reforged. You called me purified. You were wrong. You only buried the data. I am Kaelen of the Vakhas. And my data says: this ends now."
Kaelen didn't attack Malakor. He turned and, with a scream of tearing metal, plunged his cybernetic arm directly into the main control console for the Cleansing Beam. He poured every volt of power in his body, every stolen memory, every ounce of his illogical, defiant will into the system.
The console exploded in a shower of sparks. Kaelen was thrown back, his body smoking, half his cybernetics dead.
But the holographic display of the Cleansing Beam flickered and died. The weapon system was fried.
Malakor stared, his perfect logic finally, truly broken. His ultimate solution had been physically short-circuited by the very weapon he created. The irony was too chaotic, too perfect. He let out a sound—not a scream, but a short, static-filled burst of pure, undiluted frustration.
Then, he moved. With speed that belied his form, he drew a blade of solidified void-energy and lunged at Skodar.
The final battle was not of powers, but of philosophies, made flesh.