The ruins of Rust-Town were a graveyard of twisted metal and drowned dreams.
The massive cistern, once the bustling heart of the Dreg underworld, was now a stagnant lake of black water and slag. The train station where Iron-Jaw had ruled was gone, replaced by a crater of fused glass and concrete—the scar left by the Angel's first strike.
Varian stood in the center of the crater.
The air was still hot here, smelling of radiation and ozone. He wasn't hiding in the shadows. He stood in plain sight, his boots crunching on the glass floor.
In his hand, the Sun-Piercer looked different.
The Architect had worked through the night. The matte-black shaft was now encased in a lattice of gold wire. And at the tip, replacing the simple cross-guard, was the Prism Scale.
The diamond-like shard from the Leviathan was mounted perfectly, turning the spear into a lance of refraction. It hummed with a high-pitched frequency that made Varian's teeth ache.
"The harmonic stabilizer is green," The Architect's voice crackled over the comms from a safe distance in the ventilation shafts. "But remember, Sovereign. Physics is a harsh mistress. If you angle the Prism wrong by even one degree, the Angel's laser won't refract around you. It will pass through you. And you will be ash."
"Understood," Varian whispered.
He looked at Gorgon, who was crouching behind a pile of rubble nearby. The giant was calm, the Crimson Paladin armor glowing with a low, sullen red light.
"You ready for round two, Boss?" Gorgon asked.
"This isn't round two," Varian said, looking up at the smog-choked ceiling of the sector. "This is an execution."
Varian tapped his wrist-comp. He keyed in the frequency Iron-Jaw had used to overload the reactor—a dead man's code.
[Broadcasting: Legion Command Frequency.][Signal Strength: Maximum.][Message: "I am here."]
He sent the ping directly to the Celestial Spire.
He waited.
One minute passed. Then two.
The smog above began to swirl. The heavy gray clouds parted, terrified of what was coming.
A beam of light hit the crater.
It was blinding, holy, and utterly silent.
From the light, the Seraphim descended.
It had been repaired. Its porcelain chassis shone with a new polish. Its missing arm had been replaced. Its four wings of solar-steel spread wide, casting a cross-shaped shadow over the ruins.
[Legendary Encounter.][Subject: Seraphim Unit 01 (Restored).][Status: Monarch (Entry).][Directive: Eradication.]
The Angel stopped fifty meters in the air. It looked down at the lone figure standing in the wreckage.
"PERSISTENCE IS ILLOGICAL," the Angel broadcasted. Its voice was a choir of synthesized harmonies. "YOU SURVIVED THE PURGE. YOU SURVIVED THE FIRE. WHY DO YOU RETURN TO THE SITE OF YOUR DEFEAT?"
"I forgot something," Varian shouted back, his voice amplified by the Abyssal Armor.
"WHAT COULD A PARASITE POSSIBLY FORGET?"
Varian pointed the spear at the floating construct.
"I forgot to rip your wings off."
The Angel tilted its head.
"ARROGANCE DETECTED. INITIATING FINAL JUDGMENT."
The Angel raised its hand. The palm glowed. It didn't bother with the sword this time. It charged its primary weapon—the Solar Lance.
A sphere of concentrated plasma, hot enough to melt a city block, formed in front of the Angel.
"Get ready!" Varian hissed.
"DELETE."
The Angel fired.
A beam of pure white energy, thick as a tree trunk, shot toward Varian. It moved at the speed of light. There was no dodging.
Varian didn't move his feet. He planted them.
He raised the Sun-Piercer vertically in front of his face.
"Prism... Refract!"
He channeled his Solar Core into the spear, activating the Crystal Leviathan's shard.
The beam hit the spear tip.
KRA-KOOOM.
The sound was like a thunderclap inside a bell.
The plasma beam didn't hit Varian. It hit the Prism Scale.
And then, physics broke.
The white beam split. It shattered into a thousand distinct rays of color—Red, Blue, Violet, Green. The rays bent around Varian, forming a cone of safety.
He stood in the eye of the storm, untouched, while the ground around him vaporized into lava.
The refracted beams didn't just scatter. The Architect had aimed the Prism perfectly.
The beams curved backward.
"Return to sender!" Varian roared.
The rainbow of death shot back at the Angel.
The Angel's golden energy shield flared automatically. It was designed to stop physical projectiles and raw heat. It was not designed to stop a multi-spectral light assault.
The refracted beams hit the shield at a thousand different frequencies simultaneously.
CRACK-SHATTER.
The golden shield overloaded. It shattered like stained glass.
The beams slammed into the Angel's porcelain chassis.
"ERROR. SHIELD INTEGRITY COMPROMISED. ERROR."
The Angel staggered in the air, smoke pouring from its joints.
Varian didn't wait.
"Onyx. Wings!"
Shadows exploded from his back. Varian launched himself into the air, riding the thermal updraft of the laser blast.
He flew straight through the smoke.
The Angel tried to raise its sword, but its sensors were blinded by the light refraction.
Varian collided with the Angel mid-air.
He grabbed the Angel's halo with his left hand—the Abyssal Gauntlet.
"You like looking down on us?" Varian snarled, his face inches from the Angel's glowing blue slit-visor.
He drove his knee into the Angel's chest.
CRUNCH.
The porcelain armor cracked.
"Look at me now!"
Varian spun the Sun-Piercer. He activated the Void-Core catalyst. The blade turned black.
He drove the spear into the joint of the Angel's right wing.
SHH-LICK.
He tore the wing off.
Sparks and hydraulic fluid sprayed. The Angel listed to the side, its flight stabilizers failing.
"CRITICAL DAMAGE. SYSTEM FAILURE."
The Angel flailed, swinging its remaining arm. It struck Varian in the ribs.
BAM.
Varian grunted, feeling a rib crack even through the armor. But the Hydra Heart pumped green energy, knitting the bone back together instantly.
"I can do this all day," Varian growled.
He grabbed the Angel's neck.
"Gravity... Crush."
He channeled the Void essence into his hand, increasing the mass of his grip to ten tons.
He dragged the Angel down.
They fell together, a comet of black and white, crashing into the center of the glass crater.
BOOOOOM.
The impact shook the entire sector.
Varian stood up from the wreckage. He placed a boot on the Angel's chest to pin it down.
The Angel was broken. Its wings were gone. Its limbs were shattered. But its central core was still glowing.
"YOU... CANNOT... WIN," the Angel's voice glitched, dropping an octave. "THE CHURCH... IS... ETERNAL."
"Nothing is eternal," Varian said. "Except hunger."
He raised the spear for the killing blow. He aimed for the central processor in the chest—the "Heart" of the machine.
He drove the spear down.
CRUNCH-SQUELCH.
The blade pierced the chassis.
But there was no explosion of sparks. No battery acid.
There was a wet, organic sound.
"Ahhhhh..."
The Angel didn't make a machine noise. It made a human gasp.
Varian froze.
He pulled the spear out. The tip was covered in... blood. Red, human blood.
"What?" Varian whispered.
He dropped the spear. He grabbed the edges of the hole he had made in the chest plate.
"Onyx. Pry it open."
The Symbiote surged, forcing the metal apart.
CREAAAAK-SNAP.
Varian ripped the chest plate off.
He stared into the cockpit.
There was no pilot. There was no computer.
Suspended in a tank of golden amniotic fluid, wired into the machine with thousands of neural filaments, was a Human Brain.
It wasn't just a brain. It was a partial nervous system—a brain, a spinal cord, and eyes. The eyes were wide open, staring blindly into the fluid.
A brass plaque on the tank read:
[SUBJECT 001 - SAINT CELESTINE][Canonization Date: Year 215][Status: Living Processor.]
Varian stepped back, bile rising in his throat.
"It's a person," Varian whispered, horrified. "It's not AI. It's a person."
The brain twitched. The speakers on the Angel's neck crackled.
"Kill... me..."
The voice wasn't synthesized anymore. It was the whisper of an old woman, echoing from a century of torture.
"Please... it hurts... the light... burns..."
Varian looked at the ruined machine. The Church of Purity. The faction that preached the "Sanctity of the Human Form." The faction that burned mutants for being "unclean."
They were harvesting their own Saints. They were stripping them of their bodies and turning them into wet-ware CPUs for their war machines.
"They aren't machines," Gorgon walked up, staring into the chassis. "They're coffins."
Varian felt a rage colder than the Void and hotter than the Sun.
"The Architect was right," Varian said, his voice shaking. "They aren't protecting humanity. They're recycling it."
He looked at the suffering organ in the jar.
"I'm sorry," Varian whispered to Saint Celestine.
He placed his hand on the glass tank.
"Rest."
He channeled the Void.
A pulse of darkness entered the tank. It didn't hurt. It simply stopped the electrical impulses. It severed the connection.
The eyes in the jar closed. The brain stopped twitching.
[Target Eliminated.][Absorbing Essence...]
Varian didn't want to absorb it. But the Abyssal Armor didn't care about morality. It sensed a Monarch-Rank soul passing into the void, and it fed.
But this wasn't Beast energy. This was Holy Essence. Pure, concentrated faith and light.
WHOOSH.
Golden light flooded Varian's body.
Inside him, the Void Energy of the Abyssal Knight roared. Darkness met Light.
They clashed.
Varian screamed, falling to his knees. It felt like he was being torn apart. His left side was freezing; his right side was burning.
[Critical Warning: Energy Incompatibility.][Void and Light cannot coexist.][Attempting Synthesis...]
"Varian!" Venom ran toward him.
"Stay back!" Varian yelled, black smoke and gold lightning arcing from his body.
He looked at the Sun-Piercer. He looked at Onyx.
He forced them together.
"I am the Prism," Varian gasped, remembering the Leviathan's riddle. "I am the transparency."
He stopped fighting the energies. He let them flow.
The black armor on his body shifted. It didn't disappear. It turned... gray. A shimmering, twilight gray, like the moment between night and day.
The tattered cape reformed. It wasn't shadow anymore. It was woven light and dark, shimmering like an aurora borealis.
[Evolution Complete.][Symbiote Mode Unlocked: Twilight Monarch.][Attribute: Balance.][Effect: You can channel Solar and Void energies simultaneously without recoil.]
Varian stood up.
He felt calm. The rage was gone. The hunger was gone.
He looked at his hand. Gray flames danced on his fingertips.
"We have to go," Varian said, his voice echoing with a strange dual-tone. "The Church will know their Angel is dead. And they will know what killed it."
He picked up the Sun-Piercer.
"Gorgon. Venom. Rix. Gather the Legion."
He looked up at the hole in the ceiling where the Angel had descended.
"We aren't just fighting a war anymore," Varian said. "We're fighting a lie. And I'm going to tell the world the truth."
As the Iron Legion retreated back into the tunnels, a single drone hovered over the wreckage of the Angel.
It wasn't a Church drone. It was sleek, chrome, and silent.
In a dark room miles away, Dr. Valerius watched the feed.
He saw the brain in the jar. He saw Varian's transformation.
Valerius paused the video on the image of the brain.
He smiled.
"So the Church has been naughty," Valerius whispered, typing a command into his console. "The public would be devastated to know their Saints are batteries."
He downloaded the footage.
"But blackmail is such a crude tool. I think... I think I'll use this to start a fire."
Valerius opened a channel to the High Pontiff.
"Your Holiness," Valerius said smoothly. "We need to talk. I believe we have a mutual problem. And I have the solution."
"What solution?" The Pontiff's voice was icy.
"The Parasite Monarch," Valerius said. "He's not just a mutant. He's a hybrid. He just absorbed your Angel's soul. If he reaches the Zero Point... he won't just reset the world."
Valerius leaned in.
"He will become the new God. And I don't think he's the forgiving type."