The Sovereign's presence crushed everything.
Not through size, but absence.
It was not a creature—it was what remained when everything else was gone.
Orin felt its gaze—though it had no eyes—pass over him. He staggered backward as memory peeled away like brittle bark. A birthday. A friend's laugh. His mother's hand. Gone.
Mira screamed, falling to one knee. "It's pulling us apart—"
Eryssa leapt between them and the Sovereign, her blade blazing with the last true color in this place—a memory of crimson light. "We can't win like this," she shouted over the silent pressure. "Not unless we anchor stronger. Use what binds you to reality!"
Kaelen's voice cracked. "What if there's nothing left to hold?"
"There is," Orin said, rising. He closed his eyes, gripped the Skybrand, and dove inward.
He did not think of war or fear. He thought of stars. Of the night sky before all this began. Of the promise his father made:
"As long as the sky is above you, you are not alone."
And suddenly, his flame blazed.
A burst of golden fire tore into the Void, forcing the lesser Outliers to recoil like ash caught in wind.
The Sovereign paused.
"You saw that," Mira breathed.
"He reached something true," Eryssa whispered. "A core memory. A truth. That's the key."
Orin's flame wavered, but he turned to the others. "Dig deep. Think of what made you who you are. Not titles. Not blades. The real things."
Mira steadied herself and whispered: "I once sang my sister to sleep the night our city burned."
Her blade caught fire.
Kaelen closed his eyes. "I used to believe I was cursed. Until someone said, 'You're not cursed—you're chosen. You just haven't proven it yet.'"
The wind roared around him—real, true wind—and swept the Void into spirals.
Together, the four stood as lights in a sea of dark.
The Sovereign bared down, limbs folding into shapes too vast for minds to grasp—but now the Void bent around their light, instead of the other way around.
Eryssa raised her blade. "We strike together. On my mark."
They nodded.
And then they ran—straight toward the impossible god that had waited too long to forget them.