Chapter 27: The Swarm’s Dirge

The Bastion's artificial stars winked out one by one, swallowed by the advancing shadow. Lin Mei hung suspended above the central spire, her form a storm of cobalt flame and celestial void—half girl, half event horizon. The Harvester swarm's approach vibrated in the air, a subsonic growl that made the city's crystalline bones shiver. Lin Wei tasted iron on his tongue, his qi senses recoiling from the pressure.

Flashback:

Yuelin, years younger, pressed a scrap of parchment into his hand in the clan's moonlit archives. "They're not monsters, Wei. Just… lost." The sketch showed a Harvester's core—a child's face hidden in the lattice of stars. He'd laughed then. Now, he understood.

Elder Tsu found him on the observation deck, her circuitry scars glowing faintly in the dark. "You'll need this." She offered a vial of liquid starlight—Yuelin's final brew, scavenged from the Bastion's deepest vault. "It's unstable. Burns through realms."

The system identified it coldly:

[Yuelin's Last Spark: Temporal Ignition Fluid.]

[Risk: Erasure from Causality / Reward: ???]

Lin Wei pocketed it. "Why help us now?"

Her mechanical eye dimmed. "She'd have wanted it."

The swarm descended—not ships, but living constellations, their bodies woven from dead stars and spite. Lin Mei rose to meet them, her voice a fractured hymn: "You left him. You left him alone."

The lead Harvester pulsed, its voice a thousand supernovae compressed into speech: "We remake. We reclaim."

Astralon materialized beside Lin Wei, their form flickering with interference. "They'll unmake her. Turn her into a key."

"Then stop them!"

"I can't." For the first time, Astralon sounded small. "Not without becoming them."

Lin Mei's flames lashed out, void tendrils carving through the swarm. But for every Harvester disintegrated, two more took its place. The Bastion's defenses crumbled, sound-crystal towers shattering into lethal rain.

Flashback Triggered by System:

Lin Mei, twelve years old, fumbling with a defective flame talisman. "Why won't it work?"

Yuelin adjusted her grip. "Fire needs heart, Little Ember. Not just spark."

The memory dissolved as the real Lin Mei screamed—a sound that cracked the sky.

Lin Wei climbed the spire, the vial burning in his palm. The system blared warnings he ignored. At the summit, he found her core—a pulsing orb of ghostfire and Harvester void.

"Merge with me," he said.

She recoiled, humanity flickering in her eyes. "You'll die."

"So did Yuelin."

The swarm converged. Astralon shouted something lost to the roar.

Lin Wei drank the vial.

Time fractured. Lin Wei's body dissolved into light, his qi weaving with Lin Mei's chaos. The swarm froze mid-strike. Somewhere beyond reality, Yuelin laughed—a sound like breaking chains.

The last thing he saw before unraveling: a single phoenix feather, glowing in the dark.