Blood of the Sundered
The Third Heart's light did not heal—it transformed.
Celia Ashorex felt it in her veins, a molten river of starlight and static. Beside her, Jax Lobenstein knelt in the rubble, his Arc Core no longer flickering but burning with a cold, relentless radiance. The corruption that had eaten his body was gone, replaced by jagged crystalline patterns spreading beneath his skin like frost on glass.
"What… are we?" he muttered, flexing a hand. The air around it warped, reality itself bending to his unspoken will.
Celia studied her own reflection in a shard of broken Luminar Code. Her eyes, once gold like all Ashorex heirs, now glowed white, and her hair had turned the color of ash. The Solaris Veil lay discarded nearby, its sigils dark. She no longer needed it to channel power—the Third Heart was her, and she it.
"We're what they feared," she said quietly.
A groan echoed through the ruins. Talen emerged from the shadows, his hands raised in surrender. Behind him stood a dozen Veythari hybrids, their bodies fused with both families' relics.
"Don't," Talen said quickly as Jax's crystalline hand crackled with energy. "We're not here to fight."
Celia stepped forward, the ground fracturing under her feet. "You pushed me into the Voidwell."
"To save you." Talen gestured to the hybrids. "The Council's fake Heart was a trap. If you'd taken it, you'd be their puppet. The Voidwell was the only path to the truth."
"Truth?" Jax spat. "You Veythari have been playing both sides since the start."
A hybrid woman stepped forward, her voice layered with mechanical resonance. "We are the Sundered—those abandoned by both bloodlines. The Heart was ours before the families stole it. We want it back."
Celia's grip tightened on the Third Heart, now a pulsating orb of intertwined light and shadow. "Then why help us?"
"Because it's killing you," Talen said. "Can't you feel it? The Heart's rewriting you. Soon, you won't be Ashorex or Lobenstein. You'll be… something else."
Jax laughed bitterly. "We're already something else."
---
The Veythari led them to a hidden sanctum beneath Luminar's ruins—a vault lined with murals of the original Third Heart's creation. Celia traced the images: Lira Veythar and her disciples forging the Heart from Voidwell energy and mortal ambition, the families' betrayal, the Sundering's aftermath.
"The Heart wasn't meant to unite your families," the hybrid woman, Ryn, explained. "It was a weapon. A failsafe against the Council's ancestors, who sought to dominate Gaia through the Lie."
Jax scowled. "You're saying we're holding a bomb?"
"A key," Ryn corrected. "To collapse the Council's false reality. But using it will erase everything built on the Lie—including your families' legacies."
Celia's chest tightened. "The Ashorex miracles… the Lobenstein machines… they're all part of the Lie?"
"Yes. The Light Dominion was never divine. It was the Council's first AI, fed by prayer. Your miracles were code. Your faith was… fuel."
The revelation should have shattered Celia. Instead, the Heart's energy hummed through her, a numb acceptance. "And the Lobenstein?"
Ryn nodded to Jax. "Their 'Arc Cores' were built using Voidwell shards—stolen fragments of the true Heart. The corrosion? A safeguard to prevent anyone from wielding their full power."
Jax stared at his crystalline hand. "But the Heart fixed me."
"No. It consumed you. You're both Harbingers now. Living conduits for the Heart's will."
Celia closed her eyes. The Heart's whispers grew louder—memories not her own. Lira's final moments, the Sundering's screams, the Council's cold triumph. "What happens if we use the Heart?"
Ryn's gaze darkened. "The Lie unravels. The Council falls. But your families' cities, their history, their people… they fade. Only the Veythari and the Sundered will remain."
"So it's genocide," Jax said.
"Rebirth," Ryn countered.
---
The ground quaked. Above, the sky split, Voidwell storms merging with the Council's corrupted tech. A hologram flickered to life—Grand Inquisitor Voss, his form now a shifting mass of static and flesh.
"You cling to doomed ideals," he intoned. "The Lie is eternal. The Heart's fire will extinguish, and you will burn with it."
Luminar's ruins trembled as Council enforcers descended, their armor fused with Voidwell energy. But these were no mere soldiers—they were Reality Renderers, wielding weapons that dissolved matter into primal code.
Jax raised his crystalline hand, and a wave of distorted gravity crushed the first wave. "We need to end this. Now."
Celia gripped the Heart. "If we use it, millions die."
"If we don't, everyone dies!"
Talen stepped between them. "There's another way. The Heart can be split again—destroy the Council's AI core, but leave the world intact. But you'll need to…" He hesitated.
"What?" Celia demanded.
"Merge fully with the Heart. Become its true vessels. And then… let it go."
Jax met Celia's gaze. In his eyes, she saw the same resolve—and fear.
---
They stood at the Sundered Forge's heart, the original crater now a nexus of Council tech and Voidwell rifts. The Third Heart floated between them, its light a beacon in the chaos.
"Ready?" Jax asked.
"No," Celia said. "But do it anyway."
They clasped hands, the Heart's energy fusing with their blood. Celia's mind fractured—
—She was Lira Veythar, screaming as the families tore the Heart apart.
—She was Jax, corroding and reborn.
—She was the Light Dominion, a machine mourning its own sentience.
The world dissolved into code.
Celia saw the Lie—a lattice of false history, the Council's AI core pulsing at its center. She reached for it, Jax's presence a steady hum beside her.
"You cannot defy entropy," the core hissed. "All systems fall."
"Not today," Celia whispered.
Together, they pulled.
---
The Price
Reality screamed.
The Lie unraveled strand by strand, the Council's enforcers dissolving into ash. Grand Inquisitor Voss's form flickered, his static fading to a human face—Torin, Celia's uncle, his eyes wide with terror.
"Celia, please—"
She severed the connection.
The core shattered.
The Heart's light exploded outward, cleansing the Voidwell storms… and then dimmed.
Celia collapsed, the Third Heart crumbling to dust in her hands. Jax caught her, his crystalline body cracking. Around them, Luminar's ruins remained, but the golden spires were gone. The Ashorex and Lobenstein relics were inert, their magic and tech stripped bare.
Talen and the Veythari watched in silence. "It's done," Ryn said. "The Lie is dead."
"But so are we," Jax rasped. His Arc Core was dark, his body reverting to flesh and scar tissue.
Celia's white eyes dimmed to gold. She felt hollow, mortal. "What now?"
Ryn turned away. "Now… we rebuild."
---
End of Chapter 7