The Celestial Bastion pulsed like a living wound in the cosmos. Seven Anchors stood atop the Tower of Echoes, arms outstretched, channeling entropy-threaded starlight into a web of crystalline defense. The lattice crackled with celestial tension, resonating like a war drum in the vacuum between moments.
Below, Tatsu stood in silence. Not in reverence. Not in awe. But like an executioner waiting for the axe to drop.
His star-mark burned, a corona of fractured light wrapping around his chest like a noose. The mimic whispered from beneath his skin.
"They set you up to die," it purred, its voice lined with velvet malice. "Let us burn the gameboard instead."
Renzo, half-concealed in the shadow of the Bastion's armory, watched him with unreadable eyes. The massacre had broken something between them. Neither had dared mend it.
The Anchors' barrier wasn't meant to defend. It was meant to bait. Lysara's whip, Echoflayer, traced golden sigils mid-air, dragging power from the Splintering and shaping it into a dome of glimmering violence.
"The Cabal will think us weakened," Vorian said, voice stripped of all warmth. "They will arrive. They will die."
General Zee, branded in Cabal runes, smirked from her corner, her betrayal written into her scars. She had fed them the lie. The bait was perfect.
In the relic vaults, Lysara presented Tatsu with his battle skin.
"The Aegis of Oblivion," she said. "It remembers pain. And it shares."
The armor was a grotesque marvel, forged from celestial bone lattices interlaced with strands of entropic sinew. Veins of dying starlight pulsed through its ribbed plating, and its surface shimmered like obsidian soaked in blood. It wasn't worn, it chose its host.
When Tatsu approached, the armor moved. Tendrils lashed out, wrapped around his limbs and spine, piercing skin and soul with needlelike precision. It crawled across his body with hungry sentience, fusing with marrow, latching onto nerve endings, etching glowing glyphs into his flesh. Spiked pauldrons erupted over his shoulders, while a segmented back-crown of bone-fins unfolded behind his head like the fractured halo of a forgotten god.
His chestplate pulsed, each beat echoing with a silent scream. The armor whispered not words, but memories: screams, wars, endings.
The mimic snarled. "You think this changes the outcome?"
Tatsu didn't answer. His eyes were mirrors, emotionless, flat. The silence hurt more than hate.
At the threshold, Renzo met him.
"Don't die," he muttered, tossing a familiar blade.
The Ghostwalker dagger. The one he'd once driven into a Cabal warden's neck to save him.
"Return it. Or don't."
No thanks. No nod. Just the click of Tatsu's fingers as he caught it midair.
At dawn, the sky ruptured.
Cabal skiffs descended like falling teeth. Husk Knights spilled from them in droves, followed by shrieking Frozen Ones. They staggered forward, half-starborn abominations wrapped in frost and regret. At their rear, the Fallow Star rode her serpent-skull vessel, eyes gleaming behind an antlered helm.
Tatsu stood at the apex of the barrier, the Aegis tightening around him, his pulse syncing with the hum of void-forged death.
No prayer. No last words. He exhaled.
"Begin," Vorian said.
The battle erupted in thunder and ash.
Tatsu did not charge. He unfolded, like a blade being drawn.
Solfractum snapped into being, luminous tendrils of star-matter spiraling from his palms, carving trails of light through the gloom. They struck with punishing rhythm, slicing Husk Knights in half before their blades even tasted resistance. Limbs scattered. Blood boiled on contact with the tendrils' radiant heat.
The Aegis of Oblivion responded with a predatory instinct, unfurling jagged claws from his spine and shoulders. They weaved around him in choreographed fury, scissoring, skewering, eviscerating anything that stepped too close.
A Frozen One roared, its body encased in cracked, glacial armor. It leapt at him with mindless hatred. Tatsu moved sideways, not fast, but inevitable. He seized it mid-air with one claw, slammed it spine-first into the earth, and drove his boot through its skull with mechanical finality.
The mimic howled, not from fear, but delight.
"Yes! Yes! More!"
Tatsu gave it what it wanted. But only by inches.
He flowed across the battlefield like liquid gravity, his body a blur of destructive calculus. He ducked under twin axes, disarmed a knight with one lash of Solfractum, then speared it through the chest with an Aegis blade. He spun, kicked a warpriest into the path of a collapsing spire, then caught another Frozen One's frost-forged glaive between his palms and shattered it with a twist.
There was no bloodlust in him. No primal scream. His face never shifted from its mask of hollow intent.
A group of Husk Knights tried to flank him. He leapt silent, soaring over their formation. Midair, Solfractum surged downward in a corkscrew of light. The ground detonated in starlit fire. When the smoke cleared, they were ash.
Another enemy screamed prayers to the Cabal. Tatsu silenced it with a dagger through the larynx, then dragged the mimic's fury back into its cage.
"You are mine," he said again, voice colder than the void. "And I say when we feed."
His eyes glimmered with the light of dead stars, beautiful, empty, and unblinking.
And still, he moved forward.
From above, the Fallow Star tilted her head.
"He resists," murmured her lieutenant. "Impossible."
She smiled. "Let him. Even a god must breathe. And when he does… we strike."
Kaelthar's Final Note, a sonic resonance device created by the Bastion's first Warden, designed to exploit the harmonic vulnerabilities in star-born physiology detonated in a silence deeper than death. The Cabal lines fractured.
Wails. Shattering. Panic. The Frozen Ones fell into madness. Skiffs turned in retreat, dragging away half-screaming remnants.
The Fallow Star's eyes met Tatsu's one last time.
"Until next time, Sovereign."
Tatsu fell to one knee, smoke rising from the Aegis. His breath was ragged. Blood leaked from where armor had fused too deep.
Renzo's dagger lay embedded in a corpse, its glow dulled. The only warm thing in the field of ruin.
The Anchors descended.
Vorian nodded once. "Adequate."
Lysara's whip coiled, then lashed around Tatsu's throat. "But not enough."
He didn't resist. He didn't speak.
He didn't care.
The Oubliette was carved from dying language.
Its walls twisted with runes that screamed and wept. Star-marks from broken souls glowed faintly on every surface.
Vorian's voice echoed one last time. "You will remain until you understand."
Tatsu sat in the center, spine straight, eyes closed. Not in meditation. But in containment.
The mimic returned. This time, wearing Kio's smile.
"You made them fear you. How precious."
Tatsu struck the wall with one fist. Glyphs burned. Pain flared.
"I don't need you," he hissed.
"Then why am I here?" it purred.
He stared into the reflection of its eyes and saw nothing. No rage. No hope. Just a mirror of himself.
The Fallow Star knelt beneath the true Obsidian Throne.
A mass of pulsing void. Breathing. Watching.
"The vessel fractures. Sovereignty is unsustainable. Soon, he will be ours."
Renzo stood in silence outside the Oubliette. The dagger trembled in his hand. Not from fear. From guilt.
But he couldn't bring himself to speak again. Not yet.
Inside, the cameras watched Tatsu. Multiple lenses embedded into the living glyph-stone blinked, trying to read him, dissect him, break him.
Tatsu didn't move for months. Then slowly, deliberately, he opened his eyes and stared directly into one of the lenses.
"Do you think you are observing me?" he said, voice quiet but surgical.
A pause. The mimic chuckled in the walls.
Tatsu's mouth twitched, not a smile. A warning.
"No. I'm the one observing you."