The battle with the Zerg Queen raged with cataclysmic fury.
Even the sky bled.
Sheng Long's command center was in shambles. The best of their forces were thinning under the Queen's relentless assault. Her psychic field fractured weapons midair, dissolved shields, and twisted the minds of the weaker soldiers. The ground itself became poison beneath her influence.
Sheng Long's sword was cracked, his dragon form half-manifested, scales ripped and bleeding. Flames flickered weakly around him as he clutched his side, blood pouring between his fingers.
"Marshal!" Yan Shuo cried, dragging a wounded soldier behind cover. "We need to retreat or—"
"No," Sheng Long rasped. His eyes were fixed on the Queen. "She'll follow. She'll slaughter every world we retreat to."
He looked across the battlefield—so many dead, so many fighting just to breathe—and then his gaze landed on **Xiao Lin**.
The young healer stood on a rise, silver fox tails lashing behind him, his form glowing with unstable power. But he was pale—shaking.
**Not ready.**
Sheng Long knew what had to be done.
"…I have to end it. My nucleus is strong enough. If I can get close—"
"No!" Xiao Lin's voice rang out across the chaos, sharp and terrified. "You can't!"
Sheng Long turned toward him, eyes full of the pain of a decision already made. "Xiao Lin, this is bigger than both of us. If it saves the Empire, I'll—"
But he never finished.
Xiao Lin's eyes flared silver as he *threw* Sheng Long back with a sudden surge of psychic force. Sheng Long's body hit the ground and slid across the dirt, stunned.
Xiao Lin was already sprinting forward.
His tails glowed brighter than ever before, and every step radiated more power. The Queen turned toward him—*recognition* flashing in her six eyes.
"You dare—"
"I'm not going to die," Xiao Lin whispered.
And then—**the voice of his mother**. Gentle. Resounding inside his soul.
> "The Queen's heart is your mirror, Lin'er. You were born to end her. But do not shatter your own light—shatter hers."
His vision cleared. He could see it.
The Queen's beast nucleus—**corrupted**, but **linked** to him through something ancient and sealed. That was why she feared him. Not because he could overpower her—
But because he could unmake her from the **inside**.
Xiao Lin's body exploded into radiant silver light, tendrils of energy shooting into the Queen's chest. Her screech split the air as he reached for her corrupted nucleus, threads of his mental power *rewriting* its pattern, tearing through the rot—
Until with a **crack like thunder**, the Queen shrieked and dropped from the sky, her monstrous form unraveling in streams of darkness.
Sheng Long had scrambled to his feet just in time to see her fall.
And Xiao Lin collapse beside her.
"XIAO LIN!!"