The darkness trembled.
Not from fear—but from something it had never known.
Resistance.
Kael stood at the forefront, his cloak billowing like a solar flare, his blade glowing with the pulse of newly awakened stars. Behind him, the Celestial Legion emerged from the warp between realms—champions of light born from pain, redemption, and impossible defiance.
Each one had been touched by the entity, chosen by fate, or saved from destruction. They were mortals remade, myths reborn.
Yaros's voice thundered across the void.
"This is your answer? Mortal spirits in divine shells?"
Kael stepped forward, his feet carving paths of light across the black.
"No," he said. "This is your consequence."
The Legion charged.
Lyra soared overhead, her phoenix screeching, wings trailing molten flame. She rained solar javelins upon Yaros's shadow-army, each one exploding with miniature novas.
Valen summoned storms that twisted through space itself, spears of lightning lancing into the tide of Abyssal horrors that erupted from Yaros's broken throne.
The Child of Silence whispered an ancient verse—and reality warped around her. Shadows recoiled from her voice as she turned the very language of void against its source.
And Kael…
Kael blinked into existence behind Yaros, slamming a wave of celestial might directly into the god's back, sending him spiraling through a field of shattered stars.
Yaros retaliated. With a single gesture, he summoned a black hole between heartbeats. It consumed three members of the Legion instantly, twisting space into chaos.
Kael roared and closed the black hole with his bare hands, wrapping it in starlight and sealing it into a singularity that he hurled back at Yaros like a celestial bomb.
Boom.
The explosion lit the Abyss like dawn.
But Yaros survived. Wounded. Smoldering. Furious.
He raised both arms, drawing in power from the edges of the Abyss. The stars flickered.
"Do you feel that?" he growled. "You've made a spark. But now I will devour the flame."
Kael stood tall, the Legion forming behind him.
"You don't understand," Kael said. "The flame doesn't die."
He raised his hand.
Every star in the heavens responded.
One by one, they bent toward him—an entire galaxy answering their god.
"Because I'm not a spark anymore."
Kael's body became radiant. His skin turned into burning sigils, his eyes twin suns.
"I am the Celestial Core."
He took to the skies again—this time, to end the void itself.