The air in The Ruined Core turned ice-cold, thick enough to choke on. The nine brothers stood completely frozen, staring at the unimaginable nightmare standing before them.
Beside Karai stood the fully realized, resurrected Prime Clone, stretching his newly formed arms, his crimson pupils glowing with the exact same sickening malice that had haunted their nightmares since the day he took Sister Patricia from them.
Over on the far ridge, Ethan was down on one knee, his hands glowing with intense dark-matter light as he desperately worked to re-atomize The Walker's shattered chest. The Walker was barely clinging to life, his breath coming in shallow, wheezing gasps, his 100% unsealed aura flickering like a dying candle.
Tae's golden lotus eyes flared, his fists trembling with rage as he stepped in front of his brothers, his Logos Katana drawn.
"How...?" Tae spat, his voice laced with pure venom. "How are you two working together?! When did you even make contact?!"
Karai leaned back on her Void Scythe, a mocking, melodic laugh escaping her lips as she looked down at the Prodigies like bugs under a glass.
"Oh, Director... you really thought you had everything under control, didn't you?" Karai purred, her crimson eyes gleaming with arrogant delight. "When I first launched my assault on your sanctuary, I instantly sensed the Clone's sleeping core sealed deep inside Joseph. While you were all so distracted trying to parry my steel, the Clone and I were exchanging mental tethers right under your noses."
Joseph's grey eyes widened in sheer horror.
"And why do you think I targeted Ayden first with those subtle words?" Karai added, casting a mocking glance at the speedster. "His Infinite Adaptation is the only thing in this universe capable of sensing subconscious telepathic frequencies. If I hadn't driven him into a rabid, PTSD-fueled rampage to keep him occupied, he would have caught our mental messages instantly. I used your brother's trauma as a smoke screen."
Ayden's jaw clenched so hard his teeth nearly cracked, realizing how his weakness had been weaponized to pull off the ultimate breach.
"Enough talking!" Rashad roared, his clean-mana thrusters igniting as he deployed his tactical plasma cannons!
Simultaneously, Tae dissolved into a beam of weightless divine light, blitzing straight toward Karai and the Prime Clone with lethal intent! "I'M ENDING THIS NOW!"
The Prime Clone merely raised an eyebrow, a cruel smirk spreading across his face as he prepared to catch Tae's blade—but before the collision could occur, Karai held up two fingers.
She uttered a single, ancient phrase in cold, rhythmic Japanese:
"Zetsubō no Makuage... Jikū Sōsetsu." (The Curtain Call of Despair... Spatiotemporal Disruption.)
BOOM!
The entire dimension of The Ruined Core violently detonated! The floating obsidian plateaus shattered into microscopic dust, and a massive, blinding wave of pitch-black void-flame erupted from Karai's feet, completely engulfing space itself!
Tae cut through the explosion with his Logos Katana, but as the black fire cleared, Karai and the Prime Clone were completely gone—their energy tethers completely erased from the multiversal grid.
"DAMN IT!" Tae screamed, his divine golden aura exploding outward, obliterating the surrounding floating debris in pure, unadulterated rage.
The Infirmary & The Fracture
They had no choice. With the Walker on the verge of total cellular collapse, Tae grabbed the dying entity, and Joseph opened a emergency spatial tear straight back to the subterranean complex beneath the orphanage.
Minutes later, the emergency alarm was blaring red across the walls of the High-Tech Subterranean Infirmary.
The Walker was strapped into an advanced medical pod, suspended in a vat of liquid clean-mana and high-density medical gel. Ethan stood over the console, his eyes pitch-black as he used his atomic manipulation alongside Joseph's logical data-feeds to painstakingly re-stitch the Walker's heart and purge the lingering Void Decay from his bloodstream.
Tae paced back and forth near the glass wall of the infirmary, his hands pressed against his temples as he communicated internally with his newly evolved, sentient AI.
'Logos... talk to me,' Tae demanded mentally, his thoughts frantic. 'How could our radars miss a telepathic signal right in our own yard?! How did the world's smartest beings fail to pick that up?!'
'Director,' Logos's crisp, living voice resonated inside Tae's mind, carrying a quiet solemnity. 'The Void Decay frequency Karai utilizes vibrates on a sub-quantum wavelength that bypasses standard logic grids. Furthermore... Joseph's mental processing was actively engaged in maintaining spatial traps against her attacks. His focus was split.'
Outside the medical bay, Joseph stepped out, wiping sterile fluid from his hands. He hadn't spoken a single word since the Prime Clone was violently extracted from his chest. He looked pale, hollow, and visibly shaken—the core that had bound his destiny for years was suddenly out in the world, housed in a new body.
Tae stopped pacing. He turned his golden eyes onto Joseph, the anger he had been suppressing all day finally exploding over the edge.
"Joseph," Tae said, his voice dropping into a dangerous, razor-sharp tone. "You're supposed to be the smartest being in the infinite multiverses. Your mind calculates quadrillions of variables a second... and you let a void witch link minds with the Clone right inside your chest?!"
Joseph froze, his grey eyes dull. He didn't answer immediately, adjusting his glasses with a trembling hand. "Tae... I was maintaining the chronological locks on her scythe..."
"I DON'T WANT EXCUSES!" Tae shouted, stepping up into Joseph's face, his divine aura flaring violently! "The monster who killed Sister Patricia—the monster we bled and suffered to seal away—is walking free right now because you were 'busy'?! HOW DID YOU NOT NOTICE?!"
Joseph's head snapped up, a rare, sudden flare of intense anger washing over his usually stoic face.
"DO YOU THINK I WANTED THIS?!" Joseph yelled back, shoving Tae's chest! "I carried that murderer inside my soul every single day! Every time I closed my eyes, I heard his voice! I was fighting for my life out there just like the rest of you! You sit up there on your throne acting like you never miss a variable, Tae, but you're not omnipotent!"
"YOU COMPROMISED THE ENTIRE MULTIVERSE, JOSEPH!" Tae barked, grabbing Joseph by his collar!
"TOUCH ME AGAIN AND SEE WHAT HAPPENS!" Joseph roared, his Ocular Logic Grid spinning violently as he summoned his katana, temporal data lines surging up his arms!
Tae didn't hesitate—he threw a heavy right hook straight into Joseph's jaw! Joseph caught his balance, rewound his physical state by two seconds to erase the impact, and delivered a light-speed temporal knee straight into Tae's ribs!
The two brothers began violently scrapping right in the middle of the medical hall, crashing into glass displays and equipment racks!
"HEY! ENOUGH!"
Kd exploded into the room, stepping between them and unleashing a massive burst of Pandemonium Chaos Energy that forcefully blasted Tae and Joseph to opposite sides of the room!
"Both of y'all shut the hell up!" Kd growled, his crimson monarch eyes burning as he glared at them. "Tae, stop shifting the blame onto Joseph—he just had his soul ripped apart! Joseph, lock your head back in! Scrapping with each other isn't bringing that Clone back into a cage!"
Decoding the Calamity Plan
Tae wiped a drop of blood from his lip, taking a heavy breath as he sheathed his sword. Joseph gritted his teeth, leaning against a steel pillar, adjusting his coat in bitter silence.
Diego, Marcos, Ayden, Jax, and Rashad walked into the infirmary, their expressions grim.
Over in the pod, the glass hissed open. The Walker weakly sat up, coughing up a small amount of dark liquid, though Ethan's atomic healing had stabilized his core enough for him to speak. He looked around at the bruised brothers, letting out a dry, raspy chuckle in his classic British accent.
"My word..." the Walker wheezed softly, leaning against the pod rim. "Family reunions with you lot are positively exhausting. Though... I must admit, seeing the two 'smartest' boys in the multiverse throw hands like pub brawlers was quite entertaining."
"Shut up, Walker," Tae said flatly, stepping over. "You survived. Now tell us... what are they planning?"
The Walker's amused smile faded, replaced by a deadly serious expression as he looked at Tae, then over at Joseph.
"Karai didn't just resurrect the Clone for firepower," the Walker explained, his voice low. "The Prime Clone possesses a unique property—he can absorb and process raw multiversal energy without undergoing soul-collapse. Karai's Void Decay requires a massive vessel to anchor it if she wants to devour higher-tier dimensions."
Joseph narrowed his eyes, his intellect kicking back into gear despite the argument. "She's going to use the Clone as an amplifier. If she feeds her Null-Void magic directly through the Clone's core... she can unleash an absolute Chain Collapse across every universe in Sector 1."
"Which means," Diego added, pulling back his translucent bowstring to test its tension, "they aren't coming back to fight us at our front door. They're heading for the Multiversal Core to wipe out the foundation of reality itself."
Ayden bounced on his toes, his eyes glowing with bright, confident galactic light. "Then we don't wait for them to charge up. We track them, we jump them, and this time, we put both of those freaks in the dirt for good."
Tae looked around at all eight of his brothers and the recovering Walker. He turned to Joseph, holding out his hand. Joseph looked at Tae's hand for a moment, then gave it a firm, heavy shake—the argument squashed, their shared focus returned 100%.
"Logos," Tae commanded, his golden eyes spinning into intricate lotus grids as his evolved AI prepared the final jump parameters. "Sync with Joseph's logic grid and the Walker's remaining aura. Find Karai and the Clone."
'Coordinates calculating, Director,' Logos replied smoothly inside Tae's mind. 'Target lock established at the Multiversal Core. The final battle is ready when you are.'
Tae drew his Logos Katana completely, the divine blade humming with absolute, unyielding power.
"Gear up, boys," Tae said softly. "We're going to end this war."