Tae held up a hand, halting the deployment protocol just as Joseph was about to lock in the final spatial coordinates.
"Wait," Tae said, his golden multi-pupiled eyes narrowing as he looked over at Joseph. "We're diving into this blind. Karai and the Clone aren't just pooling raw power—they're playing a long game. Before we step into whatever trap they set at the Core, we need absolute clarity."
Joseph paused, his Ocular Logic Grid humming as he quickly adjusted his inputs. "There's only one place across the infinite Canvas that can map a soul-link between two Calamity-level entities without being detected. The Well of the Blind Oracle."
Without another word, Joseph shifted the portal's destination. The golden rift opened up not into a battlefield, but into a quiet, ancient sanctuary suspended outside the flow of normal space and time.
The Shrine of the Blind Oracle
The group stepped through into a massive, cavernous temple carved out of pale, starlit marble. In the center of the hall sat a massive, bottomless pool of liquid silver. Floating just inches above the water was The Blind Oracle—an ancient, veiled entity whose presence radiated a quiet, terrifying omniscience.
As the nine brothers and the Walker approached, the Oracle didn't open her eyes, but her voice echoed directly inside their minds, heavy and ancient.
"You come seeking the path to victory against the Void Witch and the Resurrected Vessel... yet you walk toward your own ruin."
Tae stepped to the front, his Logos Katana resting against his hip, his newly evolved Logos actively scanning the Oracle's temporal aura.
"We need to know how their cores are linked," Tae demanded. "And how we break it."
The Oracle slowly raised a thin, pale hand, waving it over the silver pool. The liquid swirled, projecting a horrifying, glowing image of Karai and the Prime Clone standing side-by-side at the Multiversal Core. Between their chests, a thick, pitch-black tether of raw Null-Void Decay and primordial malice pulsed like a shared heartbeat.
"When Karai extracted the Clone's core from Joseph," the Oracle revealed, her voice echoing with absolute dread, "she did not simply place him in a new shell. She forged a Symbiotic Soul-Lock. They are no longer two separate beings fighting together... they are two halves of a single, immortal existence."
Kd stepped forward, his crimson monarch eyes narrowing. "Meaning what? If we hit one, the other takes the damage?"
"Far worse," the Oracle answered. "As long as Karai breathes, the Clone cannot be destroyed—his body will instantly regenerate from her void pool. And as long as the Clone draws breath, Karai cannot be sealed or erased—his core will continuously pull her back from the abyss. You cannot defeat one while the other stands."
A cold silence fell over the starlit temple.
"So we have to kill them both at the exact same millisecond," Diego muttered, his amber eyes scanning the projection. "Simultaneous execution."
"That is only half of the truth you seek," the Oracle warned, her voice dropping into a chilling tone that made even the Walker's charismatic smirk vanish completely. "Listen closely to my warning, Prodigies of the Prime Sector... A darkness walks among you into this final war."
Ayden took a step forward, his galaxy aura flaring slightly. "What are you talking about?"
"The thread of your victory is stained in blood," the Oracle whispered, her veiled head turning directly toward the nine brothers. "I see the final blow struck against the Soul-Lock... but the vision is absolute. One of the Nine Prodigies will not walk out of the Multiversal Core alive. A final death awaits one of you on that battlefield, and if you attempt to alter that fate... the entire Canvas will collapse into the void."
The Dread Before the Storm
The silence that followed was suffocating.
The brothers looked at each other—Tae, Kd, Joseph, Ayden, Ethan, Diego, Marcos, Jax, and Rashad. None of them spoke. None of them flinched outwardly, but the sheer weight of the prophecy settled over the entire room like lead.
The Walker leaned back against a marble pillar, crossing his arms, his smooth British accent completely stripped of its usual mocking tone. "Well... that certainly ruins the mood, doesn't it?"
Tae stood frozen in front of the silver pool. Inside his mind, his evolved Logos was running continuous, frantic calculations, trying to find a mathematical loophole in the Oracle's warning.
'Director...' Logos spoke quietly in Tae's mind. 'I am analyzing temporal probability grids. The Oracle's prophecy carries a 99.8% probability index. The Soul-Lock forces a simultaneous strike, but the feedback energy produced by breaking that link... is mathematically fatal to whoever delivers the core blow.'
Tae's jaw tightened. His fists clenched until his knuckles turned white.
'I don't care about the odds, Logos,' Tae replied mentally, his golden lotus eyes burning with pure, unyielding fury. 'None of my brothers are dying today. Not Kd, not Joseph, not Ayden... NO ONE. We are all coming back to the orphanage together.'
Tae turned back to face his brothers. He looked every single one of them in the eyes. He saw the silent determination in Kd's glare, the sharp focus in Joseph's logic grid, and the fearless aura in Ayden's galaxy stance. Every single one of them was already silently deciding that they would be the one to take the fatal blow to keep the rest of their family safe.
"You all heard her," Tae said, his voice cold, steady, and echoing with absolute authority. "They are soul-linked, and they think they've written our ending."
Tae drew his Logos Katana, the blade flaring into a blinding, divine golden supernova that illuminated the entire marble sanctuary!
"We split into two strike teams," Tae ordered. "One team handles Karai, the other handles the Prime Clone. We coordinate our final strikes down to the exact microsecond. And as for that 'death warning'..."
Tae looked toward the open portal leading directly to the Multiversal Core, his golden pupils spinning into intricate lotus grids.
"We rewrite it."
Joseph stepped up, his grey eyes locked on Tae's, and tapped the terminal, locking in the final coordinates to the heart of reality where Karai and the Prime Clone waited.
"Portal open," Joseph said firmly. "Let's go finish this."