The ballroom was a vision of hell. The gold leaf on the walls was melting, dripping like liquid honey over the corpses of the elite.
Malice held Vantablack by the throat, her smoky form flickering like a dying candle. The solar heat radiating from him was so intense that the air itself was screaming.
"Kai!" Mina's voice cracked through the roar of the fire. She was pinned behind the DJ booth by Pulse, who had recovered enough to pin her down with high-speed vibrations. "Save her!"
Kai stood in the center of the carnage. His body was a map of agony. To his left, the flash drive was still broadcasting the truth to the world—but R-nex "Cleanup" squads were already breaching the roof to shut it down. To his right, his friend was being turned to ash.
The Choice: Finish the broadcast and ensure Malice's reputation is dead, or save the girl who "ate the dark."
"You can't have both, Kaelen!" Malice roared, his hand glowing brighter. "That's the lie they teach you at the Academy. Real power is choosing what to sacrifice!"
Kai's eyes went dark. Not the "Null" dark—something deeper. Something Vantablack.
"I'm not a hero," Kai whispered, his voice vibrating with a terrifying resonance. "And I'm done playing your game."
Kai didn't run toward Malice. He ran toward the Null-Pylon that Vantablack had glitched earlier. He grabbed the exposed wiring with both hands.
"KAI, NO!" Silver-Tongue screamed in his ear. "That much raw radiation will liquefy your cells!"
Kai didn't listen. He opened the Null-Void wider than ever before. He didn't just absorb the power; he used himself as a Bridge. He sucked the energy from the city's power grid through the Pylon and redirected it—not at Malice, but at the Shadows.
The room went pitch black. Not just "lights out" black. Absolute black.
The solar fire in Malice's hand was snuffed out. The speedster Pulse fell to the floor, his momentum erased. Even the fire on the walls vanished.
In the total darkness, Vantablack's voice rang out, no longer a hiss, but a roar of a Goddess. "MY TURN."
The "Gore" that followed was silent and surgical. In the dark, Vantablack became the room. Every R-nex soldier, every corrupt Sovereign, felt cold, shadowy fingers reach into their chests.
When the emergency lights flickered back on, the scene was horrific. The R-nex squads were gone—not dead, but pulled into the floor. Malice was slumped against the stage, his chest covered in deep, black lacerations that refused to heal.
Kai lay by the Pylon, his arms blackened and smoking, his eyes bleeding. He had saved her, but the price was his own body.
Mina rushed to him, her hands glowing with a frantic, desperate healing light. "Kai! Stay with me! The broadcast... it worked. The world saw it. The stock market is crashing. R-nex is falling."
Malice stood up, coughing up gold-colored blood. He looked at the screens, then at the broken boy on the floor. He didn't look defeated. He looked liberated.
"You broke the world, Kaelen," Malice rasped, a terrifyingly genuine smile on his face. "Now watch what happens when there's no 'Symbol' to keep the monsters in the dark."
Outside, the city began to scream. Without the R-nex "Peacekeepers" and the fear of the Sovereigns, every villain, every "Glitch," and every suppressed rage in the city erupted at once.
The Gala was over. The War of the Mistakes had begun.