The silence was the loudest thing in the room.
It wasn't a peaceful silence. It was the heavy, pressurized quiet that follows a bomb blast—the kind that makes your ears ring with the ghosts of screams. In the center of the Grand Ballroom, the emergency lights flickered with a pathetic, dying amber glow. The gold-leafed pillars were slick with a mixture of melted carbon-fiber and human remains.
Kai lay in a pool of his own shadow, his breathing a wet, jagged rasp. His arms were no longer skin and bone; they were blackened husks, the meat of his forearms cooked from the inside out by the Null-radiation he had forced through them. Every twitch was an invitation for the darkness to swallow him whole.
"Kai! Stay with me! Don't you dare close your eyes!"
Mina's voice was a jagged blade. She was kneeling over him, her hands pressed against his chest. Her light—once a proud, blinding gold—was now a frantic, stuttering silver. She was pouring every ounce of her life-force into his failing heart, her own face pale and slick with sweat.
"The Pylon... did it..." Kai choked out, a bubble of dark, metallic blood popping on his lips. "Is it... over?"
"The city is dead, Kai," a new voice answered.
Vantablack stepped out of a nearby pillar of smoke. She looked different. The bandages that had once suppressed her were gone, burned away by Malice's fire. What remained was a girl made of living ink, her skin shifting like oil on water. Her eyes—those bottomless violet pits—were fixed on the windows.
Beyond the shattered glass of the Aegis Center, New Heritage City was screaming.
The blackout wasn't just a loss of lights. It was a loss of order. Without the Null-Pylons and the R-nex dampeners, the "Glitches"—the thousands of unregistered citizens with unstable Grafts—were suddenly at full power. In the distance, a skyscraper was being systematically dissolved by a kid with a rust-touch Graft. Another street was being consumed by an uncontrolled storm of static.
"Malice didn't just leave," Vantablack hissed, her voice vibrating with a thousand overlapping echoes. "He opened the cage. He wants us to see the 'Mistakes' turn into the very monsters he said we were."
Suddenly, the floor beneath them groaned. The Aegis Center, built on the vanity of the Sovereigns, was beginning to tilt. The structural integrity had been compromised when Kai vented the grid.
"We have to move," Silver-Tongue crackled over the comms, his voice distorted by heavy interference. "Kid, if you can hear me, get out of there! R-nex isn't coming to save the guests. They're sending 'The Erasers'. They're going to level the building to hide the evidence of the broadcast."
"The Erasers..." Mina whispered, her eyes widening. They were the urban legend of the hero world—Sovereigns whose Grafts weren't meant for public relations, but for total annihilation.
"I can't... move..." Kai gasped. His vision was blurring. The Null-Void was fighting to keep him alive, but it was hungry. It wanted to consume his remaining cells to fuel the repair.
"Then let the dark take you," Vantablack said. She didn't ask for permission. She reached out, her shadow-fingers elongating like knives, and plunged them into the shadows beneath Kai.
She didn't hurt him. She anchored him.
The shadows rose up like a tidal wave, wrapping around Kai and Mina, forming a protective, obsidian cocoon. Just as the first "Eraser" beam—a pillar of pure anti-matter—slid through the roof of the ballroom, Vantablack dived into the floor.
They didn't fall. They slid through the geometry of the building, moving through the "Between-Space" that only Vantablack could navigate.
They emerged a hundred floors down, in the loading docks. The air here was freezing, filled with the roar of the city's panic. The street was a river of fire. Civilian cars were being tossed like toys by a "Mistake" whose Graft had turned him into a forty-foot titan of jagged bone.
"Look at them," Mina said, her voice hollow as she looked at the carnage. "We showed them the truth, and they're using it to burn each other."
"They're not burning each other," Kai muttered, forcing himself to stand, leaning heavily on a rusted dumpster. His arms were beginning to knit back together, the skin forming into a strange, matte-black scar tissue. "They're fighting for the first time. This isn't a riot, Mina. It's a birth."
He looked up at the sky. Through the smoke, he could see the R-nex satellites—the "Eyes of God"—still hovering. They were the ones who would try to rewrite this night.
"Vanta," Kai said, turning to the shadow-girl. "You said you wanted Malice's heart. He's headed for the North Sector. He's going to activate the 'Genesis Protocol'. He's going to try to reset the world."
Vantablack tilted her head, her violet eyes glowing. "I can smell his light. It smells like rot and ozone."
"Then we don't hide," Kai said, his voice regaining its edge. He reached out with his blackened hand and touched the air. A small spark of Null-Void flickered—not a blast, but a needle-sharp point of absolute erasure. "Mina, I need your light. Not for a shield. For a lens."
Mina looked at him, seeing the "Reluctant King" finally embracing the crown. She nodded, her silver light flaring to life, focusing into a tight beam that hit Kai's hand.
The Null-Void didn't destroy the light. It refracted it.
The silver beam turned into a blade of "Invisible Force"—a weapon that didn't just cut matter, but cut the laws of matter.
"Silver-Tongue," Kai said into the comms. "Tell the 'Army of Mistakes' to stop fighting the citizens. Tell them to head North. We're not just exposing Malice anymore. We're going to delete the Sun."
The chapter ends with the three of them—the Broken Boy, the Fallen Star, and the Shadow Queen—stepping out into the fire-choked streets. Behind them, the Aegis Center finally collapsed, a tomb for the old world. Ahead of them, the No. 1 Hero was waiting in his palace of lies, ready for the final harvest.
Kai took a step, the ground beneath his feet cracking as his power finally stabilized. He wasn't Kaelen Vance anymore. He was the Vantablack, and the night had only just begun.