"Khael!" Ceyla's shout was immediate, fierce. She pushed forward, storm and lightning coiling to yank him free.

"Hold him! Don't let it draw him!" Lira's voice trembled but was iron. Her glow intensified, pouring threads of Bloom into his chest. "If it drains him now, we lose more than a plan—we lose a heart."

But the shard had teeth: the more the team tried to wrench it apart, the more it siphoned at the dragon core inside Khael. Images flashed ghostly memories, a chorus of lost voices, a promise of power in exchange for a silence that smelled like oceans swallowed whole.

Juno's jaw clenched. "Taishin Gate, Vein Sense!" He forced the Gate open despite the scream of his bones. Every echo of the shard's pull became visible to him: currents inside the stone, little veins of corrupt Shinrei. He directed his body as if he were a surgeon, every muscle a suture. "Aim for the seams, don't match its pull!"

Kaen answered with a shout, extinguishing a section of his own flame to feed the rim of the shard with pressure, not heat. "Stop letting it decide! Push back, hard!"

Rael's blade hummed with a focused, cold clarity. "Seraphis, mirror strike." The spirit wrapped around his sword; the Judicator's light became a reflection of the shard's hunger and shoved hard sundered a filament of void that had laced into Khael's wrist.

The fragment shuddered. A fragment of black rock flaked away.

But the cost was clear. Khael's breath came shallow and hot. Sweat and blood mixed along his jaw. Veins of silver light crawled up his forearm, where scales had never before shown that pattern. He gritted his teeth and pushed, every inch a battle between the dragon that protected and the void that wanted possession.

(This is not just a shard—it's a seed.) Lira's thought knifed through the chaos. (If it's rooted, breaking it scatters corruption. We need to sever it clean.)

Khael's eyes lifted to theirs green tempered with storm. "If it can't be shattered, we'll cut it out." His voice was a promise wrapped in exhaustion.

"How?" Juno hissed.

Khael didn't answer immediately. He remembered the whispers of the Dragonheart Severance, the old, forbidden art that could cut clean through spirit and matter but demanded everything in return. He could taste the memory like smoke: power that demanded a price.

(Not yet. Maybe not the whole thing.) Kaen's hand found Khael's shoulder, firm. "We'll take a piece, then. Draw it out, seal the rest."

A plan, less clean, less perfect, but survivable. They adjusted. Rael re-routed his Judicator runes to thread a binding rather than a blast. Juno tightened his stances into a living clamp. Kaen reformed flame into a controlling current. Ceyla's storm slowed, precise and surgical. Lira wound her Bloom into gentle chains that would not break but would preserve.

Khael inhaled. "On my count."

They synchronized six wills braided into one motion.

"One—two—three!"

A final, brutal push. Juno anchored the ground like an immovable root. Kaen's fire corralled the void's edges. Rael's blade carved a neat line of light through the shard's flank. Ceyla's lightning sealed the cut. Lira held their life-thread steady, and Khael reached inside where the shard bled black fire and plucked, a jagged heart of corruption, thrumming and writhing free.

It tore at him, screaming, as if the storm inside Khael were being flayed. He staggered forward, the stolen piece held aloft like a captured wound. For an instant the world tilted: waves stalled, creatures paused, the air inhaled.

Then Khael collapsed across the stones, chest heaving like a bellows. Blood and scales gleamed. The shard, wounded and leaking, sat cracked but whole, its influence blunted.

Lira rushed to him, hands already trembling as she poured Bloom into the boy who'd become their legend. "Don't you dare—" she whispered, voice breaking with relief and terror.

Khael's fingers twitched. He managed a small, ragged smile. "We did it." The words were smaller than the truth. His breath shuddered. (But that piece, someone will want it.)

Around them, the cavern hummed with uneasy quiet. The main source had not been destroyed; it had been amputated. The tide beasts faltered as if robbed of some last rumor of command. The team had won a costly, imperfect victory and the shard's heart, now in their hands, was a promise that the war had not ended.

(This is only the beginning.) Rael thought, eyes on the black sliver Khael had drawn out. (And my brother's shadow still stretches over all of it.)

They gathered, breathless and bruised, facing a sea that had offered blood for answers. The map in Khael's head shifted: there were other fragments, other men who would use them.

The Hollow Nine would not rest. The balance would rebalance and the survivors would have to fight the next turn.

But for now, in the echo of the clash and the salt of their sweat, they held a single, terrible truth: they had pulled at the root and it had bled. The war had become personal.

Meanwhile on the side of Captain Roan

Captain Roan's fist unclenched from Merran's collar, the veins still hot with anger. The merchant slumped against the tide-cell wall, his breath shallow, chest trembling like a brittle net about to snap. His lips moved, broken words slipping through cracked teeth.

"H-help… I don't… I don't want to die…"

Roan froze. His fury flickered into something harder, sharper command sharpened by discipline. He turned on his heel, voice booming through the chamber.

"Medic!! Get in here, now!"

Boots hammered against stone. Two Pearl Guardians rushed in, one with a kit of sea-silk wraps, the other bearing a flask of distilled Bloomwater. They knelt beside Merran, pressing cloth to his chest, tilting his head so he didn't choke on his own tongue.

Merran's eyes rolled, unfocused. He caught Roan's shadow leaning over him, broad and heavy. His mind spun.

(No, no, no… not like this… I just wanted coin. Just survival. Hollow Nine promised me safety, power, riches, damn it, I didn't want to end like a rat in a cell…)

His chest rattled. One medic hissed under her breath, fingers slick with blood. "Captain, his heart's faltering. Poison? Or stress?"

Roan's jaw locked. He leaned down, his voice a hammer against Merran's fading senses. "Listen to me. You don't get to die here. Not before you tell me who's behind this."

Merran coughed, the sound wet and pitiful. His pupils dilated, his gaze darting wildly across the ceiling as if he saw something or someone hovering beyond Roan's shoulder.

(They'll kill me… if I speak, they'll gut me, they'll drag me down. But if I stay silent… I'll die here anyway. Gods… what do I choose…?)

His lips quivered. A sound slipped free—not a confession, but a whimper. "Don't… want to die…"

Roan's massive hand gripped his shoulder, hard enough to ground him. "Then fight. Stay alive. Breathe, damn you!"

The medics worked quickly, pressing Bloomwater against Merran's tongue, wrapping his chest in luminous silk threads to steady the rhythm of his failing heart.

Roan stood over them like a storm cloud, his eyes never leaving the broken merchant. His voice dropped, low, iron-forged. if you're afraid of them… then you should be more afraid of me."

Merran's lashes fluttered, his voice barely audible, more to himself than to anyone else. "I don't… want to die…"

And somewhere beneath the pain, beneath the fear, he thought he saw their faces hooded, watching from the dark corners of his memory.

The Hollow Nine.

His heart jerked in panic. The medics worked faster.

To be continue

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