Without a barrier, the accumulated attacks from soldiers and tars, heroes whose nas didn't matter, were descending on Orion from every angle.
It was the end for him.
But the crystals ca out of Dorian's and Magnus's hands before either of them finished understanding what was happening.
Toward Orion… Into his configuration, incorporated with the fluency of soone executing sothing they had already decided to do before the situation required it, not a true reaction, a plan activated. The combined crystal count in his hands changed to 10, and the barrier that followed was small, just enough to manage without the water and fire elental control of his brothers. Just enough, because the corruption filling the gaps made up for the precision their absence took away.
"I'm sorry," said Orion, without looking at them.
Dorian and Magnus looked at their eldest brother for the mont it took to process what had just happened.
The betrayal was quiet in the way the most miserable things were quiet. No dramatic declaration… Just the crystals moving from their hands to his and a barrier forming around him while the rain of attacks hit the surface and never stopped for them, and their brother not eting their eyes.
The barrier caught all the attacks from the room.
It then let the beam aid at Ren pass free.
Luna ran despite the exhaustion.
No beast. No fusion. No shadow step, that was gone, the reserves that made it possible had been empty since her beast finished its last work. Just the movent of soone who had made a desperate decision and whose body responded to it even though the body already knew it was too late. The distance between her and Ren and the ti between Ren and the beam were not comparable trics that human legs could seal in the ti available.
She ran anyway.
But it was too late…
The beam hit Ren with the density of everything Orion had and the brutality of sothing that was no longer being controlled in the ordinary sense but pushed by sothing growing from inside, sothing that didn't carry the sa set of limits that technique normally imposed. Not asured at all. Just full force in a direction, released through a person who was no longer fully the author of how much force was being released.
Yet Ren was already on his feet.
And he received it with his hands.
Because Ren was Ren, and because apparently facing things head-on was the only way he knew how to face them.
He tried to take control of the largest beam he had received in the entire battle with the lowest reserves he had carried at any point in his entire life, and he let it enter his system the sa way he had let previous ones, through the sa damaged channels, through the learned routes, through the pattern that the interior golden space had taught him to use.
The system protested in ways that had no na in any dical category yet.
The black veins covered everything visible on his body instantly. The blood that had already been present in several places beca evident in nearly all of them. The bones in his arms that were holding the flow took the kind of damage that should have pulverized them, surviving only because the angle was exactly right and because sothing that wasn't luck but a miracle was still deciding to hold.
Ren set his teeth.
He accumulated the power.
Orion saw him still standing and added more from his growing rage. He opened the connection to the crystals that the corruption was facilitating, that frictionless access to energy that had previously required fine synchronization, and what ca through the exchange was sothing the crystals hadn't produced under his control before today. Flowing through channels the corruption had opened by removing the walls that had been there for empty reasons.
Ren's system began breaking further under the extre volu. His body too.
Not taphorically. The channels he had been using to distribute the load had real limits and those limits were being exceeded one by one, each one going past the point of what it could hold before the next one reached it, the damage accumulating faster than the resistance that was supposed to et it. His consciousness began to fade, vision losing its edges, that deterioration that preceded complete collapse, that normally was the point where the body stopped regardless of whether the mind had agreed to stop.
Too much. Multiple tis too much.
He wasn't going to be able to accumulate this and return it. That was simply impossible…
And Orion wasn't anywhere near the middle of what he could generate with corruptions help and 10 crystals.
Ren was at one hundred and fifty percent of what he could sustain, breaking further with every second the beam continued.
Ren thought of his parents, of his friends. He ford the apology silently in whatever part of him was still forming thoughts, the honest acknowledgnt that his body had a limit and that limit had been reached, that the gap between what he could do and what this required was real and not sothing even infinite will could close.
'I'm sorry, I'm sorry… I'm so sorry.'
His vision went dark.
The light arrived from behind.
Not the kind produced by light-elent tars through their techniques. This had a warmth to it that Ren recognized before he had ti to process what it was, the way you recognized sothing that had been present for your entire life, the signature of sothing that existed before you had the vocabulary to describe what a signature was.
Like the longest, strongest embrace from his parents.
A barrier so radiant and so solid that it matched the output of the ten crystals Orion had in his configuration, almost. But the fraction it fell short of matching didn't matter. What mattered was that it was there, between Ren and what was coming, burning bright enough to be visible from every corner of the hall.
The healing ca first.
The channels that had been shattering didn't close completely, that would have required ti and rest and resources no one had right now, but they found enough scaffolding to keep functioning for one mont more. The energy from the white crystal moving not as replacent but as scaffolding, holding up what could still be held up, buying the seconds that the structure needed to do the only thing it had left to do.
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