The ten-league corpse of Nidhogg-Prime was drawn into the primary salvage bay of the Sol-Invictus by eight heavy tractor arrays, cooling from incandescent emerald to dull, petrified jade.
Down on the flight deck, the air hissed with superheated steam as cooling mist sprayed across the wyrm’s shattered dorsal ridge.
Around the cavernous hangar, thousands of Gilded Wing soldiers and Night Court reavers stood in stunned, breathless silence, gazing up at the severed head of the fifth Harbinger.
Standing atop the dragon's snout, Seraphina and Kaelen looked down upon their assembled forces.
Seraphina knelt beside the wyrm's split cranial plate.
Her white dragon-scale breastplate bore scorch marks of toxic jade, but her golden crescent mark thrummed at her throat with vibrant, restorative warmth.
With surgical precision, she extended her hand into the gaping fissure behind the third horn.
Her fingers touched an object of staggering, primordial power.
With a firm pull, she dislodged it.
Resting in her palms was the Emerald Heart of Nidhogg—a faceted, heart-shaped crystal of compressed stellar marrow the size of an artillery shell, glowing with brilliant, radioactive emerald luminescence.
The moment it was severed from the corpse, the toxic, suffocating radiation in the hangar shifted into a dense, invigorating wave of raw vitality.
"Remarkable," Seraphina breathed, her amber eyes wide as her paramedic instincts deciphered the flow of etheric energy.
"In life, Nidhogg inverted this organ to feed upon the vitality of stars. Purified, its true nature is unveiled: it is a conduit of boundless cellular regeneration. It can heal catastrophic hull ruptures and purge toxic bioweapons across an entire battle-fleet in seconds."
"A trophy worthy of my Sun Queen," Kaelen Vance murmured, stepping up behind her.
His strong, armored arms slid smoothly around her waist, lifting her effortlessly to her feet and pulling her back against his broad chest.
He didn't care about the lingering soot or the dragon-blood smeared across their armor.
He buried his face in the crook of her neck, his warm, rough jaw grazing her soft skin as he inhaled her scent of cedar, sunfire, and jasmine like an intoxicating elixir.
His ragged, deep breath sent a delicious, familiar heat pooling in the pit of her stomach.
"You took down a cosmic wyrm in its own den, little sun," Kaelen growled softly into her ear, his deep baritone vibrating through her spine with raw, possessive pride.
"There has never been an empress like you in all the annals of Caelum or the Night."
Seraphina leaned back into the solid warmth of his body, a slow, breathless smile curving her lips as she turned her head to meet his gaze.
"I couldn't have made the shot without your gravity well holding his jaws, Vance."
"We are two halves of the same eclipse," he rumbled huskily.
His molten silver eyes darkened with intense, simmering heat as his hand moved up to cup her jaw, his calloused thumb tracing the sensitive fullness of her bottom lip.
He tilted her face upward, his mouth capturing hers in a slow, deep, devastatingly sensual kiss right there before the eyes of their army.
His lips were hot, demanding, tasting of ozone, dark wine, and unyielding devotion.
A collective roar of triumphant cheers erupted from the thousands of soldiers below, but Seraphina heard none of it—lost completely in the intoxicating fire of her mate's embrace.
When Kaelen finally pulled back, his silver eyes flashed with wicked amusement at her flushed cheeks.
He took the Emerald Heart from her hands, holding it high above the crowd.
The Gilded Wing banged their spears against their shields in thunderous rhythm, the sound shaking the hangar bulkheads.
"Install the Emerald Heart into the primary life-support array!" Kaelen commanded, handing the relic to Chief Engineer Vane.
"Let its vitality course through every deck!"
An hour later, back on the bridge, the Codex of the Nine updated on the central hololith.
Five runes were now cold, lifeless obsidian.
Only four remained.
The sixth rune flared with an ominous, abyssal violet light, projecting coordinates located seven million light-years deeper into the Rift—a sector swallowed by an ancient, rotting celestial sepulcher known as the Necropolis of Shifting Bones.
There waited the sixth horror of the pantheon: Malakor-Null, the Corpse-King of the Void.
Seraphina and Kaelen stood side by side before the display, their hands intertwined, ready to plunge even deeper into the dark.