The grand rotunda exploded into violence.
A thousand petrified Praetorians took their first synchronized step off the processional colonnade, the sound like an avalanche of iron grinding over broken glass. Violet witch-fire bled from their eye-slits as the ancient legion advanced, their halberds leveled toward the foot of the dais.
"Move!" Malakor roared.
He did not wait for the ancient king to descend. Coiling the entirety of his nether-aura into his thighs, Malakor launched himself up the stepped basalt dais with concussive force. The sheer kinetic rebound of his leap cratered the quartz tiles below, sending razor-sharp fragments whistling into the front rank of advancing Praetorians.
Above, King Vaelen met the charge with chilling contempt.
The Betrayer King brought his colossal executioner’s sword down in a two-handed overhead cleave. The blade ripped through the air wrapped in ribbons of curdled void-plasma, threatening to split the dais—and the warlord—in two.
Void-Reaver met the blow head-on.
The impact sounded like a siege cannon detonating within an enclosed vault. A blinding shockwave of bruised violet and black light rippled outward, peeling the ancient platinum reliefs from the rotunda’s pillars. The stone beneath Malakor’s boots pulverized to powder, but his knees did not buckle. His jaw clenched, veins bulging along his neck as he held the colossal strike inches above his brow, their blades screeching in a shower of molten sparks.
"Strong for a whelp," Vaelen hissed, leaning his immense bulk into the press. "But you bleed mortal blood."
"And you reek of rot," Malakor snarled back, twisting his blade to redirect the pressure before driving a steel-shod knee straight into Vaelen’s armored sternum.
While the two titans clashed at the apex of the dais, Aurelia went airborne.
Channeling the Fourth and Fifth Shards, she manifested twin wings of crystalline astral frost from her shoulder blades. With a single, explosive beat of celestial light, she cleared the front ranks of the waking legion, surging directly toward the floating orb of the Sixth Catalyst suspended above the throne.
"Halt, desecrator!" a hollow chorus screamed beneath her.
A dozen Praetorians cast their halberds upward, the star-metal spearheads whistling through the air in a lethal, interlaced net.
Aurelia’s gaze remained ice-cold. She twisted her body mid-flight with lethal agility, snapping her rapier in a circular flourish. A localized frost-nova flared from the blade's tip, freezing the shafts of three spears into brittle glass before they could graze her thigh, while the rest whistled harmlessly through the fringes of her cloak.
She landed in a low roll atop the platform of the First Throne, directly behind the dueling kings.
The Sixth Catalyst floated five spans above the seat of fallen stars, pulsing like a frightened heart. The mercury swirling within the void-glass orb resonated violently with the Five Shards bound inside her chest, pulling at her soul with an agonizing, magnetic fervor.
"The seal requires a sovereign key," Aurelia realized, her breath coming in ragged gasps as she extended her left hand toward the sphere. "A catalyst cannot be claimed by force—it must be attuned!"
"Aurelia, watch your flank!" Malakor’s warning cut through the deafening roar of steel.
Vaelen had broken the lock, utilizing the reach of his executioner's sword to force Malakor back two paces. Without turning his head, the ancient king swept his left gauntlet backward, unleashing a torrent of necrotic black lightning aimed straight at Aurelia’s chest.
She had a fraction of a second.
Aurelia did not dodge. Dodging meant surrendering the Catalyst's orbit.
Instead, she drew upon the Third Shard—the Ashen Core—and summoned a translucent aegis of calcified flame. The necrotic lightning slammed into the barrier, the sheer concussive force throwing her against the obsidian backrest of the throne. Blood copper-sharp and hot bubbled into her mouth, but she kept her feet planted.
"He who divided the stars shall never yield them!" Vaelen roared, his blade locking once more with Malakor’s frantic counter-cleave.
Aurelia wiped the crimson smear from her lip with the back of her glove, her hazel eyes blazing with defiant fury. The pain only sharpened her focus.
She turned back to the floating orb, leaping upward from the seat of the throne. As her fingers closed around the smooth, freezing exterior of the void-glass sphere, she severed her own defensive wards, allowing the full torrent of her ancestral starlight to flood into the core.
"I do not seek your permission, corpse king," Aurelia whispered as her blood touched the glass. "I claim what was forged for the dawn!"
A blinding pillar of white-gold light erupted from the Catalyst, piercing through the roof of the mountain into the heavens above.