The planetary bore's diamond-tipped drills hummed, a low thrum that vibrated through Bramen’s boots and up his shins. Othrun stood framed by the archway, his frigid armor shimmering, the distant, frozen image of Xylos and his children still hanging in the air. The countdown, a stark crimson display, burned above them. “No turning back,” Othrun repeated, a lament more than a threat. Then, his arm swept forward, not with a blast of frost, but with a sudden, suffocating plunge in pressure. It wasn’t a flash, but a hungry, creeping cold that consumed the air itself, sucking warmth from everything it touched. Bramen’s skeletal army, arrayed for combat, recoiled. Their scavenged assault rifles, heavy machine guns, even the salvaged railgun on the Tide-Stalker’s shoulder, turned brittle. The metal groaned, then fractured into glassy slivers. Rounds in their chambers froze instantly, exploding harmlessly into glittering dust. The undead themselves, bound by necrotic mana, didn’t die, but their movements seized. Joints locked, bone splintered with a sound like wind chimes made of ice. [Warning: Absolute Zero Field Detected. Undead Efficiency Reduced by 90%.] “Well, that’s just rude,” Bramen muttered, his breath fogging instantly. His new magma-pet, the Obsidian Alpha, roared, charging forward. Its molten rock hide, an inferno against the frigid air, crackled as the wave of cold hit it. For a heartbeat, it held, a defiant beacon of orange against the encroaching white. Then, with a sound like a mountain cracking, the magma cooled, hardened, and then shattered. The creature disintegrated into a shower of black, glistening fragments that scattered across the metallic floor. “Oh, come on! He just got here!” Bramen yelled, genuinely annoyed. “That’s not covered in the warranty!” Othrun didn’t respond, his face a mask of grief. He moved with a speed that defied his armored bulk, a blur of silver against the deepening blue of the cold. His hand, sheathed in an gauntlet of jagged ice, seized Bramen’s throat, slamming him against the cold, metallic wall of the Crucible. The impact rattled Bramen’s teeth, and the pressure on his windpipe immediately cut off his air. Pinpricks of light danced at the edge of his vision. “I’m sorry, Bramen,” Othrun rasped, his voice thick with unshed tears, his grip unwavering. “I truly am. I wish… I wish there was another way.” He raised his other hand, and a tapered spike of dense frost shimmered into existence, poised over Bramen’s heart. Bramen clawed at Othrun’s grip, his vision tunneling. “Yeah, yeah, heard it before,” he wheezed, a desperate, biting sarcasm even now. “Sympathetic villain monologue. You know, this whole ‘saving your children at the expense of everyone else’ shtick? A little cliché. Did the System give you a prompt for that, too?” Othrun flinched, his eyes, usually serene and alien, now clouded with agony. The ice blade trembled slightly. It was the distraction Bramen needed. “Snare!” Bramen thought, a frantic burst of will. “Forget him! Main terminal! NOW!” From Bramen’s boots, a ripple of pure blackness erupted, bypassing Othrun’s frigid form entirely. Snare, a darting, formless terror, plunged directly into the Core Extractor’s base. The vast machinery, a web of glowing conduits and luminous prisms, shuddered as Snare didn’t just enter it, but *became* it. The shadow-beast flowed through the intricate circuits, a living virus of void marrow, merging with the alien technology. A low, keening whine rose from the housing, metal groaning under sudden strain. Othrun’s grip tightened, the ice blade hovering inches from Bramen’s chest. “What… what did you do?” he demanded, his voice laced with dawning horror. Bramen gasped, fighting for breath. “Just… making a few… modifications.” His necromantic power surged, not outward, but *through* Snare, straight into the machine's central spindle. He felt the cold, dead mechanism, the tether that connected it to Xylos, a hollow emptiness where a planet’s lifeblood should be. He pushed, not with destructive force, but with the raw, reconstructive power of undeath. He wasn’t bringing back a corpse; he was kickstarting a dead engine, reversing a flow, forcing a planetary core, even a dying one, to draw upon the surrounding void rather than surrender its last vestiges. [Unauthorized Core Reanimation Protocol Initiated.] [Reversal of Energy Transfer: Earth Core Harvest: 0% -> Xylos Core Revitalization: 0.01%… 0.02%…] The Core Extractor shrieked, a high-pitched whine that drowned out Othrun’s cries of disbelief. The spiral bits, moments before churning towards Earth’s heart, began to spin *backward*, glowing with an unnatural, sickly green light. The crimson countdown above them flickered, glitching wildly, then froze, displaying a chaotic string of zeroes and ones. “This is not permitted,” a new voice boomed, echoing through the cavernous space. It was not the cold, clinical voice of the System’s text prompts, but a voice of pure, unadulterated cosmic fury, synthesized into a language that clawed at the mind. The air itself began to coalesce, shimmering with light and raw data. Above the Core Extractor, from the very fabric of warped reality, a towering figure began to manifest. It was impossibly tall, forged from swirling light and shattered void-stone, with wings that unfurled like fractals of frozen gas. Its face, if it could be called that, was a swirling vortex of starlight and accusation. A terrifyingly angelic avatar, its gaze fixed on Bramen and the now-reversed Extractor. [Interference detected. Extinction Protocol: ERROR.] [Planetary Transfer Overload. Both worlds forfeit.]

The Extinction Protocol