Chapter 517: Stalemate
Xavier kept walking long after the Glassreach Basin stopped burning behind him.
The ground shifted from shattered rock to hardened dust, then to the outer stretch of transit lanes that fed into Helior Prime. The noise of the battlefield faded gradually, replaced by the distant traffic of the city that never cared what died outside its perimeter.
He didn’t hurry.
He walked until the edge of the basin gave way to an active roadway and flagged down a passing transport, one of the older civilian haulers that ran freight between the outer sectors and the city core. The driver barely glanced at him twice. Blood and scorched armor didn’t stand out much in this part of Jupiter.
They rode in silence.
The city grew larger through the forward viewport, its vertical sprawl rising in layers of steel, glass, and luminous signage. Helior Prime didn’t look shaken by anything that had just happened miles away.
The trip took hours.
Xavier sat still the entire time, elbows resting on his knees, hands loosely clasped. The motion of the vehicle rocked gently over long stretches of elevated roadways. He didn’t sleep. He didn’t close his eyes. He just watched the city approach.
When they finally reached the inner ring, he stepped out without a word and headed toward the hotel.
The city was now back to normal even after what had panned a few days ago at the Aurex club.
"I wonder if they got the news that AIL is also finished. Maybe they didn’t announce it yet, or perhaps the android was just a puppet or a decoy that could be replaced easily.
The lobby was quiet. Polished floors. Soft lighting. A few distant conversations. Just like how it was every day.
Xavier crossed the space without slowing.
He didn’t make it to the lifts. When a familiar silhouette stepped out from the corridor leading to the private suites.
Tall. Avian. Shoulders broad beneath worn plating.
"Klatos."
Their eyes met.
Klatos studied him first, gaze dropping briefly to the dried blood on Xavier’s chest, then back up.
"You look worse than the last time I saw you," Klatos said.
Xavier stopped in front of him.
"You’re alive."
"Barely inconvenienced," Klatos replied, though his posture suggested the day had cost him more than he was admitting. "The carrier was less stable than it pretended to be."
Xavier let out a short breath through his nose.
"Good."
Klatos tilted his head slightly. "That’s all?"
"For now."
A quiet stretched between them with things neither of them needed to narrate.
"The basin?" Klatos asked.
"Gone," Xavier said. "Jareth too."
Klatos absorbed that without visible reaction.
"Who is Jareth? And what about Kylus?"
"Still breathing."
"Wasn’t he the guy you were after? What happened? Tell me the story, man," Klatos insisted.
"Well, good thing I ran into you here. Grab yours and Rin’s stuff, although we don’t have much. I will grab mine and Arlen’s , and then we leave. I will tell you the story on the way."
"Cool." Klatos nodded once.
They stood there for another second before Klatos spoke again.
"You didn’t come back here for rest? You look like you will drop dead in the next five minutes and twenty-three seconds."
Xavier’s eyes drifted toward the upper levels where the private suites waited behind glass and steel.
"That’s oddly specific," he said, the corner of his mouth lifting for a second.
They crossed the lobby together and stepped into the elevator. The doors slid shut and the cabin rose through the shaft, the city lights flickering across the mirrored walls as the floors passed beneath them. Neither of them spoke during the ascent.
The ride up was quiet.
The mirrored walls reflected dried blood along Xavier’s collar and the dark streaks across his armor. Klatos watched the numbers climb without speaking/
When the doors opened, they stepped into the corridor.
"I’ll gather my things," Klatos said. "And wash off what’s left of that carrier."
"Be quick," Xavier replied.
Klatos turned toward his room while Xavier continued down the hall, keycard already in hand. The door unlocked and he stepped inside, shutting it firmly behind him.
The room remained untouched since he had last left it. The bed was made. The storage crate sat near the wall.
He moved straight to the crate and opened it, pushing aside folded clothes and gear until his fingers brushed against heavier fabric.
The Black Covenant jacket.
The one that had appeared without explanation. Just left in his possession as if someone had already decided it belonged to him.
He lifted it out and placed it across the bed, spreading it flat with both hands. His gaze lingered there for a few seconds, then he turned away.
He stripped off what remained of his armor and clothes and left them in a heap on the floor. The fabric stuck slightly where dried blood had settled against his skin. He stepped into the shower and let the water run over him, watching as dark streaks circled the drain and disappeared.
Suddenly, Xavier felt dry, a tightening across the skin, like the atmosphere itself had been drawn thin in a single direction. The lights in the room flickered once, twice, then flared white.
Somewhere far above the skyline of Helior Prime, something ignited.
The beam descended without warning.
It tore through the upper atmosphere and struck the district in a column of white plasma so dense it swallowed shadow and structure alike. Glass liquefied before it shattered. Steel frames vaporized mid-support. Concrete did not crumble; it disintegrated into incandescent dust before collapsing had a chance to occur.
The hotel did not explode.
It vanished.
Every floor, every corridor, every sealed room ceased to exist in the span of a breath as the ray carved through the structure and into the bedrock beneath it. The surrounding towers fared no better. The street below dissolved. Transit rails collapsed into molten slag. Vehicles caught in the perimeter were erased, leaving only scorched outlines where they had once occupied space.
Sound arrived a fraction of a second after the light.
A concussive roar rolled outward, flattening what little remained at the district’s edge. Windows imploded kilometers away. Air rushed inward to fill the void where a city block had been reduced to nothing but expanding vapor.
Then it was over.
Where the hotel had stood, there was only a crater rimmed with glowing debris and drifting ash. The skyline beyond it flickered with emergency systems, alarms screaming across sectors that had not yet understood what had just been erased.
In the center of the devastation, amid ground still hot enough to warp exposed metal, something remained.
The Black Covenant jacket lay where the bed had been, its fabric engulfed in flame. Fire crawled across it in bright, hungry tongues, attempting to consume what everything else had failed to withstand.
The material did not burn away.
It darkened.
The threads along its seams glowed faintly, then brighter, as if responding to the heat rather than succumbing to it. The flames receded gradually, unable to sustain themselves against the jacket’s shifting surface. The scorched patches along the fabric tightened and closed, fibers weaving back together in silent reconstruction.
The burning stopped.
Smoke lifted from it in thin spirals.
Around it, nothing remained but ash and a widening crater cut deep into Helior Prime’s district grid.
The jacket lay there alone, intact, its surface smooth once more as if the world-ending beam had merely tested it and moved on.