The void clung to them like tar, hybrid corpses drifting like macabre constellations. Gideon held Lira's resurrected body aloft, her violet eyes vacant, her throat slit by his claws. "Strike me, and she dies forever."
Lyra's scars bled cobalt, her power writhing. "She's already gone!"
"Is she?" Gideon pressed Lira's palm to his chest. Her voice spilled out, raw and desperate: "Kael… help me."
Kael froze. "Lira?"
Lyra seized his arm. "It's a trick! Gideon's using her voice!"
But Lira's gaze flickered—amber, not violet. "The pod… it trapped a piece of me." Her hand trembled against Gideon's grip. "Kill us both."
Gideon snarled, his form blurring as Lira fought his control. The hybrids stirred, their corpses twitching toward Lyra. "Mother…" they whispered. "Save us."
Lyra's power surged, a tempest of stolen time. The void fractured, revealing shards of Lira's memories: her imprisonment in the pod, Gideon's experiments, her silent screams as he spliced her essence into the hybrids.
"They're her," Lyra realized. "The hybrids… they're made from Lira's soul."
Kael's blade faltered. "We can't kill them. Not if she's in them."
Gideon laughed, Lira's body convulsing. "Sentimentality ruins you every time." He hurled her at Kael.
Lyra intercepted, catching Lira mid-air. Their foreheads touched, memories flooding Lyra's scarred mind: Lira's defiance in the pod, her whispered plans to sabotage Gideon from within.
"Use the hybrids," Lira's voice echoed in her skull. "They're my failsafe."
Lyra's veins blazed. She gripped the nearest hybrid corpse, its cobalt veins merging with hers. "Wake up."
The hybrids' eyes snapped open—amber, not cobalt.
Gideon roared as the corpses turned on him, their claws tearing at his essence. "Traitors!"
Lira's body went limp in Kael's arms, her final breath a whisper: "Finish it."
Kael plunged his blade into Gideon's core. The void imploded.