Zhen Hu lunged from the shattered dais as the ritual orb pulsed with malignant light. Beneath him, the sanctum floor cracked, veins of poisoned Zen spidering outward. He vanished in a blur of movement, Ghost Step carrying him behind the Bone Regent's flank. Before the Regent could whirl his bone rod, Zhen Hu's palm flared with void energy, Void Strike tearing a jagged gouge through the regent's defenses. Splinters of bone and shards of blackened runes sprayed across the dome.
The orb's glow intensified in response, unleashing a rain of necrotic fire. Each ember-bullet hissed through the air, scorching anything it touched. Zhen Hu dropped to one knee, summoning Fallen Sky; a dome of crackling shadow engulfed the hail of fire, vaporizing it in a concussive roar that rattled the broken pillars. He rose, lungs burning, as the Regent stumbled free of the dome's edge.
From the altar behind them, wraith-cultists spilled forth, drawn to the orb's power. Their hollow eyes glowed with unlife. Zhen Hu wove Soulbinding through his dantian, threads of pale light snaring the nearest figures. Their bodies convulsed, then collapsed into inert husks. Each binding siphoned a whisper of strength back into him, bolstering his resolve.
The orb's pulse throbbed like a heartbeat. Zhen Hu sprinted forward, the last stretch of courtyard littered with shattered idols and leaking Zen pools. Ghost Step carried him past the Regent's desperate swing; he seized the orb's base and drove both palms into its surface. Void energy crackled outward, racing through the orb's veins and igniting its core in a bloom of violet-black explosion.
The blast threw Zhen Hu backward. Heat seared his limbs, and the sanctum trembled as stone rained down. When the dust cleared, the orb lay shattered, its fragments smoldering like dying stars. The Bone Regent collapsed to one knee, mask broken, blood-smoke curling from his shattered regalia.
Zhen Hu staggered to his feet, each breath a razor in his chest. Around him, the sanctum was still, the cultists' wails cut short by the orb's destruction. Aelira's spirit-light hovered at his side, steady as a guiding lantern.
He did not need words to know the ritual was broken. The malignant pulse had died.
Only the final reckoning remained.