Kane leaped.
He didn't use his legs; he used a Void-Pulse to launch himself at Mach 20. He slammed into the Reaper's staff with his bare hands. The impact didn't make a sound—it made a flash of light so bright it was visible from the streets of New York.
For a second, the two entities were locked. The Reaper's bone-staff was trying to delete Kane's existence, while Kane's hands were trying to eat the staff's history.
"Vance! Now!" Kane's thought-command went not to the moon, but to the Citadel.
On the bridge of the Void-Citadel, Sully's eyes were glowing a terrifying silver. "He's in position! Elara, lock the Dyson-Ring beam! Re-route it through the Citadel's main lens!"
"You're going to fire at the moon?!" the High-Artificer screamed. "The tides—the Earth—you'll kill them all!"
"We aren't firing at the moon," Sully hissed, her fingers blurring. "We're firing at Kane!"
A beam of pure, overcharged solar energy—the same power that ran the Consortium's empire—erupted from the Citadel. It crossed the distance to the moon in a heartbeat, hitting Kane directly in the back.
[SYSTEM OVERLOAD: TIER-10 ENERGY INJECTION] [VOID-HUNGER: CRITICAL MASS]
Kane didn't burn. He expanded. The solar energy hit his Void-Archon shell and turned into a violet sun. He grabbed the Reaper's neck, his fingers sinking into the nebula-rags.
"You're right," Kane growled, his face inches from the Reaper's hollow cowl. "I can't consume the End. But I can make you digest the beginning!"
Kane unleashed the entire Dyson-Ring's payload through his own body and into the Reaper.
The moon couldn't handle the pressure. A jagged crack, fifty miles wide, opened up beneath them. Huge chunks of the lunar surface—the size of cities—began to float away into space. The bone-towers crumbled into dust.
The Reaper let out a sound—not a scream, but a sigh of genuine surprise. His Rank 10 body began to flicker, the nebula-rags tearing away to reveal a skeletal frame of pure, concentrated logic.
"You... would sacrifice your own moon... just to touch me?" the Reaper gasped.
"The moon is just a rock," Kane said, his skin peeling away to reveal a skeleton made of violet fire. "My people are a Virus. And you just got infected."
Kane didn't pull away. He bit. Not with teeth, but with his soul. He tore a chunk of the Reaper's Rank 10 essence away.