The Flood’s forces regroup to respond to the changing Halo angle. Star roads and ships attempt to move out of the beam’s path. What we are attempting will only delay this assault, not protect us from the Flood’s overwhelming force.

The hub forms.

An awful, painful glow rises along the spokes and gathers, spreading around the hub’s circumference. From the opposite, unfinished inner surface of the wheel, reflections of this horrible luminosity return to us.

All but blind Bitterness look away … Even so, she gasps, for her ancilla must fully convey the nature of the power we are about to unleash—for only the third time in Forerunner history.

Our minds reel at the sudden release of Halo radiation. No neurological being, no biological system, can withstand for long proximity to such a discharge. The multidimensional radiated field stretches out, as designed, to Path Kethona. Massless, subtle, deadly, it will cross that great distance in mere instants. Halo energy does not recognize space and time.

Path Kethona is already dead.

The nearest star roads in that beam twist, melt, then crumble to fragments, and those fragments … become nothing.

The infected ships within the beam’s path wander under automated control, carrying only their dead—Forerunner and, I hope, a few Graveminds as well.

“Did my wife manage to escape?” I ask.

Although its own vessels are already beginning to engage the Flood, Offensive Bias’s voice remains calm. “Two ships have departed the Ark. One of the ships reports itself—it is Audacity. The other ship is cloaked, unknown.”

I can only assume this is Mantle’s Approach. My wife has apparently escaped, and for that I feel an immense joy, but the survival of my original brings no joy, only a sharp, puzzled anger. He has violated the Mantle yet again, and then—fled! In a time of immense peril, he has deserted us.

No longer a Promethean.

No longer a Warrior-Servant.

A traitor!

Our own end is all too near. I must depart before it is too late.

“Metarch, prepare my vessel for passage. I will use the wake of Halo’s firing to escape.”

“Your ship is on approach, Didact,” Offensive Bias says.

Star roads outside the Halo field suddenly begin to move in, replacing those damaged or destroyed. They cut across our wheel. All around us, beneath us, the substance of the Omega Halo shivers as it is intersected and carved into pieces. On its approach, my vessel is tossed aside, crushed against the far wall of this ring.

I am now stranded, my fate is sealed.

The spokes and hub flicker and die. The ring’s high spanning curve violently bends and sheds huge squares like leaves from a windblown tree.