On the battlefield outside the Eternal City, Hunt keeps his focus as Bryce, wearing a helmeted mech-suit force of resurrected Fallen, and the Princes of Hel face the Asteri. Aidas draws a glowing silver sword and asks Bryce for a ride; Bryce takes Aidas’s hand and Hunt’s and teleports them into the thick of the fighting, where Hel’s monsters are already spilling past the Asteri and into the city.

With no sign of Rigelus, five Asteri confront Apollion, Aidas, and Thanatos. Polaris threatens them, and the Asteri strike first, but Apollion’s darkness consumes Polaris’s opening blast, forcing the Asteri to hesitate. Around them, the Fallen in mech-suits—still operating under Isaiah and Naomi’s command—hammer the Asterian Guard with brimstone missiles, while Hunt notes that their broader strategy depended on Rigelus splitting his forces and underestimating them.

Hunt tries to pull Bryce away to reach the firstlight core, but Polaris breaks toward Bryce, targeting her directly. Bryce draws the Starsword and Truth-Teller; when Polaris closes, Hunt disrupts her footing with lightning and Bryce teleports in front of Polaris, driving both blades into the Asteri’s chest. Theia’s star power flares through Bryce and the weapons, slowing time as the blades’ joined power begins dragging debris—and Bryce’s hair—toward a growing, dangerous void.

Realizing the “portal to nowhere” is becoming a lethal black-hole-like pull that could consume Bryce and everyone nearby, Hunt channels his Helfire-laced lightning into the nexus where the blades cross. Instead of exploding outward, Polaris collapses inward, imploding as if vacuumed into a pinpoint of darkness; the inky dot vanishes when the blades separate and time snaps back to normal. Bryce and Hunt register the victory and the risk: they have killed an Asteri, but repeating this could endanger everything around them.

Ruhn reaches Hunt over comms and urgently tells him to get to the hall with the firstlight core because they need help, then the line cuts. Bryce, eyes lit with ruthless resolve, grabs Hunt and teleports them into an upper palace corridor, where Bryce is bleeding from the nose and a pack of deathstalkers surrounds them. Before Hunt can choose whether to waste power fighting “allies’” beasts, a roaring wall of water blasts down the corridor straight at Hunt and Bryce.