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ArabicHonkai Star Rail: My Chat Group is Full of Broken Timelines — Chapter 49
Chapter 49: The Emanator of Destruction
Despair spread through the starship like ink bleeding into clear water, staining everything it touched.
The moment Phantylia’s violet-robed form materialized in the void, the last vestiges of defiance vanished from the crew. Their will to fight collapsed, as swift and total as a punctured lung. She commanded a legion, yet she was no mere Voidranger. Everyone knew who she was. A Lord Ravager. An Emanator of Nanook, the Destruction.
Against such a being, everything was meaningless.
By the time Kazuki made it back to the starship, the corridors were already drowning in it. The emergency klaxons had fallen silent, replaced by a more deep and terrifying quiet. Red warning lights swept across the bulkheads in a repeating, hypnotic rhythm, illuminating the grim tableau: discarded weapons, cooling pools of congealéd blood, and crew members huddled in corners, shivering.
Some clutched their heads, their bodies wracked with silent, shuddering sobs. Others simply stared at the cabin walls with ashen faces, their eyes vacant, as if they were merely waiting for the final judgment to arrive.
He didn’t slow, his boots hammering a frantic, piercing rhythm against the metal deck plates—the only sound in the tomb-like silence.
There was only one thought, one goal driving him forward: find Tingyun.
The command room door hung ajar, leaking the acrid stench of burnt electronics and the coppery tang of blood. The instant Kazuki shoved the door aside, his breath caught in his throat. In the corner, an adjutant lay in a spreading pool of his own blood. A pistol was still clutched in his hand, its muzzle pressed against the charred, ruined hole in his temple.
“Who else wants to make a charge? Follow me!” a bearded captain roared, his eyes shot with blood. He brandished a long spear, a handful of equally resolute crew members arrayed behind him. “Even if we die, we’ll take a few of them with us!”
Their uniforms were blackened by smoke and soot, and fresh wounds seeped blood through the torn fabric, but they stood with gritted teeth, refusing to bow.
Kazuki’s gaze swept past them, finally locking onto the lone figure standing before the main console. Tingyun. Her back was to him, her magnificent fox tail lying limp and lifeless against the floor. Her shoulders trembled, but it wasn’t from sobbing. She was utterly still, a statue staring at the dense swarm of red dots that represented the enemy on the main screen, her very soul seemingly hollowed out.
“Tingyun,” Kazuki said, his voice softer than he intended as he approached.
She turned slowly. There were no tears on her face, only a calm that was so deep it bordered on numbness.
“Little Kazuki, it’s useless.” A smile touched her lips, a broken thing that was far more heartbreaking than any tears. “That’s a Lord Ravager… We can’t escape.”
“I told you I wouldn’t let you die,” Kazuki said, and without another word, he swept her up into his arms.
She was as light as a feather, trembling faintly against him but not struggling. Like a small, wounded animal seeking shelter, she buried her face in the crook of his shoulder.
“Hold on tight,” he barked, then pivoted, carrying her as he burst through a side door and back into the chaotic corridors.
They rounded a corner and came face-to-face with two snarling Voidrangers. The creatures lunged, their arm blades glinting. With Tingyun secure in one arm, Kazuki freed his other hand. His formation blade swept out in a flash of golden light. The two monsters were bisected mid-air, their halves thudding to the floor.
“This way!” He ducked into an emergency passage, the snarls of more pursuers echoing from behind. The lights in the narrow accessway flickered violently. His feet slipped on slick patches of blood and slid over what felt disturbingly like severed limbs. Every step was a gamble, a tense journey along a razor’s edge, never knowing if another monster would leap from the shadows ahead.
“Put me down, Little Kazuki,” Tingyun’s muffled voice came from his shoulder. “You can run faster alone.”
Though she saw no hope for their survival, a desperate part of her still wished he could make it out.
He kicked open the door to a cavernous cargo bay and his blood ran cold. A Doomsday Beast. It had already torn through the outer hull and was now ripping at the ship’s superstructure with its colossal claws.
Kazuki’s pupils constricted. He threw himself and Tingyun into a violent roll, barely evading a sweeping claw that sliced through the air with a foul wind.
BOOM!
The giant claw slammed down where they had been a second before, tearing through the reinforced metal floor as if it were paper.
Seizing the opening, Kazuki swung his blade, severing one of the Doomsday Beast’s hind legs in a single, clean stroke. The monster let out a pained, deafening roar and spun, its massive tail whipping around to sweep the area.
Kazuki dove, pulling Tingyun down with him. The tail whistled over his back, smashing into a cluster of pipes behind them and reducing them to twisted scrap. Scalding hot steam erupted from the ruptured lines, instantly filling the area and obscuring his vision.
He used the chance, dragging Tingyun into the billowing white clouds and crawling frantically towards a ventilation duct. The shaft was narrow and dark, barely wide enough for a single person to squeeze through.
Shoving Tingyun ahead of him to keep her safe, Kazuki used his blade to hack through the grates and other obstructions in their path.
From behind him, Tingyun’s fox tail brushed lightly over the wounds on his back. “I’m sorry…” she whispered.
“It’s okay, Sister Tingyun,” he said, glancing back to offer a reassuring look. “I have a trump card, but I can only use it when I’m by myself… We’ll definitely get out of this.”
Just as they scrambled out of the storage hold, they found their path blocked. The end of the corridor was choked with a pack of Voidrangers.
The creatures snarled, closing in. Kazuki pushed Tingyun behind him, bracing for a final, desperate battle. But before he could act, a violent explosion rocked the ship from deep within its core. The entire vessel tilted sharply. Pipes and ceiling panels rained down, crushing several of the advancing Voidrangers and throwing the rest into disarray.
“The starship is breaking apart!” Tingyun cried out.
Kazuki seized the opportunity, grabbing her hand and pulling her toward the nearest elevator shaft. The lift was, of course, dead. They had no choice but to take the stairs, sprinting down the shaking, groaning structure.
Every floor they passed was in a state of collapse. Fires spread unchecked along the corridors, and thick, choking smoke made it impossible to see more than a few feet ahead. Other crew members would occasionally sprint past them, only to be swallowed by the shadows a moment later, their short, sharp screams the only evidence they had ever been there.
The tide of despair was overwhelming, threatening to drown them both.
Kazuki tightened his grip on Tingyun’s hand, his nails digging into her palm and his own. The sharp sting of pain was an anchor, a reminder that he couldn’t stop. If he stopped, it was all over.
Finally, they reached the hangar bay on the lowest deck where the escape pods were kept. The bay was a wreck. Several smaller shuttlecraft were parked haphazardly, damaged and askew. But one—the engine of one was still faintly glowing.
“Quick!” Kazuki yelled, pulling Tingyun toward that ship just as a deafening roar echoed from behind them.
They scrambled into the cockpit, fumbling with the seatbelts. The moment they were strapped in, the entire starship detonated in a cataclysmic explosion.
The resulting shockwave was titanic. It seized their little ship and hurled it into the void. Kazuki’s world became a maelstrom of spinning metal and screaming alarms. His vision fractured, then dissolved into blackness as consciousness finally gave way.
But in the last moment before the darkness consumed him entirely, he thought he saw Tingyun lunge across the cockpit, her body shielding his head. He thought he heard his name, a choked, desperate cry on her lips.
Outside, the once-massive starship disintegrated like shattered glass under the relentless bombardment of the Antimatter Legion. Countless fragments burned brightly before cooling in the silent void, falling into a final, deathly stillness.
Far behind them, Phantylia floated serenely in the void. She watched the lone starship tumble away from the wreckage, a faint, playful smile gracing the corners of her lips.