The spike of fear from the Heart of Orion, so raw and immediate it had physically staggered him, lingered in Bolt's senses, a chilling counterpoint to the nebula's breathtaking beauty.
It was a constant, urgent reminder of what awaited them, a silent countdown echoing in his very soul.
"We have to go faster, Eva," he rumbled, his voice tight with a desperation he tried to keep from overwhelming the fragile calm he needed to maintain his empathic navigation.
The Nyxwing responded to his unspoken urgency, its dark, shimmering hull pressing against the boundaries of its speed, the swirling colours of the nebula blurring into streaks of impossible light.
"I'm pushing her as hard as she'll go," Eva replied, her face a mask of fierce concentration as she wrestled with the Aethelgardian controls, which pulsed with a soft, urgent thrum.
"But the gravitic shears are getting worse. And the radiation pockets… the ship's shields are holding, but I don't know for how long."
The nebula seemed to push back against their progress, a chaotic, sentient force resisting their intrusion.
They dodged newborn stars that blazed with the fury of a thousand suns, their intense radiation threatening to melt the Nyxwing's delicate structure.
They navigated swirling currents of dark matter that twisted space-time into disorienting knots, forcing Eva to rely almost entirely on Bolt's increasingly strained empathic awareness to anticipate the dangerous curves.
As they pressed on, the constant sorrow of the Heart began to mingle with another, more immediate psychic presence: Krell. It was faint at first, a distant, cold certainty, but it grew stronger with each passing moment, a rising tide of malevolent intent.
Bolt felt the disciplined, ruthless thoughts of his fleet commanders, the focused calculations of his weapons officers, the arrogant anticipation of Krell himself, all converging on a single, terrible purpose.
"He's close," Bolt gasped, wiping sweat from his brow.
The effort of navigating the nebula and fighting off the growing psychic intrusion was taking its toll.
"I can feel him… his flagship. He's already deploying his weapon. A massive energy build-up… I can't make out the exact nature of it, but it feels… wrong. Violently wrong."
Eva's jaw tightened. "We're running out of time, Bolt".
The Waystone… it's pulling us towards a central point, a region of relative calm amidst this chaos, but the energy readings there are off the charts.
"We're almost at the Heart, but we're also almost at Krell."
The Nyxwing emerged from a particularly violent gravitic shear, its shields flickering as it was buffeted by the distorted space-time.
Before them lay a breathtaking, terrible sight.
At the center of the swirling nebula, where the colours seemed to converge into a single, blinding point of light, was the Heart of Orion.
It was even more immense and awe-inspiring than Bolt had imagined, a colossal sphere of swirling, fractured light, its surface bleeding raw energy into the surrounding space. But its beauty was marred by a terrible, encroaching darkness.
Arrayed before the Heart, like a predatory beast before its wounded prey, was Krell's flagship.
It was a monstrous vessel, its crimson hull bristling with weapons, its silhouette casting a long, ominous shadow across the nebula's vibrant hues.
A colossal beam of unstable, crackling energy was building at its prow, focused on the Heart like a surgeon's blade poised to carve out a vital organ.
"He's going to fire," Bolt whispered, the Heart's terror spiking again, a wave of pure, desperate agony that threatened to overwhelm his senses. "He's going to fire now."
Eva's face was set in a grim mask.
"We're too far out to directly intercept. And that weapon… whatever it is, it's building to a level I've never seen."
"Then we have to do the only thing we can," Bolt said, his voice a low, determined rumble.
He closed his eyes, reaching deep within himself, gathering the fragile harmony he had cultivated in Aethelgard, the memory of the Progenitor sphere's ancient song, the unwavering loyalty he felt for Eva, the desperate hope that even in this chaos, a spark of empathy could still make a difference.
He focused on the Heart, on its suffering, on the desperate plea he could feel emanating from it. And then, with all the force of his will, with all the power of the Ahna'sara, he sang.
It wasn't a weapon.
It wasn't a shield. It was a desperate, empathic cry, a plea for understanding, a song of hope hurled into the teeth of a cosmic storm.
It was the only weapon he had left.