Chapter 4

"Now you see me," Kasumi said, activating her shadow cloak and slipping behind an unsuspecting cannibal, driving her sword through its back. "Now you don't."

Jeran glanced at Tadius. "She is enjoying this far too much," he muttered, his mandibles twitching into a smile. Tadius could not help but agree.

The fighting had become even more intense since Shepard had made it to the Conduit, with Reaper forces spilling over the rubble of the ruined city toward where the Eclipse were taking cover. They were giving a good fight, but it was only a matter of time until they were overrun; Sayn knew this, but something in him made him stay. The words of the Major came back to him, driving him forward, to death or victory!

"Hold the line!" Sayn cried, gunning down a swarm of husks. "We must hold the line!"

Mere meters from where he stood an Eclipse merc went down, pinned by a hoard of husks. His screams echoed out as they tore into his flesh. An Alliance soldier took down a husk only to be blasted into pieces by a cannibal, and a young Asari biotic was crushed beneath the driving force of a charging Brute…

BUURRR-WAAAHH!

The sound was so terrible that no words could describe; a great reverberation that shook the earth and tore apart your soul. The sound was almost as terrifying as what it announced: the arrival of a towering Reaper, its red eye gleaming with pure malice and chaotic energy.

WHY DO YOU RESIST? The Reaper roared in their heads, knocking aside a building with an outstretched leg. WE ARE YOUR SALVATION. WHERE YOU SEEK TO DESTROY, WE SEEK ONLY TO PRESERVE…

Another electronic burst brought them to their knees, the Reaper's red laser decimating an entire platoon with one sweep. Sayn tore his eyes from the ground and looked up at his coming doom, the red laser that would take him away from this, that blinding red light…

But there was another red light, burning across the horizon, and it gave the Reaper pause. It ceased its attack and turned, enraptured by the red wave of energy washing over the world. And just before the wave crashed over him the world went dark, and the Reaper felt the voice of the Catalyst fade away. It was alone as it was sucked into oblivion.

Tadius couldn't believe his eyes. The great pulse of red energy washed over the world and enveloped the Reapers, sending the towering monstrosities and husks alike crashing to the ground. Tadius glanced up toward the stars and was amazed to see that the energy was originating from the Citadel, crashing over Earth and shooting off into space.

Beyond what they could see, the energy from the Crucible rocketed through space, colliding with the mass relay drive and turning it red. It dissipated the Reaper-destroying energy with enough force to crack the relay into several pieces before sending the energy off into the darkness of space.

And so it travelled, spanning across the galaxy in a giant web, spread to every system and every planet by the dispersed energy of the relays. It was the same everywhere; on Thessia, the Asari homeworld, the Reapers collapsed as the wave of energy washed over them. On Palaven, the Reapers fell before the expanding wave, never to rise from the dust again.

It was unbelievable. In one moment, Commander Shepard had felled the undefeatable enemy. In one moment, she had ended a cycle of destruction that had lasted for millions of years.

In one moment, she had saved an entire galaxy and its entire people, and the cheers that rose up across every world were deafening.

And in the next moment, the Citadel exploded.

Kasumi fell to her knees, an anguished cry choking in her throat as explosions rippled across the Presidium and down the arms, which in turn broke off from the station and ruptured into a thousand pieces as explosions continued to rock what was left of the galaxy's capital.

"Shepard," she whispered, tears streaming down her face as pieces of the Citadel began to burn up as they rocketed through Earth's atmosphere. Tadius came and kneeled beside her, wrapping his arm around her as she cried.

And so they sat together as the fires of the world slowly burned out and a bittersweet sun began to rise over a planet full of exhausted survivors.