The mountain air turns savage. With the last corruption burned out, the shadow-thralls lose their single hunger and snap at one another instead, shrieking in a knot of teeth and smoke.

Huarti stands at the center of the vortex, long and still, while the Obsidian Dragon throws out its wings to shelter the steady black-red seam. Their presence pins the melee in place.

The nearest parasites tear into their own pack, thinning the swarm for him. But every lash and burst of ash shakes loose sparks against the newly settled ward.

Huarti has his opening now. If he lets the thralls die by their own hunger, the mountain’s old fractures will stay open. If he intervenes, he begins replacing this ruin with his own ordered boundary.

Huarti pours his evil arcana into the spill. The black-red seam drinks it in, and the loose pressure in the basalt folds inward like a held breath released at last.

The shadow-thralls recoil mid-rend, then collapse into one another as the command takes hold. Their shrieking knot thins to smoke and drifting ash.

A hard pulse travels through the seam, not wild now but controlled, as if a lock has clicked shut somewhere deep under the stone.

The last parasites tear themselves apart and go still. What remains is a sealed line of black-red light, steady against the heat haze.