Destruction of Cordell Plaza

Destruction of Cordell Plaza is a decisive atrocity in Jack’s war against Michael and the High Table. From the ruined battlefield of Eden City, Jack identifies Cordell Plaza—the headquarters of Cordell Engineering—as a remaining link in the system that helped produce Jill’s monstrous transformation. His attack is framed by family duty, but its result is the annihilation of an entire urban site and everyone caught within it, including people Sahaqiel insists were merely engineers who did not understand the work they were performing. The action therefore marks a severe moral reversal: Jack claims to be securing his children’s future while destroying the lives of others in the name of that future.

Background and Immediate Stakes

The strike occurs after Jack has already missed the births of both his daughter and his son. Sahaqiel urges him to come home and take part in his family’s life, arguing that everyone is worried about him. Jack rejects her appeal by turning toward the carnage below and insisting that his family will have no life unless he does what must be done. The personal stakes are therefore inseparable from the military ones: Jack treats continued combat not as a choice between war and domestic responsibility, but as the condition that makes domestic life possible at all.

Jack’s chosen target is the massive structure that dominates the distant cityscape, described as the crown jewel of Eden City. Cordell Plaza houses Cordell Engineering, an organization controlled by the Black King and responsible for engineering components used in High Table projects. Those components were used to create the monster Jill had become. The building thus functions for Jack as both a strategic target and a material embodiment of the chain of responsibility behind his sister’s fate. Destroying it promises neither Jill’s restoration nor a direct confrontation with Michael, but it allows Jack to eliminate what he regards as one of the remaining loose ends.

The surrounding battle intensifies the danger and the sense of scale. Alliance forces are fighting swarms of demonspawn while Sahaqiel watches the military struggle from the ruins. She recognizes what Jack is about to do and warns him that the people inside Cordell Plaza are only engineers who did not know what they were doing. She also invokes Jill’s wishes, arguing that Jill would not want the attack. Jack’s response shows that the memory of his sister has become a point of pain rather than restraint: at the mention of Jill’s name, his eye twitches, and his resolve hardens.

The Strike

Jack answers Sahaqiel’s protest by declaring that he will not stop until his family is safe, adding that this includes tying up every loose end. When she calls out to him, he responds with the single command "Fira." Mana warps around him, the air vibrates violently, and rubble rises beneath their feet as his power gathers. The action is not an accidental discharge or a battlefield miscalculation; it is a consciously selected act of destruction made in the face of an explicit warning about civilian and noncombatant casualties.

A dense beam of black energy leaves Jack’s palm and cuts a straight path through Eden City toward the distant tower. The attack consumes everything in its route before reaching Cordell Plaza. Around the tower, the energy manifests as a miniature sun, swallowing the plaza, the demonspawn, and the survivors. Those caught inside are instantly atomized. The image transforms the target from a building into a total field of erasure: the distinction between military infrastructure, enemy creatures, workers, and civilians disappears within the weapon’s radius.

When the light dies, the center of the metropolis has been deleted. A perfect spherical crater occupies the place where Cordell Plaza and the surrounding signs of civilization stood. The precision of the crater contrasts with the indiscriminate result of the blast: Jack directs the beam toward a particular tower, yet the finished destruction encompasses everyone and everything within the sphere. His power therefore appears controlled in trajectory but absolute in consequence.

Sahaqiel’s Failed Intervention

Sahaqiel’s reaction establishes the emotional and relational cost of the attack. She initially tries to stop Jack through warning and appeal, combining the practical objection that the engineers were uninformed with the intimate reminder that Jill would not have wanted such a massacre. After the blast, she whispers Jack’s name as the devastation becomes visible, then cries it out when the crater is revealed. Her response is not merely shock at the weapon’s magnitude; it is recognition that Jack has crossed a boundary she was trying to hold in place.

She reaches toward him and attempts to use mana as telekinesis, seeking to restrain him as he prepares to leave. The intervention lasts only a moment. Through their shared connection, Jack usurps the mana under her control, dominates it, and makes it his own. Sahaqiel falls to her knees, suddenly out of breath, while a heavy pressure bears down on her and her own energy is inverted by Jack. The aftermath thus extends beyond the ruined plaza: Jack’s power over the battlefield becomes power over his closest angelic companion, turning their shared bond into the mechanism by which her resistance is defeated.

Consequences and Significance

The destruction removes Cordell Plaza, the visible center of Cordell Engineering, and with it the surviving physical site associated with the production of Jill’s monstrous body. It also kills the demonspawn fighting around the area and the survivors inside the complex. Jack’s stated objective is the safety of his family, yet the immediate consequence is the obliteration of an entire population of workers and civilians whose culpability Sahaqiel disputes. The action therefore exposes the widening gap between Jack’s protective language and the methods he now accepts.

The event also crystallizes Jack’s post-battle identity. Sahaqiel offers home, family, and the births he has already missed; Jack chooses the distant tower, the unfinished war, and the logic of eliminating every connection to Michael’s system. His insistence that a few lost battles do not mean the war is over places him inside an escalating cycle in which retreat becomes betrayal and mercy becomes a threat to those he loves. The plaza’s destruction is consequently both a military action and a declaration that Jack will continue the campaign even when the campaign requires him to defy Sahaqiel, disregard Jill’s presumed wishes, and annihilate people who may not have understood their role.

At the level of the larger conflict, the strike converts a contested urban battlefield into a symbol of Jack’s increasingly catastrophic resolve. Cordell Plaza is not simply defeated; it is erased, leaving a geometric void where an institution, a tower, and ordinary civic life had existed. The perfect crater records the value shift at the center of the event: Jack begins by presenting violence as the price of protecting family, but ends by making protection indistinguishable from mass destruction. Sahaqiel’s exhaustion and failed restraint ensure that the event closes not with reconciliation or return, but with Jack still empowered, still pursuing Michael, and farther from the home he was asked to reclaim.