The black sun throbbed like a dying star above them.
Elior stood on the edge of the broken skybridge, the world yawning beneath him—a mess of shattered land, dead rivers, and floating stone torn from the crust. The air cracked with pressure. Not thunder. Not wind. Just time splitting open.
And from that split, came Velora.
Her glass wings beat once, slow and silent. Storm shimmered across her arms like veins. She floated above a broken capital, one hand still on the Effigy of the End—a towering construct built from the bones of worlds that shouldn't exist.
"Welcome," she said, voice carried by no wind. "To the last rewrite."
Elior didn't move. The staff in his hand burned cold. Runes flickered on his skin, old ones—Lioran's, pulsing in time with something deeper than blood. Memory. Soul.
Seraphis stepped beside him, claws clicking against the stone. His fur shimmered in the fractured light. "She's holding every collapse in one moment. Feeding the Effigy. Turning possibility into power."
The construct moved. Chains dragged behind it, singing with a thousand lost names. Eyes opened on its chest—nine of them. One for every world Velora had erased.
It roared.
The sky cracked.
And Elior moved.
He stepped off the bridge.
Fell like a comet.
And landed with a crash that shook the air.
The ground didn't catch fire—it shattered, memory-threads blasting out from the staff like roots made of gold and history. Each pulse rewrote gravity. Time bent around his steps.
Velora launched from above.
She moved like a dagger through thunder. Her body spun midair, summoning glass spears that hummed with truth-forged magic—shards of guilt and choice and things Elior had once wanted.
The first came fast. Elior spun the staff behind his back and parried—one hand, fluid, the spear exploding in white light.
The second hit his shoulder.
Pain lanced down his side.
He used it. Grabbed the spear still in his arm, twisted it, snapped it into a glowing arc, and hurled it back. Velora vanished, blinked sideways—appearing behind him.
Too slow.
Elior whipped the staff overhead and brought it down.
The force split the ground again. A shockwave of memory—his mother's song, Lioran's laughter, Vera's touch—slammed into Velora like a tidal wall. She staggered, screamed—but not in pain. In fury.
The Effigy stepped forward.
It moved like a mountain falling. Seraphis met it head-on.
He roared, his body glowing from inside—lines of red, sunfire-bright. He darted between the construct's legs, leapt, twisted midair, claws slashing upward in a double-spiral arc. Sparks flew. The Effigy faltered, one knee buckling.
Chains snapped toward him—alive, lashing.
Seraphis dodged one, but the second coiled around his hind leg and yanked him backward, slamming him into a chunk of stone. Blood sprayed across the battlefield.
He got back up.
"Not done yet," he growled, then vanished in a blink-flash of fire.
Above, Elior and Velora clashed again.
She hurled a storm from her palm—lightning bent into symbols, each strike a failed prophecy. Elior countered with a wave of gold: the staff spun wide, memory-thread catching the storm and pulling it into him. Not destroying it—absorbing it. Learning it.
He moved faster now.
His feet left the ground. He leapt, midair, kicking off floating rubble. The staff became a blur in his hands—each swing a different form. Not just fighting. Remembering.
He hit her hard across the ribs.
She flew back, wings cracked.
Glass rained down like broken stars.
"You think this stops anything?" Velora spat blood. "The world doesn't need freedom. It needs control."
"You mean it needs you," Elior answered, landing on a rising shard.
She came again.
Faster.
Angrier.
The storm in her body bled out in flares of silver and black. She moved with jagged elegance, every motion meant to kill. Her hands flicked symbols—dead languages that turned into blades.
Elior dodged.
Barely.
A blade grazed his cheek.
He responded by jamming the staff into the air itself.
It lit up.
A ring of flame—not fire, but golden, breathing—spread out from him. In it, the world slowed. He saw everything. The memories inside the earth. The paths that could've happened. The way Velora once held him when he was small.
And for just a second, he hesitated.
She struck.
A spike of stormglass pierced his side.
He gasped, twisted—tore it out—and slammed the base of the staff into the ground.
The world rippled.
The battlefield bent.
Suddenly, they were in another place.
Not real. Not fake. A halfway place made of old sky and forest light. Velora looked around, frowning.
"What is this?"
Elior stood straight, blood down his leg, hand tight on the staff. "A place that never was. But could be."
He stepped forward.
And with each step, he changed.
Armor from the past formed around him—scraps of Lioran's warplate, Arien's crest, his mother's sigil. Light gathered. His wounds glowed instead of bleeding. The staff flared gold, then red, then blue—colors of all the lives that fed it.
Velora attacked again.
But her spells dissolved mid-air.
This space didn't belong to her.
Elior raised the staff.
And called.
A burst of light—twin beams—shot from the sky.
They hit Velora point blank, slamming her to the illusion-floor.
But she didn't scream.
She laughed.
"You still don't get it," she said, rising, body broken but burning. "You didn't stop the Effigy. It's already rewriting. Your son—he's part of it now."
Elior froze.
"What?"
"He's the last anchor. The last seed."
Then her body shimmered. She exploded into light.
And reformed above the battlefield.
Outside the vision.
Back in the real world, the Effigy was changing. Its body split, revealing something inside.
A crystal.
A heart.
Inside it, a silhouette.
Small.
Still.
A child.
"Eliano!" Elior shouted.
Seraphis growled low. "She bound him to the Effigy."
Elior shot forward.
The staff left a wake of gold behind him as he blasted across the sky. Velora met him—her body no longer glass, but light and voice. She struck with fury now. No precision. Just rage.
Elior didn't care.
He let her hit.
Once.
Twice.
Blood sprayed.
But then—
He flipped, spinning full-force mid-air, and slammed the staff through her chest again.
This time, it didn't just pierce her.
It planted her.
Into the sky itself.
The world cracked.
The staff lit up—every memory, every life, burning together.
And Elior poured it all into her.
Not hate.
Not power.
Just the truth.
"You were wrong."
Her eyes widened.
And for one moment—they weren't enemies.
Just two people who'd made choices.
Then she dissolved.
Gone.
Below, the Effigy cracked.
Seraphis slammed his claws into the base. The runes split.
Elior dropped down like a falling star.
He drove the staff into the crystal.
A blinding flash.
A scream—
—not of pain.
But birth.
The Effigy exploded.
Pieces rained into the sea.
And the child fell, slowly, caught by a wind made of memory and light.
Elior caught him.
Held him.
Eliano.
Eyes closed.
Alive.
The sky turned gold.
And the black sun went out.
—
When the dust settled, there was no storm. No Effigy. Just quiet.
Seraphis limped over, covered in wounds, smiling faintly.
"We made it."
Elior sat down, cradling Eliano. The boy stirred in his arms.
Eyes like his.
Like hers.
He looked at the staff.
Now cracked.
Not broken.
Just… tired.
A tool that had done its work.
"No more prophecy," Elior whispered.
Seraphis nodded. "Just the future."
They stood.
A new sky rising above them.
And walked—together—toward what came next.
—
To be continued.