The world was fire and ruin.
Nola's arms trembled as she adjusted Taveer's weight on her shoulders.
His body was heavier than it should have been, not just because of his size, but because he had fought everything. The strength in him, the rage, the burden… it all lingered in his limbs.
His head lolled against her collar. He was alive.
That was enough.
For now.
"Don't drop him," Maika barked. Her blade came down hard, severing a riftspawn's arm in one clean arc.
Nola stumbled, adjusted, gritted her teeth.
"I'm good."
"You're not."
"I will be."
They were moving through rubble-strewn corridors, half-collapsed stairwells, scorched eclipse halls smeared with blood and shadow. The further they went, the colder the air got, like something ancient had bled into the walls.
More riftspawn emerged from the cracks, the twisted things with bones for faces and fluid joints. They hissed, baring teeth shaped like nails.
Maika didn't flinch.
She met them head-on.
Nola could barely look back.
Her whole focus was on staying upright.
Taveer's blood was drying on her shoulder. His sword bounced against her hip.
"Just a little further," she told herself. "Just keep going."
Outside, the battlefield was at its peak.
The Central Tower burned like a second sun. The sky boiled with ruptured mana streams. Wind howled through the rifts as the Moon Legion, the faculty, and the Special Investigation Team launched coordinated attacks into the swirling vortex that had once been Soren Vale.
He wasn't a person anymore.
He was a gate.
A wound in the shape of a boy.
And the things coming through him still hadn't stopped.
Moon Legion squads moved in strict formation, laying down suppression glyphs and air-splitter barrages. The Moon Legion commander, Caelis, stood in the center, directing spells with clinical brutality.
Firewalls, elemental suppressors, banishment sigils carved into the air by hand.
A riftspawn lunged for her.
She caught it mid-air with a word and a flick of his wrist. It disintegrated.
The Special Investigators moved like living weapons.
Sun Legion: A woman in gold, sword ablaze, cutting through the swarm with holy fire.
Void Legion: Cloaked in smoke, teleporting through shadows, cleaving riftspawn heads before their mouths opened.
Eclipse Legion: Towering and immovable, shielding others with slabs of conjured earth and hurling them like meteors.
Comet Legion: Hurling lightning in arcing waves, conducting energy like a living circuit, frying entire clusters of beasts in seconds.
And in the center of it all was Soren.
Still standing. Still breaking.
His eyes were molten light. Glyphs pulsed across his skin, alive and screaming. Rifts opened from his chest, his arms and his spine, each one birthing more monsters. His mouth moved soundlessly as tears fell from what looked like his eyes.
They didn't know if he was crying or laughing.
Nola heard the echoes of the battle above distant, shaking the stone beneath her feet.
A vibration of ending.
She braced her back against the wall, readjusted Taveer's position.
He groaned faintly.
She froze.
"Taveer?"
No answer. He just breathed heavily.
She pressed her forehead to his for one second. "Come back to me soon."
A monster turned the corner ahead.
Maika was already moving as her dagger was singing. A creature lunged, but she ducked, and drove her knife up into its chin. It spasmed and then crumpled.
"We're close," she said, panting.
"To what?" Nola asked.
"To whatever's left."
Back in the sky, the final push began.
"Now!" Caelis roared.
The investigators surged together, an elemental trinity of light, fire, and void converging. Caelis channeled a blast of pure mana, refined, ancient and blue-white fire pulled directly from the school's leycore.
It struck Soren full-force.
The impact shook the clouds.
Rifts burst open and closed in a cascade of light. One by one, they cracked, sparked, and shattered.
The monsters screamed and disintegrated. One exploded. Another evaporated.
Soren's body convulsed.
And he screamed.
A cry that echoed across the ruins. Not of pain.
Of grief.
A roar from the boy who had begged for her life.
A roar from what little was left of him.
Caelis didn't stop.
The Special Team channeled glyphs into one final containment sigil. Massive. Ancient. It wrapped around Soren like a crown of thorns.
And then it closed.
Light exploded outward in a wave.
Then silence.
Then ash.
Nola flinched as the ripple hit.
The air warmed.
The monsters stopped coming and the pressure lifted.
She collapsed to her knees, dragging Taveer with her, letting him rest softly on the cracked floor.
It was done.
It had to be.
Maika dropped beside her, blade across her lap, face wet with sweat.
They didn't speak for a long time.
Then Maika asked, "Do you think they got him?"
Nola looked up at the open sky, the fading glow from the Central Tower still painting the clouds gold.
"I think… I think what was left of him wanted to be stopped."
Maika didn't argue.
They both looked down at Taveer who was still unconscious. Still breathing.
And alive.