The Void quivered beneath Caelum's feet as he stood upon the fractured petals of the Hollow Bloom. Time here had begun to falter, the stars stuttering in place, the great stillness unraveling at the seams. What once had been a place of solemn grief and silent strength had turned into a battlefield—and now, into a grave.
His breathing was steady, shallow. Around him lay the remnants of gods—not corpses, not bodies, but flickers of extinguished eternity, vanishing like dust into dreamlight. The Harbingers had fallen one by one, not to wrath, but to remembrance. Caelum had fought not with vengeance, but with memory. That was his greatest blade.
The Hollow Bloom reacted with every heartbeat, drawing strength from him—and he from it. Memories bloomed from the black soil: Elienne's voice on a soft morning, his father's silhouette hammering steel, his mother's voice humming lullabies from behind a curtain of cooking smoke. These were not just thoughts; they were truths. And truths could wound even gods.
Now, only one remained.
The final Harbinger stood tall, draped in broken halos and burned cloth, its face a shifting mask of past and future. It didn't attack. It watched.
"You should have taken your place," it said quietly.
Caelum's charm-bandage fluttered as unseen winds passed. "My place is where the forgotten live."
The Harbinger raised a hand. From the sky descended a weapon—not a sword, but a staff of judgment, an artifact of higher order. The weight of galaxies hummed in the air. Even the Hollow Bloom recoiled.
But Caelum did not step back. He inhaled. Grief, memory, and truth poured from him in golden threads, stitching the Void together once more. With a flick of his wrist, his blade—a ribbon of light and shadow—emerged.
The clash ruptured dimensions. Light versus memory. Order versus soul.
The Harbinger struck with the force of collapsing stars. Caelum responded not by resisting, but by remembering. Each strike he parried sent visions into the god's mind: a boy abandoned, a lover lost, a village burned, a future buried in ash.
And then…
One final blow. Caelum shifted. Not faster. Not stronger. Simply—deeper. His blade cut not flesh, but purpose. The Harbinger staggered, its form unraveling into fragments of stardust and silence.
It looked at him.
"I remember now… I was… someone once…"
Caelum reached forward and placed a hand on its chest. "Then return to that beginning."
The Harbinger vanished. No scream. No glory. Just peace.
The Void fell still.
Caelum stood alone in the Hollow Bloom. All was quiet. The stars stopped blinking. Time stopped running.
And then—the Cube stirred.
The black relic, his eternal prison and forge, pulsed. For the first time in centuries, it spoke.
A whisper—not in sound, but in memory.
You are not done.
Caelum turned slowly. "What do you mean?"
The Cube opened—just slightly. Inside, not darkness. But a shape.
A second cube. Distant. Glitching in and out of reality, like a forgotten echo.
It shimmered with unfamiliar energy, one that tugged not at memory—but at time.
"...What are you?" Caelum whispered.
The Cube responded only with silence.
The new shape faded.
Caelum stared at the space it had occupied. A seed of thought planted in him. A possibility.
But not now.
He knelt in the center of the Hollow Bloom. His body shook—not from exhaustion, but from the enormity of stillness. He had won. But there was no joy.
Only silence.
In the fading twilight of the Void, he whispered:
"Elienne… I remembered."
And in the wind, a phantom smile lingered.