Kai rose from the ashes, his body a storm of crackling shadows and fractured light. The Void had consumed him entirely—no flesh, no bone, only a swirling mass of hunger and rage. The Forgotten King's laughter echoed across the wasteland, his resurrected form towering over the ruins of the temple, bones fused with Void-energy into a grotesque armor.
"You are no king," Kai snarled, his voice reverberating like thunder. "You're a parasite."
The King's hollow eyes flared. "And you are a shadow. My shadow." He raised a clawed hand, and the ground split, vomiting up twisted creatures of ash and static—Void-wrought, their forms shifting between wolf and serpent.
Kai lunged, tendrils of Void-energy lashing out. The creatures disintegrated, but their essence fed the storm inside him, sharpening the ache of Elyse's absence.
Elyse's voice pierced the chaos, faint but urgent: "The Spire… Find the Spire."
Kai's storm-form surged north, the wasteland blurring beneath him. The Obsidian Spire jutted from the horizon—a relic of the Forgotten King's reign, its peak crowned with a shattered clockface. Inside, the air hummed with trapped time, gears frozen mid-turn.
A figure emerged from the shadows: a hunched scholar, robes singed, clutching a book bound in void-touched leather. "You're too late," he rasped. "The King's already taken the Heartstone."
Kai's tendrils pinned him to the wall. "What Heartstone?"
"The anchor for the Void. Break it, and the King's power crumbles." The scholar's gaze dropped to Kai's storm-core. "But you already knew that, didn't you? It's why he let you live."
The Queen awaited in her stronghold—a fortress carved from the carcass of a dead god, its ribs arching into a vaulted throne room. She stood beside the Heartstone, a pulsating orb of Void-energy, its surface etched with Elyse's face.
"Join me," the Queen crooned. "Together, we'll reduce the King to dust."
Kai's storm crackled. "You butchered my sister."
"I saved her."The Queen pressed a hand to the Heartstone. Elyse's scream echoed through the chamber, her soul-fragments swirling inside the orb. "Her essence stabilizes the Void. Without her, your precious realms collapse."
The Forgotten King's roar shook the fortress. "Enough!" He crashed through the ceiling, Void-wrought beasts swarming behind him.
Kai tore through Void-wrought, their ashes fueling his storm. The Queen hurled bolts of Eclipse-fire, her laughter sharp as glass. The King swung a mace forged from the Spire's clockface, each strike warping time itself.
"The Heartstone, Kai!" Elyse's voice pleaded. "Destroy it!"
He lunged for the orb, but the King intercepted, their collision unleashing a shockwave that cracked the fortress's foundation.
"You cannot win," the King hissed. "You are the lock. She is the key. I am the hand that turns both."
The Queen seized her moment, plunging a dagger of Eclipse-crystal into the King's back. He staggered, Void-energy leaking from the wound—and the Heartstone flickered.
Elyse's soul-fragments flared. "NOW!"
Kai shattered the Heartstone.
The explosion ripped through the fortress. The King howled, his Void-armor disintegrating. The Queen vanished in a burst of light, her final scream echoing: "This isn't over!"
Elyse's soul-fragments coalesced, her form solidifying for a heartbeat. "You have to… trap the Void. Use the Spire."
"How?"
Her hand brushed his storm-core. "The same way you trapped the Devourer."
Then she was gone.
Kai returned to the Obsidian Spire, the scholar's corpse still pinned to the wall. The frozen gears began to turn, the clockface repairing itself as Kai fed it the remnants of his storm.
The Void fought him, thrashing like a caged beast. "You need me!" it screamed. "Without me, you're nothing!"
"I've always been nothing," Kai whispered. "That's why this works."
The Spire's gears locked. The Void's roar faded.
And Kai collapsed—human again, but hollow, his veins etched with glowing cracks.
In the silence, a shadow stirred. The Eclipse Queen emerged from the rubble, her body rebuilt in Void-energy and Eclipse steel.
"You forget, heir," she hissed, lifting the King's crown from the ashes. "I don't need the Heartstone… I have this."
The crown ignited, and Elyse's soul screamed within it.
Kai dragged himself through the ruins, his body a latticework of glowing cracks. The Eclipse Queen's laughter echoed behind him, her new form—a fusion of Void and Eclipse steel—clutching the Forgotten King's crown. Elyse's soul flickered inside it, her silent screams vibrating in Kai's skull.
A hand gripped his shoulder. The scholar from the Spire, now a ghostly remnant, knelt beside him. "The crown is a battery," he whispered. "She's using your sister to power it."
Kai spat blood. "How do I break it?"
The scholar's form flickered. "The same way you broke the Heartstone. But this time… you won't survive."
The Eclipse Queen's fortress had reassembled itself, its rib-like arches now pulsing with violet light. She stood atop the throne, the crown's spikes digging into her temples as Elyse's essence drained into her.
"You look terrible, heir," she mocked. "All that sacrifice, and I still win."
Kai's cracked fists clenched. "You haven't won yet."
"Haven't I?" She gestured to the sky. The Void-storms had returned, but now they swirled in perfect formation—a clockface, its hands ticking backward. "The King's crown controls time itself. Soon, I'll undo your every move."
The scholar's ghost hissed. "She's rewinding the war. If she reaches the moment the Devourer was freed—"
"—she resets everything," Kai finished.
Kai lunged, his body breaking apart with every step. The Queen flicked her wrist, and time slowed—Kai's punch inching forward like a glacier.
"Pathetic," she sighed. "Even now, you don't understand. This crown was made for me."
Elyse's voice cut through the haze: "The cracks, Kai! Use them!"
He glanced at his arms. The glowing fissures weren't just wounds—they were threads, tethering him to the Void he'd trapped.
Kai pulled.
The Spire's gears exploded in the distance, and the Void rushed back into him. Time snapped forward—his fist connected with the crown.
The crown shattered.
The Queen shrieked as Elyse's soul erupted free, a burst of amber light that seared the Void from the sky. The fortress collapsed, its ribs impaling the Queen's torso.
"This… isn't… over," she gasped, clawing at Kai's ankles as the ground swallowed her.
Elyse's soul hovered before Kai, her form barely intact. "You have to seal the Void. Now."
Kai coughed black ichor. "How?"
"The same way you always do." She pressed a ghostly hand to his chest. "You devour it."
---
Kai's body tore apart.
The Void flooded into him, but this time, he didn't resist—he consumed it, letting the hunger fill every crack. The Spire's gears materialized around him, grinding the Void into nothingness.
Elyse watched, her light fading. "I'm sorry," she whispered.
Kai reached for her, but his hands were gone. His vision darkened.
The last thing he heard was the scholar's ghost murmuring: "The heir becomes the cage."
Kai opened his eyes to silence.
He stood in a featureless void, his body whole but wrong—skin etched with glowing runes, the All-Devouring Clock's gears now fused to his ribs. Before him floated the Eclipse Queen's broken crown, its spikes bent inward.
A whisper echoed: "They'll come for you, you know. The next heir. The next king."
Kai flexed his fingers, and the void trembled.
"Let them."