The world was ash.
The sky was broken glass.
The battlefield was nothing but memory and ruin.
And still they fought.
Arin stumbled forward.
Her legs barely obeyed.
Her arms felt like they were made of fire and stone.
Her light — shattered, dying —
still burned.
Across from her,
for the first time since the war began,
Asura bled.
Cracks spiderwebbed across his body —
black Abyssal markings flickering with unstable energy.
His right wing of shadow hung broken and tattered.
His crown of silence pulsed —
fading in and out like a dying heartbeat.
The Shattered Light had done more than just hurt him.
It had wounded the idea of him.
The Abyssal Genesis Ritual faltered.
The dark spires of the ritual shuddered, spasming,
unable to complete the rebirth he had promised himself.
And Asura…
Asura felt something he had not felt in years.
Weakness.
The System screamed warnings in his mind:
[Stability Breach: Core Integrity Compromised.]
[Abyssal Genesis Completion Halted at 89%.]
[Suggested Action: Immediate Termination of Threat.]
He ignored it.
He didn't need a machine to tell him what he already knew.
This world —
this broken girl standing before him —
was ending him.
And yet…
He stepped forward.
Silent.
Cold.
Unforgiving.
Arin screamed and swung her broken sword.
Light flared —
wild, unstable, beautiful.
The blow struck his chest —
cracking open more of the abyss that clung to him like armor.
He staggered.
A single step back.
A moment of humanity flickered across his face —
something almost like pain.
Almost like regret.
Almost like the boy he once was trying to claw his way back from oblivion.
But it was too late.
For both of them.
Arin fell to one knee, gasping,
blood pooling beneath her.
Her body was nearly gone.
Her soul nearly spent.
But her eyes still burned.
Asura raised his hand.
Shadow coiled around him —
unstable, violent, desperate.
Arin lifted her head and smiled.
A broken, triumphant smile.
"Even kings bleed.
Even gods fall.
Even dreams shatter."
Asura roared.
A soundless roar that tore the last floating islands apart.
He surged forward —
a collapsing star of broken abyssal power.
Arin screamed back —
a final surge of burning, radiant defiance.
Their final blows collided.
Light shattered darkness.
Darkness swallowed light.
The battlefield exploded into pure oblivion.
Reality cracked a final time.
And as the dust settled…
Only silence remained.
Floating in the endless abyss,
two figures fell toward each other.
Broken.
Bleeding.
Dying.
Ashes fell like snow.
Shattered wings — both of light and shadow — drifted apart into the void.
And in the ruins of a world that no longer existed,
the last king and the last knight reached for each other.
Not as enemies.
Not as gods.
Not as monsters.
As the broken dreams they had always been.