The gate shimmered like a wound in the sky.
Crimson light dripped from its edges, pulsing with unnatural rhythm. It was not a door. It was an ending.
Or a beginning.
Caelen and Elira stood at the edge of it, wind roaring around them. The ground beneath their feet was cracked stone—etched with runes long forgotten. The sky above was fractured, constellations bleeding into each other.
Beyond the gate, reality twisted.
A realm untouched by time.
A place where stars wept and the world held its breath.
Caelen's curse surged.
The beat of Aerthalin's fading heart throbbed within him, barely audible beneath the void that pulsed from beyond. Eredan-Mir was near. So close. His presence stretched from the gate like tendrils of silence, devouring sound and color and memory.
Elira's hand found his.
She was fire to his breaking.
"This is it," she said, her voice steady despite the storm. "No turning back."
Caelen looked at her, the Weeping Blade trembling in his grip.
"Together."
They stepped through.
The gate swallowed them.
The world unraveled.
Colors bled like ink in water. Sounds bent like light through broken glass. The air tasted of ash and old grief. They emerged into a plain of shattered glass, endless and reflecting their broken silhouettes.
At its heart stood a figure.
Eredan-Mir.
Cloaked in shadow.
Faceless. For what need had the void of a face?
His silence was deafening.
Yet even here, Caelen felt it—faint but true.
A heartbeat. The whisper of the temple's heart, calling through despair.
He stepped forward.
Elira walked beside him.
Together, they moved toward the end of all things.
Together, they chose to fight.