Reborn as the Black Knight

 

Dandy holds her arms out ahead of herself, projecting a massive barrier that crackles and shimmers as the waves of dangerous magic crash toward the sky above, ripping the ceiling of the palace apart. A beacon of the combined two magics fighting each other for dominance casts up and out endlessly, a shock wave of power radiating around the world and shaking the limbs of every tree on the entire continent in a violent shudder. Glass vaporizes, as every window, vase, and ornamental decoration within the palace shatters, the shards super-heating and turning to ash before they can ever hit the ground.

She holds the shield in place with everything she can, looking through it toward the two shapes that move in indescribable motion. It doesn’t even look like two men with blades fighting each other anymore. All she can see in the energy cascade are the shapes of gnashing, biting things — rather like two beasts from the forgotten eras of the world that have resurfaced again to fight a bitter rivalry that still burnt brightly in their powerful hearts. It’s so wild, so chaotic, that she can’t even keep pace with them in sight, let alone help.

Dandy grits her teeth, shaking her doubt out of her heart.

Hero is counting on her. They’ve come so far together; he’s done so much for her, taught her so much in the short time she’s gotten to know him. She’s learned so much about herself and the world — more than she ever thought she would know in a lifetime, let alone in such a short shared few months.

She won’t stand by idly anymore, and if she’s going to run and be afraid, then she’s going to run forward — afraid or not.

“HERO!” calls Dandy as the two knights clash with one another, the shapes of two suits of armor holding off their opponent with whom they seem to be perfectly matched.

Crystallized ash flies through the air, the fabric of her robe billowing around her as she runs straight through her own shield as it breaks and gives way to the last of the magical eruption. Dandy grips her staff, rushing forward, a blast of holy-magic shooting out of her staff and toward the wretched shadow that is Herr Ritter. His armor, black and dripping with evil, his helmet crooked and battered from the fists of the million good souls he’s slain in battle, his blade hooked like a ghoul’s talon — it glows alight as her spell strikes against him from the side. The wicked thing loses its footing, and Hero presses her given advantage, striking out with his blade and cutting a deep gash through the black metal of the horrific armor.

The shadow dissipates and floats back, a hand over its chest as it looks down at the glowing gash cut through the side of its breastplate.

“What the…?” growls the voice of the demon in surprise as he looks at his wound.

The sky above them is open, the palace throne room destroyed. Dandy holds out her staff, standing next to Hero now that they have gained ground on the pushed back enemy, the first quarter of the arena being theirs.

“Sir Knight!” calls the wretched queen, a hand on his side and the human expression of worry on her eyes — feigned and hollow. She looks back toward them.

“No, don’t,” warns the black knight, holding out a hand to stop the evil princess from taking a single step more their way.

— A ripple cuts through the air, something Dandy can’t explain. Everything loses its color, everything. The air waves as if boiling, but the color melts from it drop by drop, until nothing remains but a desaturated grayscale. The scorched and broken palace tiles, the colorful ash of burning curtains and fabric, the golden trim of her own robe — it all becomes muted and dull.

And her eyes can’t keep up with the sudden flash of movement that comes from ahead.

— A blade runs forward toward them, a sleek rapier, and it moves faster than she can react or think.

Hero shoves Dandy out of the way of the strike, somehow not as affected as she is by what seems to be some kind of slowing spell or ability. Outside of the bubble they’re inside of, she can see things flying at their normal speed toward the horizon. But everything with in, barring Hero, is dampened in force.

Ruby blood splatters the air, the forward-extended black rapier cutting in through the gap of his armor.

Dandy tumbles outside of the bubble, rolling and looking back into what almost looks like a frozen moment of time.

“No!” she screams, reaching out for him.

The colors wobble. The bubble collapses in on itself and Hero lashes out with his free hand, grabbing the black-cloaked figure only a few steps away from him as he ignores the blood dripping from his side.

But his hand grabs nothing but emptiness as a black hole almost seems to swallow the wretched princess up in a second and she rolls back out of the cloak of Herr Ritter.

Dandy lifts her hands toward Hero, panting for breath.

 

 

Magic blasts toward him in an arc of prismatic fog that swirls around his armor, his golden hair rising toward the darkness above their heads as the fresh wound on his side begins to grow closed as she heals him with her magic. He nods to her quickly and then rushes forward by himself, pressing the attack, his golden moonlight-hued blade lashing out toward the enemy. The Black Knight forms a shield of the same emptiness that has him before the wicked princess, absorbing the blow as the two of them return to their fight.

Dandy pants, looking over to the side at the woman who had tried to kill her — who hurt Hero.

She lifts her staff, holy auras cascading around her as she prepares a new spell and launches it forward at once toward the heart of the jagged crown. A hand lifts in counts and Dandy tumbles, rolling forward as something pulls her that way, toward her enemy. The priestess’ hands grip the carpet, clawing onto it as her legs are pulled back, her robe and hair, and spell pulled back toward a gaping, black hole that has manifested in the center of the room and it draws into everything.

Ash, flames, rubble — even the air she’s trying to breathe rushes in to its infinite emptiness. Dandy’s hands slip and she falls, spiraling toward it over herself.

She arcs out her staff as she flies, drawn toward the hungering abyss that is yanking her into it. A fresh shine of magic blasts out of her, a new magical wall manifesting in thin air. Dandy crashes into the prismatic glass wall made out of magic, looking just through it at the emptiness that is only inches away. She looks into it, terror in her heart, and at the same time she looks through it as if it weren’t really there. And she can see the silhouette of a single person walking her way with a calm gait and a clacking of boots against stone. Not even the princess’ eyes can be seen, as she moves like a monstrous shadow that belongs to neither this world nor the next.

Dandy’s heart races with terror.

The emptiness, the black hole, vanishes. The wall falters and she falls down to the ground, collecting herself and ducking out of the way just in time as the tip of a sword presses over her head.

“You’re unskilled, untrained,” says the princess, looking down her way as Dandy tumbles, rolling onto her back and crawling up to her feet. She braces herself on her staff, gasping for the air that keeps getting sucked away by the devouring black magic and holds her staff forward toward the enemy. “What are you, level thirty?” guesses the princess. “Thirty-five?” she asks, walking forward with her blade pointed toward Dandy’s heart, the priestess stepping back as they circle around each other. The world beyond the two of them is too wild and chaotic to keep up with as metal and teeth of infinite supply strike against each other. Dandy looks at the princess with the jagged crown. She looks like a wraith, like a bony, wretched thing whose wicked soul had consumed her body and left the mark of evil in her sunken eyes and pale skin, as if she carried a sickness in her that could never be removed. “You’re out of your depths here, priestess,” says the evil princess, the broken and jagged crown on her head that resemble’s a monster’s shattered jaw staying in place as behind her billows her tattered cape wildly in the magical winds of the two knights’ battle. “You don’t stand a chance against me. Surrender,” she orders. “I can see the tears in your eyes already, and the urine about to run down your shaking legs.” She smirks, glancing over Dandy. “You’re terrified.”

“NO!” yells Dandy in defiance, her boot pressing down back behind herself and then, as she realizes where she’s going, the priestess launches herself forward, striking out with her staff.

— The gaunt, black shadow simply steps to the side, dodging exactly how Hero had always done during their training.

Dandy smiles. Her other hand held to the right as she flies past her target, her palm pressed straight against a damp gut.

A blast of light shoots out at once, the evil body of the enemy flying back and crashing into a suit of armor that still somehow stands despite the wall behind it missing.

“You horrible monster!” shouts Dandy, aiming her staff at the evil princess. “Your evil ends here!”

A blast of magic shoots out a second time.

A shadow intercepts, streaking back through the spell and over the body of the princess, re-manifesting as a whole on the staircase of the throne. Herr Ritter kneels there, his armor smoldering as he clutches the wicked princess in his hands.

“Dandy! Are you okay?” asks a voice from just next to her. Hero, his armor covered in gashes and pieces of it broken off, his face bloodied and cut, grabs hold of her.

She looks at him with terrified tears in her eyes and nods. “What about you?” she asks.

“Better than I deserve, Dandy,” replies Hero, the two of them facing off against the enemy who has been repelled to the throne. There is nowhere left to go. “Lets finish this. Together,” he encourages, reaching down and grabbing her hand, holding his sword forward with the other.

“Together,” affirms Dandy, squeezing her fingers tightly shut. Dandy holds her staff ready, looking at the wounded enemy, darkness and night flowing around the starless and moonless world. “My level doesn’t matter,” she says, stepping forward one step ahead of Hero. “Me being scared doesn’t matter!” yells the priestess, the end of her staff starting to glow. “Because I’m not alone here,” she explains, narrowing her eyes as magic builds and swelters. “Unlike you, I have a heart and can feel and fight for something that matters! I’m afraid, but I’m afraid here together with a friend!” she finishes, the two of them readying their final attack.

Something… cracks.

Dandy doesn’t know what it is at first, thinking it was perhaps her weapon or the palace ruins, but then she realizes that it was the crack of a voice. The crack turns into a laugh, and then the laugh turns into a full howling as the hurt princess clenches her gut with both arms, cackling like a witch in the night, her eyes flashing back toward her would-be vanquishers.

The Black Knight sets her down back onto her feet, the evil princess holding herself upright on his armor as she tries to remain a dignified composure despite laughing and laughing and laughing as if she had heard the greatest joke of her life. The black-silhouetted princess, her face smeared with blood and dripping down onto her clothes that absorb the stains and hide them in their colorlessness, looks over toward Dandy in her mirth and… smiles.

A shiver runs up the priestess’ spine.

“Just the one?” asks the evil princess, her hand rising up to the air with neither sword nor spell, just her thumb and middle finger pressed together. “I suggest that you make a few more,” she notes, almost sounding amused.

And a single snap of her fingers reverberates through the air like a clap of thunder, echoing off toward the ends of the world.

Exuberance fills the world around them — a flash of light.

Hero swings his sword out, spinning, the blade making contact with a a bolt of lightning that comes from behind them, through the broken doors. An elven woman she doesn’t recognize stands there, her fingers crackling as she charges up a second attack.

“LOOK OUT!” calls Dandy, projecting her hands up past the sides of Hero’s head, a fresh shield wall emerging in the air as a barrage of metal hails against it. Her mind can’t keep up with what her eyes are seeing, but thousands of rapiers are clattered against the magical barrier, their blades stabbing through the glass and others ricocheting off into the darkness.

“Acacia!” calls a concerned voice, a shine coming the throne as another priestess of the holy-church stands next to the evil queen, laying hands on her wounds and healing them.

“ENOUGH!” yells a man’s voice, Hero shouting out as he turns, his teeth gritted and his face clenched in an anger that she’s never seen before as he arcs out his sword and strikes toward the throne. His spin knocks Dandy down to the ground as he shoves her.

— His arm doesn’t fly far, the shining cut blasting out over their heads into the sky, as two silhouettes on either side of him grapple his arm and sword, holding it firmly below their shoulders in a lock.

“Surrender, brother,” says a man with golden hair in the native tongue of the Empire.

“It’s over,” expands the green-haired elf next to him.

His eyes shake, Dandy crawling back up to her feet. Her staff is swiped out from under her and she tumbles, grabbing onto Hero’s armor. “Hey!” yells the priestess, swiping out and missing after a vildt girl with rabbit ears, who is running off with it.

“…Enough,” says Hero. “Enough. Enough,” he chants over and over again. “Enough.” Dandy looks around them, not sure what to do now. There’s too many of them. The enemy is everywhere.

“Hero,” she hisses beneath her breath, tugging on his side as she sees an opening for them to escape through. They can lose this fight and come back for a new one. They don’t need to be done yet. “This doesn’t have to end here. We can -”

“- SHUT UP!” screams the man at the top of his lungs; his face warped and changed into something she doesn’t recognize. His free hand grabs the fabric of her collar. “I SAID IT’S ENOUGH!” he wretches, spit flying in her face as she cowers and recoils, everything in her guts pulling together in a knot in an instant. “You did this!” he says, tightening his grip around the fabric. It bundles together, squeezing around her neck and Dandy splutters, slapping at his and kicking her legs as he lifts her up, glaring at her. “You failed me,” he says accusingly. “I let you be my friend, and you. YOU-!”

“Let her go,” says a firm voice from the stairs of the throne.

The rabid manic, not blinking anymore, cranes his neck to the side with an unnatural stiffness that swells Dandy’s throat with vomit.

“It’s over,” says the evil princess, pointing her sword toward the hero, who seems to have gone mad. “You’ve lost. Let her go.”

Vapors flow through his gritted teeth. “What I do with my bad friends is not your business anymore, Princess,” hisses a voice in a tone that is as dark as the empty sky above. “I’ve had enough.” Dandy screams as he throws her to the ground, the priestess tumbling over the stones and rubble toward a collapsed column that she crashes against. “You’re not my friend. You don’t get to tell me what to do.”

“I should have known from the start that you weren’t dead,” spits Acacia, her blade pointed at the panting heart of the man who is becoming something more akin to a beast, a monster… no… “This sort of failed plan reeks of you,” she explains, Hero’s eyes bloodshot and wide. “ZERO.”

His hands tear at his face. “This is MY story,” he says. “I told you. I told you to get out. To die. But you wouldn’t. You just wouldn’t be a good friend to me AND DIE!” he howls, lunging forward.

A black blade cuts through the air at once, the sword of the Black Knight slicing through the Hero.

Dandy screams as his body falls into two pieces. But the face doesn’t contort, it just keeps its expression as it talks. “So I got tired of you. I made a new story. I made a new friend, and this time I was the knight instead of the monster,” it says, laughing to itself. Its face falls expressionless and cold in a second, as if a switch had flipped. “But she was just as useless as you were,” it says. “So we’re done. I’m tired of this game. Enough.”

“I agree, Zero,” says Acacia, her boot stepping down onto the blond-haired head. “Let us never see each other again.”

His eye shoots unnaturally far to the side, looking up at her as he smiles. “You don’t get to call me that name. And you don’t get to decide,” he says. “I told you. This is my story. It always has been from the very start,” finishes Zero, the body of Hero melting into a black, empty sludge that sickers between the gaps and cracks and deep into the world, while other pieces of it float by themselves up toward the sky.

And then everything goes dark.

The fires, the hundred-thousand lanterns of the city that was in celebration, the sparks of magic floating through the air and the reflective shine of hope and joy in the eyes of everyone who is still alive — all of it is taken, swallowed, as they lift their gaze toward the sky.

There, where the last star of the world had been shining, the people one by one realize why all the others were gone, save for it.

Hovering above the world, around the world, like a cloak is an emptiness that separates them from the heavens. Its wrapped itself around them.

And that star — that single bright star that remains in the air?

It’s an eye.

The eye shifts, growing in intensity as it glares down toward them, glares down toward the world and the people that it hates most of all out of everything.

Dandy doesn’t really know what’s happening, nor is she really capable of doing so. Her mind isn’t quite ready for this kind of turn, and something inside of it gives way, like a snapping cable, and a flood of voices return to her head.

It’s all one.

It’s all one thing.

The jittery priestess, her back pressed against a column, some of her bones broken, looks at the soldiers in black armor that fill the palace, looks at Herr Ritter and his evil master, looks at the melted body of the hero, and looks toward an empty sky that is too large for her to observe in a single lifetime, and the message locks into her mind.

It’s all one thing.

The knight, the armies, the sky — it’s all one thing.

It’s just… pretend. The wars, the suffering, the monastery — everything that has happened is just pretend. None of it is real. None of this is real. It’s just a shadow chasing its own tail out of boredom. All of it, her suffering, the blood, the lives, the screaming — oh gods the screaming — she can still hear it as her fingers try to claw in through the side of her face to pull the loud voices out of her head, but she can’t seem to reach them as they go in deeper and deeper into her brain while her shaking eyes stare at the glowing star above the world and she starts laughing.

The broken priestess clenches herself and laughs and laughs, chanting over and over. “It’s all one thing. It’s all one thing!” she says, finally realizing the truth, or at least what her reality has led her to believe it is. Her thumb and index fingers press together into a ring that she holds over her bleeding face as she falls down to the side, staring up at the single eye in the night. “It’s all one thing!” she says, understanding the message they had for her now.

It was a warning.

The sky begins to close in around the world.

 

---

 

 

“Sir Knight,” says Acacia, all of the others gathering to look up toward the sky as she turns around and kneels down by the throne, holding the hand of the body there as she looks at the gaping hole in his chest, where something that is nothing — Zero — had stolen his beating heart. “I’m tiring of this,” she says in a tone that fits the statement. “I believe I asked you to deal with this matter last time already?” she asks, her fingers wrapping around the body’s and holding them. She turns her head, lifting her eyes to look up to the sky that is starting to close down around the world, like a suffocating blanket smothered over a face.

“Sorry, Your Majesty,” replies Sir Knight, a deep series of gashes running through his armor and revealing the empty exterior inside. “I’m not very good at my job,” he jokes, shrugging once to himself before gazing back at the world-ending eye.

“I know,” she sighs, rising back up to her feet and holding a hand on his arm.

“Uh, guys?” asks Junis nervously as the sky screams — which is a very odd thing for the sky to be doing. “We might need to do something about this?” suggests the elf, looking at them.

“Agreed,” affirms Acacia, as the pressure from above causes a cascade of wind to blow around the world as the sky and air within it suck up toward the descending blackness. Wind and loose sediment fly up into the abyss, leaves and sparks and rubble fly, birds taken from their course swirl and flutter as it draws them in, the same as plants and structures that are unrooted. By the second, the pressure grows, the darkness wrapping itself tighter and tighter down around the entire planet, the entire world, that it intends to swallow in full. “Sir Knight, are your soldiers spread as I had told you to do?”

“Of course,” he replies.

Acacia smirks, her hair flowing up above her head as the force of the vortex begins to pull on it, the last star — the eye of Zero — pressing down straight to her.

“Then give him what he wants,” orders the black-crowned princess. “It’s what friends are for, after all,” says Acacia, and Sir Knight blasts apart into a thousand shadows that move into a thousand directions.

The shadows spear through every pocket of darkness and emptiness on the continent that he has penetrated into long ago. Every city of the nation, every village, every house has a little emptiness inside of it somewhere, and he’s found it and taken possession of that nothingness. But not just here within the Kingdom of Odofredus Krone.

No, his men have traveled with Acacia’s influence around the world in the past year. They’ve spread to the distant nations of the Vildt and the many powers that align themselves with many jagged spikes of many different crowns, all of which in this very second, stare toward the black sky that is crashing down toward their distant nations that have nothing to do with this conflict and story and stare in horror. Their oracles scream of the end of days, and the temples are full of chanting and prayer, as bricks fly off of broken walls and chimneys crumble apart and dissipate as they’re torn toward the sky, just before failing roofs, towers, and walls of fortresses in the highest places. The mountains begin to crumble, the world rumbling as stone is ripped off of stone.

And all there throughout the chaos, more gaps are created.

People scream and run all around the world, not noticing at first the marching legions that stream out of every single cupboard with a missing glass, every single door that is closed far enough to leave a shadow behind it against the wall, every single gap below every single bed that crying and screaming children try to hide beneath as their mothers shove them in moves and squirms as black-armored hands crawl out like the dead from a million unmarked graves.

Priests are dragged out to the streets from their churches, and wizards are flung out through doors and archways. Across the world in a single instant, a unified army of black soldiers rips people out of their last shelters and drags them out into the streets and marketplaces, where sit black-robed casters with their hands held high, magic of the void propelling forward out of their palms toward the falling sky, as if trying to fight it off.

Back at at the palace, Chicory and Junis lift their hands, a glow around their fingers as lightning and holy magic begin to gather.

“You can’t beat me alone,” says Zero, its voice growling across every continent and every landmass there is. “Not like you did last time.”

Acacia’s hand is pointed up as well, holding next to her friends as hands lay on her from the side as they had done during their last encounter — Kaisersgrab, Fichtenholz, and now Hase pressing their palms against her. They don’t have the skill to make magic of their own, but they can give her what they have. That power flows through Acacia, her amplified spell surging around her fingertips.

It had been enough once, but that was a long time ago, and Zero has changed the story. It’s stronger now, larger, and it had seen this trick employed against it one time before already.

But it hasn’t seen anything like this.

Acacia’s city begins to glow again, the star — the eye — shifting at a glance. It looks confused, as if all of the extinguished lanterns had been relit.

But they haven’t been.

Instead, one glow after the other reemerges along the surface of the world below as every sorcerer and every druid, every healer, and every two-bit adventurer follows the instructions given to them by the men in black armor — all of whom seem to speak with one a single voice shared between the whole of them. Dancing flames and crystallizing ice, lightning and green hues of natural magics, purple swirls of sigils and the arcane, and the radiant glow of the fervor of heaven’s servants. Archers with enchanted arrows and men with lances, javelins, and spears to lunge all arc their glowing weapons back toward the sky.

And it happens everywhere, all at once.

Every wayward farmhouse out by itself in the remote regions begins to shine with the faintest glimmers as the inhabitants there collect what power they have in sparse hands. The oceans are pin-pricked with shining dots when seen from above, as sailors aboard distantly outward vessels collect on the decks of boats out on raging seas. Towers of ancient power and fortresses all shine alight. Everything, anywhere where there are people, begins to burn alight one point of color after the other.

And then even the things that do not belong to man.

The old ancient glades in which dryads and and creatures of pure heart reside, the dark mouths of caves from which goblin shamans covered in bones and ash crawl out with staffs that rattle, the dungeons of the world — their large stone gates breaking apart as if they were mouths being opened far too wide in a scream as an energy collects deep within their buried cores.

Everywhere there is a shadow, there is something alive and of substance somewhere nearby, from man to beast to monster.

Dragons roar at the sky they don’t understand, their throats filled with flames, and submerged volcanoes begin to stir and break from the shaking of the world that rips the deep crusts and stone apart.

And the shadows of the Black Knight press and pull and torment every single being there is, that can, into action, and if someone were to wonder where all the stars in the night had gone — someone who did not understand the true context of the situation — and they looked down at the world from above in that second, then they would think that the stars had never actually left.

They simply fell down from the sky and found a new place on the surface of the world instead, because in the total, absolute darkness that has come to end all things, light shimmers and shines like it has never done before in the kingdoms of heaven or of man, and perhaps it never will again, because of the fullness and the totality of it.

“Then I’ll do it like you’ve never seen before,” replies Acacia, the raging star pulsing as it turns back her way. “The story’s over, Zero,” says the jagged-crowned queen of the nation, of the world. She declares it with a finality to her statement that indicates that this time, truly, is the end of all ends. There will be no more. Acacia strikes out her arm, her magic wildly spiraling up toward the infinite abyss, straight toward the eye of damnation, and as it flies, with the spells of her friends in pursuit, and then followed by the ten thousand spells that arc up after it from her newly claimed city, and then from the cities beyond, and then cities beyond them. A ripple cascades out around the world as one ignition causes the eruption of the next, a chain reaction that washes over every pair of eyes that stares toward the black heavens through every pair of clenched hands as men retake the story of their world out of the hands of some twisted manipulator.

Zero screams, the star pulsating as it crashes down straight toward her, growing larger and larger by the second, the darkness rippling and wavering like a disturbed sea as one column after the next of pure, radiant energy stabs straight through it, as if man were erecting a construction to keep the firmaments of heaven aloft up above where they belonged — separate from the raw, hard physicality of their cherished world.

“YOU WON’T!” screams Zero, the sky bending and breaking back as light fills its infinite emptiness in so many places, the shines of the world’s collective magic burning through deeper and deeper as more and more people join in, seeing what their brothers and sisters have begun. Nobles stream from their manors and kings from their castles, and the frightened and the forgotten and the unsure and the scared of the world find their strength by watching the others go first and then come in after them as a second wave barrages toward the sky that seems to recoil and twist, as if it were a living, pained creature that was being pierced by every last one of the blades of the world. The eye flashes with malevolence, flashes with every last drop of hate that exists within the monster that came before all monsters, within the darkness that was the wellspring of all hatred and anger, all rage and disgust, and everything else foul and black that the gods had drawn from when they created the darker portions of men’s souls. “YOU WON’T TAKE THIS STORY FROM ME!” it screams, rattling all life to its core with the words that howl into every ear. The monster is repelled in all places except one, pulling itself apart; the morning sky it had obscured with its wrap around everything, coming to light as holes burn through it. Sunshine begins to peek through the gaps, and it collides with the magic of the people, creating a brilliance that may well give credence to the presence of the divine. Zero focuses in everything that remains toward her and her alone — the thing that it hates most of all out of everything that has ever existed.

“Correct,” says Acacia, winter's coldness in her eyes. “I have people for that."

And then it can’t see her anymore, instead only seeing a black, swirling chasm that hurtles toward it from the destroyed palace, cutting through the collective magic of the world with a blackness so absolute and deep that it even puts its own emptiness into contest. A blade slices forward through the revealing sky, hooked and curved in shape of the fangs of all monsters to exist as it changes and warps in shape and gestalt again and again and again, careening through the sky until it forms the body of a man in black armor who only appears for a breath, for a moment long enough to swing the blade straight through the leviathan’s spasming eye with a single outward strike.

Zero screams in rage, looking at its own creation, its own failed device that has been turned around back against it; its own failure comes flying directly toward its face.

“The End,” says Sir Knight, his blade swiping out only once and the scream that never stops, the howl that floats around the world, the shaking, the trembling, the apocalypse — it all comes to an end in a single instant. It all begins to fade and smolder away as the magic dies out and people fall to their knees, exhausted, panting as they look up and watch the black fabric of the end of days start to melt apart piece by piece, section by section.

And the day in those places where there ought to be one returns to the world now unobscured. And the night too comes back to the parts of the world that should feel its coolness, and the people there don’t fear the darkness and instead marvel at it as they stop and stare in wonder at the endless array of dancing lights that fill the sky, as if all of their magic had come together to form new stars that now, after such a time, seem to shine brighter than they ever had done in the past.

Everything falls silent.

And, in a way, the end of the world has come, and this time, Zero has been destroyed for good, and so destiny might now finally belong — uncontested — to the one who fights to seize it.

She did it.

She made it. They did. It’s finally over. After everything… it’s all finally over.

As the world erupts into cheers and celebration, Acacia suddenly clutches her mouth, blood leaking out of her in full flow, as she only manages to cough out a single time before she falls over and her eyes shut.

People call out and gather around her.

And everything goes dark.

 

---

 

Princess Manchineel moves in through the broken doorway of the throne room, waving to everybody, standing there looking frazzled and spent as they turn their heads her way.

“Partyyy!” she calls excitedly, her hands up in the air, and then looking at them. “Huh? Oh! I didn’t know you guys were here too!” says the oldest princess excitedly, her golden knights walking in behind her. “Where’s Acacia?” she asks happily, looking around the room that she might not even notice the actual state of — in her mind, its likely still very much perfect — and then at the collection of people kneeling down in a ring before the throne.