The end came like a breath held too long.
A sky without stars loomed above the final battlefield—silent, gray, stretched thin over a realm carved from sorrow. Caelen stood in the heart of it, the Weeping Blade trembling in his grip, its light pulsing with the weight of a world's anguish and hope.
Across from him, Eredan-Mir descended from the shattered throne of bone, his form a void wrapped in the shape of a man. Where Caelen bled meaning, Eredan bled nothing. Not anger. Not fear. Only absence.
Light against shadow. Empathy against emptiness.
Elira stood at Caelen's side, her breath ragged, her body battered, but her dagger glinted still—unbent, unbroken. "We end this now," she said.
The Hollow King did not answer. Instead, his presence expanded, shadows swirling into blades, tendrils, fangs. They surged forward.
Caelen met them head-on.
He fought not like a warrior, but like a storm made of memory. Each swing of the Weeping Blade sang with the voices of the fallen. Each step he took cracked the void beneath him. He channeled Aerthalin's suffering, yes—but also its love. The warmth of mothers. The laughter of children. The last breath of heroes who never got to finish their stories.
Eredan-Mir countered with pure nothingness. His strikes erased light, sense, self. But they could not erase Caelen's will.
Behind him, Elira cried out—a Hollow's claw tore across her side, blood blooming crimson across her cloak. Caelen felt her pain pierce through his already-cracked soul.
"No!" he roared, turning toward her. "Stay back!"
But she stood, swaying but fierce, her gaze like wildfire. "I won't leave you. Not now. Not ever."
The enemy's voice cut across the field like a poisoned blade. "Fools. Pain will consume you both. You cannot win."
Caelen turned back, his body trembling, his veins aflame.
"It already has," he rasped, raising the Weeping Blade. "But so has love. And that's stronger than your nothing."
With a final cry that shook the remnants of the void, Caelen surged forward. Light wrapped his blade. Pain and hope fused into a single, blinding truth.
He drove the Weeping Blade into Eredan-Mir's chest.
For a moment, there was silence.
Then the void cracked—and screamed.
The throne shattered. The sky bled stars. The shadows that once consumed all were torn apart by a light born not of perfection, but of perseverance.
Eredan-Mir's scream became a whisper. Then a breath. Then silence.
The realm unraveled. The Hollow plain dissolved into mist. The war was over.
Caelen collapsed.
His knees buckled, the Weeping Blade slipping from his fingers, its glow dimming. His body trembled, each breath more shallow than the last. The curse still burned—slow, cruel, absolute.
Elira caught him before he hit the ground. Her bloodied hands cradled his face, tears trailing down his cheeks.
"You did it," she whispered, voice quaking. "You saved us."
Caelen's eyes fluttered open. His lips parted in the faintest of smiles.
"No," he breathed. "We did it. Together."
But as the light of dawn crept into the sky—real light, not made of pain or memory—his chest tightened, and his hand fell limp.
The battle was won.
But the cost was still being paid.