The Maw Corridor — Perseus
The beast's jaw crushed his shield.
Perseus screamed as the force hurled him into the obsidian wall. Bone crunched. Metal buckled. His vision blurred as red smeared across his helmet's visor. His right arm dangled, useless and broken, while blood dripped in rhythmic splashes down his greaves.
He rolled aside just as a stitched abomination leapt—its frame built from small, humanoid bones lashed together by tendons and sacrificial thread. A child's laughter echoed from its open mouth as it dove.
Perseus roared.
His hammer ignited with runes of radiant flame. He twisted on his heel, caught the thing mid-lunge, and shattered it into steaming fragments. Its lower half exploded in a mist of cartilage and splinters; the upper writhed on the floor, whispering his name in a toddler's voice before he crushed it underfoot.
The corridor writhed around him. Fleshy growths pulsated on the walls, birthing spores that clung like shame. Shadows hissed. His memories began unraveling.
He saw Nyxia bleeding. Boo screaming. Loque burning.
None of it was real—but it felt real.
The void was feeding—on his fear, on his memories.
"Nyxia," he gasped, staggering upright. "I'm coming."
A rotting serpent of voidborn origin slithered into view, its skin armored in fused limbs, its spine lined with screaming skulls. A second shape dropped from above—some winged, skinless vulture-woman shrieking in a voice made of grief.
Perseus raised his hammer.
Light surged from it like defiance.
"Not today."
And he charged, roaring into the dark.
Chamber of Splintered Mirrors — Cipher
The chamber glitched.
The world pulsed between raw stone and broken reality. Mirrors flickered between showing Cipher's reflection and horrific permutations of Ves'Sariel—tall and thin, eyes like inverted stars, blades for fingers.
They stepped out of the mirrors.
Dozens of them. Void-clones of Ves, each a distortion of her form: one headless and singing, one with mouths lining her ribs, one with eyes stitched shut but weeping anyway.
Cipher moved fast.
He unleashed command-pulse grenades. Time-fracture disks. He looped the space around him into recursive traps. The clones twitched, paused—but adapted.
One slid past his guard and gashed his thigh. Another impaled his side with a scythe of regret.
His HUD cracked. His logic stuttered.
"Override," he whispered. "Rewrite—"
A blade pierced his chest, sliding between ribs.
Cipher smiled faintly as his vision dimmed.
"Then rewrite this."
He detonated his core, taking three of them with him.
The rest kept coming.
Garden of Faces — Mirell
Mirell stepped carefully, heart thudding like a war drum.
The garden seemed alive, but nothing moved. Every flower bore a face—some open-mouthed in wonder, others weeping, some serene.
Then came the voices.
"Do you remember her?" one flower asked.
Her sister's face bloomed—golden-eyed, singing softly, extending a hand.
Mirell dropped to her knees. "I'm sorry I couldn't save you."
Her sister smiled. "You didn't have to. You only had to stay."
The flower kissed her brow.
Her skin began to blacken.
"No—"
She hurled toxin bombs, lighting the garden in caustic green fire. Petals withered. Faces melted into horror. Laughter rang like bells in a funeral march.
From the ashes, a Ves-clone walked forward. Silent. Smiling. Pale eyes glowing.
It embraced her.
Mirell stiffened as the blade entered her back.
Her hand lifted, brushing her sister's dissolving cheek.
"You weren't real… but I loved you anyway."
She fell, the garden blooming anew in her blood.
Ballroom of Bone — Boo
Boo's boots barely whispered against the blood-slick bone beneath her.
The ballroom had no ceiling. Just void and stars that watched. Skulls made the walls, and ribs arched above like cathedral spires. Echoes of Boo's past spun in endless waltzes—dancers with her face, her scars, her smiles.
Then came Ves.
Not one, but many.
A circle of clones, each shaped like her—young and old, loving and cruel. They spun toward Boo in perfect step.
She didn't run.
She danced.
First strike—clean throat slash. Second—spin, double stab to kidney and spine. Third—flintlock to the head, releasing a bolt of lightning that cooked the clone mid-scream.
But they kept coming.
"You love her," one said as it lunged.
"Does she love you?" hissed another.
One took Boo's side and whispered: "She kissed you like you were a substitute."
Boo screamed.
Then she saw him.
Rhelos. Her brother's face wearing Ves's crown. Weeping.
"Please," he said.
Boo's sabers trembled.
Then she struck—one arc from groin to collarbone, another through the face.
"You don't get to wear him."
The ballroom cracked.
And Ves'Sariel descended from the void.
Voidlight punched Boo through three ribcages' worth of flooring. Her shoulder dislocated with a sickening pop. Her blood painted the walls.
"You never deserved her," Ves said, barefoot and radiating hate. "You only wanted to possess what I was."
Boo pulled herself upright, gritting her teeth.
"Maybe I did," she growled. "But I never lied about it."
The Rupture — Nyxia and Ves
Ves moved like a memory rewritten in pain.
She circled Nyxia with hands that glowed and bled, eyes that shimmered between longing and cruelty. Her touch was a scalpel; her words were traps.
"You were made for me," Ves said. "And now I've made you mine."
Nyxia's body trembled as old memories returned in waves—first kisses, half-whispers, shattered promises.
Loque's death. Perseus leaving. Boo crying. All weaponized and hurled at her.
"You said you'd stay," Ves whispered. "Even if I broke."
Nyxia cried out and struck. Her rune blazed—a fusion of holy wrath and abyssal shadow. She buried her blade in Ves's gut.
The priestess screamed—inhuman, ancient, angry.
"I do love you," Nyxia said, voice cracking.
Then the world exploded.
The wall disintegrated. The air split. Reality ruptured.
And Nyxia stepped forward.
Hair wild. Eyes fractured. Her shadow split into three jagged streaks.
Inside her body, Ves flickered—her soul bound to the rune, her essence pressed into every nerve.
"You were meant to become me," she whispered through Nyxia's lips.
And the Void screamed:
"No. She is ours. Finish her. Break her. Burn her."
Nyxia screamed—and her soul tore.
The Regrouping
Perseus emerged dragging Boo by her good arm, her other hanging limp.
Loque limped behind, bloody and still growling.
Then she appeared.
Nyxia.
Not wholly herself. Not wholly anyone.
Her hair a storm. Her eyes a battlefield. Her voice a triptych:
Void: "Let her end. No love. No lies. No weakness."
Ves: "I will not kill her. I won't lose her."
Nyxia: "I'm still here… gods… help me…"
Inside her mind, Ves knelt—trapped in the web of Nyxia's soul. Her essence flickered, battered. She fought back against the howling dark that clung to every fragment.
"You don't own her," Ves told the Void, even as it bit her name from her mouth.
The Final Battle
Nyxia descended like a prophecy—beautiful, broken, and burning from within.
Her scythe carved arcs through the air, trailing voidlight like ribbons of unraveling reality. With each step, her bootprints left cracks in the stone that bled static and memory. Her eyes shimmered—one pale and luminous, the other dark and depthless. Her voice fractured between three tones: hollow rage, stubborn love, and the scream of a soul in torment.
Perseus staggered forward, one arm limp, shield long since shattered. He had never seen anything more terrifying—or more sacred.
"Nyxia," he called, soft but firm.
She tilted her head. Smiled faintly.
Then attacked.
Her scythe hit like thunder. Perseus barely raised his hammer in time. The blow knocked him back into a column that cracked behind him. His ribs groaned. Blood painted the inside of his helm.
She advanced, faster than thought. A spin. A slash.
He dodged by inches, dragging himself upright. "You said you'd come back! By the river, at the temple when we were young—don't you remember? You said if I waited…"
She hesitated. For the briefest moment, something flickered in her gaze.
Then she roared and charged.
Sparks flew. Metal screamed. Her scythe shattered stone with each miss. Her blade nicked his gauntlet, slicing clean to the bone.
Loque howled and lunged. She met him in mid-air. Their collision sent shockwaves down the corridor. She pinned him. He bit deep into her shoulder. She screamed—not in pain, but from the raw war waging inside her.
"I DON'T KNOW WHO I AM!"
Loque tore away as she flung him against the wall. He hit hard and stayed down, twitching but alive.
Perseus struggled to rise, clutching his broken arm.
And then Boo stepped forward.
Her face was bloodied. Her pistol hand shook.
But she didn't raise it.
"You know me," she said, eyes locked on Nyxia. "We've shared special moments in Sareth'kai. I even got you that lovely gift! Surely that means something."
Nyxia's arm trembled.
Boo's voice dropped. "You're not her. You're not Ves. You're not a weapon, either."
Nyxia flinched. Her scythe dipped.
Then her face twisted. "I am the blade."
And she lunged.
Boo fired. The bullet struck Nyxia's shoulder and spun her—but she didn't fall. She closed the gap, slammed her palm into Boo's chest, and sent her sprawling with enough force to dent the floor.
Boo gasped. Rolled. Raised her pistol again.
Nyxia stalked toward her, scythe dragging. The rune on her chest flared—blinding, pulsating light stitched with shadow.
Inside her eyes, Ves writhed.
Her reflection flickered—now Nyxia, now Ves, now a mask of the Void itself.
The Void howled.
"Let her fall. Let her break. Let the vessel shatter."
Ves clawed against the storm. "No. Not like this. You don't own her. You never will."
Nyxia dropped to her knees. "GET OUT!"
She slammed her scythe into the ground, splitting the stone. Her hands trembled. Her chest heaved.
Perseus limped forward. "You don't have to carry it all alone."
She looked at him, tears burning like acid down her face. "I'm going to hurt you again."
"Then hurt me," he said, voice breaking. "But come back."
She leaned into him—forehead to forehead.
For a moment, she was herself.
And then the rune ignited again.
The Confrontation
Nyxia rose, scythe in hand, and raised the blade to her own throat.
"I'll end this. Before I become something I can't undo."
And Ves stepped free.
Her form shimmered out of Nyxia like steam escaping a cracked vessel—half-shadow, half-light. Her face was grief. Her voice was soft.
"Not yet."
She wrapped her arms around Nyxia's shoulders—like a memory mourning itself—and whispered something only Nyxia heard.
Then, with one hand, she reached into Nyxia's chest and tore the rune free.
It screamed.
Reality convulsed. The Void shrieked in betrayal.
"Take me," Ves whispered. "Not her."
The Void twisted and shrank away. It fought. It devoured. But it hated her more than it needed her.
"You were made to destroy!" it bellowed.
"But I loved her," Ves said. "And I won't let her become me."
The rune collapsed—an inverted sun imploding into itself. A black nova of sorrow and light.
Nyxia cried out.
Loque grabbed her, wrapping his body protectively around hers.
Perseus dove and caught Boo as she tried to rise again.
And Ves—smiling through tears, laughing like something redeemed—was consumed in light.
Her final words echoed, soft as breath:
"Tell her I meant it."
And silence fell.