The Blade That Ends Gods
The Ashfields of Nimeya
The battlefield lay still. A scarred land kissed by blood and flame, shrouded in steam where gods once screamed. The charred skeletons of divine towers cracked under the weight of silence. Craters boiled with lingering magic, unstable and feral. The air was thick with copper and sorrow, and even the sun tried to rise but barely pierced the black haze that clung to the ruins. Not even the birds returned. Not even the wind dared breathe.
This was no mere aftermath—it was a graveyard for the divine.
Matt stood at the crest of a broken hill, breath heavy, gaze locked on the far-off ridge—the last place Nimistran was seen. His armor, cracked and stained with the blood of gods, shimmered faintly under the weight of both Ashlight and Voidflame. His hand trembled slightly as he tightened his grip on the Ashlight core embedded in his palm. Beneath the skin, it pulsed like a second heart, reacting to his fear and fury.
He could still hear them. The screams of Nitine children echoing through his soul. The final sob of Amiya. The whisper of vengeance that never faded.
Behind him, Mailane crouched beside a wounded Grey, tending to his burns with the last of her healing flame. Her hands shook from exhaustion, but her resolve burned steady, glowing in the dark like a candle against the storm. Grey tried to joke, as always, but his voice cracked more from grief than pain. Sam sat in a silent trance, meditating beside a circle of runes drawn with his own blood. Every rune glowed faintly, reinforcing barriers against a presence that hadn't yet arrived—but whose shadow already suffocated the sky.
No one spoke. Not yet. The world itself seemed to hold its breath, waiting for something it feared to name.
"He's not just a god," Matt finally said. "He's the last piece. The blade that severed eternity."
Mailane looked up, eyes shadowed by worry and knowing.
"Then you'll have to break him."
"No," Matt whispered, eyes narrowing. "I'll have to end him."
And he meant it. Not in the way one swears revenge, but like an oath written in blood beneath the stars. An absolute truth chiseled into the bones of the universe.
---
Echoes of the Past
As twilight fell over the Nyugan plains, Matt wandered from camp, drawn by a pull stronger than memory. He found himself standing beneath an ancient tree—the one where Amiya used to take him as a child. The bark was scorched, the ground cracked around its roots. Carved into its trunk were glyphs only he could read now, symbols of both the Nitine and the gods. It was a relic of two worlds he no longer belonged to.
He pressed his hand against it.
Visions slammed into him like lightning.
Amiya's gentle smile.
The flames of Nyuga devouring his childhood.
Thermuz's cruel laughter as he fell into the abyss.
Analice's shriek as her hunger was extinguished.
Then—Nimistran's voice.
"We were brothers once, you and I."
"We were never anything."
"Then let us finish this as nothing."
Matt's eyes flared open. The tree crackled from the surge of Voidflame leaking from his skin. The sky above began to darken again, unnaturally—stars dimmed in mourning. Thunder grumbled from an empty horizon.
He breathed it like a curse, etched into fate.
"You took my world. I'll take your ending."
The final battle was beginning—not with war horns, but with memory. With sorrow sharpened into resolve.
---
Blade Against Eternity
The Godkiller Field
The battleground formed itself like a dream unraveling. Reality fractured, folding into a crucible of starlight and shadow. Gravity buckled. Space bled. The sky tore open in three directions at once, revealing what lay beyond the veil of realms—a bleeding aurora of all the wars ever fought, screaming in silence.
Nimistran stood in the center of this impossible field, a god no longer hiding behind titles. His robe was woven from celestial thread. His feet stood upon nothing and everything. In his hand, the Blade of Endings—an ancient weapon forged from voidsteel, a metal that had once slit the throat of a star. Its hum unmade sound itself. His presence distorted time.
Matt approached slowly, step by step. Each footfall weighed like thunder. With every movement, flames curled at his back, dancing between crimson and obsidian. Ashlight and Voidflame intertwined like twin dragons coiled around a soul burning for justice.
The others stayed behind. This was a duel of fate. No interruptions. No salvation.
"You wear their pain like armor," Nimistran said. "But it will not save you."
"It doesn't have to," Matt replied. "It's only here to remind me what I've already lost."
Nimistran raised his blade.
Matt summoned his fire.
Ashlight in one hand.
Voidflame in the other.
The ground cracked.
Heaven flinched.
"This ends now," Matt said. "Gods fall. Blades remain."
They charged.
---
The War of Wills
Steel clashed with flame, and time split. Each strike echoed through dimensions, unraveling the seams of creation.
Nimistran fought with calm fury, every swing precise, every parry inevitable. His blade didn't cut flesh—it erased existence. Stars blinked out when it sang. His eyes never wavered, and his expression remained cold, composed, final.
Matt fought like the world depended on it—because it did. He bled with purpose. His rage was focused. He spun between burning arcs and void surges, reshaping the battlefield with each motion. Flames bent around him. Space recoiled. Reality screamed.
Ashlight seared through time. Voidflame devoured dimensions.
At one point, Nimistran impaled Matt through the shoulder. Matt smiled through the blood.
"You've already lost."
"Because I haven't killed you yet?"
"No. Because you never knew what it meant to live."
He exploded in Ashlight. The wound healed in mid-air. His soul roared.
And in the flicker between moments, he saw her—Amiya—smiling through the smoke, reaching for his hand.
He roared. Not in pain. But for her.
The ground beneath them split. Entire continents shook. Mountains cracked. Storms raged across three realms. Divine seals began to unravel.
---
The Final Seal
Meanwhile, on the outer edge of the fractured battlefield, Mailane, Grey, and Sam were anything but idle.
The Legacies of the Paladins had returned—spectral remnants of divine betrayal, crawling from forgotten realms, burning with ancient vengeance. Their presence distorted light and warped sound. Their voices were songs of extinction.
Sam roared incantations that scorched the dead. Sigils flared from his arms, each line etched in pain and purpose. Grey sacrificed his arm to break through a cursed line, laughing even as the bones shattered. Mailane moved like vengeance incarnate, her Shadowsidian blade cleaving through spirit and steel alike. Her every strike carried Matt's memory. Her eyes burned with a love forged in fire.
At the center of the carnage stood the final seal of the Void—an orb of collapsing stars pulsing with raw power, surrounded by chains of godmetal and echoing screams.
She thought of Matt's voice in the dark. Of the nights they fought side by side. Of the kiss she never gave him. And she chose.
Mailane shattered the seal with a scream.
The light hit Matt.
He burned.
And from his back, wings of flame and shadow burst. Ashlight Ascendant. Voidflame Unchained.
A new form. A final form.
Not god.
Not man.
But the weapon fate forged through grief.
---
End of a God
Matt surged forward like a meteor born in agony. One fist struck Nimistran's blade—shattering the unshatterable. The other pierced his chest.
"This is for Nyuga."
"For Amiya."
"For everyone you used."
Voidflame spiraled upward like a black sun. Ashlight roared around him.
"And this—"
He stepped forward, eyes gleaming with all he had become.
"—is for me."
He unleashed it all. Ashlight. Voidflame. Memory. Pain. Hope. All of it, poured into one strike that fractured time.
A blinding storm of rebirth.
Nimistran screamed, his voice cracking the heavens.
And then he was no more.
Time stuttered. Stars wept. Across dying worlds and newborn galaxies, the echo of Nimistran's final scream rippled like a forgotten prophecy undone.
Ashes.
Silence.
Peace.
Matt stood amid the ruin, breath steady at last. No crown. No gods. Just a boy who kept his promise.
But somewhere, in the breath between dying stars... something began to stir.