They stood at the edge of everything.
Before them stretched a vast obsidian plain, lit only by a bleeding sky. The stars were gone — pulled into the maw of a towering gate that loomed like the skeleton of a god.
The Gate of Endings.
Here, time and memory fractured. Here, the dream began — and would end.
Lior, Rhéa, and Soren stood side by side, the three final shards pulsing inside Lior's chest.
The Memory Shard.
The Possibility Shard.
The Shard of Truth.
And ahead of them, standing alone beneath the collapsing heavens, was Mira.
She wore a cloak of living shadow, eyes shimmering with power and pain. The Black Shard, now fully awakened, burned in her heart like a second soul.
"You made it," she said softly.
---
The Last Conversation
They didn't draw weapons.
Not yet.
Not while hope still lingered between them.
Lior took a step forward. "You don't have to do this. The world doesn't need to be remade. It needs to be remembered."
She smiled faintly. "You never saw what I saw, Lior. You were always at the center of the story. I was just a side note… until I rewrote the ending."
Rhéa spoke, her voice tight. "We know what they did to you. The Dreamers. The Wraithborn. The ones who called you dangerous just for being."
"And yet you still defend their world?" Mira asked.
Soren stepped forward now. "No. But burning it down won't build anything better. You're still dreaming, Mira — but this dream ends in ash."
She flinched.
Lior's voice was quiet. "I still believe in you."
The words shook her more than any sword.
---
The Final Dream
The Gate began to open.
From it, a void spread — a place without time or shape. The dream-worlds were collapsing into one. The shards had awakened something beyond gods, beyond memory.
Mira raised her hands. "If we step through together, we can become something more. Rewrite everything. A world without pain, without loss."
Lior stared into the Gate.
And he saw it.
A world where no one died.
Where Mira never cried alone.
Where Rhéa never lost her mother.
Where Soren was never exiled.
He saw peace.
He saw perfection.
And then he saw emptiness.
No laughter. No risk. No love born from loss. No joy earned through pain. Just… stillness.
Unchanging.
Unreal.
---
"I'm sorry," he said.
And stepped back from the Gate.
Mira's eyes filled with disbelief. "Why?"
"Because I'd rather live in a broken world I can feel... than rule a perfect one I don't recognize."
---
The Battle Without Blades
She didn't scream. She didn't rage.
Instead, Mira attacked with dreams.
Lior saw visions of his friends turning on him.
Rhéa vanishing into starlight.
Soren dying in his arms.
He saw himself alone, again and again.
But the shards inside him answered back.
Memory.
Possibility.
Truth.
And with each blow, he stood firmer, not with hatred… but love.
"I remember who you are," he whispered. "I remember your smile, your fire. You taught me to question everything. Even the Dreamers."
She fell to her knees, trembling.
"Then why… didn't you choose me?"
He knelt beside her.
"I did. Every day. But choosing you doesn't mean following you into oblivion."
He reached for her hand.
"You can still wake up."
---
When the Dreamer Wakes
She cried.
For the first time since she took the Black Shard, she cried.
And the Gate — the thing beyond the Gate — blinked.
The void paused.
And began to recede.
The shards in Lior's body — and in Mira's — hummed. Slowly, gently, they lifted from their bodies, circling in the air.
Then fused.
One final shard.
The Dreamer's Shard.
It hovered between them.
Waiting.
---
Lior looked at her.
"You can remake the world. But not alone."
And so, together — they touched it.
---
The New Dawn
The Gate vanished.
The sky stitched itself back together.
The dream-worlds — broken and beautiful — became one.
Not perfect.
But real.
They awoke in a field of wildflowers. The same place Lior had once stood as a boy, dreaming of a world he didn't understand.
Rhéa laughed as birds returned to the sky.
Soren wept as the Wraithborn vanished like morning mist.
Mira lay beside Lior, the Black Shard gone. Only herself remained.
Free.
Alive.
Forgiven.
---
The boy who dreamed the end… had dreamed a beginning.
---
Epilogue: Letters in the Wind
Years passed.
The Dreamers became historians.
The shards were hidden, not to be used, but to remind.
Lior built a small school, where children could learn the truth — all of it.
Rhéa became its heart.
Soren, its protector.
Mira?
She wandered.
Searching not for power now, but for people who felt forgotten — reminding them they never were.
---
And sometimes, when Lior looked to the sky, he saw not a gate…
…but a door.
Always open.
Always waiting.
For the next dreamer.
To write the next beginning.
The End