The light didn't fade.
When Sid struck down the demon lieutenant, reality itself tore open. Golden-white fire and abyssal shadow clashed inside him, colliding so violently that the battlefield fractured like glass.
A rift yawned beneath his feet — not into earth or flame, but into nothingness.
"Sid!" Lucien's shout was the last thing he heard before the void swallowed him.
He was falling.
No air, no ground, just endless shreds of existence sliding past him. Fragments of realms, like broken mirrors drifting in a black sea.
To his left: Hal'Zirath's realm, a continent of burning chains, rivers of blood boiling under a black sun. He heard Azareth's laughter echo across the skies.
To his right: the throne-world of the gods, marble citadels hanging in a sky of pure light — but even there, cracks spread like veins, golden towers bending under unseen strain.
Ahead: shattered futures. Cities he knew crumbled to dust, oceans swallowed continents, a sun collapsed into ash. Each vision flickered, as though begging him to choose.
And then — silence.
Sid's body stopped falling. He was standing in a void that stretched forever, pale light above, shadows below. His fractured arm pulsed, chains of black and gold locking him in place.
A voice boomed from the radiance. Calm, eternal.
Aureon.
"You were made to carry my spark, Sid. Not by chance. By design. You are the vessel I forged."
Before Sid could answer, darkness erupted beneath him. Talons of shadow coiled upward, and a roar shook the void.
Ravh'Zereth.
"Forged? No. Stolen! He is mine — my flame, my heir. He carries my hunger, my fury. He is the Abyss made flesh!"
Sid clutched his head, teeth gritted. Their voices weren't around him — they were inside him, ripping through bone and marrow.
"Stop it!" he shouted, his voice cracking. "I'm not your vessel, not your weapon!"
The void trembled. Aureon and Ravh'Zereth's forms emerged — one blinding with endless light, the other a storm of claws and fire. Titans, facing each other, Sid trapped between their vast presence.
Aureon's eyes — endless suns — bore into him.
"Balance cannot exist without choice. You must choose, Sid. Will you be my eternity?"
Ravh'Zereth's abyssal grin split wide.
"Or my flame of endings? Decide. Now."
Sid staggered back. His fractured arm flared, golden and black fire crackling violently. He felt like he was being split in two, torn down the middle of his soul.
He screamed, the sound lost in the clash of gods inside him.
Both voices crashed over him, impossibly vast:
"YOU ARE BALANCE."
The void shattered.
Sid fell again — deeper this time, into a darkness where even Aureon and Ravh'Zereth's voices could not reach.
And for the first time, he wondered if choosing one side would mean erasing the other — and if there was any way to remain himself at all.