Cameras flashed. Shutters clattered. Melissa Guildford was hounded by paparazzi, a mob of hungry faces trailing her every step. The noise gnawed at her ears until she bolted, running—running into the bones of Invalia, into the endless wasteland. Sand whipped across her face. She stumbled, fell to her knees, and sobbed into the dust.
A voice rose from the silence, soft and sorrowful.
"We meet again, you ran from nothing, there was nobody there…"
Melissa lifted her head. Standing before her was Eliza—unchanged since the days she hid from Thidos' armies. Her ruby-pink eyes held no fury this time, only mourning.
"What happened to me?" Melissa croaked, crawling forward, clutching Eliza's legs as tears streaked her cheeks. "Everywhere I go, people scream. Praise, hatred—I don't understand. What happened?"
Eliza's gaze drifted past her, into the empty horizon.
"You went insane," she said quietly. "I'm so sorry. I let you show your madness. I couldn't stop it."
"Madness?" Melissa whispered. "Tell me what exactly happened."
Eliza's voice shook. "Spiral. It's consuming everything. This world is destined to end soon…"
Melissa's chest heaved. "Spiral? Again? Always spiral?"
"Spirals are everything," Eliza explained, eyes distant. "They bind humanity and divinity. We all spiral, in grief, in joy, in rage. But you…" She looked down at Melissa, tears trembling in her eyes. "You aren't spiraling anymore. You've gone beyond spiral. You are bloodlust itself."
Melissa slumped onto the sand, voice flat. "So what now?"
"What else can we do?" Eliza sat beside her, watching the sun sag toward the horizon. "It's almost over. Nothing left to save."
"Do we fuse again?" Melissa asked, tone unreadable.
Eliza exhaled, slow. "I don't mind. But what would we gain? Becoming the full God of Matter has no purpose anymore."
Melissa turned to her, eyes burning. "If you are a God… what does that make me?"
Eliza paused. The desert wind rattled against their silence. "Guildford," she said softly, "I was born into the Guildford bloodline. I don't know how we split, or why or if it even was Ezekiel's power. Being Balaternian is confusing enough. We're born with enchants no one else remembers, no one else even believes in. But you… you're something worse. Something stranger."
Melissa swallowed. "Spiral… don't spirals mean different things? Hope, madness, creation?"
"Who cares?" Eliza groaned, leaning back into the sand. "It doesn't matter. We'll all be dragged into the war soon. Even me. Even abstinence can't shield me forever from madness."
Melissa sat next to her, fists trembling. "My goal was simple. To become a God, and master humanity."
Eliza tilted her head, a bitter smile breaking. "You are a God. But no master of humanity." She reached out her hand. "You're the master of its opposite."
Melissa clasped her hand.
The world shivered. A spiral of crimson and violet uncoiled from their bodies, wrapping them in a helix of blood and smoke. Their forms contorted, flesh and spirit folding into each other. Veins lit like circuits. Screams—laughter—echoes of both voices merged.
And then—
Silence.
…
Silence.
…
Silence.
Until—
"That's great," a voice whispered from the dust.
From the spiral haze, something new began to step forward.