The darkness had disappeared, but Jonathan felt no relief.
Before him, the remains of the Crimson King crumbled like ashes carried away by an invisible wind. For far too long, that entity had manipulated dreams, devoured hopes, and turned realities into toys to satisfy his whims.
Even after defeating him, Jonathan could not stop thinking about the lives that had been destroyed because of him, the worlds that might never exist again, and the people who would never have the chance to recover what they had lost.
He had won, but victory could not return everything that had been taken from him.
"Is that all?" Jonathan murmured, gazing into the void. "After so much suffering, does everything end like this?"
No one answered.
However, deep within that darkness, something began to move. The Dark Tower, the axis around which countless worlds revolved, trembled at the disappearance of its former master.
Its endless corridors warped, the staircases changed direction, and the doors leading to other realities began opening and closing uncontrollably.
For eons, the Crimson King had used the tower as an instrument of domination, twisting its connections to extend his influence throughout existence. Now that he had disappeared, everything he had kept under his control threatened to collapse along with him.
Jonathan understood that defeating the Crimson King was not enough. If he abandoned that place, the destruction would continue, and the survivors of countless worlds would pay the price for a battle they had never chosen.
For the first time, there was no one for him to follow, no mission someone else had decided upon for him, and no voice to show him the way.
The decision had to be his.
And he chose to stay.
He ascended the Dark Tower as realities crumbled around him.
He crossed corridors where time flowed in opposite directions, witnessed universes reduced to fragments of light, and heard the echoes of civilizations fading away without understanding why their skies had shattered.
Every step reminded him of the magnitude of the task before him, but it also helped him understand something the Crimson King had never grasped: power did not mean owning everything, but accepting responsibility for what one could protect.
Upon reaching the heart of the tower, Jonathan found the place where the countless paths of existence converged. There, amid impossible structures and currents of energy that seemed to contain the birth and death of entire universes, he felt the tower acknowledge him.
Not as an intruder or another victim, but as someone who had reached its depths and refused to surrender.
Jonathan then extended his hand.
The darkness responded.
He did not attempt to destroy it or subjugate it through brute force. Instead, he imposed his will upon it, separating the Crimson King's corrupting influence from the structures that could still be saved.
Shadows swirled around him, and the ancient doors began to glow once more, one after another.
Some realities remained doomed, too badly damaged to recover; others barely retained a spark of life. Jonathan could not save everything, and that truth would accompany him for the rest of his existence. Nevertheless, wherever a possibility remained, he fought to turn it into a new beginning.
That was how Jonathan came to master the Dark Tower.
He did not become its master to rule over others, but its guardian, someone willing to maintain the balance between worlds that did not even know they were connected.
From the heart of the tower, he began rebuilding the fractured realities, restoring pathways between dimensions, repairing wounds that threatened to spread, and giving countless universes the opportunity to continue their own stories. Not every lost life returned, nor could every fate be corrected, but the end the Crimson King had attempted to impose was no longer inevitable.
As time passed, the tower's doors began opening once more onto unknown worlds.
Jonathan observed those realities and understood that he could not protect them alone.
There would always be threats emerging from the cracks in existence, beings seeking to control the destinies of others, and people who, like him, would eventually face horrors they had never imagined.
That was why he began searching for those who could understand such a burden.
He was not looking for kings, conquerors, or individuals who wanted to bring entire universes to their knees before their power. He was looking for survivors, people who had lost too much yet still held on to a reason to keep moving forward; individuals capable of looking death in the eye, defying an apparently inevitable fate, and rising again even when the entire world demanded that they remain on the ground.
The first door he opened led him to a distant reality, to a cemetery on the outskirts of New York.
There, a young man named Ken Ivanov Castle had lost his family and was on the verge of accepting a deal with Ah Puch, the god of death. His story was only beginning, and Jonathan did not intervene to change it. He merely watched from a distance, sensing in the young man a will whose true potential he had yet to understand.
Ken was not Jonathan, and Jonathan had no intention of turning him into someone like himself. That was precisely why he found him interesting.
There were countless worlds, and in each of them, people who would one day have to make decisions capable of changing their destinies. Some would be chosen by gods; others would discover their powers in the depths of despair. Some would fight to reclaim what they had lost, while others would discover that their purpose was to protect something they had never known.
Jonathan would offer them an opportunity when the time came.
Thus began his new mission: to gather those capable of facing the impossible and give them a place in a struggle that transcended their own universes. They would not be his slaves or mere weapons, but companions capable of deciding for themselves what kind of existence they wished to build.
From the top of the Dark Tower, Jonathan gazed at the countless lights beginning to shine once more between the dimensions. He knew that peace would never be absolute, that pain would not disappear, and that sooner or later, enemies would emerge to challenge the fragile balance he had restored.
But he no longer feared that possibility.
The Crimson King had tried to imprison him in perfect happiness to steal his identity. Now Jonathan understood that no reality deserved to be saved if doing so meant depriving its inhabitants of the freedom to choose their own paths.
And as the Dark Tower rose above infinity, the former exorcist took the first step toward a new era.
An era in which worlds would no longer stand alone.
An era in which those who defied death, fate, and even the gods themselves could gather beneath a single banner.
And an era in which Jonathan Belmont, Guardian of Realities, would begin assembling the few who were capable of changing the course of existence.