The battlefield was ash.
The moons that once orbited the Egoverse lay shattered, their fragments drifting like forgotten promises. Wrath stood in the center, his blade pulsing with heat, his breath a furnace. He had waited.
He had burned.
And now, Pride approached.
No longer cloaked in arrogance. No longer crowned in mirrors.
Just Pride—walking, unarmed, unshielded, unchanged.
Wrath snarled. "You dare come without a weapon?"
Pride stopped a few paces away. "I am the weapon."
Wrath roared, charging forward, his blade cleaving through the air like a comet. The ground split. The sky screamed.
Pride did not move.
The blade halted inches from Pride's chest, trembling.
Wrath's eyes widened.
Pride looked into them—not with superiority, but with understanding.
"You are not fury," Pride said softly. "You are pain. You are rejection. You are the scream of a child who was never heard."
Wrath staggered.
"I gave you orders," Pride continued. "But I never gave you voice."
Wrath dropped his blade.
The fire dimmed.
"I wanted to be seen," Wrath whispered.
"I see you now."
Wrath fell to his knees.
And the battlefield, for the first time in eternity, was silent.
Pride placed a hand on Wrath's shoulder.
"You were never my enemy," Pride said. "You were my rage."
Wrath dissolved—not in defeat, but in release.
His flame returned to the Egoverse, not as destruction, but as warmth.
And Pride walked on.