Epilogue: The Light That Remembers
When the Dragon's roar faded, the cosmos was quiet for the first time since the beginning.
The shattered fragments of the Snail drifted through the dark, no longer consuming, no longer preserving — simply being.
And from those fragments, new stars began to form.
Andromeda, though cast beyond the horizon of her own making, did not vanish.
She watched in stillness as the Dragon's world was restored — oceans rekindled, constellations rethreaded into the fabric of divine order. For the first time, she understood what her creation had lacked:
the breath of the divine, the purpose that cannot be manufactured.
She had made the Snail to steal eternity.
But eternity cannot be stolen — it can only be shared.
And the Dragon, standing amidst the light of his reclaimed worlds, saw this truth too.
He realized that his victory was not the end of Andromeda, but her awakening.
In his defiance, he had reminded even the architects of galaxies that creation was not born from power, but from remembrance.
For when God gave him that world, He did not give him dominion — He gave him trust.
And in protecting it, the Dragon became more than guardian — he became the echo of divine will made manifest.
So the universe changed.
The stars learned to shine not out of fear of darkness, but out of memory of light.
The spiral and the flame no longer opposed each other — they turned together, forever bound, tracing the sacred pattern that holds all things.
And somewhere beyond the farthest nebula, where time folds in on itself,
Andromeda whispers the lesson she once tried to defy:
"Creation is not to be taken.
Creation is to be kept —
in love, in memory, and in the light that remembers."