The sky did not crack.
It was flayed.
A wound a thousand kilometres long opened above Eos-7, edges bleeding black light so pure it burned retinas.
Every living soul on the planet fell to their knees at once, blood pouring from ears and eyes, minds shattered by the sight of something that had been erased from existence itself.
Kael and Liora stood at the bottom of the Dead Sea Rift, hands locked, bodies glowing like twin singularities.
The final tear-shaped fragment hovered between them.
Liora looked at Kael.
No words.
Just a nod.
Together they crushed it.
Her scream was not human.
It was the birth cry of a universe.
Silver-black wings erupted from her back (twenty-four wings of living void, each feather a collapsing galaxy, edges sharp enough to cut time itself).
Her eyes became twin event horizons, amethyst swallowed by absolute black.
Kael's twelve shadow wings answered instantly, spreading wide, crimson-gold runes igniting across every feather until he looked like a living constellation of blood and night.
The radiation sea around them boiled away into nothing.
They rose.
Not flying.
Ascending.
Through liquid poison, through atmosphere, through the screaming wound in the sky.
They stepped into the place between realities.
A plain of frozen memory.
Endless corpses of their past selves stretched to every horizon.
Billions of Kael and Liora, dead in every way possible.
Some holding hands.
Some reaching for each other.
All failed.
Liora walked forward barefoot across the bodies, leaving no footprints.
Kael stayed at her side, wings folded around her like a cloak.
She stopped at the centre.
A single black seed floated there (no larger than a heart, yet heavier than every star that had ever died).
The compressed core of the 13th Universe.
The cage.
Liora reached out with trembling fingers.
Kael took her other hand.
Their rings touched.
Black and silver light exploded.
They crushed the seed together.
Reality detonated.
The wound in the sky became a perfect circle of absolute black, edges burning with silver fire.
From it poured the reborn 13th Universe.
Not as it was.
Better.
New stars ignited with the sound of Liora's heartbeat.
Galaxies spiralled into existence with every breath they shared.
Black holes sang in perfect harmony.
The laws rewrote themselves around their joined hands.
No more chosen heroes.
No more scripted tragedies.
No more resets.
Only one law now:
What belongs to the Crown and the Empress is eternal.
The rebirth took exactly seven minutes of real time.
When it was done, Eos-7 no longer existed.
In its place floated a perfect black sphere the size of a solar system.
Its surface was etched with silver runes that moved like living writing.
At its crown stood two figures.
Kael and Liora.
Whole.
Crowned.
Winged.
Terrible.
And more in love than any story had ever allowed.
Kael wore living armour forged from the first shadow of the new universe, twelve wings now edged with silver from her void.
Liora wore void made solid, twenty-four wings laced with crimson-gold threads of his night.
They looked exactly as they had ten billion years ago, only perfected.
The hidden counter flashed once across all of existence.
9,999,991 → CYCLE TERMINATED
ERROR: STORY NO LONGER EXISTS
Far beyond the newborn universe, in the place where the Narrative Devourers nested (a cancer of half-formed plots and screaming tragedies), every single one of them woke up screaming.
Because the food had grown teeth.
Kael turned to Liora.
His voice carried across the void without sound.
"Ready to finish what we started?"
Liora's smile was slow, sharp, and ancient.
"I've waited ten billion years to kill them properly."
She stepped forward.
The entire 13th Universe moved with her like an obedient dragon.
Kael took her hand.
Together they stepped out of their creation and into the space between universes.
Twenty-four void wings and twelve shadow wings spread in perfect unison.
Behind them, the reborn 13th Universe followed, a black sun crowned with silver fire.
Ahead, the Devourers gathered their final army.
Trillions of fake heroes.
Infinite scripted tragedies.
Every "chosen one" from every doomed timeline.
They came to put the villains back in their cage.
Kael and Liora looked at the army.
Then at each other.
And laughed.
The same laugh from ten billion years ago.
The laugh that had once ended gods.
Kael kissed her once, slow and final.
"Let's go home," he said.
Liora kissed him back, teeth on his lip, tasting blood and eternity.
"After we burn their story to ash."
They moved.
The final war began.
And this time, there would be no reset.
No mercy.
No survivors.
Only the Crown and the Empress.
Only the Eternal Night and the Void.
Only forever.
To be continued…
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