The beach has become a living memory.
Every grain of black sand remembers a kiss.
Every wave carries the echo of a laugh shared ten billion years ago.
The night-blooming cereus have spread into forests that stretch across continents, opening only when Liora dreams.
Today is the day their children call "Family Dawn."
Once every million years, they all return—no matter how far they have wandered through the outer universes.
Kael stands on a cliff of living obsidian, shirtless, wings folded loosely, watching the horizon.
Liora stands beside him, hand in his, silver hair braided with threads of void that shimmer like captured starlight.
She wears a simple black dress that moves like liquid night.
The sky fills with wings.
Hundreds.
Thousands.
Millions.
Their children arrive in waves.
Some small and playful, chasing each other through the air like shooting stars.
Some ancient and solemn, carrying entire galaxies on their shoulders as gifts.
All of them beautiful.
All of them carrying the perfect blend of shadow and void wings, crimson-amethyst eyes, and the same impossible smile their parents share.
The youngest (barely a century old) lands first, crashing into Kael's arms with enough force to shake the cliff.
"Daddy! I brought you a black hole that sings!"
Kael catches him, laughing.
The eldest daughter lands gracefully beside Liora, bows with mock formality that doesn't hide her grin.
"Mother. Father. The outer councils have declared today a universal holiday.
They call it Family Dawn.
No laws may be written. No wars may be fought. Only love allowed."
Liora kisses her forehead.
"Good."
The beach transforms.
Tables rise from the sand—black glass, endless, laden with food born from memory: the first meal they shared after the war, the wine from their wedding on a dead god's corpse, fruits that taste like every first kiss their children ever had.
They feast.
Stories flow like wine.
The middle son tells how he taught a dying universe to dream again.
A daughter recounts convincing two warring realities to fall in love instead.
The youngest demonstrates his singing black hole, which hums Liora's name in twelve perfect harmonies.
Liora laughs so hard new flowers bloom across an entire continent.
Kael watches her, eyes soft.
Later, when the feast winds down, the children spread out across the infinite beach—some to play, some to create new stars, some to simply lie in the sand and listen to the waves sing their parents' names.
Kael and Liora walk alone along the water's edge.
Hand in hand.
Wings brushing.
Barefoot.
Liora stops beneath a forest of cereus that opens only for her.
She turns to him.
"Kael."
He stops.
"Yes, wife?"
She places his hand over the place where the 13th Universe once lived inside her.
It is quiet now.
Peaceful.
But today it stirs again.
Not with war.
With life.
Another child.
Kael's eyes glow brighter than all four moons (the fourth golden one joined centuries ago).
He pulls her close, kisses her slow and deep and full of every promise he has kept for ten billion and one years.
When they part, a fifth moon begins to form on the horizon—small, violet, born from this exact moment.
Liora laughs against his lips.
"You always overdo it."
"You always deserve it."
They walk back to the pavilion that appears only when they want privacy.
The children pretend not to notice, but they smile.
Because they know the truth their parents taught them without words:
Love is not a story with a beginning and end.
Love is the endless beach under eternal moons.
Love is a man with shadow wings and a woman with void wings choosing each other every day, every year, every eternity.
Love is the reason the universe exists at all.
Inside the pavilion, Kael and Liora make love like the first time they were whole.
Slow enough to taste forever.
Desperate enough to remind each other they are real.
Laughing enough to birth new stars.
When they finish, they lie tangled in black silk, watching their children play through the open walls.
Liora traces the black ring—now a single band shared between their joined hands.
"Promise me one more thing," she whispers.
"Anything."
"Promise me we'll never stop."
Kael kisses her palm.
"I already did.
Ten billion years ago.
Today.
Ten billion years from now.
We never stop, Liora.
We only begin again."
Outside, their children build a new constellation in the shape of intertwined wings.
Inside, the Eternal Night Sovereign and the Void Empress hold each other.
And forever, for once, stretches out like the beach—endless, warm, and entirely theirs.
**The Absolute, Eternal, Perfect End**
(Thank you for walking this infinity with them.)