Forever has learned to surprise them.
Sometimes it arrives as a new color in the sky that has no name yet.
Sometimes as a child who appears fully grown, carrying memories of lifetimes spent in distant realities they never visited.
Today, it arrives as silence.
A perfect, absolute silence that even the waves obey.
Kael and Liora sit on the obsidian cliff, legs dangling over the edge, wings intertwined.
The six moons hang motionless.
The children have paused their games, looking up with quiet wonder.
Liora breaks the silence first.
"Do you feel it?"
Kael nods.
"Something new."
From the horizon, a single figure approaches.
Not one of their children.
Not a visitor from the outer universes.
Something else.
A being made of pure light and shadow intertwined, neither male nor female, neither young nor old.
It stops a respectful distance away.
Its voice is every voice they have ever loved, speaking at once.
"I am the First Question."
Liora tilts her head.
"And what is your question?"
The being smiles (the smile of something that has waited longer than forever).
"Now that you have won everything…
What will you do with it?"
Kael and Liora look at each other.
They have faced armies of gods.
They have broken the cage of reality.
They have built forever from the ashes of tragedy.
But this question stops them.
Liora speaks first.
"We will love each other."
The being waits.
Kael adds, "And we will raise our children to love without fear."
Still the being waits.
Liora continues, voice soft.
"We will create places where no one is ever forced to be the villain."
Kael finishes.
"And we will never stop choosing each other.
Every day.
Every eternity."
The being's form brightens.
"That is the answer I was born to hear."
It bows (deep, reverent).
"Then I have a gift."
The silence breaks.
From the being's hands unfolds a single, perfect seed.
Smaller than the one that held the 13th Universe.
Brighter than any star they have ever made.
"This is the seed of the Next Forever," the being says.
"Plant it when you are ready to begin again.
Not as Sovereign and Empress.
But as something new."
It places the seed in Liora's palm.
Then it dissolves into light that becomes the seventh moon (small, rainbow-colored, orbiting in a figure-eight around the others).
The beach exhales.
The children cheer.
Kael and Liora look at the seed.
Liora closes her fingers around it.
"Not yet," she whispers.
Kael kisses her temple.
"We have this forever first."
They stand.
Walk down to the water.
The children gather around them, curious.
Liora opens her hand.
The seed floats above her palm, glowing softly.
"This is for when we are ready to be beginners again," she tells them.
The eldest daughter smiles.
"Will you forget us?"
Kael answers.
"Never."
Liora adds, "We will just love you in a new way."
The youngest child reaches out and touches the seed.
It pulses once, warmly.
Then settles back into Liora's hand.
She tucks it into the place over her heart where the 13th Universe once lived.
Safe.
For now.
That night, the family gathers under seven moons.
They sing the old songs.
They tell the old stories.
They make new ones.
Kael and Liora dance on the water, wings spread, children circling them like living constellations.
When the dance ends, they return to their pavilion.
The children spread out across the beach to dream.
Inside, Kael and Liora make love like the universe is young and wild and entirely theirs.
Slow enough to taste every tomorrow.
Desperate enough to remind each other they are real.
Laughing enough to birth new colors in the sky.
When they finish, they lie tangled, watching the seven moons through open walls.
Liora traces the place where the seed rests inside her.
"One day," she whispers.
Kael kisses her slow and deep.
"One day," he agrees.
"But not today."
Today they have this forever.
And this forever is perfect.
The children sleep under stars that sing their parents' names.
The moons orbit in eternal harmony.
The beach stretches endless and warm.
And the Eternal Night Sovereign and the Void Empress hold each other.
Choosing each other.
Again.
And again.
And again.
Because forever is not the end.
Forever is the place where love learns to begin again.
Whenever it wants.
**The True, Absolute, Eternal End**