The silence that followed was absolute.
It was a silence he hadn't heard since the nightmare began. There was no hum of the cage, no distant growls, no scrape of claws across asphalt. Only the soft whisper of wind threading through shattered buildings—and the sound of his own breathing, ragged and wet with blood.
Artur remained on his knees, the axe still in his hand. His arm was so heavy now that the blade's tip rested against the ground.
He looked at the massacre around him.
A graveyard stretching across the entire block.
The colossal bodies of the Alphas stood as the great tombstones, while the smaller corpses of the hunting dogs and scouts lay scattered between them like unmarked graves.
He was the only living thing there.
The king of a kingdom of death.
He tried to stand.
His body refused.
The batteries were empty. The adrenaline, the fury, the stubborn will—everything had been spent in the last frenzy.
Now only the shell remained.
He turned his gaze to the invisible barrier at the end of the street. It still shimmered faintly. Beyond it, the infernal landscape—and the distant Colossi—were still there.
He had won the battle.
But he was still inside the cage.
A wave of futility washed over him, as powerful as the pain. He had killed them all.
For what?
To die alone on a street littered with monsters, thousands of light-years from home?
He let the axe fall.
The weapon that had been his companion—his only friend—struck the asphalt with a clang that echoed like thunder in the silence.
He looked up at the purple sky.
He didn't feel like a victor.
He didn't feel like a hero.
He felt like the last man on Earth.
Like the caretaker of a cemetery.
He had survived.
But survived what?
And for what?
The image of Carla and the other survivors passed through his mind. He had protected them by staying away.
But now?
Was it safe for him to approach them?
Or was he—and would he always be—the beacon that called the storm?
He didn't know.
And in that moment, he didn't care.
He was tired.
Terribly tired.
A fatigue that reached deeper than muscle and bone—a weariness of the soul. The kind that comes from staring into the abyss and finding the abyss staring back with indifference.
He lay down right there in the middle of the street, his head coming to rest only a few feet from the severed head of a scout.
He closed his eyes.
The asphalt was cold.
The pain was a burning coal wrapped around his body.
If he died there, so be it.
He had fought.
He had finished his war.
Silence was his only companion.
He lay there—the king of silence—waiting for the end, whether it came as death from his wounds or the dawn of another day in this hell.
He didn't know which would arrive first.
And he no longer had the strength to care.