The war had relocated the battlefield no longer the Silver City. No longer Earth. No longer reality.
Kairos and the Rebirth battled one another in the Timeless Abyss — a realm between past, present, and future where material objects lacked form. The wind convulsed with shattered memories; cycles of time unspun and spun themselves like pieces of glass trapped forever in darkness.
Kairos was suspended in mid-air, hot with blinding luminescence like a blazing star, encompassed by tendrils of star-fire and tendrils of reality.
The Rebirth loomed before him, armor broken but unshattered, its spear thrumming with the unwound power of broken timelines.
Around them, Veyra and the susurrations of Kairos's other lives contended with the tide of Unbound. The blackness seethed and churned on and on, its tormented shapes outstretched and clawing to trap the very fabric of being, and rend asunder the final frays of creation.
> "You have gone too far, Kairos," the voice of Rebirth bellowed, resounding across the void. "You were to be a vessel—not a defier."
Kairos's lips curled into a sadistic grin. His golden-crimson eyes burned with rage and comprehension.
"I was meant to be more than a puppet. You bound infinite lives to your cycle of killing. I'm here to shatter it."
He unsheathed his sword—the Aetherbrand, forged in the union of a thousand lifetimes of power—and charged.
Their blades clashed in an explosion that shattered the void.
Shards of forgotten timelines swirled around them:
— A galaxy ravaged by war with Kairos as a dead and forgotten king.
— A far-off galaxy with him becoming a star prophet.
— A peaceful village where he was murdered protecting his family.
All the lost lives flooded his mind then, energizing him.
---
The Clash of Titans
Kairos's assault was merciless.
He twirled in mid-air, unleashing with fire-mad blurs that cut through Rebirth defenses. For each strike the Rebirth launched against him, Kairos launched a counter, summoning the martial skill of a thousand and the sorcerer's guile of forgotten empires.
Veyra in disguise expended all that was remaining of her energy on The Bastion Veil — a resplendent crystal coat of light that protected their allies from the corrupt cosmos. She was with Arius and Riven, echoes revived of previous lives of Kairos himself, who struggled with ancient forbidden powers by millennia and the Unbound.
> "Kairos, we can't hold on forever!" Veyra wailed telepathically.
Kairos heard her—but now he could not let go.
The Rebirth growled, the spear whirling in a maelstrom of cosmic madness. It hurled the spear at Kairos, slicing space behind it. Ages folded up before the spear — ancient futures unraveling into nullity.
Kairos set his teeth and wrapped the spear in his bare hand.
Time twisted. His body seethed, bones shattering—but he would not let go.
Calling upon the common will of his limitless selves, Kairos let out a deafening bellow and hurled the spear into stardust.
The Rebirth stumbled.
> "Impossible," it whispered, its flawless form trembling.
"I hold the will of all your souls you have bound," Kairos stated, voice shaking with echo in echo. "And we will bring you down."
---
The Apotheosis
The Rebirth stumbled for the first time.
Kairos struck his fist into the empty air and ripped open a fresh tear—but not one of ruin.
A doorway of bare creation,USB seething with bare possibility.
>USB "Eclipse Genesis," he named, calling up the final confluence of all the lives that had been lived and yet to be lived.
The energy exploded forth. The doorway grew, not only absorbing the battlefield, but the shattered timelines, the Unbound, and even the Timeless Abyss itself.
Kairos became a channel—not of conquest, but rebirth by option.
The Unbound, caught in the wave, were unmade—not destroyed, but freed, dissolved into raw possibility to become something new.
The Rebirth screamed, its body disintegrating under the weight of unshackled time. "You don't understand! Without the cycle, all will become chaos!"
Kairos stepped forward, radiant with limitless energy. "Then I'll forge a future where no one is bound by fate again."
With a final dash of the Aetherbrand, Kairos cut through the heart of the Rebirth.
Light shockwave illuminated everything it touched.
---
Silence.
Slowly, slowly the world began to reform itself once more.
But not as before.
The Cycle of Reincarnation was done—but in its place a New Dawn. One where souls would choose, their own lives, their own destinies of free will, no longer eternally entwined with none.
Kairos fell, his broken but unbroken body, his strength remaining.
Veyra stood next to him, panting and smiling. "You did it."
He grinned, his exhaustion holding him back. "We did."
His friends appeared—ghosts of the former lives, their smiling forms shattering in front of them before their faces slowly faded into black, glad to finally rest after all those years.
> The war was over.
But the job of creating a new world was only beginning.