[It was the true and utter belief in nothing. He had become something far more than void, a gripping, endless feeling that defied words.]
My chest pounded. Warm blood streamed from my eyes in thick, scarlet lines, each drop sizzling as it hit the snow.
[He had become the literal and the abstract, the illogical and the unnatural. He had become a true Great Old One.]
Purtunah's black sword came down in a single, perfect arc. Bone snapped under my skin as I raised my arm.
Yet the blade shattered against me like brittle glass, its edge breaking upon my flesh as if it had struck reality itself.
She stepped back, startled.
I rose to my full height as black wings burst from my back, feathers sharp as obsidian.
My hand reached out, and my sword materialized with a sound like thunder cracking the heavens.
Her vast armies, the flying dragons above, the walking titans below, the humanoid soldiers in their armor of living scales, all crumbled to nothing at my design.
Shadows alone remained, quivering where their forms had stood.
"I truly planned to fight this war without this power," I said softly, my voice deeper, layered with something alien. "Mirabel hates this power."
Purtunah laughed, a sound brittle and wrong.
She forged another sword of blackness in her hand, this one dripping with death far older than herself.
"Don't tell me," she said. "Is it time? Past midnight already? You should have been prepared."
She snapped her fingers.
The shadows I had unmade flickered and reformed, her soldiers resurrected, an endless tide of scaled death.
But before I could move to erase them again, they vanished.
My blade moved of its own accord. The next heartbeat, it was already buried in her chest. Scales split, her heart pierced.
"Scream, Dragon Queen," I whispered. "I am bringing down the weight of nothing onto your people."
[It was at this moment that Nicholas decided this was an existence he wanted dead. Cause and meaning no longer mattered. Execution was justified.]
Her death, or her living, meant nothing. She was simply there. Simply false. Simply… unnecessary.
I pulled my blade free. Black blood steamed on the snow. She leapt back, hurling spheres of black fire.
The snow ignited, burning with flames that devoured cold and heat alike.
She was the one freeing souls from Hell. Perhaps she did not even know the consequences.
Perhaps she never would have borne this burden had she not crossed me.
[Nicholas had imagined infinite reasons for their disappearance, an unending catalog of possibilities.]
I walked through her flames, reaching out. "Dead End."
[But the only conclusion that made sense was him. He was the end of all. He would never allow anyone else to end them. Which meant it was him.]
Purtunah was a Death Dragon, already dead. Killing her should have been impossible.
So I ended her instead. My end, not hers. A more permanent death in my eyes.
Yet she resisted. Her corrupted nature fought the inevitability. Her left eye went dark, but she clung to her form.
[Yes. Nicholas could only conclude it was him. Who else could have erased them? If they were gone, it was his doing.]
She tried to move, but her body began to crumble.
First she lost her tongue, so she could not speak before me. Then her ears, so she could not hear my decree.
"All those before me will meet their end," I said. "It is a law. Not even Death itself may live."
Her arms dissolved next, so she could not raise a blade.
"It is a law which I have ordained as absolute. For you, the false self, the true self, both must die."
Her legs followed, so she could not run. "It is a finality in which those above must submit, and those below must cower."
Her life unraveled last, so she could not carry a miracle she did not deserve.
"This is my decree. For Death. Now return to that which is mine."
[Nicholas had absorbed a control over death so absolute it dwarfed the scale of his soul. In his hands, it was a grain of sand weighed against a world.]
I turned to the sky. My voice cracked, a prayer and a command. "Mirabel, hear me now! I shall return your life to you!"
I called upon my power and reached for her, for the children, for what I had lost.
I tried to summon them back into existence. To unwind the erasure. To reset it all.
And the world answered, not in a thunder of armies, but with the cold, expectant gaze of power.
Around the horizon, the kings and queens of the planet rose into view, their faces set and their weapons leveled.
Dozens of crowns glinted in the broken light, a coalition of sovereigns holding a single, terrible judgment.
Their blades rested at my throat in a silent, unanimous decree, each tip like a frozen star poised to pierce.
There was Uhana, sole queen of Fertical, her golden veil fluttering in the dead air.
Stella stood beside her, now queen of Dangu, her presence sharp as a blade itself.
Calista's eyes glimmered with judgment, and to my utter surprise, Cole of Giah was with her.
Midir loomed at the edge of the formation, Ruari beside him like a shadow, and, far more shocking.
The queen of Bamdia stood arm in arm. Jaquline's bronze hair caught what little light remained, and her dark hazel eyes burned with a quiet venom.
Her pale skin, stretched taut over a slim, serpentine figure, seemed almost spectral.
She, like all the rest, wore armor polished for war and carried her blade as though its purpose had always been to strike me down.
From Falsus came the king Zaratas, his long, unkempt blonde hair trailing over rough, weathered skin.
His armor was burnished orange, his blade forged to match his sunlit hue.
And from Veritas came its king and queen, the king with short black hair, green eyes, and bronze-tinged skin.
The queen with flowing yellow hair, eyes black as void, and a complexion only slightly lighter than his.
To see the king of Falsus standing with the monarchs of Veritas without even a flicker of dispute was unsettling beyond words.
But most damning of all were the faces I knew, faces I had once called allies.
Merlin was there, cloaked in her slick black robes, her face veiled but her aura unmistakable.
And Arthur, Arthur Pendragon himself, stood at her side. His rough, dirty orange hair hung low, his eyes the same molten shade.
His skin was dark, sun-baked like caramelized stone.
He bore no sword; only his armor, light reddish-orange with the crest of a lion on its chest, and a long crimson cape that snapped in the wind.
Each and every one of them, every sovereign of this planet, was here to stop me, to deny me the act of resurrection even as the war began.
Their presence was not chance. This was not a sudden council.
This had been orchestrated, planned from the first moment a thread was pulled.
A vile thing to do to someone like me.
"So what! Is this a threat?" I taunted, letting the wind carry my words through the cold.
"Oh great rulers of the lands we share, are those your feet I see stepping on my snow?"
Arthur stepped forward first, and even the others betrayed a flicker of surprise.
He moved with the iron certainty of a man born to command. "Great Nicholas," he said, voice even, hands folded as if in courtesy.
"You must not. I know your grief. We can uncover this together, but you must not do this again."
There was steel under his calm. He was not begging; he was ordering. The threat thinned the air.
I laughed because laughter tasted better than fear.
Armor began to weave over my skin like shadowed scales, a scarf wrapping about my throat and, absurd as it felt, a straw hat settling on my head.
My blade trembled in my hand, eager. "How does one order nothing?" I asked, soft and without patience.
Merlin appeared at Arthur's side, robe slick and dark, her voice a knife of certainty. "He's right, Nicholas. We can't risk that. Not now."
Their eyes tracked me, hunting for the flinch that would mark me human.
For a moment I let them look for a slave's weakness, for the chance at freedom they all imagined.
"How does one capture absence?" I replied, and the question was its own weapon.
Arthur answered with fire: a ball of flame arced toward me straight from his palm.
It struck the darkness that clung to my armor and died like a moth on glass.
"To set the dark ablaze is to reveal your fear," I said. "Tell me, Arthur, are you afraid of the dark?"
[The third event, this must happen regardless of any and all refutations. They must all fight here.]
Then Midir moved, the man I had wanted to speak most.
He drew his sword slow, ceremonial, the metal drinking the light around him.
"So, Nicholas," he said, voice hollow with duty, "I give you the gift of resurrection, and you point your intent at existence?"
I shrugged, careless. "Bring them back. It was sudden. My heart broke. I'm sorry."
I dropped my blade in mock surrender. Calista exhaled a soft, disbelieving sound, the only sound of relief in the ring.
In the same breath my blade was through her throat.
Her head came free, hot and wet in my palm.
I felt the world pivot on that motion as every gaze snapped to me.
I held her head up like a proclamation and spat.
Cole's eyes finally caught up; I watched him register the truth in stages, revulsion, then calculation, then a thin, hard anger.
I turned my head slowly to the sovereigns encircling me, and my voice went low and absolute.
"Listen closely," I said, letting the snow drink the words. "Each time you reveal yourselves to me again, you die."