The wind that moved across the ruins of Heaven carried no hymns anymore.
Only the soft rattle of falling fragments — glass feathers, cracked halos, drifting like snow.
Sid stirred from where Nox had laid him on a stretch of broken marble. The cracks beneath him still glowed faintly, whispering remnants of divine code. His body felt wrong — like it remembered holding too much light. Every breath came with static, each heartbeat a dull ache of absence.
Around him, the Unbound were moving through the aftermath. Angels who had surrendered knelt beside mortals, helping lift debris. No one spoke loudly. The war had screamed itself hoarse.
And then came the voice.
"Sid…"
Lucien's.
Sid turned, and his breath caught.
Lucien was half-kneeling near a rift — the kind that shimmered like heat above an endless fall. His form flickered; not from injury, but from time itself unraveling around him. Every second that passed, another piece of him lagged behind, then caught up.
Nox saw it too. "He used his chronos-field during the breach," he murmured grimly. "He's still… holding it."
Lucien smiled faintly, eyes hollow but kind. "Someone had to keep the loop from collapsing when Sid cut the Sovereign's thread. If I hadn't stretched time, the recoil would've erased this whole realm."
Sid moved closer, his voice raw. "Then stop. You did enough—"
Lucien shook his head. "If I stop, everything we just saved folds backward. The seal you tore open between light and void hasn't stabilized yet. The field's the only thing keeping the wound from… remembering how to bleed."
The rift behind him pulsed — a shimmer of reality's exposed nerve.
Nox clenched his fists. "There's got to be another way."
"There isn't," Lucien said softly. "Time's currency is spent."
Sid fell to his knees beside him. "Then I'll take the field from you. I can hold it."
Lucien's laugh was weak but full. "You already held the world, Sid. Let me hold the second it breathes."
He reached into his coat, pulling out a small crystal sphere — the chronos core, the heart of his power. Inside it swirled thousands of reflections, each one a different instant from their journey: Sid's first Blackbind spark, Alfred's smile, Nox's training halls, Peter laughing in the rain.
"I can't take these with me," Lucien said, pressing the core into Sid's palm. "So you will."
Sid shook his head, tears streaking the ash from his face. "I can't—"
"You can," Lucien interrupted. "This isn't memory. It's potential. Every second I ever bought, every choice you never made — all stored here. You'll need it for what's coming."
The crystal pulsed once, then melted into Sid's hand — fusing into his veins like liquid light.
For a heartbeat, Sid saw the world not as it was, but as it could be: cities rebuilt, rivers clearing, children planting seeds where divine fire once fell. A future that felt possible.
Lucien smiled at his expression. "See? Still beautiful, even after all this."
The ground trembled. The rift widened, the shimmering edge now bleeding blue fire. Nox drew his blade, anchoring it into the marble to stabilize the distortion.
"It's eating through the realm faster," he said. "Lucien—whatever you're doing, do it now."
Lucien stood with effort, his body already translucent in parts. "When the field collapses, this plane will try to seal itself. You'll feel a pull — like drowning in air. Don't fight it. Let it happen."
Sid grabbed his wrist. "You're coming with us."
Lucien looked down at their joined hands, then at Sid's eyes. "If I leave, the loop goes wild. I'd rather end with purpose than fade into nothing."
He stepped back toward the rift. Time slowed around him; every falling feather froze midair, every echo turned into glass. Even Nox's voice lagged behind, distorted like a recording from another life.
"Lucien!" Sid shouted, reaching through the distortion.
Lucien's last words came across the fold — heavy, quiet, meant only for Sid.
"Remember why you fight. Not to save gods. Not to avenge demons. To make sure time itself remembers kindness."
And then, with a final exhale, Lucien dissolved into a thousand shards of golden light, each fragment carrying a second he had stolen back from oblivion. The rift sealed behind him — cleanly, silently.
The world resumed.
When motion returned, Sid stood staring at the empty space where Lucien had been. His hand still glowed faintly with the chronos-mark, ticking once every few breaths — a heartbeat that wasn't his.
Nox walked up beside him, face unreadable. "He didn't die," he said after a long pause. "He just… became what he always was. Time's mercy."
Sid didn't answer. He looked at the horizon instead, where the ruins of Heaven met the ashen clouds. "He gave me a second," he whispered. "I'll use it."
"Use it for what?" Nox asked quietly.
Sid turned, eyes steady now, no longer flickering with flame or light — just human determination.
"For the next world."
A distant explosion echoed — not from Heaven this time, but from the mortal realm far below. Smoke rose where the sky had torn during the siege.
Velgrin's remnants were still moving, and Sid could feel it — the tremor of the unfinished Ascension, the hum of power still unbound.
The victory was illusion. The war wasn't done.
Sid clenched his fist, feeling the chronos pulse under his skin. "Lucien gave me one moment," he said. "I'll make it count."
Nox sheathed his sword, nodding once. "Then we move."
As they walked toward the edge of the broken heavens, the light behind them dimmed — Heaven's last glow fading into a dull, mortal dawn.
Before they descended, Sid looked back one last time. The wind whispered through the ruins, carrying a voice — faint, familiar.
"Remember why."
He smiled faintly. "Always."
And as he stepped off the shattered edge, falling toward the world that still waited below, the chronos-mark on his hand pulsed once — a reminder that even gods could be outlived by one man's second.