The horizon had forgotten what color was.
Everything was fire — but not the kind that burned. This flame rewrote.
Black for memory. White for order. Crimson for hunger.
Three forces, three wills, three truths — colliding in a single place where the world itself forgot which way time should run.
Sid stood at the center, breathing the end of creation.
The air trembled around him. His body carried the marks of all he had endured — fractures of godlight stitched with daemon shadow. Behind him, the remnants of the Unbound watched in reverent terror, their weapons useless before the enormity unfolding above.
The sky was alive.
Ravh'Zereth's Black Flame swirled like a devouring halo.
Eryon's First Flame descended as a pillar of perfect light, burning away shadow and sin alike.
And then Velgrin's Eighth Flame — crimson and gold — erupted between them, its pulse a steady drumbeat of defiance.
Each flame demanded dominance. None would yield.
The clash was not a battle. It was philosophy made visible.
Every heartbeat split the ground into three layers — zones of light, void, and silence that overlapped like sheets of broken glass.
Within each layer, reality bent.
Rivers flowed upward.
Shadows burned white.
The dead whispered to the living in voices of reversed echo.
Sid tried to stabilize it. His Shadow Dominion expanded — thin, luminous lines webbing through the madness, trying to give the chaos shape.
But even Dominion buckled under the strain.
The world didn't want to exist like this.
"Sid!"
Nox's voice reached him from the fringes of the rift. "You're holding three flames that were never meant to coexist! You can't—"
"I don't have a choice!" Sid shouted back, his voice half-lost in the thunder of colliding divinities. "If I drop one, it consumes the rest!"
And yet, choice was the core of it.
Each flame whispered in his mind with words sharp as promises.
"Let go," murmured Ravh'Zereth, the Black Flame curling like smoke through his veins. "Let the world remember pain. It's the only truth worth keeping."
"Obey," commanded Eryon, his voice like sunlight turned into law. "The balance must be restored. All else is corruption."
"Transcend," hissed Velgrin, laughter echoing through fire. "We are beyond memory and law. Be more."
Sid's thoughts split like mirrors. His body followed suit — half shadow, half light, and something in between that pulsed crimson, wrong and alive.
The ground erupted.
From Velgrin's camp rose his Ascendants — those who had received the Eighth Brand, their bodies shaped by his will. They charged into the surreal battlefield, immune to fear. From the heavens descended Eryon's Seraphim, blazing beings whose wings were arcs of geometry. Between them crawled Ravh'Zereth's echoes, formed of memory and grief — fragments of those erased by divine decree.
Each army represented an idea:
Velgrin's — freedom through annihilation.
Eryon's — order through submission.
Ravh'Zereth's — remembrance through ruin.
And in the middle stood Sid, the unwilling god between gods.
Yara's unit fought near the periphery, blades cutting through shapes that refused to die.
Lucien's voice barked commands through static: "Hold the line! Don't let the realms fold over each other!"
But it was hopeless. Reality kept fracturing.
Kael's rifle discharged into an enemy that wasn't flesh but concept. The bullet struck the idea of "fear," and for a moment, everyone felt brave — until the backlash made the ground itself panic, opening beneath them.
Reinhardt's corruption worsened; his veins glowed with black fire, his eyes hollowed by exposure to too many flames. Still, he fought beside Yara, defying whatever infection claimed him. "If we fall here," he shouted, "it'll be the gods who fear us!"
Sid fell to one knee. The three flames screamed within him — their collision now a war of identity.
He saw through each of them:
Through Ravh'Zereth, he saw every erased soul clawing for recognition.
Through Eryon, he saw a perfect order where no choice was allowed.
Through Velgrin, he saw liberation without compassion, power without memory.
His heart throbbed with all three truths, and for a heartbeat, he understood them.
But understanding was not peace.
"Shadow Dominion…" he whispered. "Contain. Define. Rewrite."
The black rings of Dominion expanded from him again — now merging with streaks of gold and white. The air buckled. The battlefield warped into overlapping pocket realms.
One realm became a frozen cathedral, where time stood still.
Another, a void ocean, where the stars were drowned memories.
A third, a burning sky, where thought itself combusted.
Each pocket was a piece of Sid's mind externalized — his struggle turned into geography.
The others fought within those fragments.
Elira battled a seraph whose face was her own, made of memory stolen from Ravh'Zereth's echoes.
Nox cut down Velgrin's Ascendants, his sword now burning with what looked suspiciously like prayer.
Yara stood bleeding beneath the weight of her mark, its reaction to Velgrin's flame making her body half-translucent. "Sid… if you lose yourself—"
He couldn't answer.
There was no language left.
And then, through the collapsing layers of reality, Velgrin himself appeared.
His armor burned with the Eighth Flame, his eyes two collapsing stars.
"Do you see it now, Sid?" he called across the battlefield. "This is what we were always meant to be! Three flames, one destiny — Ascension!"
Sid's voice came ragged. "No. Just corruption by different names."
Velgrin grinned. "You can't fight truth with balance."
Eryon's voice boomed from the heavens: "Then let balance burn you."
The sky tore open.
Three pillars met — black, white, and red — and the collision erased color, sound, and reason.
For an instant, everyone was silent.
Then came the sound like the world's first scream.
Continents split. Stars dimmed. The three flames fought not over land or souls but over the definition of reality.
Sid screamed into the storm, trying to hold everything together. "You want war? Then you'll have it in me!"
Shadow Dominion ignited. His eyes became twin galaxies — one devouring, one creating. The three flames surged through him, meeting in his core.
The shockwave that followed erased half the battlefield's geography, flattening armies of gods and demons alike.
When the dust cleared, Sid was still standing — barely — at the eye of a sphere of equilibrium, his Dominion holding the impossible together.
But it was temporary.
The strain cracked his bones, bled his mind.
The war was not over. It had only changed shape.
As the survivors looked upon him — god, demon, human, all trembling in awe — they realized something terrifying.
The war of three flames was no longer outside.
It was inside Sid.
And if he broke, creation would break with him.