The god-spark screamed within him, a torrent of power and pain, threatening to tear his body apart from the inside. Aloysius' boots cracked the molten glass underfoot as he planted himself between the breach and the dying beast.
The tendrils tightened razor heat slicing deep into muscle and bone. His vision flickered. Not from weakness, but from the overwhelming flood of possible futures pouring into his mind.
In one, he burned everything, sealing the breach for eternity… and with it, his life.In another, he spared himself just enough power to survive yet the shadows beyond the rift clawed their way into the world decades later, ending everything he had fought for.
No one else can do this. The god-spark's voice had grown quieter, almost mournful."I know," Aloysius whispered, his voice trembling with the weight of his choice.
He raised his sword not as a weapon, but as a conduit. Golden fire streamed into it, the heat bending reality itself. The flames along his back unfurled like a broken halo, shattering into radiant fragments that spun around him in a storm.
The tendrils lunged, desperate to interrupt. The beast, barely alive, shifted its massive bulk, interposing itself between Aloysius and the rift. Its eyes met his one last time. In that gaze, Aloysius saw truth the creature had been a prisoner, chained to guard the breach.
"Forgive me," Aloysius said, and brought the sword down.
The strike was not a slash it was a seal.The god-spark burned completely, its power pouring into the wound in reality. The rift screamed as if alive, its edges curling inward, devoured by golden light until there was nothing left but a scar of crystallized air.
The beast collapsed, its chains dissolving into dust. It gave a final, shuddering breath before vanishing in a rain of fading motes.
Aloysius stood there, trembling, the god-spark gone from his veins. His golden flames extinguished. His strength ordinary again. The silence was deafening.
And then… he realized something was wrong.The breach was sealed. But the hunger… had not vanished.It had moved.
It was inside him.