Lying where the Titan had fallen, half-buried in blackened earth, was a fragment. Beside it lay an old, worn-out piece of paper, its edges torn and brittle as if it had survived countless storms. The fragment glimmered faintly, mocking the silence that had followed the Titan's fall.
The whole island shook. The earth convulsed beneath me, making me stumble and nearly lose balance.
Night's breath came in sharp, ragged gasps as he pushed himself forward, every muscle in his body screaming for rest. His lungs burned like hot coals pressed inside his chest, and every heartbeat was a thunderclap threatening to shatter his ribs from the inside. His legs felt like lead, his arms heavy, his wounds uncounted, yet he forced himself onward.
There was no time to stop.
His feet slapped against the ground, each step an act of defiance against collapse. The twisted forest closed in around him, the branches clawing at his skin and clothes like skeletal fingers desperate to drag him down. Splinters scraped across his arms, tearing cloth and flesh, leaving thin trails of blood.
His heart pounded in his chest—too fast, too violent, a rhythm of war drums urging him to move faster, faster, faster.
The vibrations he had felt earlier were no longer distant tremors. They were growing—deep, guttural rumbles that rose through the earth, shaking soil loose, splitting rock, tilting the ground beneath his feet. The island itself was unraveling, trembling as if some buried monster had awoken beneath its surface.
With every step, the land twisted more violently.
Roots erupted from the ground like traps snapping shut. Massive stones split open without warning, spilling shards sharp enough to slice skin. The trees warped into grotesque shapes, their bark cracking like bones under pressure. The air smelled of ash and decay, as though the forest itself had caught disease.
It was as if the island had gone mad.
And through that madness came a whisper.
Soft. Icy. Slithering into the cracks of his mind.
"You're not going to make it."
Night's teeth clenched so tightly his jaw ached. He shoved the voice aside, burying it under grit and rage. He couldn't afford doubt. Not now. Not when the ground beneath him was crumbling and the sky itself seemed ready to collapse.
He tightened his grip on the final fragment of the Shattered Heart, clutching it so hard his knuckles turned pale. The shard pulsed with faint light, cold against his torn palm, steady despite the chaos.
The last piece.
The thing he had fought and bled for.
The thing others had died for.
And now, as he held it, the island itself was devouring its own body to bury it all.
Why now?
Why was it only now—when the ground split beneath him, when his lungs begged for air, when everything was crumbling—that he wanted to live?
The thought cut deeper than any wound.
He stumbled, knees cracking against a jagged root, pain lancing up his legs. For a moment, his vision blurred from the blow, but he forced himself forward, blood dripping down his shin.
It was strange.
After everything—after countless battles, after watching blood soak into the earth, after standing on the edge so many times ready to let go—
Now, he finally wanted to live.
Not just survive, not just endure the endless cycle of running and fighting.
Live.
The word echoed in him like an ancient bell, ringing against walls he had built around his own heart.
The realization slammed into him like a spear through his chest. His steps faltered.
The ground beneath his feet cracked wide, releasing a violent groan as if the island itself was breaking its own spine. A tree beside him twisted with a sickening snap, its trunk exploding into splinters.
He had spent so long burying that desire.
So long pretending.
Pretending he didn't care whether his story ended here. Pretending he'd be fine if the void swallowed him whole. Pretending the world could burn and it wouldn't matter.
But now—
Now he was running like a hunted beast, not to escape, but to cling to the shred of life still left to him.
And for the first time in too long…
He wanted to keep it.
His feet slammed against the ground harder, his pace uneven but unyielding. His lungs seared, dragging ragged breaths like shards of glass. Sweat stung his cuts, blood trickled freely, but his vision sharpened with strange clarity.
That single spark—wanting to live—pierced the fog he had drowned in for years.
But then—
The ground vanished.
It happened too fast.
One heartbeat he was running, and in the next, there was nothing. No ground, no roots, no resistance—only empty air.
He reached out, fingers clawing for something—anything—to hold. Bark, stone, even thorn. But there was nothing.
He fell.
Fast.
The wind roared past him, tearing tears from his eyes. His stomach twisted violently as the abyss swallowed him whole.
A scream rose in his throat, desperate and raw—but no sound escaped. Only silence. The silence of freefall.
And then, crueler than the fall itself, a single thought echoed in his head.
I was too slow.
The abyss rushed to meet him, but no ground came. Only endless descent.
The darkness swallowed him.
No sky. No earth. No sound.
Only weightlessness.
A single tear slipped free, sliding down his cheek before vanishing into the void.
I failed.
After wanting to die for so long… I finally wanted to live.
And now, when it mattered, I had nothing left.
The thought cut deeper than any blade.
The fall stretched endlessly.
I reached for the sky—but it was gone.
I opened my mouth to cry out—but no sound came. My voice was smothered, my throat strangled by silence.
Weightless descent. Endless. Cold.
I was tired.
Tired of running from shadows I could never defeat.
Tired of bleeding for fragments that only brought more ruin.
Tired of losing everyone and everything that had ever mattered.
Tired of standing at graves and pretending I was still alive.
I was tired of being afraid.
I wanted to cut it all away.
I wanted the fear, the pain, the despair, the voices, the memories—all of it—to fall before my blade like grass before the scythe.
And then—
Something inside me cracked.
A soundless shatter, like glass breaking in the deepest chamber of my soul.
A weight—buried so deep I had forgotten it was ever there—split wide.
And something else surged out.
Cold. Heavy. Relentless.
A fire—but not fire as the world knew it.
Not red. Not warm. Not light.
It was black.
It crawled up from within me, slithering like smoke from an ancient wound. It reached my chest, coiling tight until my ribs ached, then spread outward.
And then it flared.
Violent. Soundless. Absolute.
A dark flame that devoured without hunger, consumed without heat.
Cold. Yet within that cold, my pain dissolved.
The wounds, the exhaustion, the weight—all erased as if they had never been.
The fall stopped.
Time bent.
Even the void itself seemed to hesitate, pausing to watch.
The flame crawled up my arms, threaded through my veins, spilled from my mouth, burned in my eyes. Until it wasn't just inside me.
It was me.
It didn't shine. It erased.
The air trembled. The void cracked. Space itself warped and froze around me.
I reached out with a trembling hand, and the black fire reached too—like it had been waiting since the beginning of time for permission to exist.
It swallowed the nothingness before me.
Not with hunger.
But with purpose.
And I could only watch—helpless, terrified, enthralled—as it grew.
What is this…?
I didn't know.
But it felt real. More real than pain, more real than life, more real than anything I had ever touched.
The cold deepened. The space around me fractured, cracks spreading like shattered glass. Through those cracks, water surged in—icy, flooding, swallowing.
But my vision blurred too quickly to see more. The cold black flame pulsed one last time—then everything drowned.
And I drowned with it.