The Spire broke open at dawn that never came.
A vertical crack split the crimson tower from base to summit—slow, deliberate—the way a mouth opens when it has waited centuries to speak.
Red light poured out. Too thick to be light, more like liquid fire. It pooled across the drowned ruins. Wherever it touched black water, the water screamed and turned to glass.
Sunny and Ash stood on the last fragment of the ancient bridge. Half the span had collapsed into the abyss centuries ago. What remained was a narrow ribbon of stone, slick with salt and old blood, hanging over nothing.
The crack widened.
Something unfolded. Not the old Terror. That one had been mindless hunger. This… was worse.
Seven corpses, fused at the spine into a single towering entity.
Each body bore remnants of the armor in which it had died:
Nephis's white plate, cracked and blackened.
Effie's iron pauldrons, rusted through.
Kai's starlight cloak, torn and dim.
Cassie's blindfold, soaked crimson.
Jet's winter coat, frozen stiff.
Mordret's mirrored greaves, shattered into a thousand lying reflections.
And in the center, a shadow, shaped like Sunny, faceless.
Great wings spread from its back—broken halos of divine metal, twisted, bleeding slow gold.
On its brow: the melted remnants of the Crown of Dawn, a ring of slag and bone.
It stepped onto the bridge. Stone groaned but held.
Seven familiar faces turned toward Sunny and spoke braided into one voice.
"Father."
The word hit harder than any blow.
Nephis's mouth moved first—gold eyes burning with exhausted rage.
Effie's followed—laughing through broken teeth.
Kai's was soft, gentle, heartbroken.
Cassie's whisper cut deeper than screaming.
Jet's was winter wind.
Mordret's smile was made of knives.
The shadow in the center—faceless, voiceless—opened its arms.
Sunny felt the white flame over his heart flare—recognition and pain.
Ash stepped back. Spear trembled.
"That's not them," she said, voice cracking.
"That's what the Spire made from what I left behind," Sunny answered.
The Terror took another step. The bridge shuddered.
Sunny moved.
Shadow exploded from his feet, forming seven colossal arms that surged forward to meet the thing wearing his family's faces.
The fight was immediate, intimate, unspeakable.
Nephis's sword carved through two shadow arms like smoke. Gold fire followed, white, pure, wrong—eating the darkness faster than it could reform.
Sunny ducked, came up inside the guard, and drove his fist through Effie's rusted breastplate. Iron crumpled. His hand closed on something that might have been a heart. He pulled. Effie's face laughed—wet, broken, delighted—and the chest cavity sealed around his arm like a bear trap.
The Terror slammed him down. Stone cracked. Spine followed.
Kai's wings unfolded—storm of starlight blades. They punched through coat, flesh, shadow—pinning him like an insect.
Cassie leaned close, blindfold brushing his cheek.
"You left us," she whispered. Words like knives.
Jet's hand closed around his throat. Frost spread across his skin.
Mordret smiled, too many teeth.
Shadow-Sunny roared. Arms detonated outward, shredding starlight blades, snapping Jet's frozen arm, tearing free from the chest trap in a spray of black blood and gold fire.
He rose. Coat in tatters, left arm hanging useless—bone shattered, shadow leaking like smoke.
The Terror rose above the bridge, halo wings broken, seven faces looking down.
"Father," it said, tender. "Come home."
Sunny looked at the narrow span behind him. Ash stood, spear raised, flame roaring white.
"Run," he told her.
She didn't.
The Terror dove.
What followed was not a fight. It was annihilation.
Every blow Sunny landed answered by seven.
Every shadow he summoned burned, crushed, cut, unraveled.
The bridge began to crumble.
Sunny lost his left arm at the shoulder—Nephis's sword, clean through.
He lost half his shadow when Kai's wings scissored shut.
He lost the illusion of control when the Terror held him over the abyss with six hands.
Seven faces looked down.
"We waited," they said together. "We kept the fire warm."
The shadow in the center spoke—his own voice, older, broken, honest.
"You taught us how to be monsters, Father. Now let us teach you."
It released him. He fell. The abyss yawned—black, endless, patient.
Then light erupted—white, blinding, pure. Ash.
She leapt, spear first, flame uncontrollable—white and gold and screaming.
She struck the Terror's fused chest like a falling star. Impact threw it backward—off Sunny, off the bridge.
For thirty seconds, the world was fire. Ash burned everything: past, future, name, bloodline.
The Terror roared—seven voices in agony and recognition. Thirty seconds. Enough.
Halo wings folded, broken. The Terror retreated—falling upward into the cracked Spire, trailing gold blood and black smoke.
It landed on the bridge stump and carved words into stone—slow, deliberate, loving.
"She's waiting on the top floor. She's been waiting since the day you left her to die."
Then it was gone.
Silence.
Ash hung above the abyss, spear buried in stone, hand gripping Sunny's wrist. Flame nearly spent. Eyes—gold, like Nephis's—dim.
She smiled. Small. Tired. Familiar.
"Tell her…" she whispered. "…I kept the fire warm too."
Grip failed. She fell.
Sunny lunged. Shadow surged. Caught her wrist a meter below. Slowly, carefully, he pulled her onto cracked stone.
Charred. Skin flaking like ash. But smiling.
Sunny cradled her. The white flame over his heart—the piece of Nephis—reached out, entwining Ash's ember.
Two fires. Mother and daughter across centuries. Finally touching.
Ash's eyes fluttered.
"Grandmother," she breathed.
Then she was gone.
Sunny held the ashes. When he stood: missing an arm. Half his shadow clung in tatters.
But the flame over his heart burned brighter than ever—white and gold together.
He looked at the sealed Spire. At the message carved in stone.
Took one step forward. The bridge groaned but held. Another step.
The eighth bell screamed, somewhere far away—in triumph, in hunger.
Sunny kept walking. Alone.
Toward the top floor. Toward the woman who had been waiting four hundred years to finish what they started.