The top floor was breaking.
CRRRRKK—!
Red stone split like brittle bone beneath a titan's heel.
White fire and black shadow twisted together, weaving a storm that tore the very air into shredded ribbons.
At its heart, immovable as monuments carved into eternity, stood Sunny and Nephis.
Foreheads pressed.
Fists buried in each other's chests.
Flames pouring into flames—white into black, black into white—an endless, howling equilibrium.
Neither moved to finish it.
Neither could.
The storm swelled—
WHOOOOM—!
—until it found a voice.
Not male.
Not female.
Not young.
Not old.
Only ancient.
Only patient.
Only blind.
"Enough."
—TSHHHHH—
The flames froze.
The shadow solidified.
The collapsing floor halted mid-fall, caught between one heartbeat and the next.
From the storm's luminous core stepped a girl.
No—
A woman.
Cassie.
Not an echo.
Not a memory.
The real soul—preserved, perfected, burning.
White flame shaped like the blindfolded prophet they had once followed through dying nights—but the blindfold was gone. Her eyes were pure radiance: no irises, no pupils, only sight—a sight that embraced everything and forgave nothing.
She walked between Sunny and Nephis as though they were statues.
The storm parted for her.
She stopped at the exact center. Turned her face—an ember sculpted into serenity—toward each of them.
Her voice was soft, the same breath that once whispered prophecies in the dark while the cohort slept around smoldering campfires.
"I was waiting," she murmured.
"I always wait."
Nephis's fist still impaled Sunny's chest.
Sunny's remained locked in hers.
Neither moved.
Cassie lifted one hand—fingers of living flame.
FWOOOOSH—
The top floor obeyed.
Broken stone rose, reassembling with a trembling groan—not into the Spire—
but into a library.
Endless walls of burning books.
Tables of petrified ash.
Ladders stretching into a ceiling of blinding light.
The Burning Library.
Cassie's domain.
Preserved here, at the heart of Nephis's corruption—because even corruption needs someone to remember the price.
She walked to a nearby shelf.
A book of white flame floated to her palm.
She opened it.
Pages of fire turned with slow, sighing HWWWWFFs.
And she began to read.
Not with her eyes.
With her voice.
The complete prophecy—the one she had never spoken in life, because speaking it would have shattered them long before they reached this floor.
"One light will devour the other.
The survivor will carry both fires and wish for darkness.
The devoured will sleep in the victor's chest
and dream of forgiveness that never comes.
The world will heal or burn
depending on which light learns to dim itself first.
There is no third path.
There never was."
She closed the book.
—SLLLMMM—
The library listened.
Cassie turned to Nephis.
"You heard only the first line," she said gently.
"You decided to be the devourer."
She turned to Sunny.
"You heard only the second.
You decided to be the devoured."
Her blazing eyes softened.
"You were both wrong."
Silence.
Then Nephis laughed.
"…kh—hah."
Raw.
Fractured.
Unbeautiful and therefore perfect.
She pulled her fist from Sunny's chest—slowly, deliberately.
SHHHHK—!
White fire followed, cauterizing the wound as it withdrew.
She stepped back.
Her wings unfurled—pure radiance laced with ruin.
The crown of bones and flame above her head blazed brighter.
"I chose to be the one who devours," she said.
Her voice was calm.
Reforged.
"I chose it the day I burned myself to cinders so you could live.
I chose it every day I fed this place souls so the fire would stay warm.
I chose it when I waited four hundred years for you to return and stand beside me."
She looked at Sunny.
Her smile was a beautiful catastrophe.
"I will devour you, Sunny.
Your shadow.
Your guilt.
Your refusal.
And when I carry both fires, the world will finally sleep."
She raised her hand.
—WHUM—!
The Burning Library answered.
Books burst open.
Pages tore themselves free.
Words melted into blades of pure white flame.
A thousand floating swords of prophecy, trembling in the air.
Cassie watched—expression unreadable.
Sunny looked at her.
At the prophecy given flesh.
At the woman who had waited four centuries just to devour him.
He smiled.
Small.
Tired.
Older than the bones of the Spire.
"I heard the whole thing," he said.
He pressed his remaining hand over his chest—where Nephis's flame, Ash's ember, and the stolen star all smoldered together.
"I just chose a different line."
He looked to Cassie.
"'The survivor will wish for darkness.'"
Then to Nephis.
"I already do."
And he opened his chest.
Not with hands.
With will.
—BOOOOM—!
The merged flames surged outward—white, gold, black—
not as weapons,
but as surrender.
He offered everything.
Everything.
To her.
Nephis's eyes widened.
The white flame-blades flickered—uncertain.
Cassie stepped back.
Sunny smiled, gentle in the eye of the apocalypse.
"Take them," he whispered.
"Devour me.
Carry both fires.
Burn the world gentle.
I'm done fighting."
He opened his arms.
—FWOOSH—!
The flames rushed into her—welcoming, warm, absolute.
Nephis reached.
Her hands closed around the fire.
For one suspended, perfect heartbeat—
she held it.
Both lights.
Both burdens.
Then the prophecy found its voice again—
Cassie's whisper, soft and sorrowful:
"The devoured will sleep in the victor's chest
and dream of forgiveness that never comes."
Nephis froze.
The flames sank into her chest—settling beside her corrupted fire.
Four centuries of waiting and wanting collapsed into a single instant.
She looked at Sunny—empty now.
No flame.
No shadow.
Only a man.
Her smile cracked.
Small.
Human.
Bleeding.
"I chose wrong," she breathed.
FWSSHHHH—!
The Burning Library began to burn for real.
Books combusted.
Shelves caved.
Light fell like dying feathers.
Cassie's flame-body dimmed.
She faced them both.
"The world will heal," she said,
"because neither of you chose to be the devourer after all."
Then she dissolved—
a gentle scattering of light.
The top floor shattered.
The Spire screamed.
And Nephis—now carrying both fires—turned to Sunny with eyes that finally, finally forgave.