The top floor was no longer a place.
It was a bleeding battlefield, a wound carved into the skin of reality itself.
White fire clashed with starlight in perfect, terrible symmetry—
—WHUMM…! KRSHHH—!
The very air cracked like glass under the pressure.
Nephis—four flames burning in her chest, wings of living dawn—stood on one edge of the broken plateau.
Sunny and the young man stood on the other, separated by a yawning chasm of collapsing stone and dying light.
The Spire screamed.
Then something deeper answered.
The dead returned.
From the fractures in the stone…
From the burning air…
From the braided storm of shadow and light…
They emerged.
Not echoes.
Not memories.
The real souls—released when Sunny freed the Saints on the eighth floor, but not yet gone.
Unanchored.
Unfading.
Waiting.
Choosing.
Six figures stepped out of the swirling fire and starlight.
Jet.
Song of Broken Swords.
Kai.
Mordret.
Effie.
Cassie.
Whole.
Perfect.
The way they had been before the Shore broke them.
Jet—winter coat immaculate, eyes like frozen lakes, breath misting in the boiling air.
Song—seven blades orbiting her like metal petals, face calm as an arrow drawn to its final tension.
Kai—gentle smile, wings of pure starlight curving behind him like a benediction.
Mordret—skin of mirrors, every lie the world had ever told reflecting across his surface, smiling with too many teeth.
Effie—iron body towering, laughter already building in her chest.
Cassie—eyes uncovered, blind no longer, pure light shining where darkness once lived.
They looked at the three combatants—
then at each other—
then at the battlefield that begged for judgment.
And then they chose.
Jet stepped to Nephis.
A gust of frost followed her boots.
Her voice was winter incarnate.
"You never stopped fighting."
"I'll stand with the one who never surrendered."
FWUUUSH—
Her cold joined Nephis's dawn.
Song followed.
Silent.
Her seven blades drifted into a perfect constellation around Nephis—
a flower of steel blooming toward war.
Kai walked to the young man.
His wings folded around him like a shield.
"You kept the stars alive."
"I'll keep you."
Starlight wrapped around starlight.
Effie strode to Sunny.
Laughing even now.
She clapped a massive hand on his back, nearly breaking him.
"Little brother."
"You still need someone to hold the line."
She planted herself in front of him like a mountain.
Mordret glided toward Nephis.
Her fire reflected across his mirrored body in a thousand warped, terrible shapes.
He smiled.
"Chaos recognizes chaos."
She accepted him without looking.
Cassie stayed in the center.
She watched all of them—
Nephis
Sunny
the young man
Jet
Song
Kai
Effie
Mordret—
every flame, every shadow, every fracture in their souls.
Then she lifted her hands.
Light.
Shadow.
Fire.
Starlight.
All four forces bent toward her—
—RUMMMMMBLE…—
Her voice was soft.
Soft enough to end a world.
"I choose none of you."
"I choose the prophecy."
She became the battlefield.
The cohort ghosts moved.
War erupted.
—KAAASHHH! — FWOOOM! — CHRNNNG! —
Six against three—
no—
Six against two…
and one empty man.
Jet vs the young man
Winter wind crashed into starlight—
ice against fire,
mercy against fury.
Her frost carved through space like razors.
His starlight answered like falling suns.
They collided—
—CRAAASHHH—!
Neither yielded.
Song vs Sunny
Seven blades scythed toward him, singing metallic hymns.
Sunny had no flame left.
No shadow.
No power.
Only a body held together by will.
He dodged, blocked, and bled.
Song's final sword traced his throat—
—SSSK!—
Effie knocked it aside with a roar.
Kai shields the young man
Jet's frost speared downward.
One shard aimed for the young man's heart.
Kai's wing snapped open—
CRACK—!
The frost shattered against him.
Starlight bled from the wound.
He smiled through the pain.
"Keep going."
Mordret turns Nephis's fire back on Sunny
Her flame struck him—
a pillar of dawn.
Mordret's mirrors caught it—
bent it—
returned it.
—FWOOOOOM—!
Sunny braced.
The fire seared his skin, his ribs, his bones.
Jet's voice cut through the roar.
"You chose this, Sunny."
Effie stands in front of him
Effie took Song's seventh blade—
straight through her chest.
—SHUNK—
She laughed.
Wet.
Warm.
Unbreakable.
"Still got you, little brother."
She yanked the blade out and threw it back at Song.
Nephis fights with terrifying calm
Not rage.
Not grief.
Certainty.
She had already won—
in her mind,
in her heart,
in her prophecy.
Her wings carved daylight into the storm.
Her fists dropped suns.
The young man fights with fury
Not divine fury—
but the kind a child learns when the world betrays the promise he built his life on.
Every strike he threw screamed—
No more cages.
No more chains.
No more waiting.
Sunny fights with nothing
No flame.
No shadow.
No miracles.
Only muscle.
Only pain.
Only a human will stretched thinner than light.
And still—
he stood.
The battlefield disintegrated.
The top floor shattered further—
stone falling upward into the bleeding sky.
The Spire wailed as its spine cracked.
Every breath was a death sentence.
Every heartbeat a verdict.
The cohort fought for the ones they believed still deserved them.
Jet, for the woman who never surrendered.
Song, for the flame that still reached toward heaven.
Mordret, for the chaos he loved like kin.
Kai, for the child who carried a god's burden.
Effie, for the brother she would protect even past death.
Cassie, for the prophecy that demanded a price.
And Sunny—
for both.
For Nephis, the woman he had failed.
For the young man, the child he had saved.
Standing between them—
bleeding, empty, human—
he refused to choose which one he would lose.
The war tore reality apart around him.
Yet still—
Sunny did not move.
He stood.