The last souls did not rush.
They walked.
Blue and gold light flowed toward the Door in a thinning river, each step quieter than the last. The worst of the fighting had already broken around them—Bakari scattered, Souleaters undone, Obsidium hooks shattered in black shards across the bone-sand.
One soul did not move.
He stood mid-stream — blue light flickering but steady — boots planted in the bone-sand as if it were still soil.
"I'm not going," he said.
The current of souls flowed around him.
Lenara paused.
"It's time," she said gently.
"No." His jaw tightened. "My son is still in the stands."
There was no anger in him.
Just stubborn love.
"I won't leave him here."
The golden rain fell harder.
Valtherion stepped closer, not imposing, not glowing brighter.
"If you stay," he said quietly, "you will rot."
The man's hands trembled.
"I'd rather rot than abandon him."
Benjareth lowered his weapon.
Hydeius felt the words strike deeper than any blade.
Valtherion's voice did not sharpen.
"If you stay," he repeated, "you won't protect him."
A pause.
"You'll become what hunts him."
The man's light flickered.
For a long second, he didn't move.
Then his shoulders sagged.
"…Will he be okay?"
Hydeius answered before he meant to.
"Yes."
The man looked at him — at the blade, at the rot crawling along its edge.
He nodded once.
Then stepped through the Door.
Cree's fire flickered—like it recognized the shape of that choice.
The scar on the threshold still smoked.
Cree stood in front of it, a ruin of bone and fire barely pretending to be a body. Their ribs were split open, flames leaking out in slow, ragged pulses. Dark Matter clung inside their wounds like tar.
They didn't move.
They couldn't.
If they did, they weren't sure what would fall out first:
the fire,
or them.
Souls passed on either side of them, some slowing, some staring, some refusing to look at all.
A woman with soot-streaked cheeks and a half-remembered city in her eyes paused.
"You burned my world," she said quietly.
Cree's flames guttered in their throat.
"Yes."
She nodded once.
"You also opened this door."
Then she turned and stepped into the light.
A soldier with half a face stopped, fingers ghosting over the broken edge as if still surprised by it.
"I died hating you," they said.
Cree didn't flinch.
"I know."
The soldier smiled, small and tired.
"I don't think I do anymore."
They walked through.
Another soul grinned at Lenara as they passed. "If I don't get wings, I'm asking for a refund."
Lenara almost smiled back. Almost.
She didn't answer.
Her scythe was still humming with work, cutting invisible permissions and shattering the last clinging hooks of Obsidium. Benjareth's weapon growled low, lazy now, only snapping to attention when a Thread flickered wrong.
The river thinned further.
Ten souls.
Then five.
Then one.
The last soul was small.
Not in power.
In shape.
A child.
Blue light flickered around a form maybe eight years old—age meant nothing here, but memory did, and this one remembered being small.
They hesitated in front of Cree, bare feet leaving no prints on the bone-sand.
Their eyes—bright blue, clear despite everything—dragged up from Cree's cracked sternum to the split in their skull, to the fire leaking from their mouth, to the macuahuitl still planted in the ground like an exhausted flag.
"Does it still hurt?" the child asked.
Cree tried to answer.
Their jaw clicked instead of opening properly, a chunk of flame pattering out between blackened teeth.
They managed one word.
"Yes."
The child nodded, solemn, like they'd expected that.
"Thank you for hurting," they said.
Cree's fire flared once, sharp and bright, before sputtering again.
They wanted to nod.
Their neck wouldn't cooperate.
The child didn't seem to need it.
They turned and walked toward the Door.
Valtherion stepped slightly aside to let them pass, head inclining just a fraction. Lenara's hand tightened on her scythe. Benjareth's grip flexed around his weapon.
The child reached the threshold.
They stopped and looked back one last time—not at Cree.
At the arena.
At the Hellbound.
At the countless souls in the stands.
Then they stepped through.
The river was gone.
Only a trickle of late golden dust fell now, like the last seconds of a dying storm.
Valtherion lifted his hand.
"Enough," he said.
The rain ceased.
The Door reacted.
It did not close gently.
The massive panels of gold and obsidian swung inward with the finality of a sentence being read aloud. The carved angels and demons along its surface shut their eyes. The constellations braided into its patterns froze.
The black scar of Obsidium along the threshold flared once, protesting, branding itself deeper into the memory of the gate.
Light slammed together in the empty space where the stream of souls had been.
For one blinding instant, the Hellbound held a sunrise in its chest.
And then the Door closed.
It didn't fade.
It vanished.
No seam.
No fracture.
No trace of hinges or frame.
One heartbeat it stood, impossibly massive, containing the promise of elsewhere.
The next heartbeat—
nothing.
Just bone-sand.
Just scorched ground.
Just the faint aftertaste of dust and rain and endings done right.
The reapers were gone with it.
Valtherion.
Lenara.
Benjareth.
Their angels, demons, shamans, warriors.
All of them.
Escorting the damned out of the Hellbound and into whatever waited beyond judgment.
The arena felt empty in a new way.
Not like a battlefield after slaughter.
Like a waiting room after everyone else has been called, and your name hasn't.
The Requiem did not move.
He had watched the last soul pass through.
Watched the child pause.
Watched the Door close.
He had not lifted his scythe.
Not once.
Hydeius was still braced between him and where the Door had been, blade raised, chest heaving, souls screaming and whispering along his nerves.
Cree still stood in front of the vanished threshold, macuahuitl anchored in the ground, fire dripping from their wounds with each slow breath.
Obsidium ash fluttered, weightless, where the scar had been.
The Requiem rolled his shoulders.
The wound Hydeius had carved through his ribs had not scabbed.
It had grown.
Dark Matter crawled across the torn bone like roots, weaving itself into new patterns. Obsidium splinters sprouted outward, forming jagged armor where flesh should have closed.
Wrong.
But functional.
He did not limp.
Did not favor one side.
He simply existed in a new configuration of damage.
He regarded Hydeius.
Regarded Cree.
Regarded the empty space where the Door had been, as if watching the after-image of light on the back of his own skull.
Then he sighed.
Not tired.
Satisfied.
"You're not going after them?" Ecayrous called from somewhere in the stands, half-laughing, half in disbelief. "The gate— that was your—"
"Experiment," the Requiem said.
He didn't look at Ecayrous.
He didn't look at anyone.
His skull-face turned slightly, taking in the hairline fractures spiderwebbing the bone-sand. The black veins of Obsidium still threaded through the arena's foundation. The faint gold shimmer clinging to Cree's fire. The black edge now crawling along Hydeius's sword.
"A successful one."
Hydeius tightened his stance.
"If you're not chasing them," he said, voice raw, "then this is where it ends."
The Requiem tilted his head.
"Still so certain everything has to be an ending," he murmured.
His gaze dropped to Hydeius's blade.
Dark Matter still oozed along the grooves where the names lived, whining softly like an injured animal that got more dangerous when hurt.
A third of the names were dull now.
Another third flickered.
Only a few still shone steady.
Hydeius could feel them all.
Each breath like inhaling over broken glass.
The Requiem regarded the sword like a craftsman appraising a rival's tool.
"You think this is where we decide anything?" he asked. "Here? In a pit built to show off how loudly gods can break their toys?"
He shook his head.
The motion was almost… fond.
"No," he said. "You've already given me what I needed."
He lifted his scythe—not to attack.
Just to gesture.
First at Hydeius.
"You've shown me what happens when mercy tries to wield a weapon that doesn't want to be merciful anymore."
His eyes tracked along the blackening edge, down to Hydeius's white-knuckled grip.
The souls behind Hydeius shuddered as one.
Then the Requiem turned slightly, scythe angling toward Cree.
"And you," he said. "You've taught me how far fire will go to be forgiven."
Cree's flames snarled weakly at that.
The macuahuitl vibrated in their hands, low and constant.
It remembered this whole battle now.
Souleaters unraveling.
Bakari screaming.
Hooks breaking.
Doors opening.
A scar burned into judgment itself.
It whispered.
Not words.
Images.
Every sin it had drunk.
Every plea it had ignored.
Every time Cree had chosen burning over mercy and told themselves it was necessary.
Now it added new entries.
Souls thanking them.
Souls confronting them.
Souls walking through a door Cree had helped open.
The weapon didn't tell them they were forgiven.
It just refused to let them forget.
The Requiem's gaze lifted to the ruined tiers of the Hellbound.
Bone cracked.
Veins pulsed.
The arena's grown foundations shivered under the memory of a Door they had not consented to host.
"And this place," he said softly, almost kindly. "You've taught it what it means to be afraid."
Silence settled.
Not the old silence of expectation, where the crowd held its breath for the next spectacular blow.
A different one.
Heavy.
Uneasy.
Thinking.
The Requiem's voice stayed calm.
"I could chase them," he said, almost musing. "Follow the scar, taste the Obsidium mark in the gate, burrow into the machinery you worship as if it were immune to rot."
His scythe traced a lazy, nonexistent line through the air, following the outline of where the Door had been.
Cree's grip tightened on their weapon.
Hydeius shifted his footing, readying for whatever came next.
The Requiem let the scythe drop back to his side.
"But why would I?" he asked.
His skull-face tipped, examining Hydeius the way one examines a puzzle missing exactly one piece.
"You've already dragged the afterlife into the Hellbound for me," he said. "You've shown me the limits of your mercy."
His gaze cut to Cree.
"And the shapes you make when you break."
He fell silent for a moment.
Then he spoke, clear enough for every soul and every scar in the arena to hear.
"I withdraw."
Hydeius blinked.
The word did not fit this place.
"You what?" Ecayrous snapped, laughter tangling into something sharper. "You can't just—"
"Withdraw," the Requiem repeated, ignoring him. "Concede this… display."
His shadow leaned forward, grinning a fraction wider.
"Not because I'm losing," he added. "Because I'm finished."
The words landed like a dropped blade.
He turned away from Hydeius.
From Cree.
From the scar on the vanished Door.
No limp.
No hitch in his step.
The Dark Matter lacing his torso throbbed, knitting into unfamiliar patterns. It didn't heal him right.
It just made him stranger.
He walked toward the edge of the arena as though nothing here had been important enough to stain him.
He did not look back.
He did not need to.
The Hellbound would remember this for him.
The bone-sand shifted beneath his feet, threads whispering.
He stepped once.
Twice.
On the third step, he simply…
wasn't there.
Shadow folded in on itself like a thought dismissed.
The Scythe of Corruption left no track.
For a long breath, no one moved.
Fire crackled softly in Cree's ribs.
Souls muttered along Hydeius's spine.
The Obsidium scratch where the Door had been smoldered without an object to cling to, memory alone keeping it alive.
Qaritas felt Eon lean even further forward inside his skull.
Not amused.
Not cruel.
Hungry.
"That," Eon murmured, his voice sliding along the inside of Qaritas's mind like a blade being drawn very slowly from a sheath, "was not supposed to be possible."
Qaritas swallowed.
"Which part?" he whispered back.
"The door opening," Eon said. "The afterlife being scarred. The Iyrian of Reapers standing in a slaughter pit and escorting the damned out ahead of schedule."
A pause.
"Take your pick."
Qaritas's hands shook.
From pain.
From exhaustion.
From being watched by something that had never bothered to lean forward before.
"What does it mean?" he asked.
Eon laughed quietly.
"It means," he said, "that your gods are more breakable than they pretend. And that the one who understands that best just walked away satisfied."
Hydeius looked down at his sword.
The blade was still humming.
Not aloud.
Inside him.
Names flickered along its edge like stars seen through smoke.
A third gone dark.
A third unsteady.
A few still stubborn.
The blackened segments crawled slowly, like rot deciding which way to spread next.
Hydeius's hand twitched.
For one heartbeat, he considered dropping it.
Letting it fall into the bone-sand and sink beneath the arena forever.
The souls behind him recoiled at the thought.
Not because they wanted to be wielded.
Because they knew what he might pick up instead.
Hydeius exhaled slowly.
"I asked you to be an ending," he whispered to the blade. "Not a question."
The sword did not answer.
It did not need to.
Its weight already had.
Across the arena, Cree pried the macuahuitl out of the ground.
It came free with a wet, sucking sound.
Fire guttered around them, cloak of embers pulling tighter to their form, trying desperately to keep what was left of them inside.
The weapon hummed louder now.
It showed them flashes every time they blinked.
Bakari praying in the instant before they were unmade.
Souls thanking them.
Souls accusing them.
The Door closing.
The scar burning.
It remembered.
And it insisted that Cree remember too.
They staggered once.
Hydeius took a step toward them.
The souls behind him surged, ready to help.
Cree lifted a hand.
Stopped him.
"I'm fine," they rasped.
It was almost funny.
They looked like a collapsed pyre pretending to be vertebrae and defiance.
"You are not fine," Hydeius said.
Cree's flames flickered in what might have been a smile.
"Neither are you," they said. "And neither is that."
They nodded at the sword.
Hydeius followed their gaze.
Silence stretched between them.
Not empty.
Full of all the things they weren't saying yet.
We almost lost them.
We still might.
He walked away.
He'll be back.
Above them, the Hellbound's bone ribs creaked.
The arena did not know how to process what had just happened.
It had been built—grown—to contain contests, executions, displays of power. It understood winning and losing, surviving and being obliterated.
It did not understand withdrawal.
It did not understand a Door that remembered its own wound.
It did not understand family bleeding in its center for something other than spectacle.
But it would.
It would have to.
Because the Requiem had not left a battlefield.
He had left a lesson.
And Hydeius's sword was still learning it.