The ruins ignited – not with fire, but with light, and in that moment, every soul – friend or foe – felt it.
The realm was changing.
And no one was ready for what she was becoming.
Smoke coiled through the sky like serpents.
The battle raged around them – steel cutting into flesh, spells bursting like stars across the ruins. Blood painted the stones where the kings once stood. Eleanor stood at the heart of the battle, her veins lit with power, her eyes burning silver, yet her body trembling under the weight of it.
Jedrek had fallen.
Not far, just beyond the crumbled altar.
Kael's final strike had hit hard- too hard. His blood pooled beneath him, darker than the shadows creeping across the battlefield. He was breathing now- but barely.
Eleanor's scream shattered the sky.
She ran towards him, her hands glowing, the magic pulsing uncontrollably.
"Jedrek! Jedrek, stay with me!"
His eyes fluttered open, faint. "Eleanor… don't come clos…"
But he couldn't finish.
Because Kael rose from the dust with a grin that promised the end of everything.
"Touching," he rasped, voice like scorched bone. "But love has never won a war."
Then he drove his claws into his own chest.
Eleanor froze.
Blood spilled from Kael's heart but it didn't fall. It rose. Coiling in the air like the shadow of a serpent, black and alive. It slithered around his body as he spoke an ancient, forbidden incantation in the tongue of the void.
Jedrek gasped. "No…he's invoking the Merge."
Eleanor's heart raced. "What's the Merge?"
Jedrek gritted his teeth. "He's binding himself to the ancient shadow that once ruled before the Lycans…before anything."
A scream echoed- not Kael's, but something inside him.
And then it emerged.
Dark. Terrifying. Hollow. Horrifying.
Shadow and bone, crowned in flame, bathed in blood, with Kael's face barely visible within it. His body split open, but didn't break- rebuilt itself around the entity, becoming something more. Something grotesque. Something divine.
"I am no longer king," The voice thundered. "I am the END!"
The battlefield stopped. Every fighter turned. Some dropped their weapons and fled. Others screamed in terror.
Jedrek reached for Eleanor, his voice strained. "You have to run..."
"I'm not leaving you."
"Then you'd have to kill him."
With determination in her heart, Eleanor stepped forward, the silver fire rising through her like a tidal wave- but the voice in her head was louder now. And cruel.
"Let go, child. Let the goddess within rise. Destroy the mortal realm, the wolf, the realm. Become the gate. Become the flame!"
She screamed, the air cracking around her as magic tore free from her skin.
Lightning struck from the sky- not once, but over and over- into her body. The ruins trembled. The stones beneath her feet shattered.
Her eyes glowed in silver flames.
Kael- the thing Kael had become- paused, staring at her with something like awe. Or fear.
"I knew it," he whispered. "You're not the gate. You're the reckoning."
She raised her hand, a blast of magic forming between her fingers. But it wasn't silver anymore.
It was white.
Purity. Destruction. Creation.
Too much.
Jedrek saw it- and his heart broke. "Eleanor, stop! It's taking you!"
But she didn't.
A dome of power shot out from her body, throwing every enemy backward- Bone Riders, warhounds, even Kael. The battlefield split. Craters carved into the earth. Ancient walls crumbled. Marbled stones shattered to dust. The grounds of the ruins cracked open.
Not until Jedrek, broken and bleeding, forced himself to his knees and shouted the only thing that could pull her back.
"Don't do this Eleanor, I love you."
Her magic exploded- into light, not fire. Blinding. Expansive.
And then everything went silent.
Except for Eleanor's scream- as she collapsed.
The light faded.
She hit the ground hard, her breath ragged, her body still glowing faintly.
Jedrek crawled to her side. "Eleanor! Eleanor, stay with me."
Her eyes fluttered open- silver, but dimmer now.
"I…I didn't mean to…" she whispered.
"I know. It's okay. You stopped it."
"No," she breathed. "I opened something. Something's coming."
Jedrek looked up.
Kael was gone.
But in his place, a black rift had opened in the sky- cracked like glass, bleeding smoke and light.
And from within…something was watching.
The battlefield was quiet.
Too silent.
Smoke drifted through the air in soft ribbons, curling around broken stones and fallen warriors. The ruins had become a graveyard of prophecy- blood soaked into sacred soil, magic humming faintly beneath the surface like something waiting to rise again.
Jedrek stood barefoot at the edge of the crater, his body bruised and bloodied, but alive. Behind him, the rift still hung in the sky- silent, wide, and bleeding darkness like ink into the world.
But he wasn't watching it.
His eyes were on her.
Eleanor.
She lay in the ruin temple garden, where the silver vines had had begun to bloom again despite the ash. Her skin glowed faintly, veins still pulsing with humming energy, and her spilled across the marble stones like moonlight.
He approached slowly, every step pained- but necessary.
Her eyes fluttered open as soon as he reached her.
"Eleanor?" He called out gently
"I didn't destroy us?" she whispered.
Jedrek knelt beside her, a soft smile tugging at his lips. "You wrecked the sky and half a mountain, but no…we're still here."
"Yeah, that's a good sign."
For a moment, they sat in silence. The war felt far away, like something from another lifetime. In this garden, with petals falling through ash and light still clinging to the edges of her skin, Eleanor looked like something ethereal and divine.
Jedrek reached for her hand- scarred and glowing.
"You saved us."
"I almost lost myself."
"But you didn't. He leaned closer, his voice softer now. "You came back."
She looked at him then- not like the scarred beast in Darkwoods forest, not like a warrior- but like the man who had bled beside her. Chosen her. Loved her.