The moment God died, it was like the world forgot how to breathe.
I didn't hear cheering. I didn't hear relief. I didn't even hear the bones of the universe grinding under the weight of what we had done. There was only the sound of light tearing me apart from the inside. And it wasn't quiet.
It screamed.
It screamed in every language ever spoken, in every note ever sung, in frequencies I wasn't meant to hear. It screamed through my bones, my blood, my mind. The power wasn't settling. It was ravaging. A hurricane made of God's essence tore through me like I was a piece of paper.
My feet barely touched the earth. I didn't even know if I had feet anymore. I felt like I was suspended in a storm of energy. Too much energy. There was no beginning or end to the power; it just was, flooding my veins like acid and light, burning so bright I could no longer see.
I wasn't Alex. I wasn't even The Dark Thing.
I was…everything.
And it was going to kill me.
Somewhere in the distance, I could hear my name being called. Maybe it was Dean. Or Kore. Or Ketch. The syllables were distorted, drawn out like echoes across eternity.
I tried to look down. To see them. But my body didn't move. My limbs were puppets on forgotten strings. My fingers twitched with lightning, my spine a livewire. I could feel the power unraveling me from the inside out, trying to make room where there wasn't any left.
The first fracture came next. Nothing physical, but a mental crack. A split right down the center of my thoughts. A jagged, aching tear between me and him.
The Dark THing.
He'd gone silent since absorbing the last of God's power. Too quiet. For a while, I had thought maybe he had disappeared completely. Burned away like the rest of Heaen's influence. But no. He was still here. And now, he was screaming too.
A howling, writhing fury. The kind that didn't beg, but demanded. That power was never meant to be wielded, not even by something as ancient as he was. And it was cracking him apart. Piece by piece.
And I knew, if he shattered, I'd go with him.
"You need to get out of me." I tried to say. "You have to let go."
But he didn't hear me. Or maybe he had, and he didn't care. He wasn't listening anymore. He was drowning, just like me.
And somehow I knew, I felt it in my marrow, that if I didn't stop him, right now, we wouldn't just burn out. We could take the whole world with us.
I tried to push. Tried to press my mind against his. Tried to find the thread that tied us together. It was still there. I felt it pulsing. This bond that had been forged over time, through hate, through pain, through desperate choices I'd made to save the people I loved. I followed it.
And suddenly, the pain was gone.
I wasn't standing in flames or ruins or stormlight anymore. I was inside. Inside the place he had lived. Where I had hidden the last sliver of myself.
It was dark. Endless. A horizon of shifting black scales and hissing whispers. It smelled like wet stone and blood. And in the distance, something moved, massive, coiled, and ancient. Its eyes opened like twin suns carved from obsidian.
He was waiting for me. And I wasn't going to run again.
A kingdom of shadow and fire, thrones of carved bone, grandeur wrapped in menace. It lay in ruins. A vast echoing cavern of black glass and dying stars, split and cracking down its center like a mirror struck too hard. He was at the heart of it all.
The Dark Thing stood tall, his silhouette half-formed, a writhing coil of smoke and divine light. The power he had stolen burned bright in his chest. It pulsed with a rhythm that didn't match anything living. I could feel it even from across the abyss between us. It was too much for him. Too vast. Too alive.
He was breaking apart and didn't seem to care.
"You've done it now," I said softly, my voice echoing across the hollow dark. "You've killed him. You won. Are you happy?"
His head turned toward me, barely a tilt, like a snake sensing movement in the dark.
"Happy?" His voice boomed, cracked, splintered across octaves. "I am transcendent. I am limitless."
His form warped with every word, expanding and contracting, muscles shifting under translucent skin, scales crawling up his arms and down his throat like corruption given form.
"But you're not stable." I stepped closer. "It's going to kill you."
He grinned, his teeth too long to be in a human mouth. "It's divinity, Child. Mortals aren't meant to comprehend it."
"You can't hold onto it." I tried to reason.
He hissed low and sharp. "I'm not letting go of it."
I stared at him, and for the first time in a long time, I wasn't afraid of him. Not anymore.
"You're going to kill us both," I whispered. "You're going to rip me apart trying to hold something you can't control."
"You're just a vessel." He said, voice tight. "You're only flesh. You wouldn't even be alive if it weren't for me."
I stepped closer to him. "That's not true. You didn't give me life. You stole it. Tricked me into giving it up."
He snarled. "I rescued you. From weakness. From death. From grief. I gave you a purpose."
"No," I said. "I already had one."
The shadows rippled around us. The floor beneath my feet cracked and bled light. The Dark Thing staggered, clutching his rips, eyes flaring gold.
"You don't understand what I'm doing." He growled low.
"I understand exactly what you're doing."
I moved again. The closer I got to him, the harder it became to breathe. The power spilling from him was molten, overwhelming. My skin blistered, my vision doubled, but I continued forward. I wasn't here to win a fight. I was here to take myself back.
"You wanted to take the kingdom." I said, "But you used my hands to do it."
"I am you." He spat, his form starting to flicker. "The hunger, the rage, the truth. You let me in. You wanted this."
"I wanted to save the people I love."
"And now look what you have become." He gestured to the darkness around us. "They'll never look at you the same again. You think that worthless human you love will still touch you after seeing what you've done? You think that abomination you call a child will forgive you? You think your kin will still call you theirs after you burned their world to the ground?"
Each word hit like an arrow. But I kept pushing forward. I remembered Kore's voice. I remembered Ketch' hand in mine. I remembered the way Elly had saved my skin so many times before. The way Jack had looked at me the first time. The way Dean always smiled softly at me, even after a bad hunt. They had never given up on me.
"I didn't become this to be worshipped," I said, reaching for the tether I could feel beneath my ribs. "I did it so they could live."
He lunged. Inhuman fast, smoke and fire, and muscle and hate. His claws reached for my throat, but I was already moving, diving into the glowing fissure between us, grabbing hold of the last thread of me that still remained, buried under the weight of everything I had lost.
The moment I touched it, the mindspace exploded.
He screamed.
I was no longer inside a cavern; I was in a storm. A storm made of our thoughts, our feelings, our selves, clashing like titans. My memories ripped past us in fragments. Laughter, tears, rage, pain. Ketch in the bunker. Kore's tiny hand. Lucifer's smirk. Cas' solemn nod. Every face I had ever fought beside and loved.
All of it burned.
The Dark Thing lashed out, trying to drown me in it.
"You're nothing without me!" He shrieked. "You're mortal! You'll die!"
"I'd rather die myself," I shouted back at him. "Then take one more breath as you."
I pulled.
The tether between us screamed. Energy surging into my fingertips, black and red and gold, and I yanked with everything I had. His form convulsed. The power exploding outward, ripping through the mindspace. Cracks of white light shattered the space around us.
"No!" He howled. "You need me!"
"I did." I spat. "But not anymore."
With one final scream, mine and his entwined, I ripped him from me.
The moment I tore The Dark Thing from me, the universe held its breath. The power recoiled from the split like a ruptured dam. Energy poured from the gaping wound in my soul, screaming outward in a vortex of light and shadow. My body arched, suspended midair, limbs flailing like they didn't know gravity anymore. I wasn't in control. I wasn't anything. I was just falling through my own skin.
And then came the sound.
It wasn't a scream. It was deeper. Older. A wail, ripped from a god's throat. The sound of a creature who had touched divinity and been cast out with it.
I saw him, outside of me now. The Dark Thing stood before me, not as shadow or smoke, but in form. Tangible. Cracked and raw like obsidian split by lightning. His eyes, once glowing with promises and pride, were wide now. Terrified.
"You don't get to be afraid," I said, panting, floating a few inches above the ground. Flames still rippled along my skin.
"You don't understand." He rasped, voice jagged with static. "We were one. You can't survive without me."
"Watch me."
He lunged for me. Slower than before, wounded now. Diminished. He tried to merge again, tried to crawl back into me like a shadow under a door.
But I shoved him away wth the force of my will. This time, it wasn't strength he gave me. It was mine. All mine.
The storm he had created around us raged. Trees bent. Dust rose in a spiraling halo. The battlefield held its breath. Demons, angels, those I loved, everything frozen in awe or fear, watching something older than war unfold in front of them.
The Dark Thing stumbled.
"You can't just…tear me out." He said. "We're bound. I saved you. I gave you your power. I gave you everything you wanted!"
I stepped toward him, breathing heavy, the gold burn of God's power still leaving traces on my skin like fireflies.
"You didn't save me," I whispered. "You used me."
He roared and slashed at me with a clawed hand, but this time it didn't connect. I caught his wrist mid-air, surprised at how light it felt now.
"You were never stronger than me," I said. "You just managed to be louder."
He screamed again, twisting, trying to become mist, to vanish, to burrow, but I held him. For the first time, he was the one afraid of me.
I could feel it, his core, burning in my palm. The coil of divine power he's stolen from God. It was a foreign presence in his dark body. It didn't belong to either of us. It screamed, unmoored and wild, trying to leap into anything that would hold it.
I saw it all for what it was. The power. The corruption. The lie. This wasn't survival. It had become an addiction. He would never let it go. Not on his own. So I made the choice for him.
I pressed my hand against his chest and pushed. Light erupted. Gold and black and red, all of it spiraling outward like a dying star. His body convulsed, arms flailing, voice a broken chorus of rage and pleading. Not for mercy. For connection.
He didn't want to lose me because he cared. He had never cared for me. He didn't want to lose me because he couldn't exist without me. But I would live without him. I had just never believed that before now.
"You're time is done," I whispered.
With everything I had left, I forced the rest of the divine power into him and watched it burn him away. The scream that followed shattered something more than sound. It cracked the clouds.
I saw demons evaporate in the wave. The rift in the ground that had allowed them to pour forward closed. Just like that. Sealed by the force of a god's final cry.
And The Dark Thing?
Gone.
With no explosions or final flash. He just dusted, like he had never been.
I collapsed to my knees, shaking. Every breath I took tasted of ash. But it was my breath. Mine. I hadn't realized how long it had been since I'd drawn one without sharing it with him. I could still feel him faintly, like an echo of a long nightmare. But he was no longer fused to me. No longer guiding my hand or whispering in my mind.
The silence that followed was deafening. I felt light. And suddenly, too weak. I didn't remember hitting the ground.
One second, I still felt like I was burning, light spilling from every pore, my body a cathedral collapsing under the weight of divinity, and the next, there was only darkness.
Soft.
Cool.
Empty.
And in the stillness of it, I fell.
Not through space. Through self. Through everything I used to be. Every deal I'd made, every power I'd borrowed. I felt it all strip away, layer by layer, until only something raw and fragile remained.
Me.
Just me.
And then…nothing.
****************************************
When I woke up, I was sure I had died.
The ceiling above me was bright white concrete, cracked and uneven in places. Dust floated on sunbeams through the pale gold light from a bulb in the ceiling. I blinked against the brightness. My body ached. Not the sharp, battle-hardened ache I was used to, but dull, all-consuming soreness, like even breathing required effort.
I was alive.
I was human.
I could feel it. The weight of it all. The fragility. My senses were dimmer. My skin wasn't armored by demonic power. The silence in my head wasn't eerie; it was real. He was gone.
I was alone.
Yet…
Soft voices stirred nearby. A shadow moved at the edge of my vision. A warm hand took mine.
"Alex?" It was Ketch.
I turned my head slowly and saw him sitting beside the bed. His hair was messier than I had ever seen it before, his grey eyes sunken from sleepless nights. He looked like hell, and it was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.
"Hey." I crooked. My voice cracked like dry earth.
He let out a breath that broke into a nervous laugh. One hand covered his mouth, and silent tears began to fall from his eyes.
"You're awake." He said, relieved. "We weren't sure…Kore said you would but…"
"How long was I…?" I asked.
"Three days." He confirmed.
That made sense. I felt like I'd been carved from stone, had shattered, and barely glued back together.
The door creaked, and more figures stepped into the room.
Kore came first. They ran, almost stumbling over their feet, to reach my side. Then came Elly and Ally, then Jack, then Cas and Cael. One by one, they arrived, filling the small space with warmth and familiar faces. Sam and Dean hung near the back. Even Lucifer hovered in the doorway, arms crossed, watching like a sentinel.
"You're okay," Kore whispered, kneeling beside the bed. "You're really okay."
I pulled them closer to me, arms still weak and shaky, and let them wrap their arms around me too.
"I'm ok," I whispered.
"You're human," Jack commented.
I nodded against Kore's shoulder. "I know."
There was a long silence after that. Nothing awkward, just…heavy. Because it meant everything had changed again. No more borrowed power. No more unkillable body. No more cosmic weapons or god-slaying light burning in my chest.
Just me.
And for the first time in years, it felt like enough.
Ketch leaned in and kissed my forehead gently.
"We've got you." He said softly. "You're not alone."
"I know." I agreed, smiling faintly through the sting in my chest. "I never was."