The battlefield lay in broken silence, scorched stone and fractured earth spreading for miles in every direction. The last echoes of Mydei's power had finally dissipated, leaving behind an eerie calm. Smoke curled into the air from fissures in the ground. The wind whispered like a sigh from the heavens.
Firefly stood still, her hand outstretched. The glow from her wings had dimmed, and blood trickled from a shallow wound on her temple. Her fingers trembled slightly, not from fear—but from the weight of everything that had led to this moment. She looked at Mydei, her eyes soft, yet unrelenting. "You don't have to keep fighting. Just take my hand. It's over."
Mydei's expression was unreadable. His form shimmered with residual power, the chaotic energy that had driven him threatening to rise again. For a long moment, he simply stared at her hand—tempted, perhaps, by the peace it offered. Then his hand twitched, and the spear he had once cast aside began to reassemble itself from fragments scattered around the battlefield, pieces drawn together like iron filings to a magnet.
His fingers wrapped tightly around the spear shaft.
He moved.
A heartbeat passed.
But the blow never came.
Yuri stepped between them like a ghost from the wind. His hand snapped out, seizing the spear before it could strike. At the same moment, his other hand drew a blade of silvery temporal energy from nothingness and thrust it into Mydei's chest. The blade slid through with a soundless precision, clean and lethal.
Mydei gasped, stumbling back as the spear clattered to the ground. His knees buckled, and he collapsed to a sitting position, clutching the wound with trembling fingers. Black mist rose from the entry point, but his body was no longer mutating, no longer shifting between forms. The chaos was draining away.
"You always were faster," he rasped, a bitter chuckle escaping his lips.
Yuri knelt in front of him, his own breath heavy, sweat running down his temple. "Only because I had to be."
There was silence between them, a silence forged not in peace, but in shared memory.
"Do you remember the lake?" Mydei asked after a moment, his voice quieter. "The one with the stone pier that always creaked when you stepped on it?"
Yuri's eyes softened. "You mean the one we used to sneak off to at night? Of course I remember. You were terrified the first time we swam out to the center."
Mydei let out a weak laugh. "You pushed me in. I was sure I was going to drown."
"You were sure of a lot of things back then," Yuri said. "Like the time you thought you could tame that stormbeast with just a stare and an apple."
"In my defense, it did eat the apple before it tried to bite my arm off."
Firefly moved closer, her wings flickering dimly behind her. She knelt beside them, not saying anything—just listening.
"I thought if I could just do enough," Mydei continued, eyes glazing over with distant memories, "if I could become powerful enough, smart enough, feared enough... maybe I could fix everything. Maybe I could stop watching people I cared about suffer."
"So you let yourself be consumed," Yuri said. "You let the chaos use you."
"Because I was too afraid to face the truth," Mydei admitted. "That I couldn't save everyone. That some things… some losses, you just have to live with. I thought if I buried myself in power, in purpose, I wouldn't have to feel any of it. I wouldn't have to remember..."
His voice cracked. He looked up at Firefly, guilt shining clearly in his eyes. "And then I dragged you into it. You believed in me, and I used that belief like a shield. I'm sorry. I never wanted to hurt you."
Firefly shook her head slowly. "You were in pain. And like all of us, you reached for something to make the pain stop. I don't forgive what you did, Mydei—not all of it—but I do understand."
He looked at her with gratitude, tears welling up in his eyes. His voice dropped to a whisper. "Thank you. Both of you. For not giving up on me—even when I had."
The wind picked up, stirring the ashes. Light glimmered faintly along the horizon. The corrupted aura around Mydei faded further, his skin returning to its natural tone, his features relaxing into something that resembled peace.
"I can feel it," he said. "I'm slipping away. It's like… like the noise is finally stopping."
Yuri leaned closer, his voice barely audible. "You don't have to be afraid."
"I'm not," Mydei said with a faint smile. "Not anymore. I've made my peace. I don't want redemption. I don't even want forgiveness. Just… to rest."
He looked up at the sky, where the first stars were beginning to pierce through the remnants of stormclouds. "Maybe… maybe in another life, I'll be better. Maybe I'll get it right."
Yuri nodded, his own eyes wet. "We'll meet again, brother. I know we will. And when we do, we'll swim out to the middle of that lake again. No chaos. No gods. Just us."
Mydei exhaled a final, shuddering breath. "Then I'll look forward to it."
His body began to break apart into tiny fragments of light, drifting into the sky like fireflies at twilight. The wind carried him away, dissolving the last of his presence until only the memory remained.
Firefly stood slowly, watching as the final particles vanished. "Do you think he found peace?"
Yuri took a long breath. "I think he made peace. With himself. And sometimes… that's enough."
They stood in silence together, side by side, letting the quiet stretch. The sky was clearing now. A new dawn would come. And with it, a future they would rebuild—not from vengeance or grief, but from understanding, and love, and the memory of a man who once believed the world could be saved if only he became something greater than human.
He hadn't needed to be a god.
He only needed to be Mydei.
And in the end… he was.