The voice of the Devourer coiled through the skies like a noose of shadow, threading through Jack's mind, twisting around memory and instinct alike. It was not loud. It did not need to be.
It spoke inside him.
"You have always been the vessel."
Jack staggered, the clash of blades ringing in his bones. The Echo reeled back from him, bleeding strands of starlight from a gash in its shoulder. But it smiled—cold, inevitable.
"You can't kill me," it said. "I am the shape of your end. Your final truth. You don't cut me down, Jack. You become me."
The Blade of Echoes burned in Jack's grip, but doubt surged beneath the fire. The visions it had given him—were they warnings, or prophecy?
"Jack!" Nyssa's voice snapped him back.
She threw something—his sigil shard, torn from the weave of his coat. It struck his chest and flared, anchoring him in the now. The pull of the Maw lessened.
Around them, the world groaned. The chasm spread like a crack in glass, bleeding red light and spirals of voidfire. The others formed a loose ring around Jack—Nyssa and Marek, blades drawn; Lola whispering incantations through gritted teeth; Kael standing closest to the edge, eyes locked on the Echo.
The Devourer's voice whispered again:
"Break the seal. Let me in. Let the Sundering complete itself."
Jack clenched the Blade tighter.
"No," he said. "This ends here."
The Echo tilted its head. "It never ends. You can't fight what you are."
"Maybe not," Jack said, stepping forward, "but I can change what I become."
He lunged. The clash of blades echoed through the broken sky.
Kael moved too—charging into the fight, but not toward the Echo. He turned toward the Maw.
"Kael, what are you doing?!" Lola shouted.
Kael didn't answer.
His expression was tight, like something inside him had unraveled. He gripped the chain at his neck—the broken pendant of Elandir—and tossed it into the chasm. Then he stepped to the edge, arms raised.
"The only way to close a wound is from the inside."
"No!" Jack shouted. "Don't!"
Kael smiled faintly. "You saw the cycle. So did I. I was always part of it. But not the way they wanted."
And then—he fell.
Into the Maw.
The void surged upward, recoiling like a beast struck from within.
The Echo screamed—not in pain, but in fury. "No! He was the tether!"
Jack surged forward, blade flashing. The Echo parried—but now its movements faltered. The timeline trembled.
Jack struck again.
A crack split the Echo's mask. Behind it—his own face, but older. Worn. Full of regret.
"Do you see?" the Echo gasped. "You kill me, and you break yourself."
Jack hesitated.
Then Nyssa shouted, "He isn't you!"
And Jack remembered. The Echo was just a possibility—a fork in the road, not a destiny.
He drove the Blade through the Echo's heart.
There was no blood. Only light.
The Echo staggered back—then began to dissolve, piece by piece, into threads of memory unraveling in the air. It didn't scream. It just… faded.
Jack stood shaking, breath ragged. The Maw pulsed violently, like a dying star struggling to collapse.
Lola ran to the edge. "He's gone," she said, voice choked.
"No," Jack whispered, stepping beside her. "He's not gone. He's inside it. Holding it shut."
From the depths of the Maw, something howled. Not a voice. A force.
The Devourer surged upward, denied its vessel.
Time twisted. The earth convulsed.
And then—Kael's voice echoed from below.
"Seal it. Now."
Jack raised the Blade of Echoes—and plunged it into the ground again.
The light from the blade spread like fire across the ash, tracing ancient sigils in the earth, forming a ring around the Maw. The void screamed. The earth shattered.
The seal began to close.
But it needed something more. The Blade could not do it alone.
Jack turned to Nyssa. "Your blood. From the Hollow. It's tied to the old magic."
She didn't hesitate. She slit her palm and touched the sigils.
They ignited.
Marek stepped forward, driving his sword into the ground beside Jack's blade. "Strength," he said. "Steel and bone."
Lola chanted again, weaving her will into the seal. "Memory. Truth. Choice."
The sigils flared brighter.
The Maw screamed.
And then—it closed.
Not gently. Not quietly.
But violently, with a tremor that knocked them all off their feet. The land split and stitched itself back together in a blink. The sky—broken moments ago—healed like a wound finally cauterized.
The Blade of Echoes faded. The light in it dimmed, then died.
And Kael was gone.
Silence fell.
The land was whole, but scarred.
Smoke curled in lazy spirals from the ground. Ash still clung to their skin. But the pull of the Devourer had vanished. The timeline had stabilized.
Jack stood slowly.
The blade no longer glowed, but it still felt warm in his hand—like a heartbeat passed on.
Marek broke the silence first. "So… did we just save the world?"
"No," Lola said softly. "We delayed its ending."
Jack nodded. "The cycle was broken. But something was torn loose. The Devourer was denied its vessel—but it's still out there."
Nyssa turned to him. "So what now?"
Jack looked to the horizon, where strange new stars had begun to appear—stars that had no names.
"Now we find what escaped when the Maw shut. We find the fragments left behind."
"And Kael?" Nyssa asked.
Jack didn't answer.
But far beneath them, in the silence between moments, a single heartbeat echoed.
Still alive.
Still fighting.