Silence came like a blade.
The Spear of Immanence. Lucien his last move sailed through a landscape of possible and infinite worlds, through all branches of beyond, and when it hit Seryx it did not make a wound. It made a verdict. When the tip of the spear came in contact with Seryx his heart, every version of Seryx, even those versions of himself that did not yet have names, even the ones he could not imagine even existed froze as if time had finally closed its mouth.
They were not wounded. They were stopped by the Spear of Immanence. Infinite bodies, infinite voices, all sealed into the same quiet that followed a great bell.
Lucien felt it in his chest: the ring on his heart broke. The clock had finished. Zero had arrived after 5001 resets with a sound like a river falling from a cliff. Lucien his shoulders loosened, and he felt small, human and raw. He became himself again. No god. No nothing. He was just Lucien.
Seryx's last form. The one that mattered here. Stilled. The hundreds of blades he wielded on his back fell from his body. For a long moment the Crucible arena was only wind and dust and the tiny sound of people breathing too loud.
Karu his face went from grey to red; Rylen's jaw worked and he had no words. Emiluna cried her eyes out on Lisa ´ s shoulder, but the sound was thin and small under the weight of the thing that had been finished.
Jason jumped in the air and staggered to the boundary and pounded the air with his fist as if he could drum something back to life.
Lucien sank to his knees, the afterimage of light in his vision like ash. The spear's power had not been a trick. It had not been a lie. It had been an absolute lock. Where it had pierced, evolution could no longer open.
Seryx did not scream. He did not laugh. He simply disintegrated into the Crucible´s air like a tide that had been pulled out and would not return.
"Is it finally… over? Can we go home now?" Emiluna whispered, voice shaking.
Lucien's hand. Which was blackened at the edges from the Oververse reach. Right there and then Lucien realized that the Oververse is the place where the Creator of Gods resides. He felt the same energy from the Creator coming out of the Oververse. Lucien was tired beyond measure. He did not answer to the Oververse.
The truth was sharp and too large for words: he had ended something that was not meant to be ended.
He had chosen his path and paid for it. He lost part of his sanity. The ring on his chest was cold and empty; he felt the loss like a limb missing. Lucien knew that he would never be the same. No one besides Lucien, Seryx, The Creator of Gods, The first and the King of Hell knew what Lucien had to go through to stop Seryx.
Then the arena changed.
Two portals opened where the Crucible's rules had once been clear. One was small, ragged, and humming with the scent of rain and salt and the particular smell of home.
It was Earth. Lucien realized that he had been fighting Seryx for atleast an hour. He saw earth. It was raw and messy, living. He knew that it had been a month that they´d been gone from Earth. He saw that the leaves were starting to fall from the trees and that the bushes were slowly losing their color. And that the flowers were slowly fading. He saw that his home wasn´t the same anymore. The monsters took over. Lucien knew that it was the King of Hell.
The other portal was a pale seam of cold light that reached up and down like a ladder to places no mind should climb: the Oververse, the high place above all dimensions. The place where the Creator of Gods resides. It gaped like an invitation and a threat.
He looked at Rylen. He looked at Jason. He looked at Emiluna. He thought of the laughter and the arguing and the cooking of instant noodles at midnight and the voices that had kept him from being a monster.
He stepped towards Earth without a any doubt. The boundary line vanished like chalk washed by rain.
The portal to Earth widened; the portal to the Oververse shimmered and then, for a moment, closed its face to look back at him with something like disappointment.
Seryx's sealed forms. The infinite versions of himself cracked like ice in sunlight and turned to smoke. The largest and newest form Lucien had pierced through with his spear, folded in on itself and the place where Seryx had stood became empty.
Back into the Crucible arena. Everything shattered into ieces. It let go of itself and its ruins folded into dust. Time, which had been a taut rope for so long, finally relaxed its hand.
He had no more resets. He had no more rewinds. He no longer had any divine power who can rewrite reality. He was the same Lucien he had always been. The Lucien who fights monsters for the people on Earth.
Later, in the low light of the council chamber above the arena, The First of the Council was talking to himself in the dark Council room.
"You found a detour," The First said, his voice sounded terrible. "You chose to keep your humanness. I had hoped—" He paused, the word left hanging like a blade. "I had hoped you would accept what I offered. But you did not. You made it out of the final test without becoming the God of Vengeance. You chose the long road. Next time I won't fail."
Archer had been missing since the Crucible began. Rumor had one hand bloodier than the other, rumor had him on the King's side. The King found him again in the depths of the Grand Canyon. where the light was like old gold. He smiled a thin, patient smile and spoke a promise like a debt.
"You stood with me," the King said, voice low and pleased. "You played a part in my plan. Lucien rejected the throne. He rejected me. So in one month, Archer, the throne will be yours. The world will bend to someone who knows how to take it."
Archer only bowed. "It will be done."
The King's eyes did not flicker toward the place where Seryx had fallen. He had learned more than one lesson tonight. Lucien's refusal told him everything he needed to know: the boy would never be his puppet.
That certainty did not anger him so much as sharpen the King's will. If he could not have Lucien, then he would shape another.
The next morning.
Around a small, battered table in the fifth command post, Lucien his family gathered. Rylen put a steady hand on Lucien's shoulder. Jason told a half-broken morning joke that made everyone laugh and then breathe from some place they had kept closed.
Emiluna knelt before Lucien and pressed her forehead to his palm. "You did it, Lucien" she said, and her voice was small and proud. "You didn't become a god or a king. Your still our Lucien.."
Lucien rose from the table and walked to the window. He could see the city breathing, people small and stubborn and alive. He could see the monsters who had evolved that they now could endure sunlight terror the city of Tokyo.
He had ended Seryx. He had locked a god's becoming. He had given up a weapon that could undo his worst mistakes ever again.
A voice, low and private, slid into his ear — not the Creator, not the King, but Karu who had arrived for breakfast, who had never liked long speeches. "You ready for the what comes next?" Karu asked.
Lucien smiled, small and real. "I am ready," he said. "We face it together."