The battlefield was no longer a place.
It was a wound in the fabric of the world.
Smoke choked the sky. The earth cracked beneath the weight of gods and mortals alike. Fire burned without fuel, as if feeding on the very essence of reality.
Talen stood at the center of it all, wings tattered, body scorched, but eyes still burning with purpose.
Beside him, Vintrinx bled from a dozen wounds, her sword shattered down the middle—but she had not fallen.
She would not fall.
Not yet.
Above them, the last of the Old Gods hovered—a being of shifting form, its voice echoing across time.
"You cannot win."
Talen exhaled smoke.
"We never wanted to win," he said. "We just wanted to choose our own fate."
The god raised a hand.
"Then let your fate be oblivion."
Lightning struck.
Flame rained.
But Talen did not move.
He reached for Vintrinx.
And she took his hand.
---
Vintrinx felt something awaken within her—something deeper than the Marked blood, older than the dragons themselves.
Power.
Not given by gods.
Not stolen from them.
Forged in defiance.
Talen turned to her, eyes glowing like dying stars.
"You know what we have to do," he said.
She nodded.
"I always did."
Together, they stepped forward.
Toward the rift.
Toward the heart of the storm.
The Old God screamed as they approached.
"You will be erased!"
"No," Vintrinx whispered. "We'll be remembered."
They raised their hands.
And called upon the fire.
---
Deep beneath the mountain, in the forgotten prison where the oldest dragon had been bound, chains began to break.
The real dragon—the one who had watched the rise and fall of gods—opened its eyes.
It did not speak.
It only **remembered**.
And through that memory, it lent its power to those who had chosen to defy fate itself.
Talen and Vintrinx became more than human.
More than divine.
They became **the flame that burned outside time**.
A force that could not be controlled.
Could not be rewritten.
Only honored.
---
The sky split open.
Light poured from the rift.
Talen and Vintrinx stood at its center, arms raised, bodies consumed by fire that did not burn them—but instead reforged them.
The Old Gods screamed as their forms unraveled.
Their power was not destroyed.
It was sealed.
Bound in the space between worlds.
Locked behind a door forged from choice, memory, and defiance.
And then…
Silence.
The storm passed.
The sky returned.
The world exhaled.
---
In the ruins of Eldenhold, survivors gathered.
Dragons knelt.
Rebels wept.
Seyra stood at the edge of the crater where the final battle had taken place, staring into the emptiness left behind.
There was no sign of them.
No bodies.
No ashes.
Just wind.
And the faintest whisper in the air.
We are not gone."
She smiled through her tears.
Because she understood.
They had not died.
They had become something else.
Something eternal.