Azmaik's half-mutated form twitched, the worm-like flesh writhing across his left side as though impatient to devour the surroundings itself. He dragged his hammer-shaped limb across the ground, carving trenches through ice and dirt until sparks danced beneath it.
"Look at you," he hissed. "Still standing. Still pretending there's something human left to save." His remaining eye gleamed, bright with malice and grief woven into one twisted thread. "If you don't kill me here, I will destroy everything. The Overseer will use me as his body and when He descends, He will wear me as a costume and through it, every soul you ever touched will face eternal hell."
Tom stood wordless for a moment, his breath formed soft smoke in the cold. The air around him buzzed faintly, his Face's chair floating at his side like a silent witness. He could feel his heart trying to convince him to attack but something in Azmaik's voice, a thread of pain woven through madness, made him stay laying.
"You've already lost," Tom said quietly. ".... I have too."
Azmaik sneered, "You think you can save them by dying, boy? Sacrifice will purify what's already rotten?" He raised his hammer-arm. "I'll crush your skull.... and the Overseer will.... sing through me."
Tom didn't move. His Face's presence rippled behind him, protective but Tom raised a hand stopping it. "No. Let me speak."
Azmaik halted, curious despite himself.
Tom looked at him, really looked. Past the rotting half-body, past the arrogance, past the man who had become a myth of ruin. And what he saw wasn't a monster. It was a myth knotted by tragedies.
"I understand." Tom said softly. "You didn't want to destroy the world. You wanted it to finally see you."
Tom continued, "If you stay here, if you live like this, the Overseer will take you. But if you take me instead…. maybe He'll mistake us. He'll think I'm the physical vessel and you the vessel of Artorias."
Azmaik's eye widened. "What are you saying?"
Tom took a step forward, his voice calm as still water. "Take my life. Use the ritual. Make the world think you're me. Carry my face, my name, my memory. Let them curse me for what you did. Let them praise you for what I tried to do. It doesn't matter anymore."
"Did you.… give yourself to me?" Azmaik's tone cracked, disbelief flickering into awe.
Tom nodded. "If I stay alive, I'll doom everyone. If I die here, the world will think Tom Greyrat lived on. You can disappear into my shadow. The Overseer won't find His way down."
Azmaik's grin faltered. "You're insane."
Tom whispered. "I'd rather the world forget me than remember you as its end."
The silence stretched between them, heavy as a rollercoaster. Then Azmaik raised his trembling hand, the worm-flesh pulsing with unstable energy. "You realize what this will do? Your soul will dissolve into mine. Your memory will mix with my hate. People will think I'm you. You will lose your identity to the people who used to know you as you were to them."
Tom smiled faintly. "Then I guess you'll have to live with me forever."
Azmaik said nothing. Then, with a snarl and a flicker of desperate rage, he drew a glowing circle in the air, crimson symbols spinning like dying suns. The ritual's hum deepened until it felt like the world itself held its breath.
Tom stood in its center, unflinching. The runes crawled up his arms like veins of fire, and his body began to glow from within.
"Goodbye, Azmaik," he said softly. "And…. hello."
Light erupted.
Two souls collided, one drowning, one burning and when the brilliance faded, kneeling in the snow, breathing heavily.
His eyes opened—familiar, yet wrong person.
"Tom Greyrat, You are...." he whispered to himself and smiled like both men at once.
....
The desert was quiet for a war still raging beyond the comprehension.
Elior marched forward, boots sinking into blackened sand that shimmered under the dim light of an annular eclipse. The sun was a ring of molten gold behind the shadowed moon, bleeding fire at its edges, turning the sky into a wound. The air trembled; sound itself seemed afraid to exist.
He could still hear the mourn of dying Vampires, the whisper of collapsing ruins, the fading hum of battle far away. Yet none of it felt real now. Something greater was approaching.
Far below, deep in the bunker, Rosario stood among twenty-three Homans. At first, it was only murmuring. Words that weren't words, humming in their throats like broken prayers. Then, suddenly, one of them began clawing his own face. Another slammed her head against the metal wall until the bone cracked.
"What happened?" Rosario shouted with a voice shaking slightly.
None listened. Their eyes began to glaze in white, pupils spinning like mirrors catching invisible stars. They walked as if strings pulled their spines. One by one, they marched outside into the darkest nightfall.
Rosario followed, horrified and confused.
The wind howled, thick with dust.
The Homans stopped, looked up at the eclipse and then, in a single, synchronized motion, thrust their hands into their mouths. Skin tore, bone snapped, their jaws stretched beyond nature. With sickening force, they ripped their own hearts out, beating, bleeding and raised them high toward the sky.
Rosario froze. His mind screamed but his legs held him calm somehow.
He wanted to look away, to close his eyes but something inside told him this wasn't the end of it. There was still a lot to happen.
From every direction, the same thing was happening. Hundreds of thousands of Homans across the whole Durkan were doing the same act of devotion. Marching slowly, hearts in hand, their blood painting the desert in a pattern of rivers.
From the battlefield, Grace saw it too. She stumbled, gasping, eyes wide as tears cut through the dirt on her face. Her legs trembled. This wasn't war, this was like an execution. This was the end.
Even Vera, locked in combat, faltered. He had seen monsters, mutants, demons but never the world itself praying through death.
Only Radahn stayed silent, swinging his blade through skeletons, face reamaining expressionless, perhaps because he already understood what was coming.
Elior stopped walking. The sand beneath him shivered. The light dimmed further until even his shadow disappeared. Then, slowly, something rose behind the eclipse.
At first, it looked like a halo. Then a shape of a colossal, writhing outline emerged from the eclipse's core. Not descending, but revealing its structure. As if the shadow itself were a curtain hiding the truth of the universe.
The Sun Presence.
It was not light. It was what light feared to touch.
Its body flickered between form and formlessness: eyes within eyes, countless fangs that unfolded into galaxies, ribs that bent like rings of fire. Around it swirled veins of molten reality, threading through void and color. Every time it moved, the reality cracked; every atom turned cursed.
Between it and the world, a wall of nothingness formed. A buffer of void because even existence refused to touch it. It wasn't invading reality; reality was recoiling, building a distance to survive from its presence.
The Homans, half a million, lifted their still-beating hearts higher across the whole Durkan. Blood streamed upward, turning into crimson mist that spiraled around the being like incense.
Their bodies fell, but their hearts kept floating, forming a red crown beneath the eclipse. The presence of the Sun Presence was affecting the Homans hugely, but Hunters were healthy somehow.
Elior looked up, his hands trembled. He could feel it. Every nerve, every cell in his body screamed to kneel, to break, to stop existing. His Face shimmered faintly beside him, sand swirling defensively in rings. He was no god. Just a man—Uptie 2, Level 1—standing before an Outer Being that could end all time with a sigh.
He didn't kneel.
He lifted his head like a glorious king, heart pounded like a drum in an empty church.
Fear swallowed him whole, but within it burned something was stubborn—hope.
Elior whispered back, barely audible,
"If no one else stands…. I will."
The End is near.