The sky was lit ablaze.
Where once there had been stars, now there was only smoke—curtains of black ash curling through the ruins of New Avalon, swallowing what was left of the city's light. Fires burned where towers had fallen, and bridges lay like snapped bones across the skyline, their cables swaying like nooses in the wind.
Xavier Bridger stood at the edge of the highest rooftop he could still reach, barely holding his ground against the wind tearing across the ruins. His armor—cracked and scorched—hissed softly where coolant leaked into the air. The left arm was dead, his HUD flickering erratically inside the shattered helmet. He didn't feel the pain anymore. That part of him was gone now, left behind in the broken halls of what had once been G.H.O.S.T. Headquarters.
He stood in silence, watching the end unfold.
Behind him, the Gate pulsed with unstable energy—a jagged tear in space, stitched together by ancient tech and desperation. What had once been a beacon of hope was now a howling wound in the sky, its light flickering like a dying star. The noise it made was unbearable: a deep, metallic hum rising into a scream with each passing second, as if reality itself were groaning under the weight of what had been done.
The cube at his hip vibrated, its core flickering between blue and red. It had taken Malcolm and him six months to design the prototype, two more to encode the message inside. Xavier had no idea whether it would survive the passage through the Gate—or whether the past would even understand what it meant.
But there was no other option.
He reached for the cube, his fingers trembling—not from fear, but from the exhaustion that came after days of fighting without rest. The weight of every life lost pulled against his limbs. Kane. Frost. Toya. Even Hunter, buried somewhere beneath the rubble of the western wall. All of them gone. All of them sacrificed on this rooftop altar in the name of a war that should never have reached this point.
Below him, New Avalon burned. Entire blocks had been erased by orbital strikes. Vehicles sat twisted in the streets like discarded toys. Mechs—some G.H.O.S.T., some Vaknar—lay in heaps, their cores still sparking as the last vestiges of their power drained away into the broken ground.
He didn't look for survivors. He already knew there weren't any.
The cube pulsed again.
He turned back toward the Gate, forcing himself to walk—each step dragging his body forward as if gravity itself was trying to stop him. The air shimmered around the portal's edge, warping light and sound. A lesser man would have turned away. But Xavier had made peace with his fate long before the war reached this place.
He looked down at the cube—so small in his hand, its smooth obsidian surface broken only by the etchings of circuitry and encoded runes. This was it. The last card. The final whisper from a dead future to a world that might still be saved.
If they found it. If they listened.
The rooftop trembled.
Boots—heavy, mechanical, deliberate—struck the stone behind him.
Xavier didn't need to turn to know what was coming.
The Knight.
He could feel it in the air: that unnatural cold, that pressure against the lungs, like standing too close to a collapsing star. The Knight's presence was wrong—like a stain bleeding into reality. And as it stepped through the smoke, the flames bent away from it. Its armor was charred steel, twisted and blackened like volcanic glass, with red slits where eyes should have been. No voice. No humanity. Just the endless advance of inevitability.
They had fought before. Too many times. And Xavier had never once won.
He exhaled.
No running. Not this time.
He lifted the cube to his lips. Whispered a name.
Not his.
Then, with the last strength left in his arm, he threw it into the Gate.
The cube vanished in a burst of light—spiraling through the vortex, into whatever past still remained.
Xavier turned to face the Knight, his shoulders square, his grip tightening around the ruined hilt of his sword. The blade—Ace's blade—was cracked down the center, the obsidian edge chipped and dulled from battle, but it still pulsed faintly in his hand. Still alive.
Just like him.
"You don't get to end it," he said, his voice steady through the helmet's distortion. "Not without a fight."
The Knight didn't speak. It never had.
It simply raised its weapon—an infernal blade forged from something older than steel—and charged.
Xavier met it head-on.
The clash of their swords shattered what remained of the rooftop's edge. Sparks flew as energy met energy, each blow sending tremors through the structure. Xavier ducked low, twisted, drove the tip of his blade toward the Knight's side—only to be met with a counterstrike that sent him skidding back toward the Gate's pulsing light.
He could feel the armor locking up. Neural responses faltering. Warnings flared across his vision.
But he didn't stop.
He struck again, and again, each blow driven not by strength—but by purpose. The Knight responded with cold precision, every movement a masterclass in destruction. Xavier knew he couldn't win. He never had. That wasn't the point.
The point was time.
A glancing hit sent him crashing to the floor, his blade spiraling across the ground.
His lungs burned. His vision blurred.
The Knight approached, weapon raised.
Xavier looked up through the fractured visor, blood trailing down the inside of his cheek. The Gate was shrinking now. The overload sequence had begun. Maybe the message had made it. Maybe not.
He didn't know.
But he still had one move left.
With a growl, Xavier reached into the remains of his chestplate and pulled the secondary core from his suit—the one he and Malcolm had built as a last resort. He rose, stumbled forward, and slammed it into the Knight's chest.
There was a moment—a flicker.
Then the explosion tore through the rooftop.
Light.
Fire.
Silence.
When the smoke cleared, the Knight was gone.
And Xavier Bridger, last of the Elites, collapsed to his knees.
The Gate flickered. Then vanished.
The city groaned.
Far above the chaos, hidden behind stormclouds and fractured light, something watched.
Not a satellite. Not a drone.
A presence.
Cloaked in darkness, cloaked in flame.
Eyes like twin eclipses watched the rooftop battlefield below, where Xavier Bridger made his final stand. Where the Knight fell. Where the Gate pulsed its last light.
A voice — neither male nor female — breathed into the void.
"He still resists."
Another figure emerged from behind the veil of dark matter — tall, regal, draped in robes that shifted like smoke on water. A golden mask veiled her face, but her aura was unmistakable. Cold. Beautiful. Deadly.
Marsa, the Dark Lady, looked down at the battlefield with no emotion in her voice.
"It won't matter," she murmured. "The message won't reach them in time."
"And if it does?" came the reply.
Marsa tilted her head. "Then let them remember what they've already lost. The future cannot be changed. It can only be delayed."
A third presence stirred — deeper, lower, older. A voice like a blade scraping against bone, echoing from the folds of reality itself.
Forgotten by most.
Hated by all who remembered.
Not yet returned.
But listening.
"Let them run," he said. "Let them fight. In the end, all roads lead to ruin. The flame they worship will burn them to ash."
Marsa said nothing.
But as she turned from the window of whatever forgotten citadel they stood in — as the last embers of Xavier's life blinked out below — a faint flicker of sorrow crossed behind her golden mask.
Just for a second.
Then the storm swallowed them whole.