Boom!
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The echo of the final gunshot faded into the groan of a collapsing mansion. Smoke pooled low, swallowing most of the room in a near-pitch-black haze. The darkness felt thick—like it had weight—like it was holding its breath after witnessing something it shouldn't have.
Everest stood in the shadows, little more than a silhouette carved from exhaustion and blood. Cuts lined his arms, burns streaked across his clothes, and every breath shuddered through bruised ribs. He looked like someone who had fought past the limit of what a human should survive—
and then kept going.
All the room's shattered lights were dead.
All except one.
A faint golden ray pierced through the smoke from some cracked opening in the ceiling, narrow and trembling, like the world had only enough mercy left to illuminate one thing:
Genesis June.
He sat on his ruined center couch, legs crossed, bathed in that weak, holy glow. Everything else was swallowed by darkness—but him? He looked staged. Framed. Presented.
Dead—
but unmistakably divine.
His long black hair, torn loose from the violence, shimmered faintly where the light touched it. His wounds, carved into him by forces that should've ended mountains, looked almost elegant under that glow. And his half-open golden eyes—already hypnotic in life—shone even brighter now, reflecting the light like twin suns trapped in shadow.
They stared directly into the darkness where Everest stood.
Unblinking.
Unfading.
And in the near-total black, that gaze was unnerving on a cosmic level.
It made Everest's silhouette feel smaller.
It made Genesis look alive.
It made the room feel like it still belonged to him.
And the smile — that easygoing, knowing smile — gleamed faintly, just enough to feel wrong.
The golden light framed Genesis.
The darkness framed Everest.
Father and son, opposite sides of the room, opposite ends of the story.
Everest exhaled, the sound soft but cutting. When he spoke, his voice carried the fatigue of a man who had killed a legend and the menace of someone who knew he might have to do it again.
"Do not worry… Father. You and I are both on our way to the Hall of Fame."
He didn't move.
Genesis's smile didn't fade.
The darkness didn't breathe again.
Cut to black.