The sky had learned to bleed.
It hung above the Arena of the Hollow Moons, a coliseum carved from the petrified hearts of dead gods. The seats were ribs; the sky was a lidless eye. A hundred million crystal orbs floated like fireflies, broadcasting to every screen on the continent.
Jonathan Andrew stood at the centre of a dais of black glass.
Velira's dust had been forged into a living cloak that clung to his shoulders, whispering her last laugh every time he breathed.
In his right hand: the void-crown, now grown teeth.
In his left: the shadow-dagger that had killed her—
its edge dripping starlight and regret.
He wore the smile of a boy who had finally come home.
Arya stood thirty paces away,
eighteen lovers fanned behind her in a crescent of steel and grief.
The black seed in her chest had become a second heart,
beating in perfect counter-rhythm to the one Jonathan had stolen.
Velira's twin dagger rested against her thigh,
humming a lullaby only she could hear.
The High Arbiter's voice rolled across the arena like funeral bells:
"ROUND 9: OBSIDIAN vs. THE VOID REGENT REBORN
There are no rules.
There is only coronation."
The crowd roared—
half in terror,
half in worship.
Jonathan raised the void-crown.
The teeth bit into his scalp.
Black glass petals bloomed from his temples,
each one a memory he had murdered.
Velira's laugh became a scream.
Solara's childhood letter burned to ash.
Arya's first kiss curdled into poison.
He opened his arms.
The cloak of dust unfolded into wings of living shadow,
spanning the width of the arena.
Every feather was a face—
Velira's,
Solara's,
Jonathan's own, age seven, weeping.
"Behold," he said,
voice layered with every throat he had ever cut,
"the empire I was always meant to rule."
He snapped his fingers.
The hollow moons cracked.
From each fissure poured yesterday's Jonathans—
a hundred,
a thousand,
ten thousand versions of the boy who had learned to smile while the world burned.
They marched in perfect lockstep,
boots of black glass striking the ribs in a heartbeat that shook the sky.
Arya did not flinch.
She walked forward,
bare feet leaving prints of frost and fire on the black glass.
Every step echoed Velira's laugh.
Every breath tasted of resurrection.
Alexander walked at her left,
storm runes blazing into a halo of lightning.
Solara at her right,
wings dripping liquid dawn.
Behind them:
Liora and Cassia, ice and fire braided into a single whip;
Sable, shadows pooling like oil;
the twins, tails fused into a living spear;
Milo and Lena, hands clasped, telekinesis humming;
Gilgamesh, golden blur circling the dais;
Cogsworth, gears clicking a war-song;
Morvox, dream-flesh rippling with locked screams;
the Choir children, voices raised in a chord that cracked the moons further.
They stopped ten paces from Jonathan.
He smiled wider.
"Still clinging to your broken toys?"
Arya tilted her head.
"You mistake them for toys," she said.
"They're the reason you'll lose."
The first strike came from the sky.
A yesterday-Jonathan leapt,
void-dagger aimed at Arya's throat.
Gilgamesh caught him mid-air,
spun him like a top,
kissed his forehead—
snap.
The clone dissolved into black sand.
Another leapt for Solara.
She met him with wings of sunrise,
burned the memory of her childhood letter into his eyes.
He screamed—
her name,
her first name,
the one only Jonathan had ever known.
He crumbled to ash.
Ten thousand became nine thousand,
nine thousand became five.
Jonathan laughed—
a sound like glass dragged across bone.
He raised the shadow-dagger.
Velira's dust cloak surged.
The dust became hands—
a thousand,
ten thousand,
each one wearing Velira's face.
They reached for the cohort,
fingers curling around throats,
wrists,
hearts.
Alexander roared.
Lightning poured from his runes,
burned the hands to smoke.
But the smoke remembered.
It became Velira's laugh,
Velira's scream,
Velira's last breath.
Liora's ice cracked.
Cassia's flames guttered.
The twins' spear faltered.
Milo and Lena's telekinesis stuttered.
Arya felt it—
the moment the cohort doubted.
She stepped into the smoke.
The hands closed around her.
Velira's face pressed to hers—
eyes wide,
mouth open in a silent scream.
Arya kissed her.
Not the memory.
The truth.
The smoke shivered.
The hands dissolved.
Velira's real laugh echoed—
soft,
warm,
alive.
The cloak tore.
Velira's dust rained upward,
became a constellation of shadow-petals that spelled her name across the sky.
Jonathan's smile faltered.
He lunged.
The shadow-dagger flashed.
Arya met it with Velira's twin.
Blade kissed blade—
clang.
Sparks of black glass and starlight exploded.
The dais cracked.
The hollow moons wept.
They fought like lovers who had forgotten how to stop.
Jonathan's strikes were yesterday—
every cut he had ever made,
every kiss he had ever stolen.
Arya's parries were tomorrow—
every resurrection,
every orgasm,
every vow.
The cohort circled,
weapons raised,
but the fight was hers.
She feinted left,
drove her dagger into the void-crown's largest tooth.
It shattered.
Jonathan screamed—
a sound that cracked the sky in half.
Black glass rained.
The yesterday-clones dissolved into smoke.
The cloak of dust fell away,
revealing Jonathan's bare chest—
scarred,
bleeding,
human.
He staggered.
The shadow-dagger clattered to the glass.
Arya caught it.
She pressed both daggers to his throat—
crossed,
gentle,
final.
"Yield," she whispered.
He looked up.
His eyes were wells again—
but now they reflected her.
"I was never the villain," he said,
voice small,
true.
"I was the mirror.
You just didn't like what you saw."
He kissed her—
soft,
apologetic,
poison.
The void-crown's shards flew.
They buried themselves in Cogsworth's chest.
The chrome artificer gasped.
Her gears stopped.
Oil and starlight poured from the wounds.
Her eyes—
once lenses,
now windows—
locked on Arya.
"I built machines to replace feeling," she whispered.
"You taught me to feel.
He just taught me to stop."
She smiled—
a perfect, mechanical smile—
and crumbled into brass feathers that drifted upward.
The arena screamed.
The cohort lunged.
Alexander's lightning burned the air.
Solara's wings became a sun.
Morvox's locked heart opened like a flower.
The Choir children sang a chord that shattered the hollow moons.
But Jonathan was already gone—
stepped through a shard of black glass,
vanished into the smoke.
The shadow-dagger in Arya's hand wept.
Velira's twin dagger sang.
Arya knelt in the brass feathers,
pressed them to her lips.
Cogsworth's last gear spun once—
tick—
then stopped forever.
Level 750.
The cohort surged—
Alexander Level 500,
Solara Level 650,
Morvox Level 620,
the Choir children Level 250 each and weeping brass tears.
The sky bled harder.
The High Arbiter's voice arrived as a single brass feather that pulsed above the dais:
"Round 9: VOID REGENT VICTORIOUS—by sacrifice.
Seven rounds remain.
The final three sharpen their grief.
Next: The Celestial Choir of Final Notes—
they fight with the song that ends all songs."
Arya stood in the wreckage,
two daggers crossed over her heart,
Cogsworth's brass feathers orbiting her like mourning doves.
She looked at the shard Jonathan had vanished through.
It reflected her face—
crowned in six broken laws,
eyes wells of starlight and rage.
"Your funeral." She whispered
The hollow moons closed.
The sky learned to mourn.
And somewhere in the smoke,
Jonathan Andrew sharpened a new crown—
made of every heart he had yet to break.