Jack knelt in the ruins, ash and blood grinding into his knees.
His mother's remains coated his skin in gray dust. His palms bled against stone slick with Steve's blood—thick, cooling, impossible to wipe clean.
Steve lay three feet away, still.
Black scars crossed his chest. Thin curls of smoke rose, carrying the smell of burned flesh. Pink foam had dried at the corner of his mouth. His eyes stared half-open at nothing.
Jack crawled forward. His hand settled on Steve's chest. Too cool. No heartbeat.
"You promised," he said, voice scraped raw. "You promised you wouldn't leave me alone."
The words hung in the air, small and useless. He said them again, quieter, as if repetition could make them true. "You promised."
Gluf stopped beside the body, blocking the faint light. His violet-black aura pulsed once—satisfied.
He looked down at Steve and smiled, small and real.
"Waste."
Violet light gathered in his palm.
Jack threw himself over Steve. "Don't touch him." The words tore out, spraying blood. "Take me."
His eyes found Elisa across the ruin.
She stood frozen, hands pressed to her mouth, tears falling without sound.
Jack's voice broke smaller, almost a child's. "Elisa. He's all I have left. Mom's gone. If he goes too… there's nothing."
He couldn't say more. The nothing sat in his throat like a stone.
Elisa felt the plea like a hand closing around her throat.
She had watched her father kill a mother in front of her son. She had watched Steve burn himself out to protect that son. She had stood silent the entire time.
Now Jack was begging her, and the begging sounded like something breaking that could never be fixed.
Her hands dropped.
"No."
She stepped forward. "Father. Stop."
Gluf turned his head.
"Don't kill them." Her voice shook, but she kept going. "I can't watch anymore. Steve gave everything for Jack. Don't take that too."
Anger flashed across Gluf's face, then something warmer—possessive pride.
He lowered his hand.
"My Elisa," he said quietly. "Feeling at last."
Elisa dropped to her knees between them. Golden light bloomed from her palms—soft, steady, carrying the faint scent of rain on warm stone.
She pressed one hand to Steve's chest, the other to Jack's shoulder.
The light flowed in.
Jack felt his wounds close, the burn in his lungs ease. He never looked away from Steve's face, searching for any flicker, any sign that the man inside was still there.
Steve's chest rose—shallow, then deeper. Color returned slowly. He breathed, but his eyes stayed closed, face slack.
"I have two crests," Elisa said, low and steady despite the tears running down her wrists. "Let them live. For me."
"Very well," Gluf said. "They live."
Relief shook Elisa's arms so hard the light flickered.
"But they will never use their crests again."
He raised the black-crystal orb. Darkness struck.
Jack screamed once—cold, exact. Memories of power, of the Light Spirit, of the God Realm shattered and drained away. The warmth that had lived in his chest since childhood went dark. A sudden, hollow absence opened inside him, deeper than any cut, colder than any wound he had ever known. It felt like losing a limb he had never noticed until it was gone.
The same darkness took Steve.
Elisa's light faded. She swayed, exhausted.
Aurora caught her. Neither spoke.
Steve breathed evenly—body whole, mind lost.
Jack stayed on his knees, hands empty, staring at the man who had given everything and received only ruin.
Gluf stood over them, quiet pride in his eyes.
Silence fell, broken only by the slow drip of blood and held-back breathing.
Then Gluf turned fully to Jack.
The boy knelt motionless beside Steve, ash clinging like a second, dead layer of skin. Blood crusted his palms. He looked small. Irreparably small.
Gluf's smile widened, slow and deliberate—the smile a parent gives a child who has just learned a permanent lesson.
"You are trash, boy."
The words landed soft, conversational. They struck harder than any blow in the entire fight.
Gluf stepped closer, boots crunching stone.
"Remember this. You always need someone to shield you. Your mother burned her soul to cinders for you. This one torched his life for you." He nudged Steve's body with his boot, casual, as if moving garbage aside. "And you?"
He crouched, face level with Jack's vacant stare.
"Nothing. You knelt. You begged. You watched."
Jack's chest hitched once. His lips parted, but no sound came. His eyes stayed fixed on nothing.
Gluf's voice dropped to a warm, intimate whisper, almost kind.
"And that little dream you carried—marrying my Elisa?" A soft chuckle, fond and cruel. "Bury it deep. She is light-years beyond filth like you. Go back to your low-class realm. Crawl through the mud you came from. Live every remaining day knowing you breathe only because my daughter pitied a whimpering stray."
He rose, already turning away.
"Take them away."
Shadows coiled, gentle but unbreakable. The arena dissolved.
Cold, clean air rushed in. Night. A cliffside over a dark, restless sea.
Jack hit the grass on his knees. The impact jarred his bones, but the pain felt distant, muffled.
Steve lay beside him, breathing steady, face empty.
No crest stirred. No memory of the God Realm remained. Only the hollow ache where everything important had been carved out.
Jack stared at his empty hands.
Gluf's words circled, endless.
Trash. Needed protection. Could do nothing.
His shoulders curled inward. A small, animal sound escaped—half choke, half whimper. Tears came silent at first, hot tracks through the ash on his face. Then the dam broke. He folded forward, forehead pressing into damp earth, fingers clawing grass and dirt until nails split. The sobs were ugly, heaving, unstoppable. Each one tore something loose inside him that would never grow back.
Mom's gone. Steve's gone—even if his heart still beats. The power's gone. The dream's gone. I'm still here.
And that felt like the worst part of all.
Far away, in a quiet moonlit room, Elisa sat on the edge of her bed.
Her memories of the arena, of Jack, of everything that mattered were sealed, rewritten, erased.
Yet a sudden weight crushed her chest. A grief with no name, no face, no reason.
Her breath caught on a sob she didn't understand. Tears spilled, hot and relentless.
She pressed both hands over her heart as if she could hold it together.
"I don't understand," she whispered to the empty room, voice cracking. "Why does it hurt so much?"
The pain rolled through her in waves. She slid off the bed and curled on the cold floor, arms wrapped around herself, sobbing for a loss she could no longer remember but could never stop feeling.
On the cliff, a car engine cut off.
Aurora stepped out. She had followed the divine ripple across realms, instinct dragging her here.
She found them.
Jack crumpled in the grass, shoulders shaking with silent, endless sobs. Steve beside him, unconscious and unreachable.
The sight hit her like a fist to the sternum.
Her eyes burned. Tears blurred the moonlight. She stood frozen at the cliff's edge, wind whipping her hair, salt stinging her lips. Her hands clenched until nails cut half-moons into her palms, blood welling warm and unnoticed.
A few paces away, Steve's car sat abandoned.
Inside, on the passenger seat: his old lighter and a crumpled pack—one cigarette missing.
The burned-down stub had left a small, perfect circle of char on the upholstery, still faintly smoking.
Jack didn't move.
Aurora didn't approach.
The sea crashed far below, endless and indifferent.
And in the night, one question hung heavy and unanswered:
What do you do when everything that made you worth saving is gone?