BOOM!
The gunshot's echo died slowly, swallowed by the groan of a collapsing mansion.
Smoke settled like a living thing—thick, gray, patient—filling the room until even breathing felt like drowning.
Everest stood in the dark.
He didn't sway. Didn't collapse. Didn't celebrate.
He just... stood.
Blood dripped from his left arm—three long cuts, bone-deep. Burns crawled up his right sleeve where the fabric had melted into skin. Every breath was a negotiation with his ribs, and his throat tasted like copper and ash.
He looked like someone who should've died an hour ago.
But he hadn't.
And that was the problem.
The mansion's lights were dead. All of them.
All except one.
A single beam of gold pierced the smoke from somewhere above—a crack in the ceiling, maybe, or a hole punched through by something massive. The light fell at an angle, narrow and trembling, like the world's last mercy had been spent on this:
Illuminating Genesis June.
He sat on the center couch, legs crossed, hands draped casually over the armrests.
His posture was too perfect for a corpse. Too composed. The light framed him like a painting—like a god who'd agreed to sit for his portrait one final time before ascending.
His long black hair hung loose, some strands catching the gold, others swallowed by shadow. The wounds carved into him—deep enough to see bone in places—looked almost elegant under that glow. Like brushstrokes.
And his eyes.
Half-open. Golden. Still shining.
They stared directly at Everest.
Not through him. Not past him.
At him. Even dead, Genesis June refused to look away.
Everest's fingers twitched. He wanted to check the pulse. Confirm the kill. Follow protocol.
But his legs wouldn't move.
Because looking at Genesis—even now, especially now—felt like standing in front of something that could still erase you with a thought.
The smile didn't help.
That easygoing, knowing curve on Genesis's lips, faint but unmistakable, glinted in the weak light. It was the same smile he'd worn at breakfast tables, press conferences, executions. The smile that said: I know exactly what you're thinking, and it's adorable you think you matter.
Everest's breath stuttered.
The room smelled like burnt hair and ozone. Like reality had been twisted too hard and snapped back wrong.
Somewhere deeper in the mansion, something structural gave way with a long, shuddering crack.
Everest exhaled.
The sound came out raw, wrecked, too loud in the suffocating quiet.
He tilted his head slightly—the only movement he'd made since the echo faded—and when he spoke, his voice was low, ruined, and sharp enough to cut:
"Don't worry, Father."
His golden eyes—so much like Genesis's, so much dimmer—reflected nothing.
"You and I are both on our way to the Hall of Fame."
The words hung in the smoke.
Genesis didn't answer.
The light flickered once.
And the darkness swallowed everything.