Nezavek
Yorika raises the Soul-Still above her head.
Across the gallery, through crystallized victims and bending reality, our eyes meet. The bond between us pulses with everything we cannot say aloud. Through it, I send her my pride in her strength, my acceptance of whatever comes next, my love that I've never properly voiced.
The Collector lunges toward her, screaming.
I intercept him, my shadow form expanding to wrap around his crystalline body.
My tendrils become weapons, blades of void that slash at his perfect form.
Ice and shadow tear at each other, neither able to fully destroy the other.
He's stronger here in his gallery, drawing power from the preserved suffering around us.
But I'm fighting for something more than survival now.
"You think you've won?" The Collector's laugh cuts through our struggle. "Even if she destroys it, you'll die."
I can’t help but smile. "Some prices are worth paying."
Yorika brings the Soul-Still down.
The crack echoes through dimensions. For a heartbeat, nothing happens. Then golden light erupts from the shattered core, not expanding outward but pulling everything in first, gathering power.
Through the light, I see Melara's consciousness rise from her crystallized form. For one impossible moment, she's whole again, her awareness focused on Yorika.
Then she's gone, absorbed into the golden torrent with the other freed souls.
The explosion reverses, erupting outward.
I abandon the Collector. Let him face what he's created. My form dissolves completely as I wrap around Yorika, every tendril of shadow cocooning her in layer after layer of darkness. Her heartbeat pounds against what remains of my chest. Her breath warms the shadows that shield her.
The wave of destruction hits.
I become a conduit. The only way to save her is to channel the explosion through myself into the void. My nature as a crossing point between realities makes it possible. Also makes it fatal.
The first soul tears through me, a child whose consciousness burns like acid as it passes.
Then another. And another. Three hundred and twelve fragments of preserved awareness, each one ripping away pieces of my essence as they flee toward freedom.
I'm the door they pass through, and each passage tears the door wider.
A young man's consciousness shares a fragment of memory, his daughter's first word, before shredding what I use for thought. A mother's soul blessed me in a language that predates the Shift, taking my ability to speak with her.
Melara passes through last, her essence brushing mine with sisterly warmth meant for Yorika. Through me, she sends love. Then she's gone, and I'm coming apart at fundamental levels.
My consciousness scatters. I exist in the gallery, in the void, in twelve dimensions at once.
The shadow that forms my body disperses like smoke in a hurricane.
My thoughts fragment: one piece still aware of Yorika's heartbeat, another dissolving into the spaces between stars, a third simply ceasing.
The Collector's realm collapses. Walls fold into themselves. The black glass floor becomes a ceiling that becomes nothing. Reality eats itself, and I'm spread too thin to care.
Yorika is unconscious but alive. My cocoon protected her. The explosion passed through me instead of her.
It was all worth it. She is worth everything.
The last sensation before I dissolve completely: her pulse, strong and steady.
Then I'm nothing but scattered shadow across ruins, dispersed consciousness fading into void, acceptance of an ending that saved what mattered most.
The rain begins to fall, washing through what's left of me, spreading my essence thinner with each drop. I can't hold form. Can't gather thoughts. Can't do anything but exist in fragments, fading.
But the bond holds one tiny piece of consciousness together. Just enough to know she's alive.
Just enough to know I succeeded.
Just enough to let go.