After the Storm
When the blinding white light faded...
All that remained was silence.
Kaela stumbled across the broken ground, her legs weak, her vision swimming with dust and blood.
Around her, the battlefield was a graveyard.
Wrecked tanks.
Burning dropships.
Twisted corpses — human, Hollowborn, and everything in between.
The clouds above swirled unnaturally, a gaping wound in the sky itself.
She clutched the Genesis Core close to her chest, feeling its warmth — feeling it hunger.
Not far away, she saw them —
Chris, slumped forward, still gripping the Spear of Genesis —
And Veyra, kneeling, one knee on the shattered earth, her beautiful monstrous form flickering with instability.
They had destroyed each other.
But not completely.
Chris lifted his bloodied face to her. His eyes, though fading, still burned with clarity.
> "Kaela... it's not over."
His voice was a whisper, but it hit her like a thunderclap.
---
Veyra's Last Gambit
Veyra — bleeding from dozens of cracks in her crystalline skin —
laughed weakly, the sound beautiful and horrifying.
> "Little child... you think you've won?"
Her wings of black shards flared.
She reached toward the Genesis Core.
Even broken, even dying, her will was colossal.
If she touched it now —
If the Genesis Core's massive energy was unleashed without control —
It would reshape the world into a Hollowborn nightmare.
Twisting forests into flesh, oceans into black bile, cities into bone spires.
The end of humanity.
---
The Choice
Kaela froze.
Everything in her screamed: RUN.
She was just a girl.
She wasn't a soldier, a hero, a legend like her parents or Chris.
She couldn't possibly fight a god.
But Chris — bleeding, broken — still struggled to stand.
Still trying to protect her.
Chris threw the spear of genesis at kaela with the remaining power and said
"now is your time ."
The Genesis Core pulsed, sensing her fear.
It offered her a second choice:
She could use it.
Tap into its limitless energy.
Become something beyond human — a living weapon — at the cost of her soul.
Or...
She could sacrifice the Genesis Core —
Destroy it with the Spear of Genesis —
Ending the Hollowborns forever, but losing humanity's last, greatest power.
Her choice.
---
Kaela clenched her fists, teeth gritted so hard her jaw ached.
She thought of her mother — Lia —
Of her father — Kairo —
Of all those who had died fighting this endless war.
Tears blurred her vision.
She was so tired.
So, so tired.
She looked at Chris, who gave her a single, small nod.
He believed in her.
Even now.
---
Kaela's Decision
Kaela screamed, the sound tearing from her soul.
She charged.
Veyra lashed out, too fast to dodge —
But Kaela, with the last strength of the human spirit,
plunged the Spear of Genesis through the Core itself.
---
The world stopped.
The Genesis Core cracked like glass.
Blinding blue light exploded from within, swallowing the battlefield.
Veyra howled — a sound of pure hatred and despair — as the wave of energy consumed her.
Her body, her mind, her power —
All unmade, erased atom by atom.
Chris, smiling faintly, slumped to the ground, the burden lifted at last.
Kaela collapsed too, the Spear slipping from her grasp.
The energy washed over everything —
Purging Hollowborn flesh, healing broken land, shattering dark magic.
The Hollowborns —
All of them —
Began to crumble into ash.
---
The Aftermath
When Kaela woke, she was lying under a clear sky.
The clouds had finally parted.
The battlefield was silent.
No more screams.
No more explosions.
No more monsters.
Just the wind.
She sat up slowly.
Chris was gone.
But his spear — the Spear of Genesis —
was planted upright in the ground beside her, like a grave marker.
A reminder.
A monument.
---
Kaela was no longer a child.
She had chosen.
She had ended the war — at a terrible cost.
But maybe...
Maybe a new world could be built on the ashes.
Maybe.