The chamber was alive with whispers. They slithered from the walls, from the broken pillars, from the throne itself — a thousand fractured voices, speaking in unison and yet apart. At the heart of it sat the Keeper, a monstrous figure draped in chains of memory. The Helm was fused to its skull, pulsing with sickly red light, as though it breathed through the metal itself.
Carlos gripped the Blade of Ascension tighter. The air around it shimmered, responding to his fear and fury alike. He felt the others behind him — Lys, Rina, Thalor, Maren — each silent, each bracing.
The Keeper rose. Its limbs were not flesh, not stone, but something worse: fragments of all those who had failed before, lashed together into a single grotesque body. Its voice was every Victor who had fallen, screaming through the same mouth:
"You are echoes. You are dust. You will join us in the silence."
And the throne room erupted into war.
Phantoms surged from the Keeper's shadow, armored figures wielding weapons forged of their own despair. They attacked without hesitation, their movements inhumanly precise, as if each one carried the memory of endless deaths.
Carlos swung his blade, its light carving arcs across the battlefield. Each phantom dissolved into ash beneath his strikes, but not before whispering into his ear — accusations, doubts, reminders of weakness. His arms grew heavy with every kill.
Lys moved with deadly grace, loosing arrow after arrow. Yet in every phantom's face she saw her sister — alive, pleading, then dying again. Her breath faltered, hands shaking.
"Lys!" Carlos's voice cracked through the din. "Don't listen!"
Her arrow trembled… then steadied. She released, and the shaft burned through the Keeper's shoulder, scattering shadow and bone.
Rina fought in silence, daggers spinning in brutal rhythm. She was faster than the phantoms, but slower than her doubts. Every cut, every strike, revealed faces from her past: the ones she had betrayed, abandoned, sold for coin.
"You will betray them too," the Keeper hissed in her mind.
"No," she snarled aloud, slamming her dagger into a phantom's chest. "Not this time."
Her blades became a storm, striking true, tearing the Keeper's defenses apart.
Thalor stood firm at the center, shield raised high as a wall of steel. Phantoms crashed into him, each one bearing the faces of his fallen brothers. They whispered blame, demanded answers, clawed at his heart.
He bellowed above them, a war cry filled with grief and defiance. "I fight because they cannot! I live so their memory lives with me!"
His sword crashed down, cleaving through three at once. For the first time, the whispers faltered.
Maren's staff glowed, fire and lightning entwined around its shaft. Shadows coiled at her feet, promising power. The Keeper's voice was sweet as poison:
"Burn them. Burn them all, and I will make you infinite."
Her knees buckled under the temptation. Flames licked higher, threatening to consume everything. But Carlos's voice cut through the storm again:
"You're stronger than it! Fight!"
Her scream tore free as she unleashed her power — lightning splitting the ceiling, firestorm rolling across the phantoms. The shadows burned away, and the Keeper staggered under the force.
The chamber shook. The Keeper howled, its patchwork body unraveling, then reforging itself again and again. It raised its arms and tore reality open. From the rift poured more Victors, twisted and hollow, each with the Helm fused to their head.
The heroes pressed together, back to back, a circle of defiance amid the tide. Carlos's sword blazed, Lys nocked three arrows at once, Rina's daggers gleamed, Thalor raised his battered shield, Maren's staff burned like a star.
The Keeper sneered through a hundred stolen mouths:"One realm, ten realms, a thousand — you will always fall. You cannot kill eternity."
Carlos's chest heaved, his voice raw but unwavering. "Then let's prove eternity wrong."
They surged forward as one.
The throne room became a storm of battle. Shadows cracked under fire, phantoms splintered beneath steel and arrow, lightning scorched the Keeper's limbs. Each strike carved away its patchwork body, until Carlos saw it — the Helm lodged in its chest, glowing like a heart.
"That's it!" he shouted. "The core!"
The others cleared a path. Thalor's shield bashed aside enemies, Lys's arrows drove them back, Rina's blades struck like vipers, Maren's fire scorched the air itself.
Carlos ran, leaping through collapsing stone, the Blade of Ascension high above his head.
The Keeper's voices shrieked, a storm of desperation:"Strike me, and you strike yourself! You are nothing without me!"
Carlos roared, "Then I choose who I am!"
He drove the blade into the core.
Light consumed the world. The Keeper screamed, its voices shredding into silence, its body collapsing into dust. The throne shattered, the citadel cracked apart, the chamber falling into the void.
Carlos fell — but Thalor caught him, anchoring him against the abyss.
Together they stumbled, as the world dissolved around them.
The Helm's voice whispered, soft and inexorable:"One realm ends. Another begins. You cannot put me down."
The floor gave way.
And once again, they fell into the light.