The wound was gone.
For the first time in weeks, the sky was whole. No crimson fissure. No bleeding scar. Just darkness, dotted with fractured stars peeking through smoke.
But the world beneath was changed forever.
The city lay in ruin. Towers stood half-collapsed, bridges broken, entire streets swallowed by fire. Sirens wailed across the distance. Helicopters circled like vultures, their lights cutting weakly through the haze. Survivors staggered through rubble, coughing, bleeding, calling names no one answered.
And yet, through all the ruin, there was silence in the sky.
The Rift was sealed.
---
In the center of the devastation, where Ethan had burned brightest, there was only ash. A charred crater, blackened stone and twisted steel. The air shimmered faintly, heat still rising from where the fire had devoured everything.
No body remained.
No trace of the boy who had stood against infinity.
Only the faint red glow drifting upward, dust scattering into the night, forming a soft shimmer high above. Survivors raised their eyes, whispering prayers, curses, disbelief. Some swore they saw a constellation taking shape — jagged, fractured, like the scar that had hung above them. But gentler now. A reminder, not a wound.
The Red Star, they called it.
---
News spread like wildfire.
Governments denied what had happened, calling it a freak atmospheric collapse, a natural disaster. Scientists spoke of magnetic anomalies, tectonic surges, unexplainable but natural phenomena.
But survivors — the soldiers, the cultists who lived, the citizens who had seen the sky split open — whispered the truth.
They spoke of a boy wreathed in fire, defying something too vast for words. A boy who screamed into the void and made it falter. A boy who burned himself away to close the wound.
The world did not know his name. But they knew the fire.
And that was enough.
---
In the ruins of the grove, where Ethan had first found the Stone, the earth was scorched black. The trees stood skeletal, their branches warped toward the sky. The clearing was quiet now, heavy with ash.
And in the center, half-buried in soot, something faintly pulsed.
A shard.
Small, jagged, glowing faintly red.
The remnant of the Stone.
It waited, silent.
---
The cloaked figure stood at the grove's edge, their hood lowered for the first time. They were not faceless now, but hollow-eyed, scarred, bearing the weight of fire that had burned too long.
They stared at the shard, their voice low, carrying only for themselves.
"You were different, boy. You chose flame, not vessel."
Their hand trembled as they reached toward the shard. But when their fingers brushed the soil, the shard flared and recoiled, burning their skin.
The figure withdrew, clutching their palm, smoke rising from the wound.
"You are not mine to claim," they whispered. Their voice shook, caught between grief and awe. "You never were."
They turned away, vanishing into the trees, leaving the shard glowing alone in the dark.
---
Months passed.
The city rebuilt, scarred but standing. New towers rose beside craters left by titans. Bridges stretched across rivers still choked with rubble. The Red Star still glowed faintly above, a reminder no storm could hide.
People carried on. But something lingered.
Children drew shapes of fire in chalk on broken walls. Strangers left offerings at the crater in the city's center — candles, photographs, words scrawled on scraps of paper. Some called it worship. Others called it foolishness.
But all who came felt the same truth in their bones.
Someone had stood there. Someone had chosen.
And the world had lived because of it.
---
One night, in the grove, the shard stirred.
Its glow brightened, faint whispers slipping into the air. Not of hunger, not of command — but of memory.
A boy's laugh. A scream of defiance. A voice whispering: I chose me.
And for an instant, the air rippled.
The outline of a boy stood in the clearing, faint as smoke, his eyes burning red. He looked up at the sky, at the Red Star glowing faintly, and smiled.
Then he was gone.
The shard pulsed once more, waiting.
---
The villain was not destroyed.
In the void beyond the Rift, it lingered, vast and patient. It roared once, fury shaking the endless dark, but its voice carried no triumph.
The boy had denied it.
The fire had scarred it.
It would wait, yes. It had all eternity.
But for now, the earth was quiet.
---
And in that quiet, Ethan Marlowe lived on.
Not in body. Not in flame.
But in the wound he had sealed, in the star above the city, in every whisper of defiance carried by those who still raised their heads against the dark.
He had once believed he was nothing.
But nothing had been enough to hold back infinity.
And sometimes, nothing burned brighter than everything.
The End