The light exploded.
Not the golden light of the Dawnblade something deeper. Something older. The light of compassion. The light of understanding. The light of a boy who refused to hate, even when hatred was justified.
The Hollow King screamed.
But it wasn't a scream of pain. It was a scream of release. The billion faces on his surface began to fade not dying, but leaving. Their suffering ended. Their agony ceased. They flowed out of the King's form like water from a cracked dam, rising into the sky, becoming stars.
Real stars. Not the dim, dying things that had watched over Tenmon for three hundred years. New stars. Bright stars. Hopeful stars.
The Hollow King's form shrank. He was no longer vast. He was... human sized. A figure of shadow, yes, but a small figure. A tired figure. A figure that looked, for the first time in eons, almost at peace.
"You freed them," the King whispered. "You freed them all."
"I freed you," Lee said. "The hunger is still there. It will always be there. But now... now you have a choice. You can keep consuming, keep destroying, keep running from your own emptiness. Or you can stop. You can rest. You can finally, after all these years, be still."
The King stared at him with eyes that were no longer dying stars, but simply... eyes. Dark, yes. Ancient, yes. But no longer hungry.
"I don't know how to be still," the King admitted.
"Then learn," Lee said. "It's never too late to learn."
He offered his hand.
The Hollow King Nihilos, the hunger that precedes existence looked at that hand for a long time.
Then he took it.