The Final Bridge

The worlds were cracking apart. Great slabs of continents had tilted sideways, the air above trembling with jagged fault lines of pressure and light. Reality itself rippled like disturbed water, and amid the trembling sky stood two tiny figures, silhouetted against the death of an age.

Orion and Emi rose to their feet, hand in hand.

Far in the distance, through ash and shattered spires, Terran stirred. A mile away, but still too close. He wiped the blood from his mouth and retrieved his remaining sword, the blade glinting like a dying star.

Orion did not move to meet him.

Instead, his eyes softened, turning to Emi.

“Emi…” he lowered his voice, quiet now, “there’s something I must tell you.”

She turned toward him, and he told her:

"The two planets – Earth and Gigas – they're unraveling. If I don’t act, both will be destroyed."

A silence passed between them, heavier than thunder.

"What do you mean?" she asked, though a part of her already knew.

Orion looked upward. The Starheart still churned in the heavens, burning like a third sun on this planet – but it was so much more than that. Matrices of impossible understanding wrapped around the air like coiling snakes biting their own tail. The serpent – now gentle, but prepared to become vicious once more. From its depths spilled ribbons of black frost and red fire, threading through the sky like veins.

This was the bridge – between worlds.

"The Evil," he said, "is leaking out of me. It's in the wind, in the soil, in every star that trembles tonight. It’s spreading to Earth as we speak. And if it continues..." He swallowed, jaw tightening. "There will be nothing left."

Her fingers clenched around his.

“We… we have to stop it then,” she said.

But Orion shook his head.

"The only way to stop it – is for me to take it all back. All of it. I have to absorb what was drained from me.”

His next words shook the cosmos itself:

“I have to become the Dark Lord again."

“No…”

"And once I do that," Orion went on, voice growing hollow, distant, "I must sever the connection between Earth and Gigas. That means cutting off the Starheart’s reach. Its bridges. Its links. And that includes you."

The words broke over her like a tidal wave. Emi staggered back a step, barely able to speak.

“You mean… forever?”

Orion did not answer. For he did not need to.

Slowly, realization took hold – her lips now trembled, her body going limp, like the world had just dropped out beneath her.

"You can't leave me," she whispered, "you can't."

He reached out, brushing her cheek with the back of his hand. The caress was gentle, reverent – as if committing every freckle, every blink, every piece of her to memory. Storing whatever sensation he could feel away in his own vault so he could have something to wake up to with every subsequent morning.

"You have no idea," he said, "how much I want to just stay. To spend what little time I have left... with you.

Tears flowed from her, rolling down her cheeks and over his hand. She held him, wanting the time to stop so that the moment could stretch longer, and longer, and longer – whatever it took. Whatever the price, she was willing to give.

“Please, Emi. You must go back. For me – live.”

She shook her head, still sobbing.

“It’s not fair.”

He held her then. One final embrace. He buried his face in her hair, inhaling the scent of Earth and books and innocence.

"No," he murmured. "It isn't."

They kissed one last time. A kiss that lingered, desperate, but grateful. They had so much more to say, so much more to do. She had so many things she wanted to show him, all the little things. And he, too, wanted to take those simple things with him, carry her off to the edge of all existence, flying on wings of Dreams.

But some things – could not be.

And so, the Starheart opened its maw.

Gravity shifted.

Emi gasped as her body was pulled upward by a silent, unseen force – her feet dragging against the stone, then lifting. Orion never stopped looking at her. His hand lingered until the last possible moment, fingers outstretched, grazing the air where she once was.

And then – she was gone.

Only leaving behind crystals of tears.

In the distance, far beyond the crumbling of time and space, Terran's roar split the skies.

He charged like a meteor gone mad, a streak of hatred moving at a trillion times the speed of light – faster than thought, faster than infinity. The fractured ground shattered further beneath him, time and matter unraveling in his wake as he surged toward Orion for one final, killing strike.

But he did not reach him.

With eyes closed, Orion raised one hand – once more, gravity obeyed him, its master.

A singularity formed beneath Terran’s feet. Space thickened like syrup, time folded inward, and even momentum itself screamed in protest. Terran strained, his body contorting midair, pulled violently in opposite directions by a field so dense it warped the fabric of void and emptiness around him.

Temporarily slowing him down.

"I just need a moment..." Orion whispered. His voice echoed not across the battlefield, but across dimensions.

And then he reached into himself – into the core of the Starheart.

The fire went back to its first, from the initial spark, lighting up tiny particles, quaking the vast nothingness, trillions of years after that, the first mortal picked up the cinder, no larger than his palm, then growing in size, it grew, and grew, and grew, through cold nights, clay pots, metal vessels, powering machines, and into the beyond.

It burned through everything: through sorrow, through memory, through the hidden poison of Evil.

The battlefield trembled as light poured from Orion's chest like a newborn sun. His form began to shift – part man, part flame, part symbol, part god. He stood still as the spell completed itself. Not a weapon, not a hero – perhaps something in between? But something final.

Terran, breaking free of the restraint, intending to charge in, only to then find himself getting blasted away by the shockwave – not merely by force, but command. For his aggression could no longer touch Orion.

Far beyond the battlefield. Beyond the skies, beyond the highest heavens.

Earth and Gigas, once fused by unnatural bridges, were infinite distances apart again, suspended in their own sacred paths. The tendrils of Evil that once laced between them like a web – now snapped apart. One by one. Each invisible, but heavy with power.

Beyond even them, the ripples of destruction that had scarred the multiverse began to heal.

Like stitches being pulled through the skin of the cosmos, wounds sealed. Stars returned to their cradles. Galaxies uncurled. Forgotten gods exhaled in the debris.

The multiverse sighed in relief, as if waking from a long, feverish nightmare.

And in the center of it all – Orion stood, witnessing Soluna putting itself back together by the tendrils of fire.