The Curtain Close?

The void surrounding Juno shifted. Two tiny, piercing points of light appeared on his face—eyes. Not human eyes. Not alive in any normal sense—but they looked at Autumna. Not blinking, not moving, yet aware. Every fiber of her being recoiled under their gaze.

A single, deliberate motion: his hand lifted. The air quivered with it, a ripple like the pulse of the void itself.

Then the floor erupted.

From the ground, countless sharp, blackened spikes surged upward, slicing through stone and blood alike. They pierced the air with a sound like tearing iron, faster than any human reflex could track. Autumna barely had time to register the motion before they skewered her.

Autumna’s body hung, suspended in the air by the spikes, petals quivering, blood dripping. She thrashed, trying to wrench herself free. Her golden eye blazed, voice caught in a strangled scream.

But the motion slowed. Her struggles weakened, then stilled. Limbs slackened.

Silence filled the chamber. She was gone.

The spikes retracted silently, sinking back into the stone as if they had never existed. The chamber fell still. Juno’s form remained shrouded in the void, his new eyes fixed on Rilke.

“Juno?” she called, voice trembling. No response.

Then he moved. A blur. His hand twisted, sharpening into a knife with impossible speed. Rilke barely ducked. The strike tore through the space behind her, cleaving everything in two.

He wasn’t human anymore.

Adrenaline clawing at Rilke’s chest as she faced the thing that had once been Juno.

“Juno!” she screamed.

Cassian ran past her, towards his gun, sweat stinging his eyes. “Focus! Don’t let him—” But before he could finish, a swipe from Juno’s hand tore through him. Cassian tumbled across the floor, blood spraying. He coughed, clutching his chest. “Rilke… don’t—don’t let him…”

Rilke’s mind screamed, body moving on instinct. She ducked, twisted, and slashed, drawing on every ounce of training she had. Every strike she landed seemed to barely phase him.

She weaved, jabbed, punched, and countered, but the exhaustion was overwhelming. Every move drew pain, every breath felt like fire.

Cassian, despite his wound, holstered his gun and aimed at Juno. Instantly, spikes came out of the ground, impaling him, robbing him of all the air in his lungs. Cassian’s body convulsed, blood pooling beneath him. “Rilke…” His voice broke as he fell, eyes meeting hers one last time before everything went dark.

Rilke’s vision blurred, tears mixing with dust and blood, but she couldn’t stop. She dodged another strike, spinning behind a crumbling column.

. . .

“Juno.”

Someone called my name, soft as a fingertip on glass. I turned, but there was no one—only darkness.

And then, a memory. One I hadn’t untouched for centuries, but feels just like yesterday.

My brother Eli, sitting cross-legged on the carpet, cereal bowl balanced on one knee, milk gone warm. His laptop glowed dimly, balanced on a stack of old game cases, stickers peeling from the lid. He was humming something tuneless, the way he always did when his mind was somewhere else.

I was there too—skin pale from another sleepless night, hoodie zipped up to my chin, a script bent between my fingers. I’d been running lines under my breath, eyes stinging, too nervous to eat.

“Check this out,” Eli said, turning the screen.

Alien worlds filled it—floating islands with crooked bridges, creatures with antennae like coiled glass, rough sketches turning to clumsy animations. He clicked play, and the frame stuttered, showing a ship falling into a glowing ocean.

I remember the way his eyes flicked to me, just for approval. 

Always for approval.

I laughed, despite myself. Nudged his shoulder with mine. He exaggerated, made a face, mimicked a voice I’d never heard, and the sound broke something open in me. We both laughed, so hard my chest hurt, so bright it burned.

Back then, the world was small and kind. Just a kitchen table, two bowls of cereal. Just me and Eli, two brothers dreaming of universes bigger than the one we were stuck in.

And yet—even then—somewhere deep under the quiet, I felt the pull. Like a string tied to my ribs. A role waiting for me. Something I didn’t choose.

The void around me rippled.

I remembered Sylvi next. Her hair snapping in the wind of the races, her eyes fixed ahead, always ahead. She moved like nothing could touch her, like she’d been built to break through walls I couldn’t see.

And me, always at her side. Thinking I was the one protecting her. Surviving, the both of us.

But what was I really?

The question drifted out of me, hollow, echoing. Not a shout. Not a scream. Just the truth trying to shape itself.

Air thinned around me. The void pressed in. I felt the weight of everything I’d ever held slip like sand through my fingers.

I wonder what Eli would think.

I wonder what Syvi would think. 

I wonder what Gideon would think.

Maybe I was pretending the entire time?

That's it.

This is all a show to me.

I knew the show would end eventually. Did I even care? Care enough?

I let Eli’s laughter ring a little longer. I let Sylvi’s stubborn glow flicker one more time. I felt the warmth of every hand I’d ever held.

I wasn’t a god.

I wasn’t a weapon.

I wasn’t even a hero.

I had always been playing a role. Even now. Even at the end.

I always pretended.

. . .

Rilke staggered, breath ragged, staring at the space where Juno had stood.

For a heartbeat, the void around him swirled like smoke caught in a slow current.

The shadow paused. A faint tremor went through his shoulders. For the first time since the transformation, he turned his head as if he’d heard her.

The darkness slid from his arm like water running off glass. His hand—once a blade—hung open and empty.

“I’m sorry,” his voice was a whisper inside the chamber, but it carried like a confession.

She stepped closer, ignoring the blood slicking the floor, ignoring Cassian’s still body just a few feet away. She touched his arm—her fingers met cold nothing.

For a moment, the void seemed to steady, as though her words tethered him. Juno looked down at her, his dimming eyes meeting hers.

And then he smiled—not a full smile, not even a real one. A ghost of who he’d been.

Light cracked through the blackness, spreading from his chest like a spiderweb. His outline dissolved into glimmering dust. Rilke reached for him again, but there was nothing left to hold.

He faded quietly, like he had simply decided to leave.

By the time the last wisp of him vanished, white light enveloped everything.

The chamber was silent. Only Cassian’s blood and Autumna’s ashes bore witness to what had happened.

. . .

Cassian and Rilke walked through the endless sand, the wind carving into their faces.

“That… thing called Juno a test subject, right?” Cassian’s voice cracked over the barren stretch.

Rilke didn’t answer. She kept moving, boots sinking into the pale desert.

“And that Lady Autumna… she said she could be as powerful as ‘them’ with that thing.”

Rilke stopped, pulling a diamond-shaped device from her pocket. The helix pulsed faintly, like a heartbeat in the void.

“You mean this? It reacts when I point it this way,” she murmured, sticking the device toward the horizon, it began to rapidly pulsate as if sensing something.

“Haven’t the slightest clue what the hell it actually is,” Cassian muttered.

She slid it back into her pocket, and they walked in silence, the desert swallowing their tracks.

Rilke remained silent, eyes focused on the sand ahead.

“Are you sure about this? Its leading us to uh... leave? Nobody’s done this before right? What if there’s another… worm, like before?”

Rilke suddenly stopped in her tracks, and Cass abruptly did the same.

They stared together into the distance, feeling the invisible line between the known and the unknown.

“It’s time,” she said, voice low but certain.

They stepped forward. The sand consumed their footprints immediately. Behind them, the world they knew—the chaos, the blood, the loss—faded. Ahead lay only wind, sun, and the endless unknown.

But then the air shifted. 

The dunes shimmered and warped. The horizon cracked, bending unnaturally, as if the desert itself were stretching and tearing. The sunlight fractured into shards.

Rilke’s hand shot to her pocket. The device vibrated violently, thrumming like a pulse in her palm.

A new voice cut through the hum—clear, female.

“Hello! Is anyone there?!”

Cassian froze, eyes wide. The desert twisted around them. The sand became liquid light, spiraling into shapes that defied sense. Shadows of structures that had never existed rose from the dunes, only to collapse back into nothing.

Rilke held the device out, the helix spinning faster, almost glowing.

“I think… it’s trying to—”

The ground beneath them shuddered, splitting. A low roar rose from the distance, echoing through the air like the world itself was protesting.

They took a step forward—and then the sand gave way.

The unknown had begun to reach for them.

The end

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