Steel clashed with silence.
Guts moved like a storm — not with grace, but with raw, relentless conviction. The power Aeon had awakened in him was not divine sorcery or holy light. It was something older. A fire kindled from loss, shaped by pain, and forged in the love that still bled behind every blow.
Griffith's movements, once untouchable, faltered. His calm wavered. His silver armor no longer gleamed like starlight but cracked and dulled under each strike. The wind no longer obeyed him. The world, once bowing to his will, had grown still.
"You can't win," Griffith hissed, parrying a vicious downward slash. "I am chosen. I ascended."
"No," Guts growled, shoving him back with a feral roar. "You ran."
Their blades met again, sparks lighting the battlefield like fireflies in a storm. Each impact sent echoes rolling across the broken ground — not just the sounds of war, but of something greater. Fate shattering. Cycles breaking.
Behind them, Aeon faced the Eye.
It loomed above the ruin — a black mass pulsing with the soul of the Shadow, feeding on despair, on broken dreams, on the blood soaked into the very soil of this world. It had no form, only presence. An open wound in the sky.
The Apostles had been torn apart by Aeon's will. Not slain in anger — but unmade in judgment. They had become part of the wound, and now the wound turned its gaze fully on him.
The Eye blinked.
And reality twisted.
Aeon fell into a spiral of memory — not visions, but truths.
He saw himself — before the godhood, before the power. Just a man. Holding his daughter's hand in a burning city, shielding her as the sirens wailed. Then — the light. The silence. Her hand slipping from his.
Then: divinity. Worlds created. Worship earned. Hope offered… and withdrawn. The moment he chose to sever himself from grief. And the horror that followed.
The Eye pulsed again — trying to overwhelm him with everything he had buried.
But Aeon did not waver.
Instead, he stepped forward.
"You are not my guilt," he said, his voice calm. "You are what I left behind to survive."
The Eye recoiled. The skies above cracked. It began to scream — a formless, soundless cry of everything unsaid.
Aeon opened his palm.
From within his chest, he drew a single flame — golden, slow, sorrowful. The last untouched shard of his original self.
"I once thought I had to destroy you to heal," he said. "But I see now — I must carry you."
He cast the flame into the Eye.
Not to destroy it.
To bind it.
The light coiled through the darkness like veins of gold through obsidian. The Eye screamed again — no longer in triumph, but in loss.
The skies wept fire.
But Aeon remained standing.
And in the mortal plane, Guts fought still.
His arms were numb. Blood blinded one eye. His shoulder had nearly split open. But he refused to stop. Every breath was a scream. Every heartbeat a drum.
Griffith was slowing.
His wings, once radiant, now shed feather after feather, each turning to ash before touching the ground. His eyes — once full of destiny — flickered with doubt.
"You followed me," he said through clenched teeth. "You loved me. You needed me."
"I needed someone to believe in," Guts said, voice breaking. "And you made that into a cage."
Their blades clashed one final time.
And this time — Guts won.
The slab of iron he wielded came down not like a weapon, but like a sentence. It broke Griffith's blade. It split his armor. It drove him to his knees.
And for a moment, nothing moved.
Griffith's mouth opened. Perhaps to speak. Perhaps to lie. Perhaps to beg.
But he said nothing.
The wind carried away the ashes of his wings.
And the battlefield grew quiet.
Aeon stood over the fallen Eye, now dim and dormant. Its tendrils had ceased their writhing. The Shadow, for now, had been bound — not vanquished, but made part of him again. Not as a tyrant. Not as a god.
But as a man who would carry every broken part of himself forward.
He turned as Guts stumbled back from the lifeless body of Griffith. The black sword fell from Guts' hands. He collapsed to his knees, chest heaving.
Aeon approached slowly.
The golden fire in his hands flickered once more. He reached out.
And touched Guts' brow.
The light sank into him — not as power, but as peace.
"For her," Aeon whispered. "And for all those who didn't get to fight."
Guts didn't speak.
He wept.
That night, the skies cleared.
The stars returned to the world for the first time in decades. Villagers in the ruins of distant towns looked upward and wept without knowing why.
The darkness had lifted — not fully, not forever, but enough.
Aeon stood at the edge of the battlefield with his cloak brushing the wind.
Guts remained beside Casca, who had not yet spoken. But her eyes were clearing. Slowly. Like dawn through fog.
Aeon looked at the two of them — scarred, broken, human — and knew they would endure.
As he turned to leave, a voice echoed in the distance.
"Where will you go now?" Guts asked.
Aeon didn't look back.
"Wherever the next wound waits."