Chapter 150 Fourteen Thousand Moons
Chapter 150 Fourteen Thousand Moons
Murks came by the thousand, swarming the moon in a living veil, smothering its light.
Something about them felt wrong in a new way — sharper, hungrier, like the Primordial Darkness itself had reached down and dipped them in purpose.
Zuri's tightened his jaw. Their shadow was eating the very light the seal fed on, and without it, no seal this old, however powerful, would hold. Not with the Darkmoon as depleted as he currently was.
"Clever, Erebus." He raised his hands anyway, sent a pulse of force screaming into the swarm.
The Murks shrieked, spun apart into shreds of shadow — and reassembled themselves a heartbeat later, whole again, worse for it.
"That's not supposed to happen." He stared up, disbelief cracking through his anger. His strength wasn't what it should be. The time reversal spell had cost him more than he'd let himself admit.
Behind him, the gate groaned, sealing faster with every passing second.
"There's no more time to waste," he muttered, and ran.
He reached the mouth of the black rock and drove Night-bringer into the gap like a wedge. The staff shrieked under the pressure, sparks spitting from its length, but it held, barely, jamming the ancient stone mid-close.
"That'll buy a little time. I need Yuna. Now."
He was gone in the same breath, the cold landscape tearing past him like in blurs.
\---
The ravine wasn't burning anymore. It was past burning. Mountains ran with lava where snow had been, and what remained of the Darkness's army still hurled itself forward, mindless, into its own annihilation. At the center of it all stood something that no longer looked like Yuna.
Her features had dissolved. Three faces glowed where one had been, radiant as the sun she'd stolen back for them, her body wreathed in fire without a single visible wound to explain how she was still standing after all this.
Even without her staff, even stripped of Night-bringer, she burned like a small god unleashed, because she was one.
"Yuna!" Zuri crossed into the pillar of flame, the heat scorching even him. He caught her raised arm, his palm hissing against her skin. "We have to go. The seal held just long enough, but Murks are eating the moonlight, and I don't have the strength left to clear them. The reversal took too much."
She didn't answer. Not as Yuna.
"Trivia," he said instead, quieter now, worry threading through the Darkmoon's usual calm. "We need to leave."
"I cannot, my Lord." The voice that came from her mouth wasn't one voice, it was three, layered and ancient, speaking as a single sound. "Not yet. This is where I hold the line."
"No." His tone hardened. "You're coming with me. That's not a request."
"Please." Gold tears slid down all three faces at once, catching the firelight. "Let me do this. For the Darkmoon. For my children. Let me be of use."
Zuri felt something crack open in his chest that had no business existing in a being as old as he was.
"I can't lose you here," he said, and his voice broke on it. "Not when there's still so much left to do. I..." He stopped. Fought whatever this feeling was, and lost.
Tears. Actual tears, tracking hot down a face that had worn a thousand expressions and never once this one.
"I can't stand the thought of losing you. It isn't worth it. None of it is, if you're not there for it."
"Now you sound like a man." Her voice cracked with something that might have been laughter, might have been grief. The fire around them surged higher. "That's what it is to be mortal, my Lord. Emotion makes you reckless, and it's also the only reason the era of mankind outlasts ours. I've worn countless mortal bodies. I've felt this a thousand times over. It's a wound that heals you."
The three voices stilled for a breath. Only the roar of fire filled the silence.
Then, softer, singular, unmistakably Yuna underneath it all. "It's fine, Zuri. It's not over. Go wake our army. Come find me when it's done. I'll still be here."
"You still don't have Night-bringer. How do you hold a horde like this alone?"
"I don't need it. It's an artifact, a symbol, nothing more. A god who leans too hard on his tools has already begun to fall. You should remember that. Fourteen thousand moons taught you as much." Her three faces managed something like a smile through the agony written across them. "I'm a godhead, Zuri. Death isn't a concept that applies to me, not for your comfort, not for anyone's. I can hold this line for another eternity if I have to. The Darkness cannot outlast my light. Go. And come back for me."
It broke him.
Tears, his, spilled freely now, ichor instead of water, tracking down a face that hadn't cried since before mortals had a word for grief.
"I'll be back before you know it. Don't you dare leave without me." He pressed his palm to her weeping faces. "I love you. We love you. Stay strong, Trivia."
He was gone before the last word finished leaving his mouth.
Yuna — Trivia — turned back to the chaos, her three faces settling into something fierce and almost joyful. "I've waited ages to let loose on the Darkness, Zuri. Take your time." Her form flared, brighter than the sun she'd borrowed.
\---
Zuri materialized at the foot of Mons Aeturnus again, into a wall of heat that had reached even here, the snow long since turned to churning floodwater, the treeline burning, stone gone soft as wax under Yuna's fire.
None of that mattered. Only the gate mattered now.
Night-bringer was screaming. The ancient weight of the black rock bore down on it, the staff's light flickering, lightning stuttering off its length in short, desperate bursts.
Zuri moved faster than the eye could follow, throwing himself into the shrinking gap between the outside world and the temple beyond. If he lost this, if the gate won, there wouldn't be a second chance.
He was almost through.
Night-bringer gave out first, the ancient metal shattering into a burst of stardust, wind and light screaming outward in its wake.
A half-second later, the black rock slammed shut behind him with a thud that shook the mountain to its roots.