Chapter 159 The Plan All Along

Chapter 159 The Plan All Along

Zuri didn't hesitate. The instant he felt the dome fall, he was already moving — his body flooding with power enough to shake the throne room's bones.

Yuna surged forward a half-step behind him, her light blazing as she moved .

But she never saw it coming.

Zuri turned on her mid-stride and shoved her back with one hand. The force behind it was overwhelming, carrying the weight of a hundred mountains.

She hit the air like a wall had grown out of nothing, hurled to the far edge of the chamber. She caught herself just short of the wall, hovering, breath torn out of her, eyes wide with a disbelief that hadn't yet turned to hurt.

"What..." She could barely get the word out. "What just happened?"

Did he just attack me?

She looked up. His back was already to her, squared toward Erebus.

She moved again, faster this time, a single flash of light closing the distance, and struck an invisible wall instead of him.

She flinched back, pressed her palm flat against the air. The dome had reformed, thicker now than before. Static crawled along her fingertips where they touched it.

"Zuri." Her voice shook. "What is going on. What are you doing?"

He didn't answer at first. The silence stretched long enough to turn dangerous.

"Yuna." Just her name, and nothing after it for a moment. "I'm so sorry. I hope, one day, you can forgive me for this."

He glanced back over his shoulder. Gold tears already traced twin lines down his face.

"Zuri, what are you..."

"Exactly what I'd expect of the Darkmoon." Erebus's laugh rolled out low and wicked. "A wise choice. It seems your little avatar is worth more than I credited him for."

"What is happening?" Yuna's voice cracked wide open. She struck Night-bringer against the dome. Light rippled through the barrier and threw a shockwave back at her, but it didn't so much as flex. She struck again, harder. And again, and again, pouring more of herself into every swing.

"Please, stop!" Zuri's voice broke down the middle. "I'm begging you, Yuna. Don't do this."

"Don't do what, Zuri? You're the one who did something!" Another strike, another wall of light that went nowhere.

"Stop. Please." His voice gave out entirely, and the sob underneath it finally surfaced.

Yuna froze mid-swing, staring at him.

"It was his doing, all of it, Trivia." Erebus said it almost gently. "Every step that led us here, orchestrated from the very start. By the Darkmoon himself."

"What are you talking about, devil? How dare you accuse..."

"Are you not going to tell her yourself?" Erebus turned to Zuri, still weeping, still facing away. No answer came. "Then allow me to carry that weight for you, since you can't bring yourself to tell the one being you have ever truly loved the truth."

"Zuri?" Yuna's eyes swept between them, confusion curdling fast into dread.

"The deaths. The destruction. Every attack on the living world." Erebus said it simply, almost bored. "He orchestrated it. The hand behind every string that moved."

Yuna's gaze went to Zuri and stayed there.

"The plan he couldn't tell you. The lies he fed his own army." Erebus went on. "All of it, in service of setting things right, by his own reckoning. The Darkmoon isn't quite what you believe him to be, Trivia. He is a Primordial being. Older than I am. Older than the world he governs. There is a great deal left for you to learn about your Sovereign. As I said before, you are still too young to know."

"I don't believe you." The words came out of her like a plea more than a protest.

"Believe me or don't. It changes nothing." Erebus's smile was thin, almost pitying. "A being of your standing should have seen it. You are Trivia, the all-seeing, and yet the smallest things slip past your gaze, or perhaps the Darkmoon blinded your vision from this. I confess I expected more. Regardless. Zuri...no, the Darkmoon, steered every one of these events to this exact moment. It would be unfair of me to take all the credit for what's been done. He holds the larger share of it, if we're being honest with each other. I may have ridden the Primordial Darkness, but the Darkmoon paved the road we both walked. That is precisely why he chose Khonshu, of all gods to become, a shaper of time and space, more potent than the Norns and Fate combined. From the first Draugr loosed on the living, to the Warchief's death, to the deaths inside the Lunar Coven, to the Selection Ritual itself...every condition, met, one by one, to bring us to this room. A shaper, just as I said."

Tears slid freely down Yuna's face now. Her eyes never left his back. Something in her chest was shaking loose.

"Empathy. Remorse." Erebus continued, unbothered by the wreckage he was making of the room. "Those belong to beings on your level, and beneath it. We don't feel such things, we recognize only balance, only order. That is our nature, stripped bare. But it isn't without its mercy, in this case. The Darkmoon meant well, make no mistake. He sealed your temple to keep his people safe, a selfless act, if a cruel one in its shape. He wants the living realm to survive, even at the cost of himself. He regrets what he's done. I confess I don't fully understand it. Either his avatar has begun to override what he is, or it is you, Trivia. Fate, in the shape of a woman. Zuri fell in love with Yuna, and in answering it, the Darkmoon fell for Trivia, a concept he was meant to sit above, not beside. You changed the shape of him. That is why he kept the living world out of this. Why he kept his own army out of it. Why he kept you out of it. He means to set it right, by his own measure. He will take my place. At the heart of the cosmic phage."

Yuna's eyes found his back again. "What?"

"I will end Erebus," Zuri said finally, turning to face her, "and take his seat at the heart of the phage."

"No." The word came out of her raw. "No... what are you thinking?"

"Yuna!" His voice cracked like thunder.

Silence dropped over the chamber, absolute.

"It isn't a debate." His voice steadied, terrible in its calm. "I'm sorry I brought you this far with me. This was always meant to end alone."

"You're not making any sense, Zuri." She hit the dome again, harder, tears streaking sideways with the force of it. "You're breaking my heart while you're at it."

"I regret everything that led to this. This body, this life, began with a pure intention, and I couldn't stand to keep living with what it became. Once I understood the Darkmoon's actions, and intentions, I couldn't take it anymore. It was selfish of me. Keeping it from you was the most selfish thing I have ever done." His voice thickened. "Erebus has been feeding the cosmic phage with his own life force, with the Primordial Darkness's help, that's why he's crumbling the way he is. An engine like this would hollow out any celestial being who tried to sustain it. He'll die like anything mortal does, in the end. But the phage cannot simply be switched off, once it's been lit. So I..."

"Zuri, please don't do this." Yuna threw herself against the dome, sobbing openly now. "I don't care what you've done. I don't care what you've carried alone. We can face it together... whatever it is. Just don't throw your life away. I'm begging you."

"Listen to me!" It came out louder than he meant it, and he pulled it back at once, gentling his voice. "We don't have time. I don't even know how long has already passed while we stood here, and the phage is still tearing at reality with every second. I'll take Erebus's place. He's little more than an empty husk now. My essence can hold that furnace for a thousand years, maybe longer. But it won't be aimed at the living realm anymore. If this engine has to consume something, let it turn toward the celestial plane of the Hands of Creation instead. I have my own grudges against them too, it's the one thing Erebus and I have ever agreed on. Yuna... plead my case to everyone, when this is done. Tell them I'm sorry. I am so sorry, for the lying, for the deceiving, for keeping the one thing that ever made sense in my entire immortal life in the dark. There was no Old Game, Yuna. There never was one. This was the entire plan all along."

He turned toward Erebus.

Erebus closed his eyes and spread his arms wide, almost welcoming.

"At the end, then... by the hands of the Darkmoon himself." His eyes flew open, bright with something close to joy. "A dream come true, old friend. Finish what I started. Or better, pick up where I was forced to leave off."

"Be quiet, Erebus." Zuri struck his scepter once against the ground. "Not everyone feels excited about dying."

Behind him, Yuna's voice kept breaking against the dome, her strikes growing weaker with every failed swing. Zuri held himself together by threads he could feel fraying.

"Love carried you this far, old friend, let it carry you the rest of the way." Erebus raised his chained hands, offering them. "Take the reins, then. The Primordial Darkness has been waiting long enough for you, to feel the essence of the Darkmoon. I'll step aside now. It was fun, while it lasted."

Zuri gripped him by the arm. His palm sizzled where it made contact.

"Zuri, please..." Yuna's voice reached him, muffled through the dome.

He breathed in deep, murmured something under his breath, and opened his eyes.

"Erebus. I am not like you. Gullible. Selfish. A fool who let himself be led by the leash. You were a slave to the Primordial Darkness, you let it wear you down to nothing until you couldn't tell the difference between its hunger and your own. I am not going to be its slave." His grip tightened. "I am going to be its master."

Erebus scoffed. "Big talk, Darkmoon. You know as well as I do that it's impossible."

Light bloomed from Zuri's body and streamed across the ruin of Erebus's skin.

Erebus felt it change the instant it touched him... this wasn't a transfer of power. It was something else. Something being conjured, whole, out of nothing.

"What are you doing? This isn't..."

"Erebus." Zuri's voice had gone perfectly calm now. The Darkmoon, fully present, fully in command of himself for the first time in this whole encounter. "Let's take a walk through the past."

"No..."

Light swallowed the throne room whole, and the world went white.