Chapter 444: It’s done.

Chapter 444: 444: It’s done.

Fire’s face twisted, and his body glowed further red.

He attacked but Atheline intercepted. Origin and Calamity collided.

That was what Fire had become.

Atheline finally understood.

Fire wasn’t his true Authority anymore, it had been the beginning. Thousands of years of corruption, death, mutation, collapse and stolen fragments had transformed him.

Calamity.

A god born from catastrophe and fed by every disaster his corruption created. The worse the world became, the stronger he grew.

Atheline couldn’t defeat that by trading blows forever. Every collapsing city strengthened Fire. Every death. Every corrupted outbreak. Every destroyed landscape.

The war itself fed him.

Atheline blocked another strike.

"Lilith!"

"I know!"

She understood him without explanation. That was why they’d survived this long.

He retreated and Fire followed. Lilith disappeared. Atheline deliberately gave ground for about five kilometres before Fire noticed.

He smiled.

"Tired already?" Fire mocked.

"Extremely."

"You disappoint me."

"I hear that frequently."

Fire attacked and Atheline blocked. Lilith appeared behind him and placed both hands together. Darkness expanded around him.

Fire froze as a black s sphere formed. It was not black as color but black as absence.

Absolute Darkness.

For those trapped within, there was nothing to use as reference except themselves.

Fire roared.

The domain shook.

Lilith screamed, blood running from her eyes. Atheline’s expression changed.

"Lilith!"

"Do it!"

The domain cracked clearly fire was not happy about being trapped.

Atheline understood. She could only give him seconds before Fire broke out, probably five seconds at most.

Atheline raised his hand.

Origin answered.

A simple and elegant bow formed.

Atheline stared at it.

For a moment he remembered the Doom Cave and the Supreme Sovereign drawing his bow while the world collapsed around him.

Atheline placed his feet, his left shoulder turned and his hand gripped the bow.

The stance came naturally, not inherited since he had been an archer long before he understood why the ancient memory mattered.

The Darkness domain shattered and Fire emerged. Lilith fell from the sky, completely drained.

Atheline didn’t look away.

Fire saw him, then saw the bow. Everything changed.

The God of Calamity stopped as thousands of years disappeared from his expression.

For one instant, he wasn’t a god. He was the Sovereign of Fire standing beneath the original World Tree; wounded and desperate while watching a white-haired man raise a bow.

Real fear appeared this time.

"That bow..."

Atheline drew the string.

Fire stared without moving, as though the fear had paralysed him.

"You aren’t him."

Atheline looked directly at him.

"No."

Origin gathered in waves.

He smiled faintly.

"I’m not."

Fire attacked, while fuming. He had to get rid of this fear if he wanted full godhood.

Atheline released it. The arrow didn’t travel through any elements, those distinctions no longer mattered.

The arrow was Origin.

It carried the possibility of everything Fire had spent thousands of years corrupting.

Creation before corruption.

Existence before Calamity.

Fire raised every Authority he possessed: corruption, death, flame, space and broken Life. This was thousands of years of stolen power formed a wall.

The arrow touched it and continued without even stopping.

Fire’s eyes widened.

"No."

His barriers disappeared, returning to what existed before his corruption had twisted them.

The arrow reached his chest but Fire grabbed it before it could touch flesh, exactly as he’d grabbed Atheline’s first divine arrow... But this time his hands began disappearing.

"No!"

He poured Calamity into it. But the arrow continued.

"You cannot!"

Atheline held the bow.

Fire stared at him.

"I AM DIVINE!"

Atheline’s expression remained calm.

"So am I."

The arrow entered him through the chest.

Fire screamed.

Across the world, every corrupted creature stopped. The black veins within the Blood Ocean froze. Corruption covering forests ceased moving. The red fracture across the sky trembled.

Fire’s body cracked.

He tried abandoning it but the arrow followed his soul. He tried dispersing into corruption but Origin followed. He tried retreating into the broken seal but the arrow followed.

Body.

Soul.

Corruption.

Divine Authority.

There was nowhere to escape because Atheline hadn’t fired at his body. He had fired at the existence connecting all of them.

Fire looked toward him one final time, not angry or arrogant as he had been before. He was afraid, the same fear he’d felt thousands of years earlier.

But this wasn’t the Supreme Sovereign, that was the final thing he understood. History hadn’t repeated. Someone else had arrived. Someone the ancient world had never produced.

Atheline lowered his bow.

Fire whispered something, perhaps a curse, perhaps a question. Nobody heard it. Origin consumed him before it could come to fruition.

The God of Calamity completely disappeared.

The sky became silent.

Across every continent, corrupted creatures collapsed, black-red veins vanished, the Blood Ocean stopped moving and the World Tree shuddered.

Then green light spread through one of its branches.

The World Record awakened once more.

[Divine Calamity extinguished.]

[Foreign corruption is being removed from the World Laws.]

[World restoration has begun.]

Atheline stared at the messages, then his bow disappeared.

He fell from the sky.

Lilith caught him, again, before he hit the ground.

She stared down at him.

Atheline opened one eye.

"This is becoming a habit."

Lilith’s lips trembled.

"Shut up."

"Okay."

She pulled him against her. Atheline stopped joking, his arms going around her as he pulled her closer.

For several seconds neither spoke.

The war was still ending around them: People were still wounded. Cities were burning. Entire regions had been destroyed. Plus rhe dead weren’t returning. Becoming a god hadn’t changed that. Killing Fire didn’t undo thousands of years.

Atheline buried his face against Lilith’s hair.

"It’s over."

She remained silent.

He closed his eyes.

Then she whispered.

"No."

He looked at her.

Lilith glanced around the ruined fairy sanctuary. Fairies were treating the injured, ancient roots were broken, the seal was gone and the sky still carried scars.

"You killed him." She looked back at Atheline. "Now we have to live with surviving him."

Atheline stared, then smiled.

"That sounds considerably harder."

"It probably will be."

He looked toward the world beyond the sanctuary. The continents were still there, damaged and scarred but alive.

Draco and Eliana remained standing. Seragus and Lucifer had survived. The Human armies hadn’t collapsed. Beastkin and Dwarves had held their anchors.

The High Elves and wood elves had protected the World Tree. Dark Elves still defended their capital. The fairies had finally revealed themselves to a world that had believed them extinct.

For thousands of years, the Cataclysm had defined history. Now history had to continue without the being who caused it.

Atheline slowly stood.

Lilith helped him despite the fact that he technically no longer needed help standing.

He didn’t mention that and he suspected she knew. The red fracture overhead began closing.

Atheline watched it.

For the first time since returning to this world, he couldn’t feel some approaching disaster hiding behind tomorrow.

What was infront of them was just consequences; rebuilding, politics, grief, families searching for survivors, and kingdoms deciding whether the alliances forged during the end of the world would survive peace.

Somewhere in all of that, a Dark Elven Queen and a newly ascended god still had a kingdom to return to.

Lilith looked at him.

"What?"

Atheline smiled.

"I was wondering whether becoming a god exempts me from council meetings."

"No."

His smile disappeared.

"Then what exactly was the point?"

She laughed out loud.

He hadn’t realized how much he’d missed that sound until he heard it.

He took her hand into his .

Together, they looked toward the damaged world they had refused to abandon. The Cataclysm had finally ended. What came afterward had only just begun.