A FIST AGAINST ETERNITY

Killing the War God released everything he had bound.

Timelines crashed into one another. Dead worlds returned inside living ones. Gravity reversed across galaxies. The celestial network overloaded as infinite possibilities tried to exist at once.

Izanara brought the Astra Noctis toward Ren'ō through the collapse.

"The Throne was regulating the multiverse," she said. "He built himself into its foundation."

Ren'ō floated amid the unraveling architecture, one hand pressed to the wound in his abdomen.

"Can it be repaired?"

"Not repaired. Reconstructed."

"Difference?"

"Everything ends first."

He looked across the multiverse.

Orison's sky split. Meridia's bell melted. The refugee moons fell toward their star. Worlds he had never seen screamed through the network.

Ren'ō reached into the Divine Remnant.

For the first time, he understood its complete design.

Laana had not created a vessel for divine power. She had created a bridge between mortal choice and the architecture of creation. The Remnant could rewrite reality because Ren'ō could decide what its power meant.

The War God had feared him before he existed.

Izanara saw the realization. "No."

"I have not said anything."

"Your worst ideas begin with that expression."

"The multiverse can be restarted."

"And the person at the center of the restart?"

"Reconstituted."

"You do not know that."

Ren'ō touched the anchor crystal. "You built these for a reason."

"To preserve memory, not guarantee survival."

"Memory is the difficult part. Bodies are simple."

Izanara grabbed his arm. "Do not reduce yourself to a body and a collection of memories."

The old Ren'ō might have pulled away.

The soldier from La-Sol 7 might have made the decision alone.

The man who walked out of the Void covered her hand with his.

"I am not planning to forget," he said. "Any of it."

"That is not enough."

"No. It is not."

He looked toward the dying worlds.

"But they trusted us."

Izanara's eyes filled with reflected gold.

"Then we do it together," she said.

Ren'ō began to object.

She tightened her grip. "You learned to trust people. Do not become foolish at the final lesson."

He laughed, breathless and wounded.

"You have become very demanding."

"Bad influence."

The phrase belonged to Laana.

Ren'ō closed his eyes for one heartbeat.

Then he and Izanara stepped into the architecture of creation.