The Sleeper is desperate. It lashes out with an off-balance strike that catches him off guard. Avenger is deflected aside, and the dark sword pushes forward, finds home.
He screams as the shadow blade pierces his flesh. Something inside of the lunar armor screams out in pain. Everything begins to unravel. He is down on the ground. The Sleeper towers over him. Its midnight blade rises as it prepares to deliver the killing strike.
He reaches deep inside, and finds that part of the avatar that is dying. It fades like a star. It must be released, and even as he ponders the notion he feels it surge forward, feels it call out with a martyr’s fury, a grim resolve. It leaps out of the avatar, and into Avenger.
The white blade rises just as the black blade falls. Dark metal shatters like broken glass. Shadows curl off into shards of lost midnight. Umbra energies part and steam as Avenger continues up, straightens, hones in on its target. He can practically smell the Sleeper’s void heart, buried deep in folds of night armor.
Avenger punches through shadow flesh and dark possibilities, slices away ebon mail and drills to the Sleeper's core. White metal pierces the black and ancient heart, and the Sleeper explodes. Shadow rains down. Dark geysers of energy scream into the heavens like bolts of hot grease.
The Sleeper melts like ice in the sun. It's unmouth rounds into a bodiless scream. Its pale moon eyes shrink, dim, and fade. The clarion roar of a thousand cursed souls escapes into the vast sky. He sees worlds unfold in the shadows of their passing: places that once were, places that might have been.
For a moment, he feels that he can reach out and grab those places, hold onto them, maybe keep them from fading.
But before he even realizes it, the moment is lost, and he is left alone as the dust of time drifts over his body and washes him away.
Cross woke back in the cave, on the safe side of the canyon. His body felt like he’d been trampled by horses. His chest was raw, and he belched up acrid smoke. Cross slowly sat up. Dull pain pushed against the inside of his skull.
After a time, Cross stood up. Both of his arms trembled. Avenger lay at his feet, smoking and broken. Most of the upper edge of the blade had cracked off, and those shards melted like ice right before his eyes. The hilt had also snapped off at the bottom, leaving an overall shorter weapon, jagged, and steaming with frost. Cross gently picked it up.
Dazed and dizzy, he looked around. He felt like he had just woken from a dream. The bodies of the Black Circle agents were still there, lifeless on the rock shelf next to the underground canyon.
He looked across the rift. The cleft in the rock had sealed.
He saw Black struggle to climb up the inside of the canyon wall by the light of her own arcane torch. Ekko was draped across her back, unmoving.
Cross lost breath for a moment.
“ Danica!”
She looked up, exhaustion on her face. Her eyes looked red and weary. By her expression, he knew that Ekko was in trouble.
He found a coil of rope on one of the fallen Black Circle agents and tossed an end down. Black secured it around Ekko's waist, and between her spirit's levitation abilities and Cross pulling the rope they managed to get both women back to the surface. They collapsed on the ground from exhaustion.
Black had a cut on her arm that bled through a rip in both her armored coat and the shirt underneath.
Ekko was listless, and quiet. Cross couldn't tell if she was about to Turn, or die. Her eyes wouldn’t stay open, and dark blood dribbled out of her nose and mouth.
“ We have to get her topside,” Black said. “Quickly.”
“ Where's Jennar?”
Black let something slip out of her pack and onto the ground. Cross saw with some surprise that it was a gloved human hand. “The rest of him got away. He slipped out in the confusion. This entire place almost tore itself apart. I thought we were all going to die.” Black paused, and she looked at Cross. “It's gone, isn't it?”
Cross nodded.
“ It’s gone. For now, at least.”
They carried Ekko back through the ice tunnels and up to the shattered portal as fast as they could. The way was treacherous thanks to the ice, and despite Ekko’s waif-like form, Cross and Black were so exhausted that even their spirits proved little help in getting their fallen companion topside.
It didn’t matter. She was dead well before they made it.
The icy chamber at the base of the Bone Tower was filled with gunsmoke and bodies. Kane, Cole and the soldiers had been attacked by more Black Circle grunts — a band of Gorgoloth armed with automatic weapons and rock hammers. Daye had been shot in the arm, but looked like he'd pull through.
Black went to Cole and embraced her. Cole held her in return, but Cross noticed that she was the one to break away, and she quickly moved to help the others.
Kane was covered in Gorgoloth blood. His visage was grim. He’d been watching the doorway when they appeared, his eyes set and sad. He seemed to know what he would see even before they’d emerged.
Regardless, when he saw Ekko, the strength seemed to drain out of him. He fell to his knees and bent over her body, and he hovered there as if held by puppeteer’s strings. Tears welled up in his eyes. He pressed his head against hers, and spoke to her quietly.
Kane stroked her hair in his hands, and softly kissed her forehead.
They left the lovers alone.
Outside, the world was held in the grip of a frozen wasteland. The air was bitter, cold and raw. Cross shivered the moment he stepped into the street.
He looked west, and saw no shadow there. They’d won.
Then why doesn’t it feel like it? he wondered. Where’s that sense of victory you’re supposed to get when you win a major battle? Where’s the sense that’s it over, that everything is going to be all right?
Cross felt none of that. He felt like he’d been thrust into the middle of something he hadn’t understood, and that he’d taken part in a battle that wasn’t really his.
He thought about his childhood. He thought about his sister and his mother, of a life when everything made sense. He’d never really had a period of his life like that, and he knew it. But he felt better believing that he had.
“ What’s that?” Black asked. He jumped at the sound of her voice. She stood just behind him, staring with him out at the frozen city. Her eyes were red, like she’d been crying.
“ What’s what?”
“ That sword.”
Cross had forgotten it was even in his hand. It felt light, like a shard of plastic, and the magnetic draw it had held before was gone. It was just a blade now, incredibly thin, something like a piece of frosted sea glass carved into the shape of a predator’s tooth. It was made of magic, but it bore no magic of its own.
“ Just something I’ll carry with me,” he said.
They stood quietly in the cold wind.
“ Lucan’s power,” Black said after a time. “It’s gone.” Cross just nodded. “So it’s over.”
“ I guess so,” he said. He looked at her. “Do you want to talk about it?” he asked quietly.
Black smiled. And then, unbidden, her tears flowed.
“ Cole is leaving me,” she said quietly. “We’d just split up before…before Cradden took her. I was ready to let her go, but…I didn’t want anything to happen to her.” She wiped away her tears. “After all I’ve done for her…she’s still going to leave.” She straightened herself. “I’m…sorry, about Dillon…”
Cross didn’t know what to say. He remembered the rage and the fury he’d harbored towards her. He remembered wanting to kill her — vowing to kill her — once it was all over. He remembered why.
He’d always remember why.
But he looked into her face, and he saw the truth of her pain. So he just nodded.
“ I’m sorry, too,” he said.
They both stood there for a while, waiting for something else to happen. When nothing did, they gathered themselves and went back inside to find Kane.