Luneth followed Ruby to get Refia to a safe place in Saronia. She barely breathed and her face showed flushed and sleek with sweat. The handmaids there all but yanked her from him.

"She'll be fine," Ruby told him before directing them outside. "But only if we get that teeming mass dealt with."

Luneth clamped down on the energy bursting from his veins and forced himself outside with them. He split a bolt of fae magic and broke ground under a league of monsters. "I'll get them."

"With help." Ruby flew with him to the battlements and released Djinnfire.

A dozen scores of larger monsters joined the throng of teeming small ones. Some of them looked like fairies stolen from their realms. From his realm.

Luneth threw himself into the thick of it with a shelled and protected shield. Saronian troops hollered at his arrival.

Luneth tagged round after round of faceless goons and exploded them. He avoided the fae until one got pinned by a flailing skeleton.

Luneth blew the skeleton free and subdued the fae with sleep.

More skeletons with their rattling bones and awkward movement joined them. Luneth leaped to find the origin: that place that Arc ran to. And that meant—

"Luneth!" Arc shouted to him, though his slow pace from the back of the army showed all the concentration he kept on it.

"Watch it!" Luneth shouted back. "You're killing my fae!"

"The Void killed your fae! I don't think we can save them!"

"Can too! And I'm the King, so I know better!"

Arc relented to that and directed his undead to surround their allies.

Kytes hauled Filo to safety under a rock. He inhaled so much dust, it hurt to breathe. It caked his fingers and turned his clothes gold-brown. The magic holding him up shook and he imagined plunging into nothingness. He wished he could crawl under his bed like he did as a kid.

Basch argued with the queen. They planned to get out, but the queen insisted she could still disarm the nethicite.

Nethicite. Building under the rock and gaining in power. The wall of it cracked and shuddered with its power. He wanted to hit it with fire, but Filo's bleeding body felt too heavy and broken. He could make it worse. Maybe even activate the explosion they tried to stop.

Rocks. Earthquake. Everything coming down on him and stopping his lungs.

"All that energy," he said. "And we can't touch it without ending the world?"

"We cannot destroy it," Basch said. "We can only hope to subdue it."

"And yet!" Queen Ashe pushed against the wall. "It won't quiet! I'm using all my might and mind, but it won't budge!"

"Then we're lost." Basch moved to shield her.

She refused him. "Not in a million years! We've saved our world once already from these things and I'll do it again!"

Kytes couldn't believe he watched them now. He dreamed of witnessing the Dynast King's power. He grew up on what stories he could snatch from the street performers, but they all claimed the line lost. Yet here he watched the line in action.

Something cracked and he found his arm gashed open. It only hurt after he saw it.

"We're gonna die," Filo rasped before healing him. "Buried under rubble. What a way to go."

He hushed her, but she kept talking. She complained about everything she never did, and she blamed them for doing stupid things. He barely heard her past the dust and blood. All he saw was the damage to their bodies. Damage that Filo couldn't heal, so much as redirect. White magic didn't remove damage, it only reallocated resources to expedite healing. Even as she made the bleeding stop, he lost strength and his eyes turned heavy.

And something clicked.

"Lady Ashe!" He crawled toward them and Filo tried to stand. "You can't destroy the power, but can't you use it?"

"What do you think I'm trying to do?" she asked.

"I mean the nethicite's power! Use it!"

"And kill us all?"

"No, redirect it! Move it somewhere else or make it do something different!"

She stared at him, eyes wide. "Meaning what? Redirect it beyond the planet?"

"If that's what you have to do! What's black magic and white magic but redirection of natural elements? Isn't that what all magic is? Isn't that what nethicite is?"

"Damn you!" She snapped back to the wall. "Basch, with me! We have other work for this bomb to do! Does Larsa know the origin of the Void's intrusion?"

Kytes struggled closer. He barely moved past the fatigue, but pain kept his vision clear and his thoughts racing. "If we had enough mages, we could just send it through space. But there's not enough of us, and seeing as none of us are gods…"

"I am!" said the queen. "Basch, the location!"

"It is no good, milady. Unless you can picture the point exactly, it couldn't make the exit. If there's a plane you can vent it through…"

"Allow us." A man dressed in white joined them, like a raider from the desert. Only more… elegant? A man in black appeared with him.

"Aerith found Mateus," said the man in black. "He knows the point better than anyone left living or dead. His work has familiarized him with Exdeath's work and this way we avoid working with Exdeath himself."

"I have so many questions," Filo said.

Kytes swallowed his fear. "Can you help patch us both enough to help channel that magic?"

"I'm not a white mage, idiot. … But I think I can if you help."

Irvine picked through the remains of the Iifa tree. "They found the signal in here?"

"That's what I said." Seifer threw a blackened branch aside. "Shit, if this doesn't smell like burned people."

"Organic," Fujin said.

Irvine kicked a pile of twisted bramble out of the way. "What do your spirits say now?"

"We're close," Seifer said.

"And does this Tellah have the exact coordinates?"

"No."

"Could he make it faster if he showed himself?"

"I'm not letting him take control of me."

Something caught his ankle and Irvine scrambled back. A hand gripped him from between branches. Something glinted between those branches and rubble.

"Here!" Irvine shot out a boulder trapping the branches and shook free.

Fujin and Seifer flanked him and pulled branches out of the way. It took minutes to get enough clear to let out the person buried beneath. With them came another that didn't move.

"Save…" The first, a man once finely dressed, dropped the second to the ground before collapsing. "Her."

"Shards," Fujin said.

"We'll worry about those once he's not dying," Seifer said. "This one looks like a lost cause."

"No." The frayed man grabbed for the other person they brought back. "Harley. I can…"

"Shards." Fujin dropped to his side and grabbed his wrist, then took his friend's. "Channel."

"Thanks," said the man. Then they both glowed with a soft light.

Seifer hissed a curse and grabbed Irvine, then put some distance between them and the others. "This is another hotspot," Seifer said. "Get Laguna."

"How would he know—?"

"Do it! We need these shards dealt with ASAP."

Irvine yanked free of him and smoothed his collar where Seifer grabbed him. "Fine. But don't make a habit of this or I leave both of you to suffer."

"And I'll be glad to be rid of you."

Irvine stung at the thought of losing them. But that was just the survival instinct talking. "Loire. Found what you were talking about. We need a team here at the Iifa tree."

The Celsius only got them so far before dropping them off at a safe point and docking. The crew and them split ways, then Yuna ran out of psychic energy a fraction into their journey east. Lulu got snippy from overexertion, but those shards kept her going. Yuna focused on walking and ignoring the pain that claimed every part of her. Selphie remained upbeat, but her dragging feet betrayed her exhaustion.

They fumbled through overturned dirt and twisting roots. The sky calmed from its earlier chaos, but still shifted unnaturally. Even as barren as she was of magic, the ground crackled about her with distress. The strain felt too much to bear.

"Found them." Lulu twisted through a mess of trees and Yuna followed. Brambles caught on her skirt and gave way to shifting sand.

And through the torn wood, a pale man and paler girl kneeled in silence. They didn't shift or turn.

"Are they dead?" Yuna asked. "No, I can't feel them that way…"

"You'd better not, after your disconnection," Lulu said.

They joined the two and Selphie collapsed. Yuna wondered what it was they could do before the girl snapped her eyes open and took Lulu's wrist.

Lulu hissed and pulled away, but it was too late. Her skin dulled and her knees buckled. The girl glowed brighter and moved to cast—

Lulu grabbed the girl by the neck and interrupted her. "I'll let that slide," Lulu said, "but don't expect any friends if you make a habit of ripping power from people."

"It isn't yours," said the girl.

"No, but that would have killed anyone else."

"Death is… not how you imagine it right now. And the Void's infection has placed shard-bearers in more risk. We're missing too many still."

Yuna kneeled by the man, whose eyes flitted about under the lids.

"Yeul," he said. Yuna startled away. "Yeul, we're losing them."

The girl dropped to his side and put a hand on his shoulder. Lulu reluctantly joined them.

"But what can we do?" Yuna asked.

"You don't need the power of gods to connect to the planet," Lulu said. "Now help us guide the Farplane to play nicely with these other forces or I'll tell Tidus your most embarrassing stories."

Yuna put a hand to the shuddering dirt like they did. "How?"

"Borrow from Yeul and focus. If we keep this steady while the others kick the Void, then they'll separate again on their own."

Yuna imagined those churning pyreflies and closed her eyes. Waves crashed over her and she lost herself to the confused voices of the dead. Only this time, she had an anchor to hold to. Yeul's power served as a steadying weight and Yuna relied on that as she found herself diving into the depths of the planet's defenses. With so much chaos, the Void shrugged off the planet's protests like a light shawl every time it tried to rebuff it.

Yuna found Lulu and Yeul and Rufus through the link and together they redirected attentions. They distracted the planets from trying to remerge and they split to focus on the different points.

It didn't take long for the Void to redirect a swarm of monsters their way. Selphie forced herself to her feet and took up defense again. Yuna didn't know what she'd manage without her bombs.

Ingus slashed and parried until black blood stained his uniform an oily sheen. Saronia burned in places, but he had to trust their army knew how to dispel those that leaked through his ranks.

Sara fought at his back, a reassuring presence despite the constant nagging fear of losing her to one misstep.

Ruby used her witch powers to blast whole legions of monsters, but Luneth was forced back to his non-fae side that he neglected for too long. Arc sent rattling bones and barely formed skeletons after the Void monsters. Yet they remained outnumbered.

Something nicked his shoulders and Ingus beheaded the creature that caught him. He stumbled back and found a spike through his chest. He ripped it free and felt the sucking sensation of depleted crystal energy.

A distant bang sounded, and he remembered collapsing against a foreign, stone wall. The Void laughed at him through a deep shudder in the earth.

Ingus recovered his stance in time for a bat to cut past. His temple turned wet and sticky. Shock blurred his view and he lost balance.

"Ingus!" Sara blasted creatures back and took to his side. Soldiers covered them. "Ingus, no!"

"I'm fine," he said. "Fine. Just… have to stand."

"You're bleeding! From so many places!"

"Most of it's drying. Crystal… recovers most."

A rush of cool white magic and he blinked back stars. The battlefield rang in clear and angry. Shouts across the field and screams of agony. Black and white magic misted the air like smoke and Ingus made out vague shapes through its haze.

Sara kept up a dome of wind about them. It burned through so much of her energy, her skin sheened and her breath came in labored bouts. Something clenched in his chest. She kept healing him.

"Leave me," he said. "I'll manage."

"Don't you dare!"

He stood and found the pain dulled. "I can defend myself again, thanks to you. Let's make it quick and finish this while you have energy left."

She gave a stiff nod and took stance at his back again. The dome dropped. Monsters surrounded them.

Ingus cut through a wolf-turtle hybrid, a rabbit-behemoth, and some gnarly insectoids. His renewed strength helped him slice through some dozen more before he lost energy again. He needed rest to recover his crystal magic. They had to make it quick indeed.

Y'shtola focused on the pull of her magicks, guided as she was by its mystic currents. So long as she kept stable on their waves, she wouldn't get caught in their tumultuous ride.

But then something caught the currents and yanked her off-center. Her wind spell twisted off and chipped a stone off the wall.

Power joined them that rivaled Hydaelyn's influence. Power that tugged at her limbs and pulled at her conscience.

"At last," she said. "Alphinaud! Alisaie! Our chance has come! Let us be rid of this infection!"

They agreed and Y'shtola found their light connected to hers. She followed the trace and grabbed onto that otherworldly power. And once she found ground, she transferred it.

"Thanks for that!" came a young man's voice. "Now let's get you somewhere safe before we blow this thing!"

"We're too deep," Y'shtola reminded him. "We have work to do still before we can cut this Void off, have we not?"

"Let me worry about that. I'm sending Dajh to help you guys with this place while I go handle Gaia II. Come on!"

With another tide, Y'shtola dropped into the flow of space. And then with a blink she returned to conscious.

Location shifted and she found herself on the precipice of something terrible and great. Like a maw beyond the ledge.

"And you brought me here for what purpose?" Y'shtola asked.

A being of Space touched down beside her. "You've got a lot of power, right? I'll take your shards, but you're still potent enough to change things here. There's a world in that nothingness and I need your help pulling it out."

"You ask the impossible."

"You seem like someone who can't be stopped by the impossible. I want to use that."

"Very well." She took anchor in the existence behind her and reached for the nothingness beyond. "It's quite stuck."

"I brought your friends, too."

"Yes, it seems they arrived before myself. Get on with yourself, Space Lord. I'll pull this line."

"Don't worry—I'll help."

Y'shtola found the telling mass of something within the nothingness. "Thanks for your assistance, then. But make haste, as we are losing light."

He left and another took his place. This one carried shards but more like hers than that other wanderer.

"Name's Libertus," he said. "Nice to meet you."

"Much obliged."

"You been practicing shards for long, or—?"

"Not as such. But I've learned them enough to know that it takes concentration to use them."

"Oh, yes. Let's do that."

Y'shtola adjusted her grip on the mass and pulled.

"With me, Machina." Rem took his hand and split her shards. Machina took them and burst with light.

"Isn't that too much?" he asked. "Don't you need more?"

"That was half. Now follow my lead." Rem found the pull of another, already held tight to something living in the distance. She joined that pull and joined her strength with theirs.

Shards connected and power surged through her. Machina joined her and the surge sparked. She felt half a dozen forces in the link and one of them felt distant.

Distant, but coming closer. She thought it a tiny piece of god power at first, but with this connection, she found instead a faraway source of power like hers. Like the others bound to her.

Noel mapped out the world and defined its edges while the others pulled. He kept the anchor on the planet, and he pulled on Leila's shards. Just a little further…

The merged world shifted with the first collision from Gaia II. Dirt exploded and winds shifted. Vanille made it through Valhalla's barrier sometime before and coaxed the planet into calming. Like a cold cloth pressed to a swollen wound, she reduced trauma while they introduced a new element.

"Can't you go slower?" Vanille asked across their link. "I can't keep up!"

Noel said, "This Leila makes that impossible!"

"Then slow her down!"

"I just said that's impossible!"

"The shell is stressed! I can't keep it together! If we could just calm the center—!"

Noel paused his pull. "What's wrong with the center?"

"There's something building up down there! I can't disarm it because I'm busy keeping us from bursting with this last world!"

Something rumbled beneath the deepest parts of the planet and Noel felt her dread. It threatened to burst with the might of a dying sun.

"Let me handle it!" Noel eased off his grip on Gaia II and one of the Hydaelyn twins quipped on his weakness.

Noel left them and dropped into the planet.

Ashe strained beneath the weight of her world and more. With the merge, this had to hold enough power to blast them all to pieces.

"I can't hold it forever," she said.

"Just a little further," said one of the white mages. "Almost…"

The tension shattered with the explosion of another presence. "I'm here!" said a man in almost-Rabanastrian, blue clothes.

"And who are you?" Ashe asked.

"Just a friend from the future." He took to her side and pressed his leather-laced hands to the wall. "Okay, on my mark."

Ashe channeled her shards and adjusted her grip on the nethicite.

"Ready?" he asked.

"Ready."

The white mages joined them and strengthened their hold.

"Focus on the direction," said the newcomer. "We can vent it into space since the atmosphere's about to rip apart anyway. Yeul, can you get everyone in position?"

"I've summoned who I can," came the reply. "Lightning and Snow won't leave Hope."

"Good enough. Look, Miss Ashelia, don't worry, you have help from all over. We should have enough people pushing and pulling that as long as we get this at the same time they deal with the Void, timing shouldn't be an issue. Into space, you understand?"

"I do."

"It's close. Ready for it?"

She could only nod.

"Go!"

Ashe Pushed. With a flare of power and a surge of energy and a gust of piercing wind, she braced against the bomb at her fingertips. It triggered.

The new man shouted and contained it. Panic flared and Ashe channeled it up. She pictured that twinkling night sky above her balcony and she imagined flying toward it. The rush of power in her veins made it feel real and her eyes pricked with adrenaline.

People shouted around her. The stowaways joined them, though their participation felt meager next to these almost-gods.

Ashe screamed. The bomb weakened, but so slowly. The planet surged already with the force of it, but they kept going.

Lenna stood over the darkness of Exdeath's castle. Or, the black hole that remained of it. She shivered at the thought of tumbling through its endless abyss.

Lenna trembled with the sense of something coming her way. She felt the dancing of foreign powers as the twinkling of crystal spores from all around her though she saw no one. When she didn't engage the shards inside her, they only amplified her connection to her Crystal Gods.

In the distance, that towering beast of twisted, shimmering flesh toppled with the might of an earthquake. The NORA group emerged, stained in its blood and hollering. A new man joined them, crowned with strong, heavy hair and marked with the same condemning oil that saturated the others' clothing.

The Dissidian warriors held together. Spirits flitted to and fro. The gathered planet cried as one rippling wave of gale-force wind and the air turned sour against the walls of her mouth like fruit rotted there.

The black hole exploded. A magic like black ink blasted the sky and cleared the roiling clouds. In its wake came a glittering gold and blue.

Exdeath's castle returned to its ruined state and the grasslands rolled back into being.

The Void left their Merged World.

Lenna sucked in a breath of shocked atmosphere. She rebalanced the sky and she sealed that hole left behind. The earth sorceress Vanille helped her from afar. They repainted the atmosphere and they restored natural breath.

And once she ensured the Void couldn't come back in, Lenna turned on the straggling remainders of its twisted soldiers.

The bomb died. The walls dimmed and stilled. Rocks fell. Dust filled her lungs.

Filo blinked back her bleariness. They disarmed the gods themselves. And she would die for it.

"With me!" shouted the queen.

The armored man took Filo in his arms. His ridged gauntlets dug into her back.

"Watch it," she rasped. "Those hurt."

"Majesty!" shouted the man. "With haste!"

"I'm here, too!" said another before taking Kytes. That one had such lovely trim on his hems… "Now!"

The ground shook. Filo watched for Kytes, but the blue man took him away. She struggled to get free, but the armored man held her tight.

They sped through rock and debris and the crumbling structure of Giruvegan. Filo spat in the Occuria's face twicefold, then. She came here and she helped destroy their bomb. Like… like when Vaan beat up Vayne Solidor.

The armored man worried over the queen's stress. She must have hurt herself.

But Filo couldn't see her. She only worried that she couldn't find Kytes.

Sara backed into a corner. They made it all the way to castle walls. There was nowhere else to fall to.

But then Cid's friend Sazh came in with his pistols. He yelled for her and hers to get back before shooting through the horde of monsters. He took them by the dozen and wiped them from the battlefield.

It all happened so fast. It ended so quickly.

Sara couldn't believe herself still breathing.

They fought stragglers while wind blew scrap along the grass and the land changed. Debris withdrew and the sky returned its stars. A fire started along the tree line, but Arc and Refia turned Mage and put it out. Buildings vanished and mountains reformed.

Beside her, Ingus breathed. He looked about them, tense as a frightened beast, and readied for the next hit.

Nothing came. What remained, the footmen cleared out. And then someone gave the clear and the army got to checking bodies, both enemy and ally.

Sara grabbed Ingus by the neck and kissed him. He acted surprised by it, but in the rush she didn't care. She wrapped her arms around him and didn't let go.

Somewhere in the distance, Luneth cheered.

Realities and timelines flashed before them and every part of him ached at the thought of Hope not waking up. Snow couldn't help the nauseating thought that this could go on forever.

"I don't want to care for him again," Snow said.

Sazh gripped Hope's collar. "You hear that, son? You better not disappoint this guy. We're all sick of your angsting and would like to move on with our lives, thanks!"

"Should've known not to sign on, then," Lightning said. "He's not stopped complaining since day one. Little drama queen."

"Right. Drama queen." Sazh released Hope.

Hope's skin turned almost metallic and he convulsed. Serah made a sound of distress and swam over. "What's happening?"

Snow took Hope's arm. With contact, he felt parts of that body that overheated as it endured Conversion. Bhunivelze's power consolidated within, but under whose control?

Sazh did something similar and warmed Hope at the toes and fingers. Even Ascended, taking all that into himself was too much. Snow signaled to the others and they took shards from him. A little here and a little there. Snow sensed the most distressed parts of the mind and pulled just as many pieces as hurt him.

"Watch it," Lightning said before pushing Serah back. "Don't want to turn him into some fountain of youth."

"I think he's already got that," Sazh said.

Hope finally stilled and Snow pulled back. "Tell me that's a good thing," he said.

"As if any of us know," Sazh said.

"Do we check for breathing?" Lightning asked. "Or…"

"If he died," Sazh said, "I assume he would just fade or something. Like we normally did. But maybe bigger or something."

"What if we resuscitate him?" Snow asked.

"Again, you're assuming I know things that I don't, son."

Hope woke and flailed. Snow grabbed him at the same time as Sazh and they steadied him against the unstructured space. "Mom? Guys?"

Lightning forgot to move. She hadn't heard that childish tone since they did those stupid games on the plains of Gran Pulse. Snow grabbed Hope in a bear hug while Sazh and Serah shared breaths of relief.

Lightning didn't dare join lest she shatter the illusion that he was back. In case Bhunivelze became a much better actor.

"Lightning." Hope pulled away from the others as much as he was able before pulling her into the hug. He shimmered with sickly energy and he spoke like he swallowed rocks. But he held her with strength enough to feel real.

She meant to fight back, but then she wrapped her arms around Snow and Sazh and Hope and she melted into memory.

"Hope!" Vanille barreled in and took Hope in a spinning hug.

Snow cheered and went after them.

Sazh chuckled and joined Lightning. "You're crying. I didn't know goddesses could cry."

"I didn't either." She wiped them away. "Damned if I start the trend."

"Don't worry, I think Serah beat you. There's worse things to be known for, anyway. Come here."

Lightning let him take her in a tight hug and she hated how small she felt. Everything hit her at once and she sobbed into his chest. She heated with embarrassment, but she couldn't stop herself.

"I won't tell the others."

"… Thank you."

"It's about time. Can't keep bottling that all up forever, you know."

"Just don't get used to it."

"Too late."

She pulled away again and shoved him back. Then just stayed close as they watched Eight and Sice join in the game of tag that resulted from everyone chasing each other through splintered time.

Cater and the others restructuring the place yelled for them to stop. Their visiting spirits alternated between mirth and grumbling. They still worked to gather mass and energy to form buildings. All they managed so far was a splotch of sand.

"Let them have their fun for now," Sazh said. "We'll make it into work after everyone's worn themselves out."

Lightning shook her head. "I don't think we wear out like we used to."

"I guess we'll find out. I'm not moving from this spot until I've become nice and relaxed."

She couldn't remember the last time she just waited because she could. But it felt damn good.