I'm back, finally. Sorry about the wait!

Anyway, these are the final chapters of The Final Paradox. I'm kind of sad to be done with it, honestly. To anyone who's been following and supporting it the whole time: Thank you! You're the reason I'm still here.

Well, I'd better just stop typing and get to it. It's 3 AM where I am...

Chapter Sixteen: The Final Paradox

Waiting for the end to come
Wishing I had strength to stand
This is not what I had planned
It's out of my control
Flying at the speed of light
Thoughts were spinning in my head
So many things were left unsaid
It's hard to let you go

~Waiting for the End – Linkin Park

Lightning, Caius and Noel turned on each other, Lightning brandishing her blade.

"Noel Kreiss," Lightning breathed. "What have you done with Serah?"

"She's—she's gone," Noel gasped. "This is all your fault!" With that he pulled himself to his feet, drawing his blade in response.

Lightning slid into a fighting stance, preparing to counter. But Noel didn't go after her. Instead he flung himself at Caius, both swords flying. Caius had no time to draw and ducked instead. He looked as though he'd return blows, but instead he completely slid to the ground again, gasping for air.

Lightning waited for him to get back up and claim it was nothing as he had before. Instead, he stayed there, even as Noel was standing over him with one of his swords pointed straight at his back.

"Don't touch him," Lightning found herself saying.

"What?" Noel replied, turning and looking at her. "It's his fault your sister's gone, and you tell me not to touch him?"

"It's not his fault," Lightning murmured. "It's everyone's."

Noel looked from Lightning to Caius and back again. Then, slowly, he sheathed his blade.

"Get away from here," she continued. "The timeline is deteriorating. If we're not careful we'll end up just like she did."

"But, Lightning—"

"Get out of here, Noel," Lightning repeated.

He stared at her for a moment, but finally turned and jogged away along the line of water.

Lightning pulled Caius up by one arm and dragged him into the shadow of one of the stone buildings, ducking out of Noel's sight.

"Caius," she whispered. "What's happening?"

He couldn't even find enough breath to formulate the words to explain.

Lightning touched his jaw lightly, turning his face towards her. "Is this…?"

"The Heart of Chaos," Caius managed to gasp. "It must stop beating for Etro."

"What do you mean?" Lightning demanded.

"The goddess," he breathed, "is dead."

The goddess? What had happened to Etro? A million thoughts went through Lightning's mind at once. Maybe Etro was erased; maybe there was no change in the timeline; maybe it was part of the paradox. Yet even with all of these possibilities coming to her, none of them formed a clear answer for her.

She snapped back to reality. Caius grimaced as he struggled to keep control of himself, but still his strength was leaving him and he collapsed into her arms.

"Caius," Lightning murmured, "you can't leave me here. It's an imbalance in the timeline…"

"There was an imbalance from the beginning," he hissed through clenched teeth. "And that… That is why I…"

She waited, but he didn't finish. "What?" she asked, waiting for him to continue.

His hand flew up to take hers. "Lightning…" he breathed.

"No, Caius. You can't leave." She willed him to stay with her, but knew it was inevitable. "Pull yourself together."

The hint of a smirk formed on his face, as though he was recalling their endless battles. But he didn't reply for a few moments. Instead he closed his eyes and focused on breathing.

Lightning set her jaw. She wouldn't show emotion, not even now, not even when she had become so close to Caius. It's only part of the paradox, and never should have happened at all. Our relationship is a mistake.

She wouldn't believe herself. Those were words that meant absolutely nothing, especially not after this paradox had erased so many people she'd known.

"You replaced them," she said in a painful whisper.

Caius turned his gaze slowly to hers. She continued, "I lost all those people I used to know in the paradox. And in their place—"

He shook his head. "No. You must not think of it that way."

"Caius…" she said.

With that she leaned over him, brushing her lips against his.

He whispered to her his last words.

"I… I shall…remember you…"

And Caius Ballad vanished.

Lightning squeezed her eyes shut for a moment, fending off emotion. When she opened them again she saw a shadow standing way above her, a silhouette against the masses of stone and background of a dark, swirling sky.

Noel.

"Lightning!" he called out from his perch.

She glanced up for only a moment, and then looked down in resignation.

"What kind of game are you playing?" he shouted.

In response, she turned and walked away. But he jumped down and followed her.

"Lightning," he said breathlessly when she stopped walking at the water's edge. "What is this? You pushed your sister away as she fell into the Void. And against all odds—" The pause seemed to be painful for him. "You and Caius were together."

The conviction, the disgust with which he said the word hit her hard. She whirled around to face him. "This has nothing to do with you. Leave me alone and I told you, get out of Valhalla!"

"But you don't understand," he pleaded. "Serah… I…" Noel sounded as though he were on the verge of tears. "How could you take her away from me? How could you take her away from everyone?"

"I did nothing to cause this," Lightning retorted. "You twisted the timeline. You ultimately destroyed it."

"And so did Caius." Noel's tone had changed; his voice was now thick with renewed hatred.

They were at a stalemate. Both of them stood still as statues, glaring at each other. Then suddenly a crash like thunder ripped through Valhalla's skies, and a jagged rift pulled the clouds apart to reveal a dark void behind them. Noel and Lightning both cried out as the ground shook violently.

And as quickly as it had come, it was gone. The two of them pulled themselves to their feet and glanced at each other.

"Serah," they both said at the same time.

Then Noel gasped, his hand snapping up to meet his forehead. He grimaced as he stepped back, looking like he was in pain. Within seconds Lightning felt it too: a force like a vortex sucking something out of her mind. She fell to the ground, the name "Caius" escaping her lips one final time.

And then that word, that name was merely a specter of what had been. It meant nothing to her.

"Lightning!" Noel cried out as another rift opened behind him. He drew his sword instinctively and dashed away from it. But it opened wider, like a gaping maw waiting to swallow them. The weight in his right arm was suddenly gone, and he saw that his sword had dissolved completely—and that the rift was taking the rest of his arm too.

Lightning dashed forward, clamping a hand around his other wrist and attempting to drag him backwards. But before she even touched him, she knew it was no use. She'd seen her share of rifts—those that had sealed her memories away, those that opened on the shore of Valhalla, and the one that had exploded, temporarily leaving her at the mercy of Caius.

Somehow she already knew this one wouldn't let Noel go.

Noel fought the rift, jerking backwards, trying to pull himself back into space. Yet the harder he fought, the more of him it seemed to consume.

His whole arm was completely gone. He was dissolving into the rift by the second.

Finally he looked back at her, eyes shining. "Let go," he said in a voice that threatened to break. "Let me go."

"What—?!" But before Lightning had even gotten the word out of her mouth, he wrenched his arm from her grasp. One second he was looking straight at her, seeming to plead with her one last time, and then—

And then he was gone. He was gone and the rift had disappeared with him.

Dead silence enveloped Valhalla. Lightning shook her head. Everything, it seemed, was forsaken. Even Valhalla's timeless shores were being consumed by the paradoxes. They'd done what they'd feared the most—torn the timeline apart.

Valhalla, the anchor that held it all together, was on the brink of destruction too.

Every step Lightning took was heavy as she walked back up to the center temple of Valhalla, where Etro's throne had once stood. Now there was no trace of it. And the visions that Valhalla had once shown her of the timeline had all turned to skewed images of dust and ash and things no longer animate.

She didn't even have the strength to shed tears. She could only stand and watch it.

Then it happened again. Right in front of her, the ground exploded, tearing open with unparalleled force. Lightning knew what was coming. A second later, something seemed to slam hard into the back of her skull, and her memories were gone.

The other rifts didn't close. They opened wider, like a thousand fanged maws, starting a chain reaction and splitting the ground into hundreds of new temporal rifts. Lightning stared out at it, something flickering at the edge of her memory, but it was all in vain. The shard of memory was gone before she could even hold onto it.

As she looked out into the sea of rifts surrounding her, her darkest thoughts surfaced.

Lightning knew it was over. She had long known it was over. But there was one thing that she refused to do—die a phantom, a coward. So as Valhalla dissolved around her, and with it the cries of those lost in the Void Beyond—as her memories left her, one by one, of Serah, of Caius, of everyone—she did the only thing she could.

She drew her gunblade against the torrent, and looked fearlessly into the darkness.