Kankri (diamonds) Karkat: Trope- Heroic Sacrifice; As all hope is lost and the players face defeat, the Blood aspect finally activates. However it's power is neither bonds or disease. Rather it acts as a sacrifice to recreate a special kind of scratch that results in all players but those of Blood to live safe lives. As far as Karkat and Kankri are considered, it's worth the sacrifice.
Terezi should have told him it was dangerous. Terezi should have said many things. She didn't, and couldn't, because she was dead. So many of Karkat's friends were dead. Vriska, Tavros, Aradia…Sollux, Feferi, Eridan…Nepeta and Equius…even Kanaya. It was just he, and Gamzee and his dancestor, Kankri.
Kankri had picked up the ring from a newly re-dead Aranea, and taken her place in the physical world. It was just the three of them, along with the remaining living humans, against Bec Noir and Lord English. Eridan would have said it was hopeless ("and as the prince a hope, I'm qualified to knoww!"), and he would be right. It was hopeless.
Gamzee dies in the first wave of attack. His previous neglect of his health made him fragile. Kankri and Karkat bleed heavily, matching vibrant red rivulets dripping from wounds. John falls in the distance, a heroic death. He took a mortal hit for Rose. Dave goes berserk, his screams echoing oddly as it's joined by the voices hundreds of matching, grieving Daves.
Jade is already dead, a death manipulated by Aranea to be considered "just." Roxy and Dirk lie dead, side-by-side, heroically killed taking down Bec Noir. There's just Lord English left, now. And the going isn't pretty. Kankri is crippled easily, legs crushed. He lives, barely, because Jane takes his place in LE's beam of death. It's a heroic move, so she doesn't come back.
Rose dies and revives four times before she takes a hit for the original Dave. That one is heroic. Karkat screams, not from the pain of his wounds but because it's too much, there are too many of his dead friends littering the ground. There are fewer and fewer duplicate Daves running around, time may be his aspect but Lord English is a master.
Kankri screams on the other side of the battlefield, crushed legs barely visible through the specters of his own friends. The ghosts of Meenah, and Porrim and everyone else scream as well. Lord English knew exactly which spot to hit.
And then they feel it. The pulse of their blood in their veins, the sense of bonds and broken bodies and loyalty overwhelms the pain of their wounds. They aren't god tier, there is no way that they can overcome LE on their own. But they don't have to. Blood isn't just the aspect of bonds and disease and loyalty, no it is an aspect of sacrifice.
They bleed together, eyes glowing with power. Somewhere in paradox space, a rip in time and space opens, and sucks in the universe. It sucks in every universe. The world they know ceases to be, and Lord English shrieks his rage at being thwarted, as he stands alone in an empty session.
A lifetime away, seven-year-old Terezi Pyrope laughs at a joke her sister Latula tells her. Sollux and Mituna Captor scream at each other over Mario Kart 8, as Aradia and Kurloz watch and laugh. Meenah beats Eridan and Vriska at poker, and Damara and Tavros watch cute little cartoons as Rufio and his boyfriend Horuss make out in a different room.
Their lives are happy. Their lives are safe.
Jade and Feferi play dress-up games with stuffed octopi and cuttlefish. Rose and Kanaya go on their first date. Dave and John and Dirk and Roxy marathon a million terrible movies, and Jane and Jake and the others participate in a community play. And no one even knows what their happiness cost them.
Karkat and Kankri don't regret a single thing, even if they miss out on the best of it. They have their memories, and they get to watch their friends grow up. And to them? That's more than enough.