Noctis Lucis Caelum had come here to die.
He knew, as he climbed up to the throne that was finally his, that his body wouldn't sustain the power of the Astrals for much longer. Just long enough to get the job done.
He looked at the ruined throne room as he sat. He'd been soaking up every last drop of the gods' powers for the last ten years, but he still felt nineteen.
He leaned back and sat, for the first time, as the last king of Lucis.
Ardyn would wait for him. The only way for that monster to truly die was through the combined power of the gods and man. All that power, localized in one body.
He was the only one in the world who could endure it. He couldn't fail.
"Good luck," he told the empty room, wishing childishly that his friends heard him.
They'd need it if they were going to fix all this.
He closed his eyes. Enough wasting time. He had a prophecy to fulfil.
He summoned his father's blade and stabbed it down in front of him. "Come to me, Kings of old!"
The ring on his finger glowed white as the spectral forms of his ancestors formed in front of him and drew their blades slowly, regretfully, to transfer their power to him in the only way they could.
One-hundred and thirteen times. It would hurt.
"I'm ready."
He wasn't, not really. Not for the first, and not for the fortieth, fiftieth, or sixtieth strike to his soul.
When it came time for the one-hundred and thirteenth blade he didn't look beside him at his father. He couldn't. He couldn't allow himself to cry. He only forced his hand to lift the blade back into place and waited.
His skin, his muscles, his bones, they were all on fire. He had enough power to bend the stars to his will, and it was unwanted. He grit his teeth.
It was necessary.
Ardyn had to be stopped. The Starscourge had infected him so deeply, so thoroughly, that it became him. It had tasted magic, and so doomed the world. He didn't know if there was anything of Ardyn Lucis Caelum left in there, not after he'd been locked away by his brother and the first Oracle—
Luna, Luna... paying in blood for what some ancient ancestor had done.
—but it didn't matter. If he was the only sacrifice needed here, then so be it.
His father's spectral form rose in front of him and he uncurled his fingers from the blade.
Had the Founder and the Oracle made the right choice? Had the gods, when they fought to stop Ifrit and created the Starscourge?
Who knows?
Noct managed to lift his head at the last moment right before his father thrust his blade forward and his eyes rolled up in agony.
His father's helmeted face was turned away.
.
.
.
There was a darkness plaguing this star. One who refused to submit to the might of gods and could not be purged even by Bahamut's blades of light. One so tainted he could subjugate one of them.
The Glacian, Shiva, held the horn that was left of Ifrit and wondered if this outcome was inevitable.
Had it been the clashing of divine blades on mortal land that sealed the fate of this star? Had it been the corruption of Ifrit, which had woken Ramuth early, which then woke Titan and Leviathan, and so on?
If they weren't so weakened, could they, together, have cleansed this star? Or, if they'd slept on, would they have woken to corruption poisoning their magic, twisting it to bind them?
Shiva set her feet on the stone floor, a spectator among spectators.
Humans came from them, and so they bore their flaws. Bahamut, whose pride would not allow him to admit weakness or fault, who bound the Tainted One into passiveness by a promise of future death, who could not say that he would have won while the rest of them slumbered.
Leviathan and her stubborn solitude. Ramuth and his unforgiving, ceaseless storms. Titan and his absolute determination to spend eternity stuck in place keeping the humans safe, holding up the meteor, as they called it.
O' Infernian, and his beautiful rage.
Shiva tightened her hold on his horn.
O' Glacian, and her cold sorrow.
The one-hundredth blade, the one-hundredth and one...
The end of the Infernian, so bleak and miserable.
One-hundredth and two...
O' King of Kings, and his love for this star.
One-hundredth and three, one-hundredth and four...
O' Lady Oracle, last of her line, whose purifying light left this star to darkness upon her death.
One-hundredth and five...
In having their power, so, too, did the King of Light have their presence. Bahamut, hovering at the back of the room, hands folded on the handle of his blade.
Titan and Leviathan, across from her.
Ramuth, where Ifrit would have hovered next to her.
...one-hundredth and nine, one-hundredth and ten, one-hundredth and eleven...
O' Lady Oracle, determined to carry out her duty, to bestow her healing light upon all she could, even as it pained her, as it weakened her.
Had humans not discovered Ifrit while he slept, would their combined might have been enough?
No, for the Infernian's rage for them all would not be so easily abated.
One-hundredth and twelve, and the last, the one-hundredth and thirteenth Caelum.
O' Glacian, and her unending empathy for mankind.
The King of Kings slumped on his throne.
Her doubts, her thoughts, were useless. Her duty was at an end, and this star would bloom anew without them.
A scarred, desolate star with few lands left unravaged by the Tainted One's magic, with humans who knew only pain and grief.
It was a cruelty, on their part, to leave them right before a time when they'd look for them the most.
They had no choice.
Did they? Did she?
White light burst from the King of Light and enveloped the room as he broke the boundary between the living realm and the realm after death, as he offered all he had to do what they could not.
If she could make a change, would she?
The thought alarmed her. It went against all they'd done so far, to everything that brought them here, to this moment, rapidly fading, quickly losing the sentience they had as the King of Kings wielded their power like a blade to break that middle place he'd created and fully enter the realm beyond.
It was not until the midst of battle that she came to accept that Ifrit was beyond saving.
Shiva's hand was on Noctis' shoulder, stopping him, shocking him into twisting to stare at her.
"S-Shiva? What—"
She pressed a hand to his blade, the manifestation he'd chosen, and drew her power from it. Tangled together as they were, the power of the others came with it.
Noctis appeared to realize what she was doing, as he tried to shake her off, to pull the blade from her, but as the magic flowed into her, the more solid she became.
Her hold on him tightened, and he could not move without harming her.
Shiva glanced beside them as Bahamut let out an enraged roar, the same golden, bleeding holes that had been all over herself on him, swinging his massive blade down to separate them.
It passed through her arms. His momentum carried him past them, but it went unnoticed by Noctis, confusion and rage and fear in his eyes. Bahamut spun around to them but didn't lift his blade again.
"A-Ardyn?" Noctis asked, uselessly trying to draw away.
Shiva shook her head and cupped his cheek, the gentle touch of frost beneath her fingertips.
She wanted to speak to him, but he would not understand her.
But it was because she was herself, because she'd done what she could for the one he loved, that he hesitated to use force with her. It was this hesitation that would cost him his fate, even if she was doing this for him, for all of them.
"Shiva?" Ramuth asked, confounded by her actions.
A clawed hand passed through her head. Leviathan, taking on the sun-kissed appearance of the woman who was once her voice, her messenger, like Gentiana had been for her, before they were all killed in the war.
"Stop," Leviathan hissed, the most unused to speaking of them all.
"You were not touched by the corruption," Bahamut said, unable to understand.
It was only Titan, who loved this star more than she, who didn't move or speak.
The spectral blade shattered as the magic left Noctis. His hand was still in the air as his pupils shrank and his family's armiger formed behind him with the sound of twinkling glass automatically to protect him.
Shiva stuck her hand through his chest and grasped, next, at the power that had been pierced into his soul.
Noctis gasped, a look of alarm on his face. The ethereal weapons moved on their own in a swirl to defend him but were encased in ice before they could touch her skin.
"You have to stop," he choked out. "This-I thought all of you wanted to stop Ardyn."
Shiva wrote, y-e-s, on his cheek.
"Then why? He'll come back if I don't finish him off. This won't end until I do."
Bahamut lowered his head. He faced his blade down and folded his hands on the handle, prideful to the end. "Your selfishness has doomed them all."
He dispersed in a scatter of golden light.
Dark blue, vein-like marking appeared along her arm as she drew the line of kings from his soul.
Noctis' face twisted in pain. His arms fell to his sides.
If she could change even a single thing, it may change everything.
Leviathan turned from her, eyes finding an opening in the wall, seeking the sea as she dispersed.
Ramuth watched her with furious eyes, and the glow from them was the last to disintegrate.
Titan sat, bowed his head, and dispersed.
Noctis' armiger slowly faded into nothingness.
Shiva pulled her hand from Noctis, returned her hand to his shoulder, and shoved him out of the middle realm he'd created.
He went without resistance, weakened as she left him.
Shiva turned away from the King, and made a wish.
.
.
.
Noct tumbled down the throne steps and groaned.
What just happened?
He was aching all over and felt the weakest he'd been in his life but he...
He was alive.
Noct managed to get his arms under him, gritting his teeth, then pushed himself onto his knees and finally, his feet.
He was breathing hard as he looked up at the throne.
He'd been sitting, no, standing, ready to do what he came here to do, and then Shiva had—
taken his magic
—appeared in front of him and stopped him just as he was about to begin and—
taken his destiny
—shoved him out of, well, wherever he'd been, after she'd drained him.
Before that, he hadn't let himself think about anything except killing Ardyn, once and for all. Not about the pain he felt all over, or what felt like his last breath as he was pinned to the throne.
He touched his chest, but his suit was intact. He was intact. He wasn't even cold.
He looked up at the throne again.
He hadn't expected to get this far. Didn't think there'd be an after for him.
Noct waved his hand to summon his blade, wanting to warp to a hole in the wall to get a look at the sky, but his magic didn't respond to him. In fact, he couldn't feel his magic.
Shiva had... really taken everything from him, huh?
But not his life.
He shook out his hands to get them to stop shaking.
Still, he'd probably notice the sun coming up.
It meant Ardyn was still alive. It'd take a while for him to come back, but he would come back. He couldn't imagine his sorta-ancestor would be too happy when he found out what happened.
It'd be catastrophic.
Noct... felt dead. He was empty inside, quiet, defenseless. But he ached all over in a way that dead people didn't.
"What were the last ten years for?" he asked the room. "What was any of it for?"
The gods didn't answer him.
Right. He'd lost his covenants too.
Noct shuffled out of the room. The ride back down the elevator was awkward, and he couldn't believe that it had only been a few minutes ago that he'd had Prompto show him his camera so he could take a picture with him.
Noct stopped against the wall outside to catch his breath and looked at the scuff marks on the floor left from all the presents Ardyn had left them.
The daemons, the struggle to get here, for... this?
What was this?
Noct stepped over plaster and glass and made it outside, not sure what he was looking for or where he was going until—
—until he saw his best friends, alive and unhurt.
Of course they handled it. They'd spent ten years handling it without him.
Ardyn was still out there, the sky was still dark, and he was a King of ruins.
Prompto was sitting on the bottom step, his arms around his knees. Ignis, next to him, was staring up at a sky he couldn't see.
Gladio was standing with his shield up, still scanning the area for daemons, acting as his shield, their shield, for what was supposed to be the last time.
He would've finished Ardyn off by now. Noct scrubbed a hand down his face, forgetting his beard, and Prompto reacted to the noise first. His gun was in his hand as he swung his arm behind him, already halfway pulling the trigger when his mouth dropped open.
He made a choked sound and dropped the gun right there on the steps as he ran up to him.
For just a second, Noct was nineteen again. Prompto's arms flew around his neck and Noct somehow managed to stay on his feet. "Noct!"
"Me," he agreed, patting his back a few times.
"You uh," Prompto pulled back, wiping his face with his dirty shirt. "I'm not in a dream, right? I didn't get put to sleep by some daemon that snuck up on us and when I wake up you'll-you won't be—"
"Seems to me that a daemon hasn't gotten that lucky in a long time."
"It could still happen!"
"It's not him," Gladio spoke, eyes narrowed. "Stop messing around, Prompto."
"What's your favorite food?" Iggy asked. He hadn't turned around.
"Berry Opera," Noct said immediately.
Prompto didn't move. It brought him back to reality suddenly, that he was twenty-nine and his nervous best friend had become someone who thought he could avoid an attack from Ardyn up close.
They'd been fighting together for most of the day and he was still surprised.
Noct pulled a folded photo out of his suit pocket before Iggy could ask him another question. Prompto gasped as he unfolded it and scrubbed his eyes.
He held it up at Gladio. "Recognize this? You believe me now?"
Gladio was silent.
"What is it?" Iggy asked, standing. "The photo he took?"
"Yeah," Gladio said, dragging out the word. "But I'm not convinced. Care to explain what happened to the Ring of Lucii?"
Noct looked at his hand. The ring was gone.
"Something happened—"
"Noct went in there with it and wouldn't come out without it."
"Shiva stole my magic," he said, and they fell silent. "All of it. Every last drop. You could say she ambushed me. I was almost done. I was dead—" he faltered and couldn't look at them as he cleared his throat, hating how shaky it sounded. He bounced his leg as they watched him, a teenage habit in a body that had never learned to outgrow it.
"She ambushed me," he said again. "Hand through the chest, stopping the armiger like it was nothing, and the worst part is that when she told me she wanted to stop Ardyn, I believed her. Now we're here, waiting for Ardyn to finish what he started."
The silence was clogged with his guilt.
"Did Shiva... did she say why?" Prompto asked first.
"Nah," Noct said, swiping a quick hand across his wet eyes. "Bahamut, Leviathan, Ramuth—they tried to stop her, but were all too weak by then—"
A metallic crash interrupted him.
He looked up, eyes finding the shield dropped on the ground in the dark, a second before a hand was on his shoulder, roughly yanking his battered body into a hard hug.
"I'll end you, if you're not you," Gladio threatened, voice rough.
"Already doing it," Noct managed as the air was squeezed out of him.
It grounded him, like only his friends could.
Gladio let go. He turned his back to him, patting his eyes with his collar as he muttered, "Got something in my eyes. Must be all the dust."
"If that's the decision the Glacian made, then we'll simply work around it," Iggy said, wiping water off his sunglasses with a folded cloth. "Magic or not, prophecy or not, we have a duty to the Insomnians still in the city to do what we can. It might not be enough, but at least now I'll have no regrets."
"Aw, come on. Don't talk like that. It's like you think we'll die," Prompto said, wiping his nose and going down to pick up his gun.
Noct felt the emptiness in his soul like a long drop off a steep cliff. "Ardyn still has his magic. He might be the only one left who does."
"So what?" Gladio asked, clearing his throat. "You forget how to pick up a sword while you were in there? All of us spent ten years without the armiger. You'll get used to it."
Noct blinked. "I can't just get used to something like that—"
"You've always been a quick study, Noct," Iggy interrupted him without sympathy.
"See? This is why long-range is the best," Prompto said, leaning an arm on his shoulder and waving his gun. "No gear to lug around, no blades to break my back. I only need a holster for these and my crossbow on my back. But I'll admit I missed the Bioblaster."
"That machine that knocked you down every time you used it?" Noct asked incredulously. And then he was laughing. At the memory or that it all had gone so wrong so fast, he didn't know, but then Prompto snorted and started laughing too and he couldn't stop.
"I seem to recall Prompto knocking himself unconscious the very first time," Iggy said innocently.
"H-Hey! That was a long time ago!"
Noct laughed until he cried, and then he kept laughing.
.
.
.
Shiva watched the King of Kings lead his friends down the ruined steps of his home, turning his head back to ask them of the lives they'd built during his time within the Crystal, and felt her wish take hold within the fabric of this star.
Her stolen power began to appear outwards, her body emitting a light so bright it bleached the color from all that was around her.
Gentiana, would you tell me a lullaby?
Time slowed to a standstill, all around Shiva black and white for a moment before all that was left was white nothingness.
Gentiana, would you tell me why fate must despise me so?
If she could speak to her other self, she would tell her that making a choice, even one that seemed to contradict their purpose, was the most human thing about them.
All of them thought they were doing the right thing.
Shiva reached out, even as color returned to the world and golden holes dotted her icy skin, her fingers barely brushing the cheek of a woman nestled in a chair before they crumbled, invisibly, to gold dust.
Aulea shivered at the sudden chill, pulling a thick quilt blanket more over herself and her protruding stomach, watching her eldest read on the floor and helping him with the most difficult words, ignorant to the quiet death of the Glacian behind her.
Shiva's wish alone would not be enough to change what was fated and had been. A Caelum had shifted fate the first time, and so it could only be another who shifted it again.
Shiva had ensured her child would be born healthy, and strong.
So it is fated, and so it will be.