Time returned exponentially slowly. A single second stretched out into seemingly minutes as every action played frame-by-painful-frame. The Watcher watched as Light's sword clashed with the Neverite covered blades of Nadier's daggers. The world glowed brighter with each passing moment as the physical objects of dust and utensils that had accumulated around the time bubble rubbed against each other in an instantaneous moment, creating friction that would have a heat that matched a star. The sound of the explosion happening around them grew in his ears.

His hand stretched out towards the dark elf. He needed to get to Nadier, move both of them out of the explosion radius as quickly as possible. The circuits in his body attempted to charge, but sputtered and burnt as energy left him. His hand reached Nadier's shoulder, just as another hand touched his own. The explosive sound cuts away. The bright glow was replaced with a copper ceiling.

As if pulled back by a vacuum, time returned. The explosion rocked across the dining hall, flinging the already stumbling Watcher back through the air from the sheer force of a shock wave. Burning heat grazed his skin and debris warmed his face with bloody cuts.

He landed on his back, followed by two resound thuds beside him from Nadier and Adelaide as the last of the blast wave washed over the trio. A breeze of warmth blanketed their bodies followed by an instant back draft of cool.

Silence took the room as dust clouds settled like sand in a crystal lake.

For a long while, they laid on their backs, struggling with aching joints and bruised backs, attempting to shake the ringing out of their ears. Adelaide was the first back on her feet. Though she stumbled slightly from the quick use of her teleportation, she nevertheless managed to notch an arrow into the string of her bow and had the weapon drawn to the front. With a helping hand from Nadier, The Watcher got to his own feet. The dark elf stabled his stance before standing forward with his weapons.

The time traveller signalled his companions to halt their attacks with a hand before the dust even settled. They had landed near the door, almost across the room from where the blast had occurred. Bright light streamed in from opposite them as the wall had been blown opened to the outside world, gleaming through speckled fog.

As the room cleared, the damage revealed itself. The wall opposite had all but crumbled with an evenly shaped hole canvassing the scenic view of steady snowfall outside. Two thirds of a crater originated from where Light and The Watcher had once settled as their battleground, with chairs, tables, utensils, and bits of metal from the portal machine strewn in a haphazard debris field. The portal continued to spin, even without any machinations powering it.

After reaffirming the halt signal to Adelle and Nadier, The Watcher approached ground zero with a tired but confident gait. He staggered down the slope. While the thick ceiling and floor between levels were cracking beneath his feet, they remained otherwise intact.

In the middle of the crater, lying with his clothes tattered, charred and torn, along with patches of seared skin that overlaid cuts and scars, Light twisted his head at the approaching Watcher, his golden hair dusted and blood soaked lumped with each turn.

“Do you remember Captain Lily?” Light choked out. He slumped his head back onto the rough ground as The Watcher sat down beside him. “She was amazing, wasn't she?”

“Yeah,” The Watcher replied. “Smart and brave.”

“In the twenty-first and second centuries, before things went to shit, I read about great people like Churchill and da Vinci, and I thought that in another time, another place, she could have been a Hullway or Yousafzai.”

The Watcher sighed and leaned back into his arms. “We could have been a lot of things if you had not did what you did.”

Light gave a blood gargled laugh. “You chased me across time and space. Even now, in another universe, you won't get off my heel?”

“I can't help it. I told you, didn't I? I'm with you until the end.”

The Lord's breathing slowed. “Do you think we could have been friends?”

Small, dandelion-like glows of light started emerging from Light's body. The glow-puffs floated off onto the breeze and were carried out the opening in the wall with a ride from the wind.

The Watcher turned, panicking on his knees. He exclaimed, “What are you doing?”

“Scattering my molecules into light itself. Dispersed into the universe.” The small glow-puffs drifted further and further from the body, fading and dispersing into dusted sparkles as they went out into the open. “I'd really rather you not win this time.”

“You selfish bastard!” The Watcher screamed. He held out his arm to wrap a time bubble around his former comrade, but his magic circuit simply sparked and faded. He took out his pocket watch only to see that the crystal too had lost its charge and glow. “We're the last ones! Don't you die on me!”

Light cackled, blood overspilling out of his mouth, spitting and spluttering around him. “Look at you, all the power in the world and can't even save a single life.” He gave a smile that bordered sadistic and kindness. “You haven't answered me yet... in another time, another place, could we have been friends?”

Tears streaked down The Watcher's face as his fist clenched in anger, frustrated that even to the end, the man known as Luviet fought for his ideals. Light's form began to fade as the glow-puffs doubled in numbers.

The Watcher reminded, “We're family.”

Luviet's smile widened and a glimpse of his former self flashed across an aged face right before his body disappeared in a poetic field of firefly ashes.

The dust had mostly settled, and aside from the ominous portal that continued to spin before him, the sky was clear with freckled snow. The city of Everwind sprawled out before him, a couple of buildings on the outskirts seemingly destroyed and a section of the wall to the east having collapsed as if from siege. Aside from those few slightly out of place demolitions, the city was quietly whispering about its day.

Footsteps neared from behind and The Watcher got to his feet to face the two elves that approached.

Nadier asked, “Is it over?”

“Yeah,” The Watcher replied, taking a quick look back at the ground where Light once laid. “It's over.”

Adelaide asked, “What about the portal?”

He did a quick calculation on the velocity of the portal's rotation and concluded, “It's losing power. It's more stable than the first one I dealt with, but without a power source, it'll simply vanish after a time.”

“How sure are you?” the dark elf asked.

“Eighty-seven percent?”

“Well, that's more than what you usually go by.” Nadier turned and began walking back to the exit.

Adelaide asked, “Where are you going?”

“We are going to find Miguel and Luce. They'll be wondering what happened over the past year. The Watcher can stay and watch the portal, make sure it closes. It's literally his name, after all.”

She turned to The Watcher with a look of concern, a relatively new expression for her to wear that he found heart-warming, though unsettling for her personality. Regardless, he gave her a reassuring nod and she reluctantly nodded back in agreement before following Nadier out of the room.

Pocket watch in hand, he noted the returning of power to the trinket and deduced that the proximity to the portal must be speeding up the crystal's charge, though he did not hide the wish of hoping it had just been a few minutes faster. Just then, he noted how familiar the newly destroyed room looked. As he pieced his thoughts together, he heard a thud from the direction of the portal.

Turning around, The Watcher witnessed as the man in dark grey coat and ruffled black mud hair straightened up after landing on the ground in front of the portal, flicking whiffs of dust off the shoulders of his coat.

The newly arrived man attempted to take a step. “Oosh!” He raised his hands to regain balance on the uneven ground. “That was trippy.” The newcomer did a quick scan of the room before his eyes rested on The Watcher.

The Watcher greeted, “Sup', Pausa?”

Pausa replied with a satisfied grin, “Well, hello to me too.”

“I look good.”

“You too.”

The two laughed, before Pausa asked, “So, what happened here?” He looked around the emptied and destroyed room. “What did we do?”

“What makes you think we did anything?” The Watcher replied, slightly offended.

“It's because it's us,” and The Watcher begrudgingly agreed.

“Oh!” The memory returned to The Watcher like a brick. “You use the name, 'The Watcher', here.”

Pausa cocked his head aside. “Huh? Weird. But okay. So, where do I go now? Are there any Mexican food here? I could really go for a taco right about now.”

The older man smiled sadly. He held up his fingers, poised to snap them. “Why don't we find out?” With a flick and pluck, Pausa Alvet vanished from where he stood. Muttering under his breath, The Watcher noted, “We end the same way we begin.”

The portal seemed to almost sputter before losing its coherency. In a gentle burst of seither energy, it dissipated in a wave of purple, leaving just the limpid winter sky behind, a blimp puttering across the horizon.