Gemini’s vision was still recovering when he pushed himself off the ground. Miraculously, him and Nelson had been unhurt by the sudden explosion that had scattered the gathered debris everywhere. Lecturer Shirou, however, had suffered from multiple huge dents on his armour, but it had at least protected him from the more dangerous injuries.

His metal helmet cracked into half and fell onto the ground, revealing a windswept head of white hair. Gemini and Nelson had been struck by an overwhelming expansion of what amounted to compressed air, but by the former hero’s account, a couple of tables and chairs were probably the culprit for the damage on the lecturer’s armour.

A hilt rolled by the winded Gemini, and he corrected himself mentally, adding a sword to the list of items the armour had fended off. It was a wonder that the lecturer was still largely unharmed.

The eight Paragons who had been attacking the camp were all bleeding profusely when Gemini looked upwards. Some of them were burned badly, and two of them were missing an arm and a leg respectively. But there was one thing in common — their faces were all a gruesome mix of pain, fear and blood.

“What are you?!” One of the eight Paragons, who was holding a spear, stepped out and yelled. “Stop playing at ghosts and reveal yourself!”

A chuckle brimming with satisfaction replied back. “As you wish, little ones.”

The wisp of silvery energy that had been covering his face vanished, evaporating like mist in the sun to reveal a face all too familiar to Gemini.

Nox. The Last Star.

On the surface, he would appear to be an unremarkable human teenager. But Gemini knew better. He had a skill of sorts that allowed his appearance to lapse out of other people’s memory and consciousness — something like a mental suggestion to avoid being scrutinised physically. In fact, Gemini was quite sure that most of the Constellations also didn’t know what he looked like in the first place, himself included.

All he could tell was that the Last Star had a head of black hair and even blacker pupils, but for the finer details regarding his face…Gemini himself didn’t know.

“You’re still playing at ghosts, eh?” The spear-wielding Paragon spoke. “Don’t think I can’t tell that you’re hiding your true appearance!”

“Does it really matter?” asked Nox. “After all, you’re about to die.”

He laughed. “I think it was called No Russian, yes? But I can’t have you lot running off to tell your superiors about my personal rendition of that level.”

No Russian? Gemini felt a headache come on. He had buried most of his memories of Earth deep down. Some of them would surface very occasionally, but Gemini was now able to recognise that his reluctance at reliving memories of Earth was born from a subconscious desire to avoid tainting his old memories by associating them with the constant war and death he’d experienced and perpetuated under the Human God’s command.

While the former hero was struggling to remember what ‘No Russian’ meant, the eight Paragons above them had taken umbrage at the Last Star’s words. Their weapons glinted ominously as the eight of them bore down on their mysterious enemy.

The Last Star smiled, or at least, Gemini could feel that the teenager was smiling. Power gathered around his right hand. “Skill: Shard of Heaven.”

His words rang across the encampment. Eight black rifts, each of them larger than any man, opened in the space between the incoming Paragons and Nox, each of them sending alarms through Gemini’s mind as they entered his vision. Prismatic light blasted out from each of the black rifts, distorting the air where they passed through and catching the Last Star’s assailants off guard. Each of them was trained on different targets, but Gemini had the feeling that a single clean hit was more than enough to kill them.

After all, the Skills that the Constellations were bestowed with enabled them to fight with utmost lethality. Most of them were replicas of the generic applications of qi that every Paragon could do, but even these basic Skills were optimised for efficiency. Other than that, however, each and every one of the thirteen Summoned by the Human God had one or two unique Skills of their own too.

Nox’s Shard of Heaven had to be one of them.

Wind howled as the Paragons made hard turns in mid-air, but two of them were just a bit too slow.

Wall after wall of energy appeared in front of the two Paragons who were too slow to escape, their expressions grim as their defences activated just in time to intercept Nox’s lazy counterattack. A thunderous roar followed as the blinding streams of light crashed into the hasty defences that the two had created, sending out a blast of wind that threatened to knock Gemini into the ground.

Their defences scattered into wisps of energy as the huge streams of rainbow light overpowered the defences of the two Paragons with utmost ease, swallowing up the two men standing behind them. No evidence that the two had even existed remained after the two streams of prismatic light vanished into the distance.

The Last Star just had killed two people who stood at the world’s summit, and he hadn’t even moved from his position. A small grin — he had to be grinning now, Gemini was sure of it — adorned his face as the others fled in separate directions. His lips moved again, speaking words that Gemini couldn’t make out, and six flowers of prismatic light bloomed far in the distance.

“Damnit,” muttered Lecturer Shirou. “We were so close. Damnit. Damnit.”

The nebulous pressure that had been weighing down on everyone except Gemini intensified as the Last Star turned his full attention to them. Nelson, who was probably the weakest here, was bleeding profusely from the ears, eyes and nose.

“I apologise, beastfolk of Ark City.” The Last Star’s words rang loud and clear throughout the ruined camp. “But I cannot allow any of you to leave here alive. You must die, if I am to live.”

Black rifts opened all around Nox. There were hundreds of them, each of them glinting with a promise of certain death. “But as recompense, I’ll leave you guys with a partial corpse. Die in peace.”

An azure light shone from the land that Heritage Basestation was built on as the echoes of the Last Star’s words dissipated, and the world rumbled. At the same time, tens of Harvesters toppled out from the azure rift that was housed in the Wooden Pavilion — the passageway that led to Heritage — which then flashed out of existence.

Gemini could feel the Last Star’s surprise as the azure light continued to gather, and captured the moment when his killing intent deepened. Paragons and Lords — even those who had been in seclusion — created as many defences as they could muster in a short time, creating defences that would have stopped most attacks in their tracks in a second or so. But the former Constellation knew that they wouldn’t be enough. He looked at the fallen Nelson and the immobilised lecturer near him, and took a deep breath.

The events of the past few weeks flashed across his mind. The former hero had enjoyed his time here…he found a meaning beyond that of a machine of slaughter in this place of hope. He’d lived with the objects of the beastfolk genocide, worked with them, laughed with them. But he never had the chance to even atone for his sins, not in the slightest.

But he would today, if only slightly. His life alone would never be enough to make up for all the lives he’d taken, but Gemini was ready to live with that.

“Lecturer Shirou. Tell Nelson that I said goodbye.” The hero smiled gently, his eyes ablaze with pride. “Skill: Supernova.”

A blazing, all-consuming heat began to emanate from Gemini’s chest, and the snow all around them melted just as the prismatic light began to descend. The lecturer’s eyes widened as power coursed through the guard, but Gemini paid no attention to him.

Gemini smiled grimly. The Skill, Supernova, was a reward from the Human God all so many years ago after completing a particularly hard quest, one that enabled him to burn his entire lifeforce to elevate his next Skill to that of a Demigod.

It was probably a sick joke on the Human God’s part, but sometimes, the hero had wondered whether it was given to him because his unique Skill was that of a clone. That said, Gemini never got to test out whether getting his clone to use Supernova worked or not. Furthermore, although his Skills had been retained even after the divine connection between him and Anren had been broken, he had never wanted to use them again. He’d long associated them with killing, ever since he arrived in the Intersection.

But for the first time ever since his summoning, Gemini was profoundly grateful that he had them. He took to the skies with a speed that he’d never thought possible, and with all his might, created the strongest defence he could muster. A brilliant light, red and orange, blazed out of his body with furious intensity, tinting the descending light the colours of the setting sun.

His right palm faced the sky, and an enormous circle, emblazoned with lines and inscriptions, spread out from it, sending a ripple through space itself. His nerves shrieked from the pain of doing so, and coupled with the debilitation that was the cost of Supernova, Gemini was painfully aware of his efforts.

Feels like I’m holding up the sky, eh? A calm corner of Gemini’s mind joked, as the rainbow lights began to descend.

A bone numbing chill encapsulated his body as streams of prismatic light bombarded the giant circle. His body shuddered as the lights struggled and broke apart against the barrier. It wasn’t a comfortable feeling by any account, but the only emotion in Gemini’s heart now was a sense of relief.

Below him, the azure light reached its zenith, and the entire camp vanished as the last of the prismatic light shattered against Gemini’s defence. The circle shattered, and Gemini plummeted from the skies to land on the snow-covered ground with a small thud.

A small snowman that had somehow survived the past few hours sat quietly beside his fallen, numb body. The look on its face was comforting, and the hero smiled as his body began to crumble away. The awful chill he’d felt earlier, one that was in stark contrast to the heat that had occupied his body earlier, started climbing up from his limbs.

It was a painless death. Gemini smiled at the snowman, before belatedly realising that his vision was no longer updating. Darkness lapped at his consciousness, and for the first time, the embrace of death was no longer cold.

So…this is dying, eh? It doesn’t feel that ba—