Sylvester fought against his clones. They were everywhere. They weren’t as strong as the being they also imitated, but they were overwhelming in their own way. He felt like he was drowning. There was no room to attack or defend himself properly.

For every solid blow he landed on his enemies, he received dozens in return. Maybe they were superficial cuts, but they were wounds all the same, and eventually, they would defeat him, bringing him to his knees in this anonymous space: a white void, far from home, far from the woman he loved.

He wanted to save the world, but not at the cost of his life. He had endured enough sacrifices. No matter what, he had to survive this. That was the flame burning in his chest, the desire driving him forward.

He had to survive because someone was waiting for him, because he had a future. It didn’t matter that they weren’t even the same species. He had never felt at home anywhere, not even before gaining his powers, before being separated from the rest of humanity, forever, almost entirely.

He needed to see her. He needed to touch her, love her, feel her lips on his. Love was the force that moved the world. These inhuman beasts, who knew nothing of love, couldn’t stop him.

Sylvester roared, and his attacks became even more ferocious. He didn’t just use his sword, his arms, and his legs; he sank his teeth into them. He pushed and tore at their flesh, feeling their blood fill his mouth, his teeth grazing bone.

He was a wild animal—he had always been—but he was more than that. He threw off a few of them and flew toward the ground, or what should have been the ground. The clones attacked more frantically, desperate.

They scratched him back, bit him. Their swords impaled him from all directions, but he barely noticed. Pain was as illusory as this space. He had to stop being bound by human concepts if he truly wanted to win.

He broke through the ground. The nothingness shattered into a thousand pieces around him, and something was born afterward.

——

Heather saw dozens of lunar remnants falling toward them, entering this space, then more and more dozens. An apparently endless progression. How many could there be? Hundreds? Thousands? And would they be against them?

She was the lunar princess, but if they appeared in this space, they weren’t necessarily under her control. She needn’t have worried.

The lunar remnants charged toward that being, roaring, howling, snapping their jaws and claws, extending tentacles, vomiting blood, bile, and fluids for which there were no names. They exuded pain, death, and misery.

These were the strangest and most monstrous lunar remnants she had ever seen, and she could swear that Sylvester, had he been present, would have agreed. What other kinds of monsters could be born at the end of the world?

It was one thing to know the world was in danger and another to see it vanish before your very eyes. Then Sylvester returned from wherever he had ended up, emerging as if from a portal, followed by hundreds of his clones.

Heather quickly concluded that these clones were weaker; otherwise, they wouldn’t stand a chance. Sylvester dispatched them in the blink of an eye. The severed pieces and spilled blood vanished without a trace.

Heather had suspected Sylvester was changing, but now she was certain. He was transforming into something closer to her than any human being. That should have worried her, made her fear for him, or feel pity.

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But selfishly, Heather was glad that the one person she cared about was becoming more like her. The distance between their hearts shrank with each passing day. Why not the distance between their bodies too?

The being who had orchestrated all this madness turned toward Sylvester, fixed its eyes on him, and shot forward. But it didn’t get far, because the lunar remnants were already upon it.

Heather flew to aid her subjects. On black wings, humanity’s savior took off toward his final battle.

The four forces would collide in the middle. The army of lunar remnants couldn’t defeat that being outright. But they could help. They could be a nuisance.

For an entire lifetime, Sylvester had sacrificed himself for humanity over and over, giving everything to save them, even when he saw little worth saving. It was time for humanity to repay him.

The moment had come.

The clash occurred, and as a result, space itself trembled. Sylvester was evolving with every passing second, and he wasn’t sure where or when it would stop. But those thoughts could wait until the battle was over.

The lunar remnants swarmed him, and Heather and Sylvester were no less savage than those beasts. It was clear they had lost all traces of human reason. They weren’t like the ones in the city she had turned into her little kingdom, with human souls and only their forms changed.

They had lost control and were more monstrous than ever.

The question was whether it would be worth it, whether it would work.

They attacked him from all directions, and he couldn’t escape. Too many limbs were grabbing, pulling, stabbing into him, providing thousands of opportunities that they seized in an instant, wasting no time.

The space itself seemed to tremble like glass about to shatter, vibrating, writhing. Even the air was changing.

Heather caught a glimpse of the unstoppable monstrosity they had seen over the city, whose name no one remembered. She saw one of those massive limbs slicing through the air.

She saw, superimposed on the void, the image of one of those limbs tearing a sun from its orbit, causing it to go supernova, making a planet, similar yet completely different, vanish without a trace.

That disaster had happened in an adjacent universe, perhaps a nearby one, but it couldn’t reach them, because the creature existed in multiple universes simultaneously. It was a higher existence that defied understanding.

Even she got a headache just looking at it, just trying to comprehend it. But she believed that, in time, she would adjust. In time, sooner rather than later, she would get to the bottom of this.

Sylvester felt as if his head were splitting in half. He had caught disconnected images of something. They slipped from his memory almost as quickly as they had come. It was another sign of his transformation.

He was beginning to process things neither human brains nor circuits were designed for.

What awaited him at the end of this journey? What would be the final form of his transformation?

He didn’t know. He had no idea.

And he didn’t give a damn.

He was back in the fight, and they were winning. That was what mattered.