Embrace The End

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I was listening to this while writing and now I'm sobbing all over my phone...
Do you think it fits with this chapter?

The void had consumed everything but the Life Gate and the sparse land around it. The battlefield was gone, the dead bodies were gone and now it swallowed up the mammoth crater the King had descended into. Mikel took a step backwards hurriedly, his eyes expanding in alarm when he noticed it.

He bumped into Astra, who looked at him with wide puzzled eyes, her uncertainty clear to see.

“Where’s Tyrese?”

She shook her head, her eyes fixated on the approaching void. Everywhere was white now, white and empty and they backed up, their backs planted against the Life Gate. “That thing, swallowed him. One second he was there, then it touched his leg and he was gone. What’s going on?”

She took his hand, squeezing it tightly and a note of despondent finality entered her voice. “We’re going to die here, aren’t we?”

The Life Gate drowned out his answer, sparking to life suddenly. The space in between its two hands had been replaced by a swirl of monochrome colours and when Mikel looked down at his body, he saw he was dissipating.

His body was pixelating, the pixels shuffling towards the Life Gate at a dizzying speed.

It was what he had wished for, what he had wanted but as the Life Gate transported him back to the real world, he found himself clinging to Astra, burying his face in her shoulder.

Tears pricked at his eyes unabashedly. “No, not now…”

Astra looked down at him, and the panic she felt made her voice a pitch higher than usual. “M-Mikel? What’s happening to you?”

He did not say anything but hugged her even tighter, not trusting his voice to hold if he spoke.

The dissipation had gone all the way to his chest now, much faster than he had expected, and he only had time to whisper a final farewell before he was gone, vanished from the game. “I’m sorry.”

Astra was all alone now, and for miles and miles around her, there was nothing but white. Nothing remained of the landscape she knew. The trees, the hills, the skies, they were gone. Tyrese and the corpses were gone. Mikel was gone.

She dissolved into sobs, reaching for the Life Gate, reaching for the monochrome swirl which was disappearing into nonexistence…

If I could reach it, I could follow him…

…but the void had gotten her now. It consumed her just as it had consumed all the others, invading her being and holding her in place. In vain, she reached for the Life Gate, her hand outstretched futilely in front of her. So close, yet so far away. As the last of the swirl which had taken Mikel away disappeared, so did the Life Gate.

Its purpose had been served and so the void consumed it as well, just as it consumed Astra. It took over her legs, her arms, her chest, her face. It consumed until there was nothing left to trespass, until the land was white and shapeless, until all was as it had been in the beginning.

It consumed until No Blessed was purged.

*

“This program had been disrupted with news from the ACND. Residents living in the Zamani region of the city are advised to evacuate their homes within the next thirty minutes. A growing whirlpool has appeared over the city, raining blocks of hail on the province. Residents are advised to evacuate their homes as soon as possible—”

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