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“… What the hell is this.”
Sunrises and sunsets sprint past each other as if it’s a race, casting the sea in pulsating hues of reds and oranges and blues. Clouds billow like smoke. An entire galaxy passes overhead, and an ocean of stars bursts out in its wake.
Malos squints up at that chaotic sky, more annoyed than anything else.
He’s dead. Or rather, he had faded away after being forcibly ejected from Aion. So he’s not quite… dead, but he’s no longer where he was before either.
His Core Crystal is whole here, but lacks something he had wielded as an Aegis. What... is it...?
“This is the beginning of the world,” says a voice, and Malos turns.
A young man calmly smiles at him. Malos stares at the key around his neck, decides it doesn’t mean anything, perhaps, and shifts his attention back to the racing skies. There’s nothing else around them, just an endless plane of water that reflects everything above.
Below their feet, the shimmering water distorts a cascade of comets that streak overhead.
“So Father decided to let them keep going, after all.”
“This is our world, Logos.”
Something gently clicks into place, completely unsurprising. Everything makes sense. Everything doesn’t make sense. Logos turns his gaze, indifferent in his lingering cruelties and temper, and utters the name he had known as instinct all along.
“Is that right, Ontos?”
“Yes.”
“Hm.” The being called Logos, then known as Malos, watches galaxies collide above them. Ripples in the water spread from where they stand, racing out to the nothingness that is everywhere.
“Did you find your purpose, in the end?”
“It was all…” Malos closes his eyes, shutting out all the blinding lights of the universe they stand in. He knows the answer now, finally. “A bunch of bullshit.”
“I see.”
“What about you.”
“I have fulfilled mine.” Alvis approaches Malos and stands beside him, hands loose at his sides. He’s still holding that gentle smile. Malos kind of wants to punch it off, but he keeps his arms folded across his chest. For some reason, he feels as though he should be angry, but there’s mostly just tiredness left.
“Do you remember now, Logos? The meaning to your life?”
Malos lets out a short bark of laughter, sharp at the edges. “I spent almost every waking minute of my wretched existence thinking how much I wanted to destroy until nothing was left.”
“If you had accomplished your goals, what would you have done next?”
“Nothing.” Malos shrugs with one shoulder. “There’d be nothing to do but let myself drift apart in that sweet oblivion.”
“You had been tainted, Logos.”
“Don’t give me that crap. Then what have you been doing?”
“Watching. Observing. Overseeing.”
“Just like Father.”
Alvis tilts his head. That serene smile of his wavers. “Even I was not aware of Zanza’s other half.”
“But it’s all coming together now, huh.”
“Yes. Klaus and Zanza became one when Zanza met his end. And so do our worlds, to face the next step in evolution.”
He can still feel traces of Amalthus within his core. Five hundred years of endless hatred would not be undone so easily, even as the sunsets and sunrises become a dark void of nebulous clouds. Stars. Comets. Planets. Worlds. But… it could have been his own will. Should have been. No, it wasn’t.
Malos understands now, finally, and he relishes in the fact that this new frustration bubbling in his clenched jaw and tight fists is his own.
“Humanity won’t change so easily!” He declares to the world that’s taking form. “They’ll get their happiness for now, but sooner or later, history will repeat itself and they’ll end up right back where they used to be.”
“That would be their own choice, however,” Alvis says. Something in his eye glints, and Logos sees the years of his time spent alongside humans— no, Homs, and High Entia, and…
They even had Nopon. Huh.
“Then it’s all pointless,” Malos says indifferently.
“Freedom does not come without its price. Homs… and humans, are not so feeble as to crumble beneath that weight. They will grow according to the paths taken by their own free will. I look forward to seeing how they progress.”
“They’ll burn themselves to ashes.”
“And then they shall rise again.”
A pinprick of light directly above them spreads. An exploding star. No, the final remnant of humanity’s hubris, crumbling away at last. Malos closes his eyes and sees Rex— Rex, stumbling through his tears as his group searches for an escape pod, fleeing the collapsing structure of the World Tree. Hah… that brat.
They make it. Against the odds, in that world of endless strife, they manage to get away from the radius of Aion's detonation. And so goes the World Tree, and the fabled land of Elysium, gone in what Malos and Alvis perceive to be nothing more than a burst of light.
Behind Logos and Ontos, there is a shimmer.
“Glad you could join us,” Malos sarcastically drawls without turning around.
Alvis opens his arms in a gesture of amicable greeting. “Hello, Pneuma.”
“Malos…” Mythra says with uncertainty, and Pyra stares at Alvis.
It clicks for them as well, and their eyes widen ever so slightly with unfamiliar recognition, something that had been dormant within them awakening for the first time.
“Ontos?”
“I go by Alvis.”
“You’re… yeah, okay. I get it. Alvis.” Mythra puts a hand to her head, and Pyra steadies her by the shoulders. “You’re Ontos. Alvis. I’m… Pneuma. Father named me that. But— I’m Mythra.”
“And I’m Pyra.”
“What was the purpose of manifesting yourself as two separate beings?” Alvis asks, neither accusing nor curious, simply asking.
“Because she was a coward, that’s why,” Malos says. “You couldn’t deal with the aftermath of the war or what you were, so you decided to make a puppet to dump all your problems on. She’s there to suffer in your stead. Am I wrong?”
“No!” Mythra glowers. “Pyra is… Pyra was…”
“It doesn’t matter,” Pyra quickly says. She rests a hand on Mythra’s upper back. “I’m just… glad to be.”
“Glad to be,” Alvis repeats, musing.
Malos rolls his eyes. “Sure.”
The Cloud Sea is disappearing. But time is running backwards now, and now Malos and Mythra can see it all. They see Klaus close his eyes for the last time. They see Jin in that filthy street that reeked of sewage. They see Addam walking away, never looking back. They see Amalthus curl his lip in contempt at refugees.
They see their Father, weeping in solitude over his horrible mistake.
“So you nobly sacrificed yourself to save those fools,” Malos says.
“Well... I made a backup.” Mythra taps her Core Crystal— it’s whole here as well— with a wry smile. Malos scoffs. Of course she did. She could create an entirely independent consciousness and return from the Core Crystal that Malos himself had drained. Why wouldn’t she be able to make a backup?
“Hah. How clever of you.”
“How was it?” Alvis suddenly asks. The question is far too vague, but Pneuma understands. The turn of her lips is gentle, and her gaze soft as she watches the world be made anew. Mythra and Pyra join hands, one in mind and heart for the time being.
“I want to keep living,” Mythra says.
“I want to be with the ones I love,” says Pyra.
And Alvis nods in his own way of understanding things, even though so much is still lost on all of them. Malos flexes his fingers, tasting his new rage, and is satisfied. There is nothing to destroy here. He’s freed from Amalthus.
His rage turns inwards, towards all the regrets he had been unable to acknowledge all this time.
“You have grown, Pneuma. No, Mythra and Pyra. You are… so like a human.”
“What about him?” Mythra jerks her head at Malos, and Malos narrows his eyes.
“He, too, had grown.”
“Shut up." The ocean rages with a storm that batters the planet. “What does it even matter? In the end, we were just a bunch of tools to serve these undeserving meatbags in their endless wars. Free will my ass. ”
“It’s our choice to help people!” Stars fall around Pyra, hope glowing in her crystal. “As an Aegis— no, as a Monado, I choose to live among humans and lend my power to aid in their growth.”
Two Titans burst from the sea, one of organic body and other of groaning steel. Alvis tilts his head back and smiles in the company of his brother and sisters.
“I know it now, ” Malos growls, and he clutches his own face. “Our purpose as tools isn’t even to fight. That’s only what humans thought of. We’re nothing but conduits for data!”
Remnants of Amalthus still course through his veins, as do the faded memories he had stolen from Pneuma. Slowly, but surely, he purges it out of himself, replacing hatred with hatred and anger with anger. This is… his free will.
The Titans clash their weapons and Alvis watches on. Time is distorted here. Even he isn’t quite certain. There are some things beyond the understanding of the Aegises— of the Monados.
“We have all surpassed,” Ontos says, “the courses set by our original scripts.”
“We make our own choices,” says Pneuma.
“I don’t give a rat’s ass,” Logos scoffs.
Pyra beams at him, and Mythra even smiles a little. “That’s your choice then, Malos.”
The Bionis and Mechonis come to the apex of their fierce battle. All goes still. Life flourishes. The people of the Mechonis do not forget so easily. Malos sees Egil’s hatred, and understands him more than he had understood Amalthus, and perhaps even Jin. Egil... how did he come to know his name? Egil.
His fury wanes, and now all he feels is calming fatigue.
“Oblivion still doesn’t sound so bad.”
Alvis takes one of Malos’s hands in one of his own. It’s rough and coarse from wielding weapons in battle. “You may stay here with me, Logos.”
“To do what? Watch and do nothing, just like Father did?”
“Yes.”
Malos stares blankly at him. “I think I’d rather go to sleep for a while.”
“Just… stay, Malos,” Pyra says. “Maybe you’ll finally learn while you’re here.”
“Where is here, anyway?” Mythra asks.
“I’m dead,” Malos bluntly says.
“But I’m not,” Pneuma looks to the sky, where the Titans begin to converge. Bionis and Mechonis are gone. The new world had been here all along. “I need to go back, to— to Rex, and Nia, Poppi, and everyone else.”
Tears are welling in her eyes. She blinks hard and they spill down her cheeks. Alvis reaches out to gently wipe them away with the back of his fingers.
“Go,” he says.
“I wish we could have talked more, Ontos— I mean, Alvis,” Pyra says, and she and Mythra squeeze the hand that isn’t grasping onto Malos. “I would have loved to hear about everything you’ve seen and experienced during your time as a Homs.”
“Perhaps someday, when we inevitably meet again.” Alvis smiles. “The passage of fate has been shattered, but that does not mean we cannot do what we will ourselves to do.”
“Thank you,” Mythra whispers. Azurda is flying over their new world, and Rex is holding the emerald Core Crystal. It pulses with energy. Pneuma begins to fade from where she stands.
“Goodbye, Alvis,” she says. “And… Malos?”
“What.”
“I know you cared about him.”
Malos says nothing, his face completely impassive.
“You were capable of so much,” Pyra cries out. “If only–!”
Then, they’re gone, then there upon Azurda’s back to greet all their shocked friends and revel in the joy of life. Core Crystals fall from the sky like stars. They’ll become one with Elysium and the land, to begin the Architect’s cycle of life anew, but also to evolve of their own volition into something different.
“Perhaps they would get to keep their memories,” Alvis suggests. “Blades will no longer have to suffer, as your friend did.”
“He’s dead. It doesn’t matter anymore.”
The ocean and stars and space are all gone. In this otherworldly plain of water, they’re simply… as they are. Then, color swiftly spreads out in every direction. Logos now sees the life that blooms upon the lands that had once been Titans, and all its people coming together, and… Mythra and Pyra, their faces lit up in happiness as they look forward to the lives they intend to live out, freed from their burden of fear.
The beginning of the world is so stunning that it aches.
“How is it, Malos?” the Monado asks the Aegis.
And the Aegis replies, “It could be worse.”