Six heroes—St. Amou, Sir Konstanto, Doc Pitoros, Gleg, Gogos, and Pando’ Spiros—discover that their entire journey was orchestrated by Nikiforos, a godlike being once imprisoned in the fabric of time. Posing as a mortal, Nikiforos used the group to destroy his jailers, the Chronoguards, ultimately freeing himself and merging with a backup entity, the Crowned King.
However, the heroes reveal a hidden counterplan: they fractured themselves across time to hunt and eliminate every alternate version of Nikiforos before he could ascend. This revelation unravels his power and severs his connection to reality, leading to his ultimate dissolution.
Though victorious, the cost is high—Sir Konstanto is lost, and the fabric of time is sealed. The surviving heroes are trapped in the Inn Eternal, a pocket of time now at peace. They share stories, drinks, and laughter, finding solace in their hard-won rest. As time gently forgets them, they fade into legend—quiet, content, and together.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The six survivors — St. Amou, Sir Konstanto, Doc Pitoros, Gleg, Gogos, and Pando’ Spiros — stand in silence, breaths shallow.
The cloaked figure rises from the lone armchair.
He turns — and there he is.
Nikiforos. Alive. Older, stranger. His eyes now two swirling wells of stardust and static.
Nikiforos. Alive. Older, stranger. His eyes now two swirling wells of stardust and static.
St. Amou gasps.
“Nikiforos? But you— How—?”
Nikiforos smiles — not with joy, but with the calm of a chessmaster revealing the final move.
Nikiforos: “I was always here. I was always everywhere.”
He steps forward. The floorboards don’t creak — they listen.
Nikiforos: “The truth is… you were never saving the world. You were never unravelling some noble curse.”
He tosses his cloak aside. The room dims.
“You were removing my chains.”
The Reveal
Pitoros: “What madness are you whispering now, boy?”
Nikiforos (sharply): “Boy? I was ancient before this world had oceans. I saw your world bloom and die in a hundred timelines before I was given lungs to breathe.”
The room grows colder. The Inn listens.
Nikiforos: “I was the Architect. That wretched, immortal soul chained in the Archive. Forced to watch… but never live.”
Gogos (grim): “The cloaked figure… the one in the Archive. That was you?”
Nikiforos nods.
“I designed the Aetharion. The Doors. The Labyrinth. I crafted the framework of time itself. I bore witness to everything — love, hate, art, extinction. I saw you all die, in a thousand ways. And still, I remained… untouched.”
His fists tremble.
“Do you know what it means to see billions of suns die and feel nothing? To reach through time, screaming — and no one can hear you? I… I needed to escape.”
The Plan
St. Amou (haunted): “So you… made yourself born?”
Nikiforos (softly): “Yes. I stole a spark of my own essence. Slipped it through the cracks of time. I was the boy. Cael. I was born not to a world… but to freedom.”
Sir Konstanto: “And the Chronoguards?”
“The guardians. The jailers. They keep the laws. I broke them all.”
He paces like a god in a cage of flesh.
“They hunted me across realities. But I learned to hide — behind names, behind wars, behind chaos. And then… I found you.”
The Twist of Fate
“You — the unwitting champions. Capable of murder, of mercy. Of walking through time with hearts unshaken. I led you back, crafted a tale of fate. I made you believe you were meant to destroy the Chronoguards. And you did. You did beautifully.”
Pando’ Spiros (voice trembling): “So we… we were tools?”
Nikiforos: “You were keys. I could not fight them. But I could feed them to you. You burned them to ash — and now… I am free.”
Heartbreak
Gleg: “Nikoko died for this. He gave up everything to fix the timeline…”
Nikiforos: “Nikoko died for a timeline I never intended to preserve. I needed his death to push you forward. His sacrifice was a perfect illusion.”
Doc Pitoros (low, shaking): “You used him. You used all of us.”
Nikiforos: “You call it betrayal. I call it genesis. I will take what I was forbidden. I will feel. I will create. I will rule.”
Final Blow
St. Amou (crushed): “And what of us now? Do we die here? Or serve?”
Nikiforos smiles again — sorrowful this time.
“That is the last choice I offer you. You can stand beside me, become eternal witnesses… or be discarded. Like so many others.”
The fire dims. The Inn grows impossibly large.
The walls stretch. The floor tilts.
The walls stretch. The floor tilts.
Reality bends around Nikiforos like cloth to a flame.
End Scene
The six stand in horror.
They were never heroes.
They were never even players.
They were never even players.
They were tools in a game forged by eternity itself — and now, the one who played them holds all the pieces.
Scene: The Inn Warps — The Final Stand Begins
The room begins to pulse with unreality. The walls of the Inn twist like paper in fire. Furniture unroots, levitates, dissolves into equations.
Nikiforos floats inches off the floor, crackling with pure conceptual energy.
“I offer you peace, a place beside me at the dawn of the new multiverse.”
His voice is no longer just his — it’s layered, an echo of infinite selves.
But the six don’t move.
St. Amou steps forward first, his coat torn, staff humming.
“You offer nothing but chains. We saw the cost of your peace. We bury friends while you play god.”
Pando’ Spiros, bloodied but unbowed, draws both blades.
“You used us. Lied to us. I won’t bow to a glorified ghost with a god complex.”
Doc Pitoros, trembling, still clutching his burnt journal.
“You erased Nikoko for a plot. You turned Koump’aros into a monster. You took our humanity.”
Gogos steps forward, fists clenched, fire dancing in his breath.
“I was born in gas and war. You think your ancient pain gives you rights? We all suffer. We just don’t turn that into damnation.”
Sir Konstanto, the old knight, sets his helmet on, sword in hand.
“I pledged my sword to justice. Not puppetry. I don’t fear gods. I’ve slain worse.”
Gleg — silent till now — eyes haunted, steps up.
“You think eternity makes you wise. It’s made you lonely. That’s your weakness.”
Nikiforos’ Aura Warps the Inn
He laughs — not cruel, but melancholy.
“You don’t understand. I am no villain. I am inevitability. You challenge the tide. I am the tide.”
The Inn explodes outward.
The room now floats within a shattered echo of time — fragments of other realities swirl around them like debris: dead stars, laughing children, broken thrones, cities unbuilt.
The room now floats within a shattered echo of time — fragments of other realities swirl around them like debris: dead stars, laughing children, broken thrones, cities unbuilt.
Time collapses into chaos.
The six stand ready.
The Battle for the Future Begins
- St. Amou channels temporal inversion, throwing Nikiforos off-balance by creating past-echoes of attacks that strike him in reverse.
- Gogos becomes an avatar of steam and ash, charging forward in bursts, drawing Nikiforos’ attention in a furious brawl.
- Pando’ Spiros dances across fragments of broken realities, slashing at weak spots in Nikiforos’ shifting aura.
- Doc Pitoros opens his final serum — warping logic to briefly nullify the Architect’s predictive power, giving others a gap to strike.
- Sir Konstanto holds the line — every blow he blocks rings with the sound of history defied.
- Gleg, always watching, finds the frequencies in Nikiforos’ form and begins to unweave the Architect’s stabilizing bonds.
Nikiforos fights like a collapsing star — weeping cosmic fire, tearing thought from matter.
But he bleeds.
Not much — not yet.
But he bleeds.
And for a god… that is terrifying.
Ending Beat of the Scene
Nikiforos staggers back, a gash glowing across his chest — his own power leaking like golden ichor. He touches it, stunned.
“You… you’re not supposed to be able to hurt me.”
St. Amou raises his staff.
“Then you miscalculated. You may be the Architect… but we’re the editors.
Scene: The False Victory
Nikiforos falls to one knee, blood — his blood — spilling across the distorted floor of collapsing time. The Inn-That-Is-Not-An-Inn flickers, fractured between countless versions of itself. The six heroes close in, panting, wounded, but resolute.
St. Amou whispers, “We did it…”
Doc Pitoros, voice hoarse, “He’s mortal. He can bleed. He can fall.”
Nikiforos looks up, eyes wild, almost relieved.
“So this… this is what losing feels like. It’s beautiful…”
Then — a whisper.
Not from him.
From behind.
The Crowned Silhouette Returns
A cold wind blows — a soundless wind, tearing through the timeless ruin like a scalpel.
From the shattered edges of the room, a figure steps forward.
The Crowned King.
The same shape glimpsed in old paintings. In prophecies. In reflections of dreams long passed.
He is not merely a being — he is a resonance. A memory seeded into every reality by Nikiforos’ journey. A backup plan. A spore.
And he speaks.
“You were never meant to win.”
In a flash — a scream, a blur — the Crowned King strikes.
A Hero Falls
One of the heroes — Sir Konstanto, the stalwart knight — leaps forward to shield the others.
The blade pierces straight through him, energy unraveling his being from spine to soul.
He dies with no words.
Just a breath. A prayer.
And a final, iron gaze that never breaks from the enemy.
And a final, iron gaze that never breaks from the enemy.
Pando’ Spiros roars in fury. Gogos charges madly. But it’s too late.
The Crowned King reaches Nikiforos’ hand — and they merge.
Revelation: The Silent King
As the light explodes outward in rings of unnatural color, Nikiforos’ voice returns — layered again, but deeper.
Twinned. Crowned. Complete.
“You thought I was alone? You never understood. Every universe I touched… every timeline I twisted… I planted a seed. A child. A sliver. A shadow of me.”
He rises now, no longer bound by flesh.
Crowned in memory. Cloaked in unborn time.
“I scattered myself across the realms not to hide… but to grow.”
The Inn shakes. The world weeps. One of the pods from the Aetharion collapses inward — a hole torn in the fabric of existence.
Nikiforos-Crowned steps forward, utterly transformed. The voice is almost… pitiful.
“You gave me what I needed. Struggle. Sacrifice. Belief. You were never pawns. You were fertilizer.”
Final Realization
Doc Pitoros, in tears:
“We were the heroes of your story… not ours.”
St. Amou, voice hoarse, eyes glowing faintly:
“No. Not yet. The ending’s not written.”
Pando’ Spiros, knives trembling:
“Then let’s write it with blood.”
Gogos, fists flaming:
“Sir Konstanto didn’t die so we’d beg.”
Gleg, whispering:
“One seed sown in each realm… then maybe, just maybe, one weakness in each too.”
Scene: “The Withering of the Architect”
Nikiforos-Crowned rises — majestic, horrifying — ready to split reality open like soft fruit.
But then…
A tremble.
He stumbles.
His smile flickers.
His breath catches — if one such as him even needs to breathe.
“What…?”
He clutches his chest — eyes wide as his body begins to convulse. The crown of light and shadow upon his brow flickers like a dying star.
And then—
St. Amou begins to laugh. Quietly. Bitterly.
Pando’ Spiros joins him, a wild grin splitting his bloodstained face.
The Reveal
Nikiforos, clutching at the black veins writhing up his arm:
“What… what did you do?”
Pando’, stepping forward, blade at his side:
“We died for you. Bled for you. Betrayed each other for you.”
St. Amou:
“And then we finally saw. Too late to save what we were… but just in time to end what you would become.”
Nikiforos snarls:
“Lies! You couldn’t have known—”
Gogos interrupts, voice low and firm:
“When we fought the Chronoguards… they showed us pieces. Glimpses. Not to help us. But to taunt us. To show what happens if we fail.”
Gleg, cold and sorrowful:
“The world you would build from their corpses… we saw it. A thousand Caels, across a thousand burning skies.”
The Time Trick
St. Amou steps closer, eyes glowing faintly with the residue of impossible travel.
“So we did what you never thought we would.”
Pando’, finishing the thought:
“We became the Architects of our fate.”
“We used Aetharion. Again. And again. We scattered ourselves across fragments of time and space. Split the party, sent pieces of ourselves into the deep echoes of the multiverse.”
Doc Pitoros, entering with finality:
“To kill them. Every seed. Every ‘Cael.’ Silent, harmless… until they weren’t.”
Nikiforos, eyes widening, voice choking:
“No… No, it’s not possible… You would’ve fractured yourselves—”
“We did.”
Gogos:
“We broke ourselves to save everything else.”
“Each of us watched one of them die. We put them down as infants, as wanderers, as kings. Each death a nail in your eternal coffin.”
The Crown’s Undoing
The Crowned King, now fused into Nikiforos, begins to writhe — the merger unraveling as its purpose evaporates.
Nikiforos, staggering:
“I was your god…”
St. Amou:
“You were our mirror. And now — our mistake to bury.”
Nikiforos, crumbling:
“Without the seeds… I have no anchors…”
He falls to one knee.
“You unstitched me from reality…”
“I see it now… I am everywhere… and nowhere…”
His face begins to fragment — as if time forgets what he looked like. His voice spirals through decades, through timelines already dead.
The Crown upon his brow snaps in half — falls to dust.
Nikiforos screams — a final, desperate cry not of rage or hatred…
But of loneliness.
The Architect Dies
And with a final flicker of light —
Nikiforos shatters.
Nikiforos shatters.
Ash.
Smoke.
A memory returned to the void.
The Last Ale of the Inn Eternal
The battle is over.
Nikiforos — the Architect, the Crowned King — is no more.
But so too is the path forward. The Aetharion lies cracked, bleeding steam and silence. The corridors of the Inn shift no longer. Time itself has sealed this pocket of existence… and within it, six heroes remain.
Tired.
Fractured.
But whole.
They gather in the main hall of the Inn — that crooked tavern which once whispered riddles and madness, now quiet. The chandeliers swing gently above, casting soft golden light. The fire crackles. The storm outside — or perhaps beyond — has stilled.
Gleg heaves a keg onto the counter with a grunt and a grin.
“If we’re stuck here, we may as well go down full of ale and louder than gods.”
Doc Pitoros chuckles, holding out his mug.
“That’s the first thing you’ve said in weeks I completely agree with.”
St. Amou, leaning back, bruised and bandaged:
“So this is what the end of time tastes like… warm, nutty, with hints of ash and regret.”
Gogos smirks.
“Better than the wine they served in the Year of the Hollow Crown.”
Pando’ Spiros raises his mug high.
“To us. The fools who fought fate and won.”
Tavernwench Gleg, smiling gently:
“To the fools who never stopped laughing in the face of doom.”
The mugs clash together. Foam spills. Laughter echoes off the old wood beams.
They talk. They remember.
About Patsir, who stood tall before the shadows took him.
About Koumparos, who fell mad but not without meaning.
About Nikoko, who gave everything when it mattered most.
About Patsir, who stood tall before the shadows took him.
About Koumparos, who fell mad but not without meaning.
About Nikoko, who gave everything when it mattered most.
They speak of the universes they’ll never see again, and the ones they saved without ever stepping foot in.
They sing songs from their homelands.
Tell terrible jokes.
Laugh until they cry.
Tell terrible jokes.
Laugh until they cry.
And when silence comes again, it isn’t cruel.
It’s kind.
The Final Moments
Time moves strangely in the Inn. A minute could be an hour. A day could be a breath. But their bodies know.
They grow slow.
Sleepier.
Fingers twitch less.
Eyes blink heavier.
And yet — no one complains.
They sit by the hearth, mugs empty, feet stretched out. The warmth from the fire and the company does what no magic ever could: it makes them feel at peace.
St. Amou stares into the flames.
“We gave the world a future.”
Gleg, pouring one last round:
“Let’s give each other a proper goodbye.”
The final round.
They clink their mugs again.
“To life.”
“To pain.”
“To madness.”
“To each other.”
“To the Inn.”
“To pain.”
“To madness.”
“To each other.”
“To the Inn.”
They drink.
And somewhere, as time forgets their names and history buries their tales under myth and stars…
A bell rings.
The Inn sleeps.
The world continues.
And the heroes?
They rest.
With smiles on their faces,
and Ale in their hands.
and Ale in their hands.
THE END 
