The Explorer, convulsing with the power of the Phantasm, releases the Flare.
The mortals of the world looked up from beneath.
The glow of the flare signaled their doom, for the Phantasm could not be contained in a mortal vessel.
The people of the Kingdoms held the hands to the towers' glyphs.
And the Soullights shone. Brighter and brighter.
Their final hope. The great beacons that had lit the shadows now raged with white flame.
Thus, their true nature was revealed.
At the signal, the Sea of Souls rose into a swelling wave.
Following dark channels, it bubbled up and rose around the Lighthouse Dock.
The Ruins shook to their foundations, and the Shades looked skyward. They rose.
The Dock spun like a cyclone, and the Soullights formed a great ring of light.
The great tower turned dark for the first time in centuries, then shot a beam of light upwards.
Through limbo, into the true sky. And the world descended.
The Kingdoms of the surface were drawn to the pit, called below by the Soullights, to prepare the world for its renewal.
The compressed, inverted Kingdoms blanketed both limbo and the Ruin's sky, dropping the hapless inhabitants on the blurred Dock.
And the Shades of the past ascended through the cavity, made whole by the mortal souls. To take their rightful place above as the people of the new world.
The stone of the world crashed down in waves, displacing the other regions in the Ruins as it became one of them.
Few survived, as the Aeon Ruins did its dark deed. But true doom was soon to follow.
As the gates of memory closed, the Explorer descended, greivously wounded but alive. And before they fell to their wounds, they devoured the Souls of every survivor.
But with their death, the Phantasm's rage was diffused, and Souls flourished. The world's grim cycle continued, free of an ultimate other.
The Lighthouse Dock was left alone again. To await another end.
The memory of the Explorers' struggle was not lost... but it was buried, unknown to the renewed world.
But when it too fell prey to mortal folly, the gates of memory would open once more.
And the Shades of the long dead would arise, bearing the echo of their bravery in their very Souls.