The Explorer, convulsing with the power of the Phantasm, brought a knife to their neck... and killed themselves.
The mortals of the world looked up from beneath. And saw their savior falling to their death.
In despair, 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.
The Shades ascended. And as they passed the body of the Explorer, tendrils of purified Souls escaped his body. Made them human as they passed.
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 life continued, clinging desperately to the stone like moss.
It was thanks to a lone Explorer's sacrifice. Their rejection of the Phantasm's great power.
But the people never knew the extent of their bravery. It went unnoticed amid the chaos, and they were eventually forgotten.
A new world thrived above, but for the first time, the Aeon Ruins was not an empty shell, eagerly awaiting a premonition of doom.
The survivors of the nine Kingdoms were now its eternal stewards, dancing in the Soullights' rays.
They forgot the boundaries of nation, and achieved unity, remembering the past and shaping the future.
For the first time, the shadow had been denied its final triumph.
For the first time since time began, the mortal soul had bested death.