Seiya smiled. It was a terrible, beautiful, human smile.
Hades, seated upon his dark throne, opened his eyes. He saw the boy—arm broken, blood weeping from a gash across his brow—still standing. Not victorious. Not even confident. Simply standing .
The Sanctuary bells began to ring. Not in alarm. In defiance. Saint Seiya
It was too warm, too thick, too final as it ran down the cracked marble of the Sanctuary steps. Pegasus Seiya lay on his back, the shattered remains of his Gold Cloth glinting like dying stars around him. The sky above was a bruise of violet and black—the Solar Eclipse, unnatural and absolute, devouring Helios himself.
“Get up, Seiya.”
He saw Saori’s face. Not Athena, the cold goddess of war, but the girl who had once stood in the rain with a broken umbrella, waiting for a boy who was always late. He saw his orphanage brothers, Shun’s gentle hands, Hyōga’s frozen tears, Shiryū’s bleeding knuckles. He saw the little girl in the village of Rhodes who had offered him water when his own throat was ash.
The voice was a whisper of wind through cyllene trees. Marin. His teacher. Her ghost, or perhaps his own fraying sanity. He coughed, tasted copper. His legs had stopped listening three temples ago. Seiya smiled
Cosmo.