The only memory Morro had left of his mother was that she was an angel, because he got his elemental powers from her. All elements came from either angels or demons, and Morro had feathery white wings, a gold halo over his head, and mastery over the element of wind. From his human father, he inherited mortality, which he blamed more for his death than the starvation or the sickness or the mentor who took the orphaned boy in.

Even a half-angel would have gone to Heaven, had the realm not lost in the war against Hell. There was no easy answer for the realm he belonged in. Morro felt his spirit long for the beyond that followed the afterlife, and in terror, he ran across eons and vastness until he could run no more.

He stumbled out of the darkness into a sea.

Morro spread his wings and kept himself aloft over the ocean. He gasped, his breaths no longer heavy and ragged like they had been when he was dying. The wind howled, but it carried him with all the care of a mother.

"Who are you?"

He spun around.

The woman tilted her head, the waves crashing around her. "There's no one else," she said. "Where did you come from?"

"I don't–" Morro shook his head. "Where am I?"

She shrugged. "The end of the world."

A roar split the skies. Morro saw the silhouette of a great serpent in the distance. He flinched.

"There's nothing left here," the woman said. "If you have somewhere else to go, you should leave."

"What if I don't?" he asked.

The water rose. The rain fell like another ocean. Morro flew higher, but the downpour only weighed him down. The wind slowed, unable to help him.

She stepped closer–Morro was almost at eye level with her, frantically flapping his wings to stay above the water. "This is only one of many ends," she said. "Find an end that suits you, Master of Wind."

"What?!" The waves lapped at his feet. "What's that supposed to mean? I'm already dead!"

The woman put both hands on his shoulders. "Oh, child," she said, holding him down, "there is always another end."

She pushed him under.

Morro choked on seawater and clawed for the surface, sinking deeper and deeper no matter how he struggled. The world ended in water, and he fell out of the ocean into another of the endings, where the world was consumed until there was only itself to consume, and then another, where Hell grew dissatisfied with only one realm conquered and overcame the mortal realm as well. The world ended countless ways with endless suffering, and Morro cried out at how pointless it was. Why were they here, if this was how it ended? Wouldn't it be better if it was all preserved? If we could all be one in death, held within one existence?

He was plucked out of the ends of the world and cradled in the Cursed Realm's million arms. You could be my champion, she said to him. More than that, he could be the hero of the mortal realm, of Heaven and Hell both, the one who ends the pointless suffering of existence.

Morro didn't remember his mother. She wasn't like the woman in the water. She wasn't like the Cursed Realm. She was an angel, and they were supposed to be champions of Good. What was Good, if not ending suffering?

He accepted the Preeminent's offer, and a new end of the world was written.