Unrecognizable

~Epilogue~

And that was that, wasn't it? Grian was gone. All of the other Hermits were gone as well. There was no one left in this world. This was it. The end. The one that was always meant to happen. The one that was determined the moment XisumaVoid decided to interfere with Mumbo's project. The one that was determined the moment XisumaVoid even stepped into HermitCraft in the very beginning. 

A happy ending for all. 

Or, in reality, an unhappy ending. No one ever really got their end of the bargain. HermitCraft was scattered, as planned. The Hermits were separated, with no time to even say goodbye. Sage was trapped in the decaying world, ruined by Xisuma's hunger for power. What seemed like a dream was really just a nightmare in disguise. 

Fifteen days had passed since Sage first emerged from the depths of Mumbo's base. 

Twelve days had passed since Grian first rebuilt his Sherlock Grian shop and recruited Scar to help him.

Nine days had passed since Grian and Scar investigated Mumbo's base.

Seven days since Scar met Bee and Grian and Scar found out about Sage and Citrus.

Six since Grumbot got His new body.

Three since Citrus left for the last time.

Three and a half months since Mumbo Jumbo disappeared.

And nothing would ever be the same.

There were new faces, there were old faces, there were new sides to the old faces. The old faces twisted into something new, the new faces resembled something old. Everyone is a protagonist, and everyone is an antagonist. There are a million sides to every story, not just two. And every one of them is twisted. 
------------
Sage stared at the spot where Grian just was, where he had given the look of sheer betrayal and horror that countless others had just given him as well. He was broken, too, in the sense that his mind had fully cleared. His blind rampage was now fully coming to light. But there wasn't much to be done now, other than the last thing he had to do to finish what he had helped begin. 

Whoosh. The lone person made his way through a Nether portal into the fiery depths of the underworld. How fitting, that he should end his journey here. The glowing bowtie was affixed to his neck as it had been. This was what XisumaVoid told him to destroy. There was no wind down in the Nether. Sage stood over a cliff, peering down into the lava. He untied his bowtie... and let it fall. Before it hit the pool of death, he returned to the Overworld. It was his home now. Now and forever. 

And he arrived just in time for the portal to fizzle out behind him. It had begun. 

Throughout the remnants of HermitCraft, things began to shut down. Portals lost their glow, rendering them as just useless fixtures of obsidian. The clouds stopped traveling across the sky, stopped raining, stopped snowing. A large, sentient snail stopped moving. Crystals, glowing with passion, lost their color and just returned to shards of glass.

A pink crystal in the shape of a heart dimmed and fizzled out. A heartbeat monitor flatlined. A now useless hunk of metal fell to the floor. 

The entire world ended, and Sage was the only one left. He was never powered by admin magic. His stolen communicator allowed him to die and return, but it was pure code that gave him the ability to come back, and life in the first place. Silently, he pressed the button to let him downstairs... but nothing happened. He'd just be breaking his way through. 

And he disappeared into the floor.

HermitCraft-- what was left of it, at least-- grew still. It grew motionless, lifeless. Everything was over.

And then...

A small gray faux-communicator, powered solely by code, sparked. It glitched like it had been doing for the past six days. A single spark was all it took to restart a computer. A screen flickered on, revealing a set of bright orange eyes and moustache. 

And just like that,

something new began.