Author's note: I highly recommend listening to the music from the "Mind of the Virtuoso" trailer while reading the closing act. I do believe that the high note of the violin at the end caught the moments here quite perfectly. Kudos to you as well if you managed to catch that last champion cameo

Hope you enjoyed, and reviews are most welcome ^^

-DG

Epilogue

By then it was close to dawn.

He breathed deeply and looked into his victim's eyes.

This was the moment.

Click.

And the artist saw magnificent poetry written in the air with Whisper's last shot.

But he did not see the blood.

He did not see the gore nor the brains.

Instead, cherry blossoms and dancing stars emerged as if in slow motion from the reeling, headless corpse.

Beautiful! Beautiful! Beautiful!

This was the end.

He had outdone himself.

His grandest work. His greatest opera.

Complete.

It is done.

This was what he was going to be remembered for.

This was what he was going to be immortalized for.

I am no longer an artist...

There was only one task left to do.

I...am...art!

He stepped past Zed's body and onto the smoldering earth, laid Whisper and her cane attachment with a lover's caress.

Rest well, my love...your purpose is complete...

Onward he strode, not feeling the wounds Shen had dealt on him, head up high in pride.

There was no inferno.

No blaze, no explosions. The Jyom Pass was not exploding in every direction in a fiery cataclysm.

Instead there was fanfare and applause.

A deafening standing ovation.

"I live for your applause!" he cried out.

It was not ashes and soot that poured forth from the ruins of the Grand Temple nor blocked out the rising sun...

Instead, lotus petals, roses and cherry blossoms rained down endlessly from the sky where a pillar of light—his spotlight—descended upon him.

I...have risen from the filth and muck...

The innumerable bloodied and broken corpses that his masterpiece had wrought, he did not see...

Instead there was a crowd of millions all around, including his fellow champions, applauding him.

For him.

Overcome with emotion, the Virtuoso fell to his knees and spread his hands wide upon reaching the centre of the courtyard.

I...am the lotus blossom...

Tears of purest joy streamed from his eye as he beheld his audience.

The blaze crept ever closer, but there was only the sound of his song.

The fires licked his flesh but there was no pain.

Only loving admirers wanting to touch the skin of their hero.

Finally an admirer came forth from the crowd, wearing a mask in black and white halves, reaching his face for a kiss...

I...am beauty...