C.J. Thorpe stands alone.

“Denial. That’s where you started this, wasn’t it, Jasper? You sat on your throne, smug as hell, trying to make me believe that I couldn’t win. That I couldn’t save her. You paraded me in front of Doom and Nox like a lamb to the slaughter, thinking you’d beat the fight out of me. But here I am, Jasper. Bloodied, bruised, and still breathing. Because denial? That’s not my weakness. It’s my fuel. Every time the world tells me something’s impossible, I break their chains and make it happen.”

He paces slowly.

“You wanted me angry, didn’t you? Stage two. You thought my rage would make me reckless, that I’d swing wildly until I burned myself out. But you don’t understand my anger, Jasper. It’s not blind. It’s not chaotic. It’s a scalpel, not a hammer. Controlled. Precise. It’s why I waited until Ring of Dreams to turn on you.”

Thorpe stops.

“You dragged me to stage three. Bargaining. You made me beg, made me kneel. You took my pride, my dignity, and made me offer it all up just for a sliver of hope. But we both knew the truth. Bargaining doesn’t work with a man like you. There’s no deal to be made. No promise you’ll keep. So I stopped begging. I stopped kneeling. Just like I did with Narcy. It’s why I’m the World Champion, and you’re the perennial runner up.”

His voice grows colder, darker.

“Depression. You wanted to bury me in it. To smother me under the weight of my failures until I couldn’t even hear the people screaming my name. And for a moment, you succeeded. You made me feel like I was drowning, like I couldn’t rise. But depression isn’t the end, Jasper. It’s just the darkness before the dawn. And when I stood up, when I heard them chanting my name, I realized something. You don’t own me. You don’t control me.”

In the light, the tears CJ cried are like scars.

“Acceptance, Jasper, is where this story ends. For you. Acceptance that you gambled everything to destroy me and lost. Acceptance that every move you made, every piece you played, led you straight to me. And when we stand face to face, when there’s nothing left between us but the truth, you’ll have to accept the hardest truth of all: You’re not the Artist, Jasper. You’re not the Killer King. You’re just a fool who thought he could paint my grief as his masterpiece. But at Red Snow, the canvas is mine.

Thorpe steps forward, his voice filled with raw emotion and intensity.

“And you know what they’ll call it, Jasper? The last act of a desperate man. A portrait of failure. Because when you look at it, when you feel every ounce of agony I’ve been forced to endure, you won’t just accept the truth—you’ll drown in it. The truth that I didn’t just survive you. I broke you.”

His eyes close for a moment, the last breath before the plunge.

“You wanted my grief to be your masterpiece. But now it’s your epitaph.”