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He let that wretched thing corrupt the heavens. The sky blackened, tainted with distortion’s color, as Giratina gleefully wormed and twisted its way back out from Arceus's tyrant halls. Successful no doubt, by how ghastly empty the wormhole's light he left was - like an everlasting candlewick had just been snuffed. How Volo wished he could have seen it for himself! Alas, the pact was written in Ancient blood, their roles set. Volo, the concoction of plans, the collection of plates, the removal of obstacles; Giratina, the kill.
Yes... All of it went as they willed. The Hall of Origin fallen; its Keeper slain. Slabs of His great staircase crashed around Volo. He barely reacted. The destruction of history didn't matter all that much to him, it seemed, seeing the Temple of Sinnoh total. His mind was elsewhere, elsewhen.
"Akari..."
His thoughts lingered on her. Why? He won. Volo did nothing but watch as she, with scarf clutched tearfully in hand, scrambled up those misbegotten steps. Arceus, naturally, granted her quick asylum above.
Gods always did like to play favourites.
But that was it: Akari was surely gone. Forever. He imagined she left this world when Arceus did. Perhaps she simply faded away with His holy domain - somewhere into the infinite ether.
Yet Volo knew endings were never so beautiful. Sinnoh's Strongest Soldier would have died in His defense, perished. Akari would have flung mud balls and rocks at Giratina to keep it and its darkness at bay if she had to - she was just that kind of fighter.
Volo chuckled to himself. Mud balls and rock, huh... Such a simple girl. Adorable even in adversial moments. A dawn of sunshine in his sunless life.
Without a body it was as if she had never existed at all.
As a usurper, he should really be thinking bigger. God was gone--not just gone, dead. Debased, dethroned. Giratina swam back into darkness, its comfort, uninterested in whatever came next – the hunt was all it was. "Young Volo," it whispered, bubbling in the familiar shadows 'neath his feet, "Hisui is thus yours."
"Do with it as thy will."
And so Volo was left to languish lightless and alone.
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Volo spent humanity's last hours gazing from the peak, down at the worthless world below Coronet. His purview caught jolly Jubilife, now a ghost-town. His keen eyes wasted away on such a sight. The empty square, empty fields, empty homes--what was the point of it, all of it?
He'd lived a long life under Almighty Arceus and it brought him nothing. And when he did find something - someone - it was that bastard's envoy. What a sick joke. If truly He Above thought one girl reversed a thousandfold years worth of misery and solitude...
...
...
...
He'd be right. A significant chunk of Volo's lifetime happiness fit into those precious months trailing with Akari.
But Akari, she... Well, she came eons too late. His dealings with the devil - the one slumbering within the Distortion World and the one smoldering inside his soul - were long bought, sold, and signed for. A merchant always paid his due eventually. Volo only wished it didn't all have to happen so soon - he should have misdirected her, delayed her, let the game last that much longer, but he couldn't risk that hag Cogita undoing centuries of work. Nor could he suppress Akari's will to march onwards and protect Hisui - the fire inside her was unlike his, subdued but greater in value, a warm hearth versus the blazing inferno.
He realized if he could meet Arceus, and ask Him one thing, it wouldn't be about what qualities he as Volo lacked: it would be what of Akari's made him whole.
And if his endgame conflicted with hers, and the crack in his heart doomed to never mend, it'd be best if he never loved her at all. It would've spared him the agony, at least. Until he stepped foot on Coronet he believed somehow that he could endure this, that they could endure this. The story of Volo and Akari was surely a neverending tale.
He hadn't even made it halfway up before he slowly began convincing himself it wasn't meant to be.
And right then, in the clean, crisp Temple air, he completely and utterly saw himself for the fool he was. “Hope” – the evillest of Arceus’s wines. Foolishly he let himself sip from it; foolishly he let it cloud his mind; foolishly he let himself succumb to its sweet poison. In actuality there were two paths, hers and his, ever apart and never to dovetail.
Without Akari by his side, all that remained of Volo was nothingness. Absolute nothing. Apocalypse. The lands became derelict – an astute reflection of his soul. This was the dark, empty path he chose, and Hisui below felt the consequences.
Yet nothing felt quite so empty as this broken plateau.
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Not a soul left in Hisui but he. Volo found his new divinity held little value in a world devoid people, devoid life, devoid Akari. He'd managed to live countless lifetimes before without Akari's smile - so why couldn't he imagine one now?
Then it hit him.
He didn't need to imagine living without her. This was no longer Arceus's cruel universe - it was his. An artistic slate.
So he did as Gods do. He created life.
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His passion for life was singular. He set his hands about recreating Akari, only Akari. If Arceu--no, not Arceus; if his own actions tore the love from his chest, he'd seize his own beating heart and hammer it back anew.
It was a long, tiresome project. Such craft took time, even for a God. He put his all into it. Volo had been called many things in life, pled guilty to almost every sin under the sun, but not lazy. Never lazy. He put effort entirety into this little Akari homunculus. A golem of what was, to the best of his recollection.
A crude mishmash of Mirelands mud gifted Akari with solid-ish form. It was amateurish and eyeballed, but he remembered exactly how high she stood tiptoed against his chest; how much she weighed when he lifted her up and flirted in return. And in keeping this clay-Kari upright, he made good use of his immediate surroundings. Splints of temple stone made for suitable bones; the very graveyard whereabove she perished, ironically, kept her steady upon sculpted feet. With each piece installed, she in Volo's vision returned to life. He felt like an artisan at work, rounding out the soft contours of her seraphic face with sweet Floaran honey; dabbing away at her skin with freshfallen snow.
Lastly, perhaps Volo's strangest set of wares, the Odd Keystones – these ones housing no souls - finalized his grand design. Her 'limbs' bolted into the curious ridges and granted her articulation, not unlike a child's Ginkgo doll. And what a doll she was! All his lifelong schemes paled pit against this replicate masterpiece.
He alone knew the secret of the Keystone, although he suspected she--Akari--might have had an inkling. Volo thought he saw her once or twice glance at the invisible phantoms haunting the lands. These things were cursed. But no doubt she would have taken them unto herself regardless.
She always did have a way with the lost and wretched.
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Finally complete. Volo stared down at something undivine - his worn, shaky hands - as if within those caked palms, cut and sliced into the muddy slush that rebuilt Akari, was their tragedy together written.
So much history wrapped up in misery.
But when he raised his weary head, and looked at the facsimile he made, all he could do was reminisce and smile.
For every villain, a hero.
For every sinner, a saint.
For Volo, Akari.