Ending a sentence in ことに?

Question

I was translating a sentence from a lore book for Saint Seiya. It's describing the parts of the Underworld and I guess the main story beat that occurs there. It definitely uses certain pieces of grammar I know to be "old sounding," poetic language, such as using the masu-stem of a verb as the connecting form where modern language would expect the te form.

That said, I can't for the life of me figure out why this sentence ends in ことに. Any insight?

一の谷(血の池)、二の谷(森林)、三の谷(熱砂)と３つの全く異なる谷からなる六番目の獄。第二獄でルネの裁きを受け、戦いに明け暮れていた星矢は、この第六獄一の谷血の池地獄に飛ばされることに。

I roughly translate this as:

The Sixth Prison is comprised of three separate parts: The First Valley (The Pond of Blood), The Second Valley (The Woods), and The Third Valley (The Fiery Desert). After receiving Lune's judgment in The Second Prison, Seiya, who had been doing nothing but battle, was condemned to the Sixth Prison First Valley's Pond of Blood.

For this translation, I basically have paid no the ことに at the end no mind. Is there any nuance it's adding that I'm missing? Is it maybe something like "ended up?"

Answer 1

ことになる is shortened as ことに here, or in other words, the verb なる is omitted. You can think of it as an ellipsis, too. This happens mostly in written language and when the space is limited, and I suppose in poems, too, with their own constraints in length and meter.

In this context, 飛ばされる is not much different from 飛ばされることになる, so you don't lose much in skipping ことに instead of adding になる. Strictly speaking, ことになる makes it clear that the event happens in future.

In general, verbs at the end can be omitted when they are easy to infer. (It gives an impression of being shortened for some purpose, though, kind of like headlinese.)

彼は新幹線で東京へ行く。
彼は新幹線で東京へ。 (The verb is omitted but can be plausibly predicted.)