A celestial body descending from outer space was causing anomalies in the continent’s nature and mana. Because of it, gravity had gone awry, and the world’s restraining force had loosened, if only for a moment.
The closer the celestial body drew, the more severe this phenomenon would become.
“……Gilteon.”
—In that end of days, Epherene had manifested herself. For a brief while, she had fixed herself to a specific timeline.
Because now was the only moment she could escape the restraints of causality.
“Can you hear me?”
Epherene looked at Gilteon, seized by a somewhat complicated feeling. The exhausted, crumbling Gilteon looked as though he had already lost himself.
“…….”
On the other hand, Gilteon’s gaze as he glared at Epherene was fierce. Those eyes, frightening and brutal as a beast’s, were no different from when he had driven the Luna family away in the past, but Epherene was no longer afraid of him.
Rather, she pitied him.
“……Your magic hasn’t been dismantled. I only postponed that time for a little while.”
She did not know if it would be any comfort, but Epherene said it for now.
The grand magic Gilteon had realized at the cost of his own life. What meaning there could possibly be in a magic that offered oneself as a living sacrifice, Epherene could only find sorrowful.
“…….”
Gilteon said nothing. Had his vocal cords been shredded because he had just shouted, “What can a mere lowborn—”?
Epherene quietly looked around.
The paintings hung here. The passages leading to the “Outside of the World,” which Gilteon had tried to burn to the ground.
Epherene was still researching how to evacuate countless people of the continent through them.
“But…… there’s something I’m curious about.”
Murmuring softly, Epherene turned her eyes back to Gilteon.
“Why did you hate me, and my family, so much?”
Yukline and Iliade could be called enemies, or even archenemies, but Luna was not.
If one had to define it, their relationship was that of a beast and prey, with one side only ever being devoured.
“……Hated, you say.”
Gilteon let out a sneer. A voice like ash flowed from his charred vocal cords.
“Child of Luna. I did not hate you.”
Gilteon stared blankly up at the ceiling. Epherene asked back in a small voice.
“Then?”
“……I feared you.”
His answer was far too honest.
“Because your talent seemed as though it might surpass my daughter’s.”
Epherene said nothing, only swallowed the saliva pooled in her mouth.
“That…… frightened me.”
Gilteon turned his head askew. With pupils melted like candle wax, he gazed at Epherene.
“Epherene. Even now, you are being used by Deculein.”
Yet the moment he spoke of Deculein, anger returned to his voice and face. His lingering obsession flickered like embers.
“Do not trust Deculein. He will ruin you. Just as he ruined my daughter…….”
Ruin.
Had the dictionary definition of “ruin” changed without my knowing?
Epherene pondered for a moment, then murmured like a faint breath.
“What’s the problem? Sylvia became what you wanted, didn’t she?”
“……What I wanted?”
Gilteon’s voice, tinged with fury, came back immediately.
Epherene crouched down beside Gilteon and answered.
“Yes. You said you wanted Sylvia to become the sun.”
The sun.
What Gilteon desired was a great mage reigning over the heavens of all mages.
A heaven beyond heaven, one that even the lofty Floating Island could only look up to.
“She has already become the sun.”
And yet, Epherene stretched out a finger and pointed to the paintings in this gallery. To the countless people preserved within them.
“Just as life cannot live without sunlight.”
There were many people living by leaning on her.
Her talent was now this world’s hope.
Her power could become the warmest nature, and gently soak the continent.
“Sylvia will save this continent.”
Epherene said.
But Gilteon laughed aloud. It was a sneer.
“Foolish. Ambition is not such a thing…….”
—Click.
At that very moment, the sharp sound of footsteps descended.
The appearance of “someone.”
Epherene quietly nodded, and Gilteon knew who that “someone” was without even looking.
Click, click.
He could tell just from that regular rhythm of heels.
“……Father.”
A voice calling him Father. As blunt as ever, yet the clearest tone, the most pleasant to hear in all the world.
Gilteon slowly closed his eyes.
“It’s been a long time.”
At those words, it’s been a long time, Gilteon’s expression sank again.
A daughter who had lost her ambition.
A figure unbecoming of Iliade.
“I hate it.”
Sylvia, who had let go of the family—Gilteon found her disappointing.
If it were you, you could fulfill my dearest wish, the long-cherished desire of our house.
You certainly would.
He had believed it without a doubt.
“……You are being deceived by Deculein.”
Gilteon spoke as if vomiting blood. Blood flowed from the gums he had clenched hard.
“Father.”
Sylvia neither denied nor affirmed it. She did not want to force herself to follow Gilteon’s will, her father’s heart.
“I made peace with myself.”
She merely conveyed that.
That she had made peace with herself.
“Deculein, who killed Mother, and Father, who ordered it…….”
Sylvia’s words paused for a moment.
Gilteon’s closed eyes slowly opened.
“In the end, all I needed was to make peace with myself. There was no need to blame anyone.”
Sylvia approached Gilteon and sat by his head. She placed a hand on his chest.
“……So.”
Her voice was still dry, but the heart contained within it lapped like the sea. It shimmered like starlight.
Like tears pooled in a doll’s eyes.
“Father, you should make peace like that too.”
“…….”
Words asking for reconciliation.
At his daughter’s request, Gilteon burst into laughter before he realized it.
“Hahaha.”
At the end of his life, his child’s sincere request.
Sylvia’s wish that he let go of that ambition now.
“No.”
But Gilteon shook his head.
Because before he was Sylvia’s father, Gilteon was the head of Iliade.
Because the years he had lived as Gilteon were longer than the years he had lived as Sylvia’s father.
“……I don’t think I can do that.”
Gilteon stared straight into Sylvia’s eyes. Those golden eyes, the eyes of the child he had once mistaken as more Iliade-like than anyone else, he glared at with resentment.
“I am still disappointed in you…… endlessly disappointed, child.”
A trembling voice, and Gilteon’s heart, where flames still flickered.
Yet seeing her father like that made Sylvia proud instead.
“Yes. I understand.”
Saying so, she wrapped both hands around Gilteon’s.
“Because that’s who you are, Father.”
“…….”
……A moment of silence.
Gilteon and Sylvia looked at each other without a word.
—Crackle, crackle.
From somewhere came the sound of a campfire burning, and Gilteon slowly realized.
Now, somehow, he understood.
Why Epherene had said Sylvia had already become the sun.
“……Yes.”
Though it was far different from the figure Gilteon had wished for, though she was too alien to be a descendant of Iliade, too lacking, and endlessly pathetic.
“You take after Ciel, not me.”
Gilteon acknowledged it so.
That she had inherited more deeply not his likeness, not the blood of Iliade, but Ciel’s warmth.
“……Yes.”
Sylvia accepted it as well. She did not let go of Gilteon’s hand, which she held tightly.
“And…… Sylvia.”
Gilteon closed his eyes.
His body, all but fallen apart, and his heart, exhausted beyond measure, had now reached their limit.
But before then, before he ended his life……
“I truly loved Ciel.”
Though Gilteon had killed Ciel in order to set his ambition ablaze, that did not mean he had not loved her.
It was simply that, more than the feeling called love, ambition had taken precedence.
“So, Sylvia…….”
Gilteon smiled.
Continuing slowly, enunciating each word as if savoring it.
“I am disappointed in you, who have no ambition, but…….”
Suddenly, Gilteon’s pupils darkened. His blond hair crumbled like ash with a soft rustle.
Yet he did not let go of Sylvia’s hand, which he held tight.
“Even to this moment, I…… you…….”
……love you.
He left those words as his last.
—Crackle, crackle…….
Somewhere, within someone’s heart, a campfire burned.
Gilteon’s end was just that cozy.
* * *
Julie swung her sword. With every grain of its motion, a frigid wind rose and flowed like shards of ice. Winter’s mana settled coldly.
The priests of the Altar, Sirio and Jaylon, could not possibly break through that current of absolute zero. They could not approach even an inch.
Julie had manifested a “domain.”
Thus, she guarded the path leading to Deculein. Even while facing hundreds, she did not yield in the slightest.
However, a rash offensive was forbidden.
The enemies were trying to provoke Julie and draw her out. They deliberately showed openings to lure her into attacking.
But Julie’s purpose was not attack.
Only “protection.”
She would guard this door.
Until the comet fell, and until her body gave out.
Until her soul faded and her mana vanished…….
In each and every moment, Julie felt happiness.
If she could buy even one more second like this.
That alone was enough to make Julie’s happiness beyond words.
Clang——!
Each time she swung her sword, her body broke apart, and each time she released mana, her own body shattered, but she did not care.
She had her conviction; she had her heart for Deculein. To die like this was, rather, her own wish.
Claaaang———!
The resonance of sword meeting sword. Julie deflected Jaylon’s blade and froze Sirio’s.
Her battle was still continuing…….
…….
“We can’t get through, can we?”
Sirio said. Jaylon, too, scratched the back of his neck with a somewhat awkward expression.
“Seems not. She’s an iron wall.”
Julie gripped her sword with both hands.
That knight was truly like an incarnation; no matter how much they struck, no matter how much they provoked, they could not break through. Neither swordsmanship nor magic worked.
Whatever they tried, she froze it at once.
“We have word that the Emperor has entered the lighthouse.”
In the midst of that, the priest delivered yet another piece of bad news.
Sirio gave a low smile.
“Oh, dear. If we can’t break through the front, we’ll be killed by the Emperor coming from behind, won’t we?”
“Mm…… so it seems. Is this death the path of faith?”
Jaylon shrugged and muttered.
Even with death before them, the two looked detached—no, calm.
“Hmmm…… But, you know, Jaylon.”
Sirio set his sword on his shoulder and looked back at Jaylon.
“Why did you convert to the Altar?”
It was a rather pure question.
They had known from the very beginning that the Altar’s ending—that is, Quay’s desire—was this “destruction of the continent.”
“……Why ask something like that? Is there a reason for religion?”
Jaylon answered so. Sirio frowned and toyed with his chin, but soon snickered and nodded.
“Well, that’s true.”
There was no reason for faith.
Just like Julie’s faith, which now protected Deculein, there was no particular reason for their faith in serving Quay.
Because believing in faith meant, in the end, believing in oneself.
Because it was a contest of the size of that belief.
“……Then.”
Sirio once again poured mana into his sword. Jaylon and the other priests did the same.
“If we’re going to die even if we go back, there’s nothing else for it, is there?”
Sirio the Swift Sword. On his clear face, like the wind, a refreshing smile spread.
“We have no choice but to break through the front.”
* * *
Claaaaang——!
The sound of sword meeting sword rang out. Ice fragments scattered, and mana and demonic energy mingled in upheaval.
Within it, Lia climbed the stairs Sylvia had drawn for her.
Hiding herself in secret, one step at a time.
She climbed carefully and reached the top floor of the lighthouse.
—Gulp.
At the end of those stairs was a small, modest door.
If she opened this door, beyond it—
Creeeeak——!
The door opened first while she was still hesitating.
Lia and the children trembled, and first, a voice flowed in.
“……You’ve come.”
It was Deculein’s voice.
He was sitting in some chair.
Still like a noble, with wine poured into an antique glass.
“Yoo Ara.”
He called her Yoo Ara. In that instant, it felt as though a needle had pierced her heart, but Lia maintained her composure.
She walked steadily toward him.
“……Hoo.”
And took a deep breath.
In truth, there had been something she had suspected about Deculein all this time.
Even now, the blue flower placed on his desk.
Forget-me-not.
It was amplifying Lia’s suspicion.
“What are you trying to do?”
Deculein furrowed his brow slightly, and Lia prepared her “method.”
That “method” was simple.
If he was human, if he was at least a person, and if her hypothesis was correct.
The moment Deculein heard this name, he would hesitate, even if only a little.
He surely would.
“……It’s.”
Lia slowly opened her mouth.
“You know.”
Of course, the probability that it was not true was higher.
But since he had called her Yoo Ara first.
I, too, want to answer like this at least once.
Truly, just once like this.
“……Woojin.”
Woojin.
The name of that person, whom she had once called dozens of times a day in the distant past.
“Kim Woojin.”
The name of the one she loved most, Lia called out, pretending she had gone mad.
She watched for the reaction Deculein would show from now on.