The surroundings are destroyed—nothing left but shattered stone, cracked earth, and the lingering metallic smell of blood. In the middle of the ruin, Ellie and Olivia stand facing one another, their argument bitter and unrelenting, their voices sharp as breaking glass.
They argue over Aeren's death. Over his blood. Over what was lost and what can never be recovered. Their voices echo harshly through the broken hall, bouncing off collapsed walls and scattered debris. And then, behind them—A faint groan. Barely audible.
Jane begins to wake. Her fingers twitch first, then her eyelids flutter open with painful slowness. She lifts a trembling hand to her forehead, pressing it against the pounding ache that threatens to split her skull in two.
"Ugh… ahh…" Her voice rasps, raw and strained. A sharp headache pulses through her consciousness like a living thing. She feels it—the memory of suffocating fear, the crushing pressure that had forced her heart to nearly stop beating.
She remembers collapsing. She remembers darkness swallowing her whole. And now…The fear is gone. Completely gone.
She breathes shakily, realizing the oppressive weight filling the air earlier has vanished entirely. The presence that had dominated everything—that suffocating, inescapable pressure—has been erased. Aeren's death wiped it away like morning light burning through fog.
Her eyes adjust to the dim, broken hall. She pushes herself up slightly and looks around, wincing at the metallic taste of blood in her mouth. All around her, the others are still unconscious.
But alive.
They don't look injured—only exhausted, drained of everything they had. Jane exhales in relief, her shoulders relaxing for the first time since the fight began. Her muscles unwind from their defensive coil.
Then she looks up.
She scans the ruins, searching for any sign of battle, any remaining threat, any clue about who survived—and who didn't. Her gaze locks onto two figures standing not far away, framed against the destruction like predators over fallen prey.
Princess Olivia. Princess Ellie.
Both of them are awake. Both of them are arguing fiercely—about something she can't yet understand. Jane squints, still dizzy, still tasting blood on her tongue, her mind struggling to catch up with reality. The air around them smells overwhelmingly of blood and ash, a suffocating combination that makes her stomach twist.
The silence of the ruins makes every word they exchange echo louder, sharper, more accusatory. Slowly, painfully, Jane starts to push herself upright—still not knowing what happened, still not ready for what she's about to learn.
***
Jane pulls herself together and begins healing her own body methodically. Warm mana spreads through her limbs, easing the ache in her muscles with careful precision. With enough strength to sit up properly, she surveys the ruin around her with a healer's eye, cataloging injuries and deaths in her mind.
Her gaze lands first on Samarth's body in the distance—collapsed, lifeless, unmoving. The cosmic light that once burned in his eyes has extinguished completely. Then she searches for Aeren.
He is nowhere.
She looks down at herself again—alive. Breathing. Conscious. Which means only one thing.
"Aeren died, huh…" she whispers, her voice hollow and oddly neutral.
There is no joy in her voice. No sadness either. She never met him in a way that formed a genuine bond—only fear, a deep disturbing pressure that had made her feel like prey hunted by an apex predator. Now that he's gone, what she feels is…
Relief.
And the lingering awareness of sacrifice all around her. Bodies that fell for a cause she barely understands. Lives extinguished in service to an idea or a survival instinct she can't fully grasp.
She exhales slowly, centering herself.
"Alright… let's wake everyone up. Maybe those two know something—about Aeren, or anything he said at the end." Her voice steadies, falling into the practiced calm of someone accustomed to making decisions in chaos.
Jane forces herself to her feet, still unsteady, still trying to grasp how they even survived a battle like this. She never believed they had a chance. The odds were impossible. And yet here they are—alive. All of them she personally knows and cares about. No familiar faces lost to the darkness.
The others who died… she has no connection to them. Relief outweighs grief in her carefully balanced heart.
She walks to Jarek first. He lies still, his eyes closed, his body stable but far from waking. The divine wound in his abdomen still refuses all healing magic. She examines him briefly and shakes her head with resignation.
"He won't wake anytime soon…" The realization settles heavy in her chest.
There's nothing more she can do for him right now, so she turns toward the fallen figures of the two emperors—one her father, and one her friend's. She steps toward them, steadying herself with each breath, preparing to revive the ones who will demand answers she doesn't yet have.
Jane reaches her father, but something catches her eye—a body in the distance. Not a corpse. Emily. Her friend lies there, frozen mid-crawl, as if she had been dragging herself toward the battlefield before losing consciousness completely. Blood trails mark her path like a desperate prayer written in red.
Jane pauses, stares for a moment, then decides she will check on her later. Emily is breathing; that is enough for now. That is survival.
She kneels beside Emperor Baltazar Vorthis, her movements careful and deliberate. "Wake up, Father," she murmurs, placing a hand on his shoulder. She shakes him gently once—no reaction. His body remains limp, unconscious, trapped in whatever nightmare fear had constructed.
Again—still nothing. His breathing remains shallow, unchanged.
A third time, firmer, more insistent. His eyelids twitch. A groan escapes him, raw and pained. "Ugh… ahh…" Slowly, he opens his eyes and focuses on the face hovering above him.
And then—
"AHHHHH!"
Baltazar jerks back violently, panic exploding in his eyes like shattering glass. For a split second, his mind plays tricks on him—he sees Aeren. His son. His nightmare made manifest. Standing over him. Ready to end him.
He scrambles backward desperately, hands digging into the dirt, his body responding to pure survival instinct.
Before he can scream again, Jane grabs his wrist firmly, her grip steady and unmistakable. "Father. Calm down. It's me." Her voice cuts through his panic like a blade through silk.
His breath stutters. His eyes blink rapidly as he tries to focus, confusion swirling with fading terror, reality slowly reasserting itself over nightmare.
"I'm not Aeren," Jane says, steady and quiet, her words carrying absolute certainty. "He's gone. Maybe dead… or maybe he left us for later. But he is not here." She repeats it, letting the truth sink in. "He is not here."
Baltazar's breathing slows gradually. The wild fear drains from his expression bit by bit, replaced with exhaustion and trembling relief—the kind that comes from narrowly escaping death.
He finally recognizes her. "Jane…" he whispers, his voice cracking with emotion.
"Yes, Father." She keeps her voice soft, steadying him as much as herself. The nightmare has passed—but the consequences remain, lingering like smoke after a fire has burned itself out.
Emperor Baltazar finally gathers himself and looks around with the eyes of someone who has seen too much.
The place is a ruin—silent, blood-scented, unnaturally still. The kind of silence that follows absolute devastation.
He searches for Aeren's body desperately, as if finding it would somehow confirm what happened, would provide closure or explanation or meaning. But there is nothing. No corpse. No trace. Not even a fragment that could be identified.
Only destruction. Only emptiness.
His gaze shifts farther, where Samarth lies collapsed, unmoving. The man looks lifeless, but Baltazar can sense a faint presence—alive, but barely clinging to existence. And strangely, the divinity that onceflooded this area is gone, as if it had been erased from reality itself.
None of this confirms Aeren's death.
Baltazar turns slowly until his eyes fall on two figures in the distance. Ellie—his daughter. His youngest child, standing with an expression of absolute emptiness. And Olivia—the girl who might have become his daughter-in-law if fate had been kinder, if the world had been saner.
Olivia's face is streaked with tears. Ellie stands beside her, unreadable, emotionless—a statue carved from ice and cruelty.
He doesn't dwell on them yet. Instead, he turns back to Jane.
"So," Baltazar says, his voice stiff with the effort of remaining composed, "what happened? And where is Aeren's?"
He holds her gaze, hoping—praying—that she knows something. Anything. That she can provide the answers he desperately needs to make sense of this nightmare.
He hadn't listened properly the first time she spoke; fear had drowned out her voice completely. But now, with panic fading and reality reasserting itself, he is ready to hear.
Jane shakes her head slowly.
I don't know anything," she answers honestly, her voice free of pretense. "I was unconscious like you, Father. I only woke up a little earlier. I'm just as confused as you are."
She turns her eyes toward Ellie and Olivia, studying them carefully with the analytical gaze of someone trained to read people.
"But…" Jane lowers her voice, her words carrying the weight of intuition earned through years of observation, "I think they know. They were conscious earlier. And Ellie wasn't here before—I'm certain of it. Maybe they can tell us what happened—and what happened to Aeren."
Baltazar follows her gaze across the ruined battlefield. Suspicion flickers in his ancient eyes. Jane mirrors the feeling exactly.
Both of them stare across the destruction at Ellie and Olivia—two girls who might hold the truth about Aeren's disappearance. And possibly his death.
***
Emperor Baltazar stares at Ellie and Olivia for a brief moment before turning his attention back to Jane. He can see her studying them, confusion still lingering in her expression like a question she can't quite articulate. He thinks through the situation quietly, weighing possibilities, each one darker than the last, then finally asks:
"Are you certain they have answers? Or are you just guessing?" His calm question breaks Jane's concentration on the two distant figures.
Jane turns back to him, meeting his eyes directly. She sighs softly—she doesn't want to admit the truth. She believes those two know something crucial… but she cannot say it with certainty, and she knows her father will doubt her if she claims anything without proof. No one ever believes her instincts easily, no matter how accurate they've proven to be.
That is why she chose to wake the unconscious people first—So that, whatever the truth turns out to be, she won't face it alone. Whether the girls offer answers…Or whether danger comes from them instead.
After a moment of silent thought, she finally answers carefully:
"Well… I'm only guessing based on what I can sense. But I can feel it—they might have the answers we're looking for." Her calm voice reaches Baltazar, steady and measured, carrying the confidence of years spent reading people and situations.
He studies her for a heartbeat, then nods slowly—a gesture of respect and trust earned through countless years of fatherhood.
"Well. I thought so," he replies simply, rising to his feet with measured grace.
Emperor Baltazar rises slowly, steadying himself as he turns toward Emperor Barlet's unconscious form. Before stepping forward to wake him, he speaks to Jane—his voice calm, polite, and carrying no hint of royal authority, only the gentleness of a father who has learned much about loss.
"Go ahead," he tells her with quiet certainty. "Heal everyone who needs it. We'll speak with Ellie and Olivia later—when we're all together. When we're all ready."
There is no smile on his face, only a quiet steadiness that comes from having witnessed centuries of human suffering and resilience. He looks toward the ruined hall, the devastation surrounding them, the people slowly waking, and then adds with unexpected warmth:
"And when everyone regains consciousness, we'll speak together. We can share our sadness and our happiness at the same time…" His voice softens, becomes almost philosophical. "So the pain feels lighter, and the joy—whatever remains of it—can be doubled among us all."
Baltazar had lived for centuries. He knew better than anyone what shapes a human life. Connection—nothing more, nothing less. It is connection that makes people noble or cruel, compassionate or hollow. Lose that connection, and everything else rots away like corpses left in the sun—purpose crumbles, empathy dies, love becomes impossible, restraint dissolves into nothing.
Aeren had lost all of those long ago. And Baltazar could see it clearly now: Aeren had nothing left to hold onto, not even himself. He was a being untethered from everything that makes existence bearable.
With that quiet, sorrowful thought, Baltazar steps toward Emperor Barlet to wake him, leaving Jane to begin the work of healing what remains.