Aurelion's command reached Youri not as words but as a direct intrusion into his skull, bypassing language and bypassing doubt, reduced to a single absolute directive that fused seamlessly with the Flow State. In that state, a pilot's whole inner world narrowed to one brutal axis: death. Killing. Eradication. The enemy ceased to be people or ships or worlds, and became a concept to be removed from existence. History recorded dozens of God Unit pilots who had not been able to contain that narrowing — pilots who, once stripped of empathy and restraint, had turned their weapons inward, toward the Empire itself, toward its command, toward anything at all that still moved.
But Youri was different. Not stronger, and not purer. Just… elsewhere.
His body stayed fully under control — his reflexes flawless, his breathing steady, his synchronization at its optimal level — and his senses worked perfectly. He perceived everything. And yet his mind was not there. It had been dragged deep beneath consciousness, down into that vast and endless watery abyss, a place without edges, sound or pain. The chaos far above existed there only as distortion, ripples on the surface of a distant ocean, so that explosions, commands and death itself barely registered as shifting light. He drifted there, weightless and still. All around him Altopereh moved, its immense form flowing through the dark like a shadow beneath black water, coiling, circling, existing alongside him.
And for the first time since their bond was forged, Altopereh hesitated. A deep groan rolled through the abyss — not sound, but pressure, a thought shaped into warning.
The cost of this will deteriorate your body, cell by cell, system by system. But that will be the least of your worries.
The words pressed against Youri without disturbing him, and Altopereh shifted again, its presence tightening.
Will you endure the aftermath of what you are about to do? Will you carry what remains — when there is nothing left to erase the memory?
And for the first time inside the Flow State, something in Youri answered. His eyes closed slowly in the cockpit, and the abyss changed.
He was running, barefoot on warm grass still damp with morning dew, and sunlight spilled across the rolling fields of Day Light, golden and endless. The air was alive and thick with the smell of soil, flowers and summer heat. The wind that brushed against his skin was gentle and familiar, and it carried laughter on it.
A table stretched across the open garden, long and heavy with food — wooden, worn, loved — with plates clinking softly and voices overlapping, life overflowing all around it. They were all there. Flavio stood at the head of the table, broad-shouldered and well again, smiling in that quiet, proud way of his. On his left stood Lira, radiant and laughing with the sunlight caught in her hair. On his right was Mira, the crimson-haired woman Youri had only ever heard described, calm and warm, putting food onto plates with effortless care. Liam and Emma sat beside Lira, older than he remembered them, bickering playfully with sharp words and smiles that gave them away. Across from them Leo and Casey leaned against the table sharing a drink and shaking their heads in amusement as the bickering turned into laughter.
Youri stood at the far end of the table with one hand resting on the wood, his fingers spread against it as though grounding himself, leaning forward a little with his head bowed, watching all of them, memorizing every gesture and every expression. On his left stood Six, greedy as ever, shoveling food into his mouth without the slightest shame, his cheeks full and laughing in the middle of a bite while crumbs fell freely onto the table — unapologetically alive. On his right was Leonora, talking animatedly with Gloria, who sat beside her, their conversation light and effortless. Her eyes sparkled the way they always did when she forgot about the world beyond the moment. And somehow — impossibly — Barnaby was there too, perched half on the edge of the table beside Six with a glass of wine in his hand as though he belonged among them, gazing up at the blue and cloud-streaked sky with a peaceful, unburdened face, as if the universe had never asked anything of him at all.
It was wrong. And it was perfect. A gathering that had never happened. A future that would never come. Yet in that impossible moment, Youri felt something he had rarely known in his life: contentment, a quiet and overwhelming comfort that needed no words, no justification. Just presence. The thought came to him, clear, gentle and final.
If the world must end — let it end here. Let it end with this. The laughter. The warmth. The memory of being loved.
The garden shimmered. The abyss took him back, and Altopereh recoiled.
The antimatter cannon unfolded. Layer after layer of containment structures rotated and locked into place. Reality itself bent around the core of the weapon as dark energy gathered there — not light and not void, but something that devoured both.
On the bridge of the Sovereign Spear, alarms flared. "Antimatter charge initiated," tactical announced, his voice strained. "Containment stable. Firing sequence counting."
Aurelion stared at the display as the firing percentage climbed. Ten percent. Twenty-two. Forty-one. He said nothing. He didn't move.
In the cockpit, Youri stood perfectly still with one hand on the trigger, and the dark visor of his helmet caught the light of the nearby star — a single thin ray glancing brilliantly off its black surface. For a fraction of a second time itself seemed to hesitate, as though the universe recognized what was about to be taken from it.
Altopereh spoke one last time. Then remember this, when the silence follows. You chose.
The percentage reached one hundred, and the trigger was pulled.
The cannon discharged a beam of dark gray that tore through space — not explosive and not radiant. It didn't burn its path. It erased it. It struck Volar. For one infinitesimal moment the planet resisted, its shields flaring, its crust fracturing, its atmosphere collapsing inward. Then physics surrendered. Matter met antimatter, and Volar ceased to be. There was no explosion. No debris. No echo. Where a world had existed a few seconds before there was nothing at all — no planet, no orbit, not even a memory etched into space. A perfect absence carved out of the universe.
Silence followed. On the Sovereign Spear, every system seemed to freeze, and nobody spoke. Aurelion closed his eyes.
Somewhere deep beneath the layers of command protocols and Flow State suppression, something inside Youri broke loose and sank even deeper into the abyss. The garden faded. The long table emptied. The laughter died. Only the water remained.
And in all the vast universe ruled by the Empire of Terria, the name of Volar would never be spoken again.