He had never seen real sky.
Not once in seventeen years.
Now it was everywhere.
The ascent took seven minutes.
Seven minutes of golden wings wrapped around him, shielding him from poison winds that could peel the skin off steel.
Seven minutes of Leah's heartbeat in his ear—steady, warm, impossibly human.
The scarf snapped at her twice—
SHHK!
KRRR—!
—but Si-Hyun forced it down both times, gripping it so tightly his knuckles blanched.
Then they broke through the last veil of cloud—
FWOOOOOSH—!!
—and light struck him like a physical blow.
The First Sky-Ring.
A continent of white stone and living sunlight.
Floating in a sky that was actually blue.
Real blue.
Si-Hyun stared up, mouth open, tears lifting off his cheeks and evaporating into the warm air before they could fall.
Leah let him stand there—
silent, trembling, overwhelmed—
until she finally whispered:
"Breathe."
He did.
The air tasted like nothing he'd ever known.
No poison.
No rust.
No rot.
No blood.
Just… air.
He took one step on the cloudstone pier and nearly stumbled; gravity here was light, forgiving, as if the ring itself were trying not to hurt him.
The scarf coiled miserably around his neck, its edges still scorched gold from Leah's touch.
They were alone on a marble pier that jutted into endless sky.
Far below—so far it blurred into dream—the six lower rings circled the poisoned planet like pale scars.
Leah laid Ryeo-Won on a cushion of crystallized prayer.
The small girl slept peacefully now, cheeks warm and pink.
Si-Hyun couldn't tear his eyes away.
"She'll live," Leah said gently.
"All of them will. I left a fragment of my Stigma in the station.
Nothing less than a Stellar Lord can harm them now."
He nodded—slow, numb.
Then he sank to his knees.
Not in submission.
In exhaustion.
The remnants of his eight wings sagged behind him—broken, dripping, torn like ragged banners after a lost war.
Leah knelt too, lowering herself until their faces were level.
She touched the deepest wound on him—the scar that cut straight through his heart.
FWOOM—
Golden light sank into him.
Pain flared white, then softened.
The black star in his chest throbbed once—furious—
then again, quieter.
Si-Hyun's voice cracked apart.
"…Why."
One word.
Everything inside it.
Leah understood.
She took both his hands—scarred, trembling, still stained with the world he came from—and pressed them to her own heart.
"Because seventeen years ago…
a woman I was ordered to kill looked at me and called me good girl before she ran to save you.
I've spent every day since trying to become the person she believed I was."
Her blind eyes shimmered with tears.
"I was born with the Stigma of the Last Sun.
My purpose is to keep light alive until the real sun returns.
But light without someone to carry it… is just fire."
She squeezed his hands.
"You are the only one who can hold the darkness without becoming it.
I need you, Si-Hyun.
Not as a weapon.
As proof."
He stared at her.
The scarf hissed—low, confused, wounded.
Si-Hyun closed his eyes.
When he opened them, the amber one dimmed, and the black one deepened.
"I don't know how to be proof."
Leah smiled—small, fierce, and heartbreakingly soft.
"Then let me teach you."
She stood and extended her hand.
This time, the scarf did not scream.
Did not attack.
Did not pull him away.
It only watched—warily, reluctantly—as Si-Hyun took her hand and rose.
Together, they walked the pier toward the heart of the First Sky-Ring—
a cathedral forged from dawn itself.
Behind them, the poison clouds far below curled into the shape of a single black wing…
…and dissolved.
Above them, the artificial sun flared once—brighter, warmer—
as though greeting something it had waited centuries to witness.
And in the hollow shell of that sun,
the sleeping Devourer stirred.
It dreamed of a boy walking beneath real sky, tears drying on his face…
eight broken wings learning how to become something else.
Something new.
Something dangerous.
Something alive.