The phantom sleep always came without warning. Without a physical body, there were no cues like yawning or heavy eyelids to signal that his mind was shutting down.
It was simply a sudden, inescapable drift—a heavy, suffocating gray fog that would roll into his thoughts, completely swallowing his consciousness.
Whenever it happened, time lost all meaning. He would close his eyes for what felt like a brief second, entirely unaware of whether hours, days, or weeks were washing past the small mountain cabin while he drifted in the dark.
When Yuuya finally snapped out of the fog this time, the first thing he noticed was the emptiness. The cabin felt emptier, the ambient warmth of the room distinctly lacking the presence of someone.
Yuuya floated down from the wooden rafters, his spiritual form drifting over to the main living area.
Bell was sitting quietly on a small stool by the fireplace, drawing lines in the ashes with a stick. The little boy didn't have his usual bright, energetic smile; he kept glancing toward the heavy front door with a look of quiet, confused longing.
Near the window, Alfia stood like a silver statue, her gray and emerald eyes fixed entirely on the outside. Her jaw was set in a tight, rigid line, and the air around her felt incredibly sharp, suffocatingly tense.
Yuuya looked more into the house where he found that Zald's room is empty, especially his armor stand..
'Hey... where's the big guy?' Yuuya thought, a sudden prickle of unease rippling through his mind.
He didn't wait around. Yuuya flew straight through the log wall of the cabin. He checked the village, he checked the bustling market square where they usually bought meat skewers. Nothing.
Yuuya flew back up to the cabin and waited. One day passed. Then two. The heavy crunch of massive boots never echoed on the porch. The door never swung open to reveal Zald with a sack of fresh bread over his shoulder.
Zald was completely, entirely gone.
'System.' Yuuya called out internally, his thoughts tense as he hovered in the center of the quiet room. 'Talk to me. Where did Zald go? Did he go down to the lower valleys for a hunt? Why does everyone look like someone died?'
[Host Yuuya.] the System's voice resonated within his mind. [A critical event occurred during your recent period of hibernation. Your slumber lasted for three consecutive days. During that window, the peace of this cabin was breached.]
Yuuya's spirit sharpened.
'Breached? By who? Did monsters attack?'
[No. A god arrived.] the System explained. [The deity of the Dark Factions. The god of Evilus. Erebus.]
Yuuya's mind instantly raced, pulling up the fractured pieces of the lore he remembered from his past life in Japan.
'Erebus... the god who orchestrated the Great Feud in Orario.'
[Correct.] the System replied. [While you were unconscious, Erebus stood in this very room. He laid out his grand design to Alfia and Zald. He told them that the current generation of adventurers in Orario had grown weak, stagnant, and complacent. He argued that without a true threat to push them to their absolute limits, the world would perish when the final grand quests inevitably awoke. He asked them to return to the city with him. He asked them to become the ultimate villains—the terrible, stepping stones that would force a new generation of heroes to rise from the ashes.]
Yuuya looked over at Alfia, who was still staring blankly out the outside the window, her hand tightly gripping the fabric of her dress. 'But... this is the alternate timeline, right? I remember reading about this. In the author's scenario, both Alfia and Zald are supposed to reject him. They're supposed to choose staying here and watching Bell grow up over throwing their lives away for the city.'
[In the standard recorded record of that alternate path, that is exactly what occurs. Both pillars of the old era refuse the call. But this version of the world is different, Yuuya. The fabric of this specific timeline has drifted.]
Yuuya's spectral form went entirely rigid.
'What do you mean? What changed?'
[Alfia refused.] the System revealed softly. [She looked at Erebus, she looked at the young boy sleeping in the corner, and she chose her nephew. Her illness is severe, but her desire to see Bell grow into a man overrode any sense of duty to the world's hidden heroes. But Zald... Zald made a different choice.]
Yuuya's gaze drifted toward the empty stool where the giant adventurer used to sit.
[Zald's body was failing him. The lingering, horrific poison from his battle with the Behemoth was slowly eating away at his insides, rotting his organs week by week. Unlike Alfia, who found a quiet peace in watching over the boy, Zald was a warrior to his very core. He looked at his deteriorating hands, he looked at the dark god's offer, and he decided that he could not bear the thought of quietly wasting away into dust in. He chose to burn out. He decided that if his life was going to end, it would end as a terrifying wall that the future of the world would have to shatter.]
A heavy, suffocating weight settled over Yuuya's mind as the realization fully clicked into place.
He wasn't just witnessing a simple, happy alternate universe where everyone lived happily ever after.
This was a fragile, compromised timeline—a world where the path had split right down the middle.
Alfia had stayed to be the aunt Bell needed, but Zald had walked out, turning his back on the quiet, peaceful life to march straight toward the blood stained streets of Orario as a monster of Evilus.
Yuuya looked down at little Bell, who was still quietly tracing lines in the ash by the fire, entirely unaware that his uncle had just left to become the greatest villain the city would ever face.
'A modified "What If"...' Yuuya thought, a profound sense of grim reality settling deep into his soul. 'The Silence stayed... but the Gluttony went to war.'
Not long after, the gray fog rolled in once more, swallowing Yuuya's thoughts before he could even process the fading light of the afternoon.
This strange, spectral hibernation had become a regular part of his existence, a reminder that he was still just a wandering soul waiting for a proper home.
He could never tell how much time slipped through his fingers while he drifted in that blank void, completely cut off from the world of the living.
When his consciousness finally snapped back into focus, the first thing he felt was a heavy, suffocating weight in the room.
It was deep into the night. Outside the cabin windows, the surroundings were dark and still, the branches of the pine trees rustling quietly under a cool, gentle breeze. Inside, a single candle flickered on the wooden table, casting long, dancing shadows across the log walls.
Yuuya drifted down from the rafters, his eyes instantly scanning the room.
In the corner bed, little Bell was fast asleep.
But at the wooden table, the atmosphere was dead silent. Zeus and Alfia were still awake, sitting across from one another.
Yuuya's breath caught when he looked at Alfia.
She wasn't wearing her usual, simple clothes. Instead, she was dressed in her formal, striking black gothic dress—the very same legendary outfit worn by the "Silence" of the Hera Familia.
The dark, elegant fabric hugged her slender frame, trimmed with intricate details that made her look beautiful yet terrifying. She was also wearing a heavy, dark cloak.
Her pale face was entirely devoid of color, and her heterochromatic eyes stared down at the flickering candle flame with an icy, unbreakable resolve.
Zeus looked older than Yuuya had ever seen him. The eccentric, loud old god was gone, replaced by a weary elder staring blankly at his own wrinkled hands.
"You know what this will do to him, Alfia." Zeus said, his voice dropping into a low, raspy whisper that barely carried across the room. "Your departure... it's going to leave a scar on that boy's heart that might never heal. He looks up to you. He called you mother. He loves you..."
Alfia didn't look up. Her hands, resting flat on the table, tightened slightly against the wood.
"I refuse to do nothing." she replied, her voice carrying a chillingly steady, melodic tone. "And I absolutely refuse to die in a sickbed in front of his eyes. I will not let his final, lasting memory of me be a pathetic, rotting corpse coughing up its own life until there is nothing left."
She paused, taking a slow, shallow breath that seemed to rattle faintly deep within her chest.
"This is the only way..." she continued softly. "I want to do something for this world before I go. At the very least... let this be my final gift to Bell."
Hovering just a few feet away from the table, Yuuya felt a cold dread settle deep into his soul. As he listened to her words, the pieces of the puzzle began to violently twist into a reality he hadn't expected.
Back in Japan, the author teased that because of Bell, Alfia was supposed to live long enough thanks to "mother energy" until Bell became an adult, Omori joking that she will even become the final boss for Bell's suitress."
But as Yuuya stared at the deep, dark shadows beneath Alfia's eyes and the unnatural pallor of her skin, he realized this timeline was completely different.
The miracle hadn't happened here.
The peak of her terminal illness had officially dawned upon her. Her lungs were failing, her body was breaking down, and she was actively, rapidly dying.
The mother energy she felt for Bell hadn't cured her; it had simply given her the strength to hold the rot at bay for a few precious years so she could give the boy all of her love and care.
But now, her time had run out. She was at the absolute end of her rope.
"If I stay here, I will be a burden." Alfia murmured, her heterochromatic eye flashing with a solemn, tragic light. "Zald understood this. When Erebus came to us, Zald chose to burn out as a villain because his body was already ruined by the Behemoth's poison. I stayed behind back then because I thought I still have plenty of time. But now... now I must join Zald."
Zeus let out a long, heavy sigh, closing his eyes.
"You really think becoming a monster of Evilus is the answer?"
"Orario has grown weak, Zeus." Alfia stated flatly, her voice hardening. "The Loki and Freya Familias are weak. If they stay like this, they will be slaughtered when the promised time comes. They will never stand a chance against the One-Eyed Black Dragon. My sacrifice, and Zald's sacrifice... we will become the ultimate wall. We will force the next generation to grow strong enough to tear us down."
She turned her head, her gaze softening completely as she looked across the dark room toward the sleeping white haired boy.
"And if the adventurers of the city become strong enough because of our cruelty..." Alfia whispered, a faint, heartbreaking smile touching her lips. "Then Bell will never have to pick up a sword. He will never become an adventurer. He can live his life peacefully, right here in these mountains, far away from the blood and the gods. That is all I want."
Yuuya stood entirely still in the air, a profound wave of sadness washing through his spectral form. He saw the tragedy in her reason. She was going to throw herself into the fires of Orario, becoming a terrifying tyrant alongside Zald, all to forcefully awaken the heroes of the city so her beloved nephew would never have to put himself in danger. She was going to fight a war of absolute hatred just to buy a normal human boy a quiet, peaceful life.
This was going to be her first, her last, and her single only battle since retiring.
Alfia slowly stood up from the wooden chair. The long black fabric of her gothic dress rustled softly against the floorboards as she walked over to the side of the bed. She stood over Bell for a long, quiet minute, her tall silhouette completely blocking out the candlelight.
Slowly, carefully, she reached out a pale, trembling hand. Her fingers gently brushed a stray lock of white hair away from the boy's forehead, her touch incredibly light, as if she were handling the most fragile glass in the universe.
Her expression was filled with an immense, quiet agony—the look of a mother saying a permanent goodbye to a child she would never see grow up.
"Grow up well, Bell. Mother always loves you..." she whispered into the dark room.
She turned away, her face hardening back into the cold, emotionless mask of the "Silence." She pulled the cloak up, covering her head and shielding her dress from view, and walked directly toward the front door.
Zeus didn't try to stop her. He remained seated at the table, his head bowed, his shoulders shaking slightly in the dim candlelight as the weight of his old era officially crumbled away.
Alfia pushed the wooden door open. A rush of cool night air swept into the cabin, causing the candle flame to flicker wildly before settling.
She stepped over the threshold, her boots making a faint, final sound against the porch before she vanished completely into the dark, silent shadows of the mountain trail, marching straight toward her own death in Orario.
Hovering alone in the center of the quiet cabin, Yuuya watched the empty doorway, the heavy silence of the night wrapping around the broken family left behind.
The ache of powerlessness pressed hard against Yuuya's chest was unforgiving as he watched the empty doorway.
He wanted to look away, to turn back toward the fireplace or check on the sleeping boy, but the sheer reality of what was unfolding kept his thoughts entirely locked onto the trail outside.
He couldn't just stand still. He couldn't just float in the corner of a quiet cabin while the woman who had spent years caring for Bell marched off to throw her own grave.
Before he could even consciously decide to move, he felt a sudden, unexplainable tug pulled at the very core of his spiritual form.
It felt like a taut, invisible wire hooked into his soul, dragging him forward. He didn't fight it. Yuuya drifted straight through the heavy log wall, leaving the cabin behind as he chased the faint, dark silhouette rapidly fading into the shadows of the forest.
The journey was a grueling, silent testament to human stubbornness. It took an entire day of non-stop travel.
Alfia didn't pause to rest, nor did she ever slow her pace. She walked through the freezing mountain winds of the midnight hours, straight into the pale, gray light of dawn, and continued through the dry heat of the afternoon.
Her heavy traveling cloak rustled against her boots, concealing the dark gothic dress beneath.
Twice during the trek, her body violently betrayed her. She stumbled off the dirt path, her slender hand slamming against the rough bark of a tree to keep herself upright as a series of wet, agonizing coughs tore from her throat.
Yuuya hovered inches away, his hands instinctively reaching out to steady her shoulders, but his fingers only sliced through the empty air. He had to stand by and watch as she pulled the blood stained handkerchief from her lips, straightened her spine with a rigid, painful jerk, and kept marching forward without a single complaint.
By the time the gargantuan, circular stone walls of Orario finally loomed against the horizon, darkness had claimed the sky once more.
The labyrinth city didn't look like a beacon of civilization. It looked like a furnace. Even from the distant hills, Yuuya could see thick columns of black smoke rising into the night sky, illuminated from below by the angry, orange glow of scattered fires.
The faint, chaotic echoes of distant explosions, clashing steel, and distant screams drifted over the ramparts. It was the eve of the seventh day—the final, bloody climax of the Great Feud that had turned the streets into a graveyard.
Alfia bypassed the main northern checkpoints entirely. She slipped through a hidden, collapsed sewer grate near the outer slums, navigating the dark, damp tunnels with the familiar ease of someone who used to own these streets.
When she finally ascended a set of ruined stone stairs, she stepped into the courtyard of a hollowed out, abandoned church.
"Ah. The final piece of the curtain call has arrived."
A smooth, theatrical voice echoed from the shadows near the ruined altar. Stepping into the moonlight was a god with black hair with two cadet gray locks and a sharp, playful smirk that felt entirely unsuited for a city choked on blood. It was Erebus.
But Yuuya barely looked at the god. His eyes were fixed on the massive, looming figure standing just behind him.
Zald stepped out of the darkness, his heavy boots grinding a fragment of fallen stone into dust.
He looked frail. The faint sickening odor of decay that clung to him, and the way his massive left arm trembled slightly against the pommel of his colossal greatsword was now more prominent. The poison of the Behemoth was clearly finishing what it started years ago.
Alfia stopped ten paces away. She slowly raised her hands, unlatching the brass clasp of her traveling cloak and letting the heavy fabric fall to the dusty floor, revealing the pristine, terrifying elegance of her black dress.
Her gray and emerald eyes scanned the giant warrior, noting the slight slump in his posture.
"You're still alive." Alfia said, her voice cutting through the silence.
Zald let out a low, gravelly chuckle that instantly dissolved into a brief, wet wheeze. He leaned a fraction of his massive weight onto his sword, his scarred face twisting into a weary, grim smirk.
"I can say the same to you. How's your illness?"
Alfia closed her eyes for a brief moment, her chest rising in a shallow, controlled breath.
"Not much worse than your rot."
"Hmph. Good enough for tomorrow, then." Zald muttered, his deep voice carrying the immense weight of a man who knew he wouldn't see the next sunset.
The massive warrior paused, the fierce, terrifying edge of the "Gluttony" fading from his eyes for just a brief moment.
He looked past Alfia's shoulder, his gaze lingering on the dark tunnel she had just emerged from, as if his mind were drifting back across the miles of forests and mountains they had left behind.
"How is he?" Zald asked quietly, the gravel in his voice softening. "How is Bell?"
Alfia's tensed posture softened by a fraction of a millimeter.
"He is small. He is foolishly kind. He still cries when he scrapes his knee, and he still believes the stories that old fool tells him by the fire." She looked down at her own pale hands. Her expression faltered for a moment. "He... Called me mother... And promised me that he'll become a hero. The last hero. For me..."
Zald let out a genuine, rumbling laugh, his chest heaving.
"The boy has a good heart. It's a shame I won't be there to teach him how to hold a real blade and you won't be there to see him become a hero."
"He won't need to hold one nor does he need to become a hero." Alfia stated, her voice hardening back as she looked toward the burning center of the city. "Tomorrow, we ensure he never has to. Hopefully..."
The dawn of the seventh day broke over Orario not with light, but with a suffocating mantle of grey ash and the roar of a city tearing itself apart.
From his vantage point floating just above the crumbling rooftops, Yuuya watched the grand tapestry of the Great Feud reach its bloody climax.
The streets below were a labyrinth of smoke and steel. Phalanxes of Loki Familia warriors moved in tight formations, their shields locked against wave after wave of fanatical Evilus cultists.
Further down the main avenue, the Freya Familia's adventurers tore through the enemy lines like a scythe through wheat.
Then, the absolute center of the battlefield fell dead silent.
Alfia stepped out from the billowing black smoke of a collapsed warehouse. Her black gothic dress rustled softly against the blood stained cobblestones, and her silver hair trailed behind her like a ghostly shroud.
She held no shield, and her hands were tucked loosely at her sides, yet the mere sight of her caused an entire battalion of advancing Orario adventurers to stumble backward, their weapons trembling in their grips.
"It's the Silence... What is she doing in here!?" a level four adventurer rasped, his face draining of all color as he threw his arm out to halt his men. "Hold the line! Don't let her chant! If she finishes a spell, the whole district goes down!"
Yuuya drifted lower, his spectral form keeping pace right alongside her as she walked into the open square.
He braced himself, expecting the horrific slaughter he had read about in the old lore back on Earth. He expected the merciless nightmare that would leave a mountain of corpses in her wake.
Instead, Alfia simply took a slow, deliberate step forward.
"Scatter." she murmured.
She merely released a pressurized wave of concussive sound from the palm of her hand. The air distorted violently, a visible ripple tearing across the square.
The shockwave slammed into the line of adventurers. Shields cracked, heavy armor buckled, and dozens of grown men were lifted entirely off their feet, thrown backward through the air like autumn leaves in a gale.
The blast caught the stone pillars of a nearby building, causing the old brickwork to shatter and cave inward, burying the empty storefronts in a pile of heavy dust.
It was a collateral damage—the inevitable ruin of a clash between adventurers—but as the dust began to settle, Yuuya noticed something that made him stop dead in the air.
Not a single adventurer had been blown to pieces.
The captain who had been leading the charge slammed hard against a stone fountain, his sword clattering away as he collapsed onto his side.
He was groaning, clutching his shattered ribs, his breath coming in ragged gasps—but his chest was rising and falling. He was alive. All around the square, men were scattered across the pavement, bruised, broken, and thoroughly knocked cold, but every single one of them was still breathing.
Yuuya stared down at the groaning soldiers, then looked back at Alfia, who was already walking past them without a backward glance.
'She's... she's not killing them...' Yuuya thought, his mind racing as he floated after her. 'In the original history, she leveled entire blocks and left no survivors. But here, she's completely holding back...'
As the morning bled into the afternoon, the strange, deliberate nature of her crusade became even more obvious to the invisible observer.
Alfia marched toward the central plaza like an unstoppable force of nature, yet her path through the war torn city was completely selective.
Whenever a stray fire spell from the Evilus cultists threatened to ignite a residential block, she would flick her wrist, sending a burst of sound to snuff out the flames before they could spread to the homes.
She wasn't destroying the city; she was actively containing the madness around her, minimizing the ruin to only the immediate space beneath her boots.
The true confirmation of Yuuya's suspicions came when they crossed into the lower commercial alleys.
A panicked scream echoed from a collapsing fruit market.
A mother, desperate to shield her young son, had tripped over a pile of broken crates just as a massive, rogue Minotaur—unleashed by the dark factions to spread chaos—came barreling down the narrow lane.
The beast roared, its curved horns lowered to impale them both.
Alfia didn't hesitate. She appeared in front of the beast in a blur of black silk, her hand extending outward to catch the monster's massive horn with her bare palm. The ground beneath her boots shattered from the sheer impact, but her arm didn't shake.
With a cold, indifferent glare, she twisted her wrist. A sickening sound echoed through the alley as she snapped the beast's neck with a single, effortless motion, dropping the massive carcass into the dirt.
The terrified mother clutched her sobbing child close to her chest, staring up at the legendary villain with wide, tear filled eyes, clearly preparing for the end.
Alfia stood over them, her silver hair casting a long shadow across the dirt. Her mismatched eye lingered on the little boy, who was buried deep in his mother's arms, his small shoulders shaking with the exact same frantic terror Bell showed whenever he scraped his knee on the mountain trails.
For a single, fleeting second, the terrifying mask of the "Silence" cracked. Her gaze softened into something deeply tragic, a profound wave of weariness washing over her pale face.
She didn't raise her hand to strike. She didn't say a word. She simply reached down, grabbed a fallen wooden beam that was blocking their escape route, and tossed it aside.
"Run." Alfia whispered softly. "Go to the safe zones near the outer walls."
The mother didn't need to be told twice. She scrambled to her feet, scooping up her son and sprinting down the cleared path as fast as her legs could carry her.
Hovering just above the dead monster, Yuuya smiled, a heavy sense of warmth settling into his phantom chest.
'I knew it. Hey, system.' he thought quietly, watching her watch them run. 'While I was asleep, did "that" even happen? When Bell tells Alfia that he'll become a hero?'
Despite already hearing the conversation between Alfia and Zald last night, he still wants confirmation.
[Yes, it did happen.] The System replied. [She have said to Bell that she chooses him over the evil. Yet, she broke that promise. So, perhaps in a futile act of keeping that statement alive to the kid, she is deliberately holding herself back.]
Or, Yuuya realized, it might be even simpler than that. She had spent the last seven years drowning in the innocence of a little boy who looked at her like she was the center of the universe. She had tucked him into bed, listened to his laughter, and watched him draw silly pictures for her.
Now, looking out at the terrified civilians and helpless children of Orario, she couldn't see them as enemies anymore. Every innocent face she looked at just reflected a piece of Bell back at her.
She couldn't bring herself to stain her soul with the blood of the helpless, not when she was doing all of this just to keep that exact same innocence alive back in that cabin.
The resistance grew drastically heavier as she approached the main avenues leading to the Babel tower.
As the fight goes on, it is clear that against the adventurers, Alfia was notably rougher. She didn't show them the quiet gentleness she gave to the civilians.
Pang! Pang!
As she encounters more adventurers, she knocked them out with two fast strikes of her palms, she shattered their swords into a thousand glittering shards.
She stepped inside their guard, her elbow striking a veteran squarely in the center of his chest plate. The heavy steel caved inward with a loud groan, and the man was propelled backward, coughing up a spray of blood as he crashed into a stone wall, his eyes rolling into the back of his head as he lost consciousness.
Another swordsman lunged from behind, but she simply swept her leg low, catching him by the ankle and slamming him face first into the pavement with enough force to crack the stone.
It was a brutal, overwhelming display of absolute supremacy. She was breaking bones, shattering armor, and leaving the pride of Orario bleeding in the gutters.
But even here, among the warriors who were actively trying to take her head, her killing blow never came.
She would break a man's weapon, crush his defenses, and leave him utterly incapacitated on the ground, but she always stepped away before the strike became fatal.
Yuuya drifted through the air, his eyes tracking every single movement, every deflected spell, and every unconscious body left behind in the dirt.
He could see the grand, tragic design behind her violence. She was playing the part of the ultimate villain perfectly, forcing these adventurers to realize just how weak and unprepared they truly were, pushing them to the absolute brink of despair so they would be forced to break through their limits and grow stronger. After all, facing someone of her caliber and managing to stay alive is an achievement of its own.
She was acting as the wall they needed to conquer, but she was doing it without stealing their future.
'You really are too kind for this role, Alfia.' Yuuya thought, his spectral form hovering beside her as she cleared the last of the adventurers, her pale face slick with a layer of cold sweat as her illness continued to claw at her insides. 'You're trying to save them all... even while you're pretending to destroy them.'
And then, the fated moment on the 18th floor has arrived.
(I'm keeping the informations here vague because I don't know much on how the battle went.)
The crystal ceiling of the 18th floor was completely shattered, raining glittering shards of light down upon a landscape turned to absolute ruin.
The central lake of the Under Resort was boiling, steam hissing violently against the scorched earth where the absolute destructive force of Genos Angelus had just torn through the cavern.
Standing amidst the smoke, the young women of the Astraea Familia were battered, bloodied, and breathing in ragged gasps.
Their armor was cracked, but their eyes held a fierce, unbreakable light. They had survived the ultimate spell of the Silence.
And in the heartbeat that followed, they had launched their final, desperate counterattack.
They succeeded, most notably Ryuu and Alise.
They didn't sever her limbs. They didn't tear her flesh. But the impact of their attacks had found its mark on Alfia, fatally injuring her.
Internally, the fragile, dying foundations of her body completely gave way. The internal hemorrhaging was instant, her organs violently failing as the terminal illness and the trauma of the battle crushed what little life she had left.
Alfia staggered backward, her black gothic skirts brushing against the edge of the massive, glowing crater her own magic had blasted into the floor of the Dungeon. A thin, dark line of crimson spilled from the corner of her lips, trailing down her chin.
She looked at the trembling, victorious girls of the Astraea Familia. A faint, nearly imperceptible nod touched her chin.
She began telling them that they succeeded, that she accepts her defeat. She began telling them her last words. And then finally—
"You have passed..." Alfia murmured, her voice no longer a strong, but a faint, echoing whisper. "Do not stumble... on the path ahead."
With those final words, her strength completely vanished. Her knees buckled, and she allowed her weight to tilt backward, falling into the massive, yawning abyss that led straight down into the lower depths of the Dungeon.
Below her, the distant, angry orange glow of the deeper floors swirled like a furnace, waiting to incinerate her remains into nothing but sparkling ash
Hovering right above the crater, Yuuya watched her fall. A heavy, suffocating knot tightened in his chest, and a bitter, metallic taste seemed to fill his mouth.
He knew this was how the story was supposed to end. Half of his mind was telling him to just stand still, to let the grand, tragic lore of the world unfold exactly as it had been written.
Yuuya knew exactly that Alfia's gonna die once all of this is over, yet he came along. He brings himself into this, so he has resolved himself to see the ending until the very end.
But as Alfia's form drifted further down into the darkness, the world suddenly warped.
The chaotic roars of the Dungeon and the distant cheers of adventurers completely faded away into a dead, unnatural silence.
Yuuya's eyes widened. Somehow, through some impossible glitch or perhaps a cruel joke from the universe, a voice began to echo directly inside his own mind.
It was Alfia's voice. But she wasn't chanting.
'Just a little longer...' Her thoughts drifted into his head, initially steady, carrying the cold, formal composition she had maintained her entire life.
'It is finally over. They defeated me... Zald... Orario has its heroes... and I can finally rest. Just a few more seconds of falling, and I will see you again, Meteria. I will hold your hand in the afterlife, and I will tell you that our boy is safe.'
The thoughts were peaceful. Stoic.
Exactly the kind of quiet resignation Yuuya had expected from the mage.
But as her black dress fluttered violently against the rushing wind of the abyss, the voice in her mind suddenly hitched.
A sharp, trembling hesitation rippled through her consciousness.
'It will be quick.'
Her thoughts hurried, as if she were trying to convince herself of something.
'The flames below... they will burn hot. It will just be a sharp flash of pain, and then it will be nothing. I am used to pain. My lungs have burned every single day for years. This is no different. It's just a little more pain... and then quiet...'
But she couldn't hold it back.
The closer she drew to the swarming heat of the lower floors, the more her internal composure began to violently shatter.
The cold, unyielding facade of the "Silence" completely disintegrated inside her mind, revealing a raw, terrifying reality that Yuuya had never read about in any book.
She was afraid.
'No...'
A sudden, frantic wave of panic erupted through her thoughts.
The voice in her head grew louder, cracking with a desperate, childlike terror that made Yuuya's phantom soul lock up in pure shock.
'No, I don't want to.... It's so dark down here. It's so cold. I don't want to burn. I don't want to vanish into nothing...'
In the pale moonlight filtering down from the 18th floor, Alfia's physical body still looked perfectly calm, her eyes closed as she fell gracefully toward her doom.
But internally, she was screaming.
She was crying, her mind throwing itself against the walls of her own inevitable mortality like a trapped bird.
'I'm scared... I'm so scared of dying... please, someone... it hurts so much...'
The frantic, agonizing thoughts poured into Yuuya's mind in a chaotic, breathless flood.
She wasn't a legendary, tragic icon choosing a beautiful death.
She was a twenty four year old woman who was being violently swallowed by the dark, terrified of the absolute void waiting for her at the bottom of the world.
'Bell...' Her thoughts sobbed, a profound, heartbreaking wave of grief tearing through her panic.
'Bell, I want to go home. I don't want to leave you alone in that cabin. I want to see you grow up. I want to see what kind of man you become. I want to see you become a hero... I don't want to die... Please... I... I—'
'I want to live...'