[POV: Astraea]
She moved through the outer lattice of the empire like a ghost beneath skin.
No alarms triggered.
No resistance met her path.
Ren had built this dimension like a fortress of divinity—but she remembered what lay underneath: the soft systems, the vulnerable roots. The things he hid even from himself.
The air was different now. Sharper. More intricate. The goddesses' presence bled into the very fabric of the dimension. It pulsed in its architecture. Stank of longing.
She didn't hate them.
She pitied them.
So many layers of love poured into a man who couldn't answer any of it.
Couldn't let himself.
Not without unraveling.
And yet…
Her fingers skimmed across the wall of a sealed corridor. It opened for her without hesitation.
He hadn't changed the access key.
Part of him knew she would return.
[POV: Ren]
I felt her before I saw her.
The air thickened.
Not with power, but remembrance.
I stood in the central atrium—just beyond the inner threshold—and turned as the light fractured in the hallway behind me.
She emerged like a memory pulled from the wrong timeline.
Hair like drifting starlight.
Eyes like broken mirrors that still reflected only me.
Astraea.
Her feet made no sound on the marble.
She stopped five paces away.
And smiled.
"Still standing," she said softly. "Still pretending you're alone."
My expression didn't change.
"You shouldn't be here."
"Neither should you. But here we are."
Silence stretched between us. Not awkward. Not cold.
Wound-like.
"You erased me," she said.
"I buried you."
"Because you were afraid."
I didn't answer.
Because it was true.
She took a single step closer. The walls behind her bent—just slightly. Not cracking. But reacting.
"I thought about you every day in that vault," she said.
Her voice was too calm.
"I watched you build this world. I watched your hands mold these goddesses like clay. I watched you sit in silence like a god who couldn't decide if he wanted to be worshipped or left alone."
She tilted her head.
"I wonder… if I had said the right thing, would you have let me stay?"
I didn't move.
Because any motion might've been mistaken for emotion.
And I couldn't afford that.
Not now.
She stepped close.
Too close.
Her breath touched my skin. Her presence wrapped around me like déjà vu.
"I didn't come here to destroy this place," Astraea whispered. "Not yet. I came to see if you were still real."
Her fingers brushed my chest.
"Still cold," she murmured. "Still trying so hard not to feel. You haven't changed."
She looked up into my eyes.
"But I have."
Then she stepped back, calmly, as if nothing had passed between us.
"I'll be nearby," she said.
And then she vanished—without breaking a single seal.
Just like that.
[Ren]
I remained standing for a long time after she disappeared.
The system reeled silently behind me.
The goddesses stirred.
Airi would feel it soon.
Minako would sniff at the edges of it.
And Elira… Elira had already begun watching.
But Astraea wasn't a storm.
She was something worse.
She was the first thing I ever let close.
And now… she was back.
[POV: Airi]
It started in the early morning.
Ren was the same as always. Quiet. Soft-spoken. Eyes slightly downturned when he looked at her.
He held her hand on the way to school.
Laughed, just a little, when she made a joke.
But the warmth didn't reach his skin.
There was a flicker in his eyes that hadn't been there before.
A shadow behind the silence.
She walked beside him anyway, heart too full of denial to speak her fears.
But it worsened by the afternoon.
She sat at her desk in class, turning her pencil slowly in her fingers, watching him from the corner of her eye.
He was present.
But not here.
And something cold passed down her spine, like a pair of unseen eyes watching her from above.
She turned toward the window reflexively.
No one there.
Still, the feeling didn't fade.
She left school early, feigning a headache.
Ren tried to walk her home, but she insisted she was fine.
He hesitated… then let her go.
He never used to hesitate.
[Evening. Airi's Home]
She closed her bedroom door and leaned against it, heart thudding louder than it should.
The sensation had followed her.
She wasn't just being paranoid.
She could feel it. Something invisible. Something watching not her body—but her soul.
She checked her windows. Her closet. Under her bed.
Nothing.
Still, her fingers trembled as she reached for her phone.
Ren hadn't messaged since she left.
But when she opened the chat…
The screen flickered.
Just for a second.
A glitch?
No. A ripple.
As if something had passed between them digitally—like a shadow caught in the corner of her eye, sliding into her data.
The camera light blinked.
Only once.
She threw the phone onto her bed and backed away, chest tight.
Her voice trembled.
"Ren…"
She didn't even know what she was asking.
[POV: Elira, monitoring]
She watched the footage silently, eyes wide.
Airi pacing.
Airi whispering his name in fear.
The system feed wavered slightly, but not from her end.
No, something else had tapped into the observation net.
Something foreign.
Elira leaned forward, whispering to herself.
"She feels it too."
But she didn't report it.
She simply kept watching.
Because this girl—this threat—had already reached Ren's world.
And Elira had to know everything.