Ellie has had enough of Olivia's whining.
Olivia is still shouting at her about "blood" and "excuses," her voice shrill and desperate, but Ellie's patience shatters the moment she senses movement in the ruined hall. The vibrations in the air shift—a rhythm that speaks of bodies awakening, consciousness returning. She cuts Olivia off sharply, her voice cold as winter frost.
"Enough."
She turns—and sees them.
All the unconscious people are now awake and walking toward her in an eerie procession: Jane, steady and composed despite the carnage around them. The two Emperors, their movements stiff but purposeful. Emily, her face streaked with tears, carrying Samarth's limp body on her back as though he weighs nothing and everything all at once. All of them approaching in a loose formation, dazed yet undeniably focused on the two girls before them.
Olivia's voice is still ringing in Ellie's ears, but Ellie ignores her completely now. Her attention shifts entirely to the group advancing toward them—these people she has already decided to use. These people who will become her foundation.
Aeren is gone. Dead. Erased. And with him, the only obstacle standing between Ellie and her rise has vanished like smoke in wind. No one left in this world can threaten her now. No one can suppress her ambition. No one can match what she has become.
But she knows something Aeren never cared to learn—something he dismissed as irrelevant in his pursuit of power: Power means nothing without supporters. Without a force backing her, without people willing to die at her command, she will crumble just as he did—forgotten and crushed by the world's indifference. She already has a few loyal to her cause, but it is not enough. It will never be enough. She needs more. She needs many more. She needs people who will follow without doubt, without hesitation, without question. People who will give her everything because they have nothing else to hold onto.
That is why these people matter.
"Shut up," Ellie snaps at Olivia, her voice cutting through the princess's mounting despair. "Someone is coming."
Olivia stiffens, swallowing her frustration hard enough that Ellie can almost hear it in the silence. The princess turns with Ellie, and the moment her eyes land on the approaching group—the Emperors, Jane, Emily with Samarth—she straightens herself. Her earlier panic dissolves instantly. Her mask returns. She stands like a true royal princess once more, as though the blood on her clothes is merely decoration rather than evidence of a broken heart.
Ellie watches them approach with the patience of a predator, her expression calm and unreadable. But behind her eyes, calculations move like gears grinding in an ancient mechanism—each movement, each expression, each micro-reaction being filed away for future use. Her next stage begins now, and she will not miss a single detail.
They come closer, gathering in a loose line across from the two girls. The distance between them feels like a chasm, though it is only a few paces.
Everyone stands silently—waiting, waiting, waiting. Expecting answers. Hoping for anything that might explain what happened here. Hoping even more desperately for any word about Aeren.
Ellie scans them once, her dark eyes moving methodically across each face. Then her gaze drifts to Samarth, the old emperor hanging from Emily's back like a broken puppet.
She observes him for only a moment—just long enough to note the shallow breathing, the grey pallor to his skin, the way his body seems to be folding in on itself—before she speaks flatly, as though announcing the weather:
"He is going to die within a day or two. Nothing can save him now. He will perish from his accumulated age and the strain his body can no longer bear."
The words drop like stones into still water.
Everyone freezes.
Shock widens their eyes until they seem to consume their faces.
Ellie can practically feel the disbelief rolling off them in waves—a tangible force that presses against the air between them.
For a few moments, the entire ruined hall is consumed by absolute silence. Even the settling dust seems to hold its breath.
Then Emily breaks.
Her entire frame convulses as though struck by an invisible force. Her voice trembles when she finally speaks, each word shattered into pieces before it leaves her lips.
"W-What do you mean?" she whispers, staring at Ellie as if begging her to say she is lying, to laugh and reveal this as some cruel joke. "That cannot be... there must be something..."
But Ellie only looks back at her, her expression blank and immovable—making it devastatingly clear that she truly cannot do anything for him. That Samarth is beyond salvation. That he is already lost.
"H-How is that even possible?" Emily chokes out, her voice cracking. She already suspected Samarth's condition was catastrophic—she felt his body failing in her arms, felt the way it was collapsing from within—but she had still hoped. She had believed, desperately, that his transcendent body would somehow recover, would somehow find a way to endure. Ellie's cold declaration crushes that fragile hope into dust.
Jane steps beside Emily, her own face carefully controlled even as she observes her companion's dissolution.
She knows Emily's feelings for Samarth run deeper than she has ever publicly acknowledged—she has never cared much about such things, never interfered, only watched from a distance like a careful observer. Jane considers herself a rival to Emily, a friend perhaps, a competitor—their relationship has not been so complicated that sentiment should matter. And yet.
Watching Emily break like this, watching the princess crumble, stirs something unexpected in Jane's chest. Something warm and dangerous that she cannot quite name.
Jane places a hand on Emily's trembling shoulder, her grip steady even as her own heart wavers.
"Calm yourself, Emily," she says, her voice gentle in a way Jane rarely permits herself to be. "There is always a way. There is always something we have not yet discovered. We can search for a cure. We can seek answers. And Ellie might know more than she is saying. We can ask her. Together, we will find—"
"No," Ellie interrupts, her voice slicing through Jane's words like a blade through cloth. "There is nothing that can be done about it. But I can explain what happened to him."
Her answer crushes the fragile hope Jane had tried to construct for Emily—and whatever faint hope the others were clinging to shatters completely, falling away like sand through an hourglass with no bottom.
"He used power far beyond what his body could withstand," Ellie continues, her tone mechanical and absolute. "Transcendent power. Ancient power. Power that should never have been channeled through a mortal frame. He did not even comprehend what it was he was wielding. Now that power is erasing him from the inside, consuming him cell by cell, spreading faster and faster as the clock runs down on his existence. There is nothing you can do. There is nothing anyone can do. Not prayer. Not medicine. Not magic. Only time, and he is running out of it."
A few people breathe out shakily—sounds that are closer to despair than relief, closer to the rattle of dying hope than anything resembling comfort.
Emily finally breaks completely.
Her tears fall once, twice—and then stop altogether, as though something has switched off inside her.
She freezes like a statue carved from marble—empty, hollow, stripped of every emotion she had left. There is nothing behind her eyes anymore. Nothing but absence.
Jane notices immediately, her acute awareness catching what others miss. She pulls Emily into her chest and embraces her tightly, her arms wrapping around the princess as though she can hold her together through sheer force of will. She tries to keep Emily from shattering completely even as she, too, trembles with the weight of this knowledge.
Both emperors watch the two girls for only a moment—a perfunctory glance at their suffering—before turning their eyes back to Ellie. It is as though they have forgotten the sacrifices made here. As though the ones who fought and died were merely tools fulfilling their designated purpose. As though their blood is already forgotten.
Their entire attention is fixed on Ellie now—because she is the only one who might hold the answer they truly want, the one answer that matters more than a hundred dead soldiers or two grieving women:
What happened to Aeren?
"Ellie," Emperor Sacaler speaks first, his voice tight with barely contained urgency. "What happened to Aeren?"
"Where is he?" Emperor Barlet demands, his question stepping over his counterpart's like they speak in chorus. "What became of him?"
Both emperors ask nearly simultaneously, unable to hide their desperation. Their voices carry the weight of men who have waited too long for an answer, who have built expectations and fears around a single question. Their hands clench. Their bodies lean forward unconsciously. They are no longer emperors in that moment—they are just men desperate for confirmation that the greatest threat has been neutralized.
Ellie twitches slightly at the question—just a microscopic movement, barely perceptible—but she quickly composes herself. She lets a brief pause stretch across the ruined hall, each second feeling like an eternity, as she turns her gaze toward the empty space where she severed Aeren moments earlier. The spot where he once stood is now nothing but air and dust and the fading scent of blood.
"He is dead," Olivia answers before Ellie can speak, unable to contain herself. Pride and validation ring through her words.
Ellie notices the faint smiles tugging at the corners of the emperors' mouths—smiles they struggle desperately to contain, as though restraining themselves from celebrating too openly would be unseemly. Yet beneath that forced composure, she sees doubt lingering in their eyes like stubborn shadows. They have been deceived before. They have been played for fools. They will not accept victory until they see proof.
"I killed him," Ellie says, reinforcing Olivia's words with cold, absolute certainty. Her voice carries no boast, no celebration—just fact. "I cut him down. I severed everything that made him what he was."
"And I helped her," Olivia adds, almost proudly, her chest puffed out slightly as though she deserves credit for the fall of the man who has haunted their empire.
The emperors' doubts flicker like dying flames. But they are not extinguished—merely dimmed. They begin to suspect that perhaps they are being deceived, that Aeren might still be alive and using these two girls as puppets to trick them into lowering their guard. The paranoia of men in power is a deep thing, and it dies hard.
They question again. This time Emperor Barlet Sacaler steps forward, his movements deliberate and commanding. When he speaks, his voice carries the hard authority of a man used to being obeyed, a man who demands truth through force of personality alone.
"Where is his body?" he demands. "If you killed him, show it to us. Show us proof. Are you two deceiving us, Olivia? Ellie? Are you hiding something?"
Olivia stiffens for a moment as she listens to her own father doubt her, fear flickering across her face like candlelight. But that fear vanishes instantly, replaced by cold certainty. It does not even make her flinch.
"It is not like that," Olivia says, her voice steady now despite the blood still wet on her clothes. "She cut him to nothing—even his blood. She cut everything, every part of Aeren. She kept cutting and cutting until there was nothing left. Nothing that could regenerate. Nothing that could come back. That is why I was shouting at her—because we had the perfect body for experimental research, the most valuable specimen imaginable, and she just kept cutting until everything completely vanished."
She gestures toward Ellie with frustration still evident in her movements, as though Ellie has personally wronged her by being thorough.
"See? I told you! I told you this entire time!"
Ellie ignores Olivia's whining entirely, dismissing it as background noise. She focuses her attention on the emperors, her gaze unwavering.
"Yes," Ellie says simply, her voice carrying the weight of finality. "I doubted whether he might regenerate again, even from that state. So I cut everything. Left nothing in his body that could possibly live. Left nothing that could remember what he was. Did I do anything wrong in being thorough?"
The two emperors freeze solid.
They can hardly believe the words they are hearing, but judging from the way the girls were bickering moments before, bickering with such genuine frustration over a lost research specimen, they can sense that neither of them is lying. The texture of their argument is too real, too raw, too authentic to be fabrication.
And that is all the emperors need to know.
As relief washes over their bodies like a tidal wave, both emperors begin laughing. Not the controlled, dignified laughter of rulers—but genuine, primal laughter that shakes their entire frames.
"HAHAHAHA—yes, yes, you did right, Ellie! You actually did it! You actually killed him! HAHAHAHAHA!"
They laugh like madmen released from prison, like men unburdened of a crushing weight. They laugh as though Aeren's death has given them new life, has rewritten their futures, has given them permission to hope. Completely forgotten in their celebration is Emily's pain—the princess still trembling in Jane's arms, tears flowing like rain.
A short distance away, Seraphina clutches Nil's lifeless body to her chest, trembling just as violently as Emily trembles—yet no one pays attention to her either. No one acknowledges her grief. No one offers her comfort. She is simply left alone with her dead, invisible to everyone now that Aeren is confirmed gone.
And in all of this chaos and noise and celebration, everyone forgets about Jarek entirely. The talented young man remains where he fell, unnoticed and unremembered, as though his existence has already been erased from their collective consciousness.
***
One Week Later
Samarth dies on a grey morning, his body finally surrendering to the power it could not contain. They hold a funeral for him—a grand affair with all the ceremony befitting an emperor, though Emily does not attend. Emily shuts herself inside her chamber, locking the door and drawing the curtains against the world. Jane and Seraphina stand vigil outside her door, ready should she need them. Ellie is announced as the new crown princess by imperial decree—a position that carries more power than she had ever anticipated. Because of this decision, her engagement is broken without ceremony. The betrothed prince is relieved; Ellie does not care.
Jarek remains in a deep sleep, his consciousness far from the ruins and the grief and the celebration. But his body slowly improves with each passing day, his wounds knitting together with stubborn determination. Ellie watches his recovery with calculating interest. She can clearly perceive his talent, his potential, his usefulness. She is already considering taking him as one of her subordinates once he awakens—she knows he will be valuable to her in the days to come.
Nothing significant happens during this week—nothing that reshapes the world or changes the balance of power. It is a week of mourning and consolidation, of plans forming quietly in the shadows. Days pass like pages in a book being turned by an unseen hand.
Until one day, they receive news about a new empire.
A new species has risen and begun fighting for control of the territory. Before this moment, only two empires existed in the known world—two forces locked in careful balance. Now, a third empire is born—one that Nil once controlled with an iron will, but after her death, it fell into chaos like a kingdom without a king. The species under her command began fighting among themselves, their loyalty shattered without her presence to hold them together. That internal conflict eventually pushed them toward the remaining two empires, carrying their motives and messages with them, seeking alliance or conquest or simple survival.
As the representatives explain the situation and the reasons behind the conflict, laying out the geopolitical implications and the power structures at stake, Ellie listens with the focused attention of a predator observing wounded prey. She sees an opportunity unfolding before her—one she intends to grasp with both hands and squeeze until it yields everything she demands. This becomes her first step toward pulling the strings of the world itself. This becomes the beginning of her ascension.
Months have already passed since Aeren's death. The world has moved on. Grief has transformed into acceptance. Fear has become memory.
They give Ellie their proposition—a careful dance of words and veiled threats and false promises. And she adds a few of her own conditions before agreeing to the terms. Ellie knows that her true opponent might eventually be the Sacaler Empire, and she prepares for that eventuality with the patience of someone who understands that wars are won in boardrooms and back hallways before a single blade is drawn. But she does not care about them at all. Not yet. Not while there is so much else to acquire first.
***
The In-Between
Meanwhile, far from the chaos of politics and mourning, far from the ruined halls and the struggling survivors, a transparent human figure stands in the world of mortals like a ghost that has not yet learned it is dead. He is waiting for something. Something important. Something he is not certain will ever come.
He looks up at the sky, watching as it fades slowly into night. Stars begin to emerge like diamonds scattered across black velvet. The darkness deepens. The world grows quiet.
"Hmm..." Aeren whispers, his voice carrying the faint echo of something that might be disappointment. "I cannot reach the reincarnation world through my soul's consciousness alone. It seems that path is sealed to me."
He had believed—had hoped—that he could reach through the veil, trace the world's connection to the reincarnation cycle, and see what lay beyond the mortal plane. He had waited, feeling nothing respond to his presence, listening for an echo that never came. The silence was profound and absolute.
Now, after the silence has stretched long enough to confirm his failure, he realizes it simply is not possible. Not in this form. Not through this method.
"Well then," he whispers, his tone shifting to something almost thoughtful. "Let me cross the universe itself and search for another reincarnation world there. Beyond this universe. Beyond these stars. There must be something more."
He does not try to materialize his own body. Does not waste effort on something so trivial as physical form. Instead, he simply lets himself dissolve into the night, his consciousness scattering like smoke on wind, seeking paths beyond the boundaries of what mortals call reality.
And then he vanishes from the mortal world entirely.