The silence atop Lone Eagle Peak was so absolute it hurt. The wind, once a constant howl, now whispered, as if afraid to disturb the newly gained peace. The teleport platform was gone—only a void remained where the obsidian once pulsed, a broken tooth in the mountain's smile. The air no longer smelled of ozone and madness, but of pine and clean high-altitude freshness. It was disorienting.
We stood there, the five of us—six, if we counted Liriel—staring at the emptiness that, a moment before, had been a portal to a nightmare. Battle dust and metallic soot covered our clothes, and fatigue was a living weight on our shoulders. But we were alive. Breathing.
The first to break the silence was Vespera. She nudged one of the inert fragments on the ground with the tip of her boot. The stone, once a pulsating black rhombus, was now just a dull, lifeless rock.
"So... that's it?" she asked, her voice echoing strangely in the thin air. "No more crazy little lights? No more whispers in Takumi's head?"
"Looks like it," I replied, my own voice sounding hoarse and strange. The absence of the whispers was like the absence of a constant hum in the back of the mind—relieving, but also hollow. I felt... lighter. And somehow, more vulnerable.
Elara let out a trembling sigh, a mixture of relief and exhaustion. She looked down at her hands, where a soft light had once shone against the chaos. "The lake... it really did give me something. Something that could help."
Sylva and Gorr exchanged one of those looks that contained entire conversations. "The threat has been neutralized," Sylva declared, her voice as practical as ever. "Azeron's echo is gone. The fragments are inert. Mission accomplished."
Gorr just grunted, wiping the blade of his hatchet on his pant leg. "We still have a debt to settle. And a forest to cross."
We all looked at Liriel. She stood at the edge of the cliff, her back to us, gazing at the horizon where the Cloud Fortress no longer hovered. Her shoulders, usually straight with divine pride, were slightly bent. She still held the small pressed flower.
"Liriel?" I called softly.
She didn't turn immediately. When she did, her face was serene, but her eyes... her eyes held a sadness so deep and ancient it seemed capable of swallowing the sun. The usual arrogance had dissolved, leaving behind a raw vulnerability I had never seen in her.
"It's done," she repeated what she had said in the chamber, her voice a thread of wind. "The wound is closed. The tumor excised." She looked at the flower in her hand. "But some scars... some scars never heal. They just become part of who you are."
She let the flower fall. The breeze caught it and carried it away, a brown and fragile speck vanishing into the vast blue sky.
"What happens now?" Elara asked, her voice full of cautious compassion. "To you, I mean."
Liriel finally faced us completely. A sad and strangely human smile touched her lips. "Now? Now I'm no longer the Guardian of the Void. No longer the jailer of a mad god. And, it seems..." She raised her hand and made a subtle gesture. Nothing happened. No glow, no flicker of power. "...my connection to the pantheon... to my source of power... is extremely weakened. Maybe even severed."
The revelation hit us like a bucket of cold water. Liriel, the supreme goddess, the woman with the endless wine glass and the clumsy divine spells, was... mortal?
"What?!" Vespera exclaimed. "You've been... demoted?"
"It's more like... dismissed," Liriel replied, with a trace of her sharp humor. "Maintaining the exiled fortress and watching over Azeron was my primary function. With that fulfilled... well, the position was abolished. And I was left outside when the door closed."
She looked at her wine glass, which had miraculously remained attached to her belt. She lifted it. It was empty. Completely empty. For the first time since I'd met her.
"Oh," was all she said—and the simplicity of the word was more devastating than any of her dramatic speeches.
The journey back to civilization was strangely quiet.
The looming threat had dissipated, but a new tension had taken its place—uncertainty. Without the whispering fragments, without the urgent mission to survive Azeron, what were we now? Just a bunch of clumsy and deeply indebted adventurers.
Crossing the forest without being hunted was a new experience. The dangers were mundane—bears, rough terrain, hunger. Gorr and Sylva guided us with their usual efficiency, but even they seemed a bit lost without a cosmic enemy to hunt.
When the walls of Vaelor finally appeared on the horizon, a wave of conflicting emotions hit me. Relief. Fear. A touch of nostalgia. This city, with its noisy taverns, crowded guild, and fierce rumors, was the closest thing to home I had in this world.
We entered through the gates under the bored gaze of the guards. The city was as always—an organized chaos of shouting merchants, creaking wagons, and the smell of fresh bread and manure.
That's when we realized things had changed.
A boy selling fruit at a stall pointed at us. "Look! It's them! The Strippers!"
But his tone wasn't one of fear or disdain. It was... admiration?
An older woman carrying a basket of clothes smiled at us. "I heard you faced a floating fortress! Defeated a mad god!"
"Well, technically, it was more of a... divine-mortal cooperative intervention," Vespera began to explain, puffing up her chest, but the woman had already moved on, shaking her head and laughing.
The news had preceded us. And somehow, our reputation had changed. From "the perverts of the hot springs" to... heroes?
Extremely incompetent and accident-prone heroes, but heroes nonetheless.
At the guild, the reception was surreal. The usual receptionist, the brown-haired woman, looked at us over her glasses, one lip slightly curved.
"Takumi. And... company. Heard the rumors. They say you saved the world from a... 'dimensional rift.'" She spoke the last words as if savoring a strange candy. "Impressive. Should I update your records to 'Saviors of the World' or 'Desecrators of Elven Undergarments'? Both titles are under discussion."
My face burned. "Just 'adventurers' is fine."
She scribbled something on a parchment. "As you wish. Speaking of debts... we received an anonymous transfer. A significant sum. Enough to clear your outstanding debts with... pretty much everyone in Vaelor."
We all froze.
"Who?" Sylva asked, the first to recover.
"The note simply said: 'For the trouble caused. – A.'"
A. Azeron? Before his final dissipation, he had... paid our debts? Was it a last act of remorse? Or just a cosmic joke from a mad god? Somehow, the idea was both terrifying and incredibly funny.
We were free. Free of debt. Free of pursuit. Free of existential threat.
And yet, as we stepped out of the guild into the afternoon sun, a strange sense of emptiness lingered.
We said goodbye to Sylva and Gorr in the main square. The elf extended her hand to me, a formal gesture.
"It was... an experience, Takumi," she said, her face serious. "If you ever need to hunt something other than a god's sanity, you know where to find me."
Gorr just nodded, his growl sounding almost friendly. "Don't mess it up."
And then they were gone, disappearing into the crowd.
There were four of us left—me, Elara, Vespera, and Liriel. The goddess (ex-goddess?) looked around, her expression strange, as if seeing the ordinary city for the first time.
"What do we do now?" Elara asked, her voice filled with cautious hope.
"Well," Vespera said, rubbing her hands together. "Now that we're not being hunted or indebted, we can finally focus on what's important!"
"What?" I asked, dreading the answer.
"Finding a decent place to live! And maybe... you know." She winked at me, then at Elara, a mischievous smile on her face. "Sorting out this ridiculous romantic tension between you two. It's getting boring."
Elara turned scarlet. I felt my own face heat up.
Liriel, however, laughed. It was a strange sound—free and carefree, without the weight of millennia of solitude.
"You know what?" she said, looking at the empty cup in her hand. "I think I'm going to like being mortal. At least the food's better." She looked at us, her smile softening, becoming more genuine. "And the company... well, you grow on me."
In that moment, amid the familiar bustle of Vaelor, with the sun warming our faces and the weight of the world finally lifted from our shoulders, for the first time since I opened my eyes in that wheat field under a sky too blue, I felt that maybe, just maybe, a normal life—or something close to it—could be possible.
Of course, we were a former Stormbearer, a mage with severe mana issues, a chaotic succubus, and an unemployed ex-goddess. And we were notorious. And we'd probably cause another disaster in about... oh, twenty minutes or so.
But we were together. And for the first time, the future didn't look like an endless nightmare. It looked... like an adventure. And I, Takumi, was finally ready for it.
At least until the next bill arrived.