Phainon put away the Coreflame of "Worldbearing." The weight that came with the name "Khaslana" was far heavier than he had ever imagined.
After all, across thirty million recurrences, how could Khaslana have truly been merely repeating the tragedy in vain?
But...
Phainon's gaze pierced through the void, toward Okhema, toward his brother who was now walking the ultimate path of "Deliverance."
Compared to the "contingency plans" Khaslana had left behind, one matter was now more urgent and more important—to pull Asterion back from that irreversible road of destined solitude and decline, before his path to Deliverance reached the point of no return!
On the other side, Cyrene silently watched the Chrysos Heirs, who remained unmoved by the Coreflames right before their eyes.
The bewilderment, pain, and emptiness interwoven on their faces were also within her expectations.
She didn't urge them, only speaking softly in a voice tinged with gentle weariness:
"Take them."
Her voice wasn't loud, but it reached the ears of every Chrysos Heir clearly.
"In countless recurrences past," she continued, her gaze seeming to pierce through the people before her, seeing countless similar yet different faces,
"I made the same promise to every incarnation of you. That promise was—to inscribe the messages the Chrysos Heirs of the previous recurrence left for their own next incarnation onto the skies of Amphoreus."
Her fingertips gently brushed against the Coreflames floating in the air, their warm light reflecting off her ice-blue pupils, now frozen like frost.
"Through the 'Coreflames,' you can read... information from your 'past selves.' It is what they wanted to say to you."
Her voice carried an indescribable weight. "If you want to this time, say something to your past selves. Because..."
She paused, looking around at everyone, and spoke her judgment word by word:
"This... might be Amphoreus's final recurrence."
Cyrene's words ended there.
All she could do was deliver these "final messages," carrying the weight of countless recurrences, into their hands. How to face them—whether to listen or to resist—that was their own decision.
But just then—
A little pink-glowing creature floated unsteadily in front of Cyrene, holding the Coreflame of "Time."
It was Mem.
After hearing the truth about Amphoreus with her own ears, the innocent big eyes of this little one seemed to have lost some of their naivety, gaining instead an indescribable clarity and sadness.
Under the impact of such enormous information, she seemed to have undergone some degree of evolution; at the very least, she could now speak perfectly clearly.
"Do I need to watch the message you left behind, too?"
She tilted her little face up, looking at Cyrene, her voice carrying a hint of timid uncertainty.
Cyrene gazed into the little creature's clear, pure, and utterly sincere eyes.
In those eyes, she felt she was looking at a version of herself from long ago.
Cyrene was silent for a long time. Finally, she let out a soft sigh, laden with countless complex emotions.
"Forget it." Cyrene's voice softened, carrying a sense of release. "I've thought it through, Mem. You are, after all... different from me."
She reached out, gently rubbing Mem's little head with her fingertip, a gesture filled with unprecedented tenderness.
"Whatever I've left behind, it shouldn't have any impact on your life."
Her gaze swept over Stelle and Dan Heng beside her, finally returning to Mem.
"During this not-so-long, but certainly wonderful Trailblazing journey, you've already found your own path. You have companions to fight side by side with, and... people you want to stay with."
Her tone carried both a blessing and a farewell. "If things ultimately head towards an irreversible conclusion, if Amphoreus is destined to be unable to escape its fate..."
"Mem, you should leave this place with everyone from the Astral Express. Phaethon, he... though stubborn, probably won't forcibly keep you all here—you who don't belong to this world."
She said these words to sever Mem's connection to this tragic world, and to prevent this pure little one from being tainted and bound by her own past.
Well... absolutely... absolutely not because she didn't want the private words she'd only ever spoken to Phaethon alone to be seen by a second "person," even if that "person" was Mem.
"Khaslana," Cyrene turned around, her voice returning to its previous clarity and resolve, addressing "Phainon," whose demeanor had now greatly changed. "We should leave. To do what we must do."
"We're going too!"
Almost the moment Cyrene finished speaking, Stelle and Dan Heng stepped forward in unison.
From the moment they'd heard the cruel truth of Amphoreus, their hearts had already flown to Welt, who was still facing Phaethon alone in Okhema.
They didn't know exactly how strong that Phaethon was, nor whether Welt could contend with him, but worrying about cherished companions needed no reason at all.
Cyrene glanced at them, offering no objection, only nodding slightly.
The next moment, Cyrene, Phainon, Stelle, and Dan Heng quickly departed from the Eye of Twilight, heading down toward Okhema, now shrouded in amber and crisis.
High above in the Eye of Twilight, only the Chrysos Heirs remained, still immersed in the enormous shock, along with the ten Coreflames quietly floating before them, shimmering with a faint light.
The wind blew through once more. It could stir up fine dust, but it could not dispel the heaviness permeating the air, nearly solidifying into substance.
...
Elsewhere, the original site of Okhema had long been transformed beyond recognition.
The city's former outline, streets and buildings, even the traces of human civilization, had been completely sealed by that thick, crystalline, yet deathly still amber.
And in another dimension, the data layer composed of "0"s and "1"s, existing parallel to this physical coordinate—
Shh!
Phaethon's figure moved like a phantom. With a sidestep, a purple-black pseudo-black hole shot past, grazing his clothes.
The terrifying gravitational force failed to touch him at all, merely tearing and distorting the fluorescent data streams along its path, turning them into a chaotic mess of invalid code.
But soon, this chaotic data flow was restored by the layer's self-repair capability.
Phaethon's movements showed no delay, as if he had predicted everything. Space, before him now, had lost its meaning.
Phaethon's form merely blurred, and in an instant, he appeared within close range of Welt, one hand reaching through the void as if piercing through space itself, aiming directly for Welt's heart!
Welt reacted extremely quickly, relying purely on instinct honed through countless battles. He forcefully retreated, his feet pushing off, while simultaneously slamming the Star of Eden in his hand heavily onto the intangible "ground"!
Hum—!
Centered where the cane struck, more pseudo-black holes, each the size of a basketball, bloomed around him like a deathly black lotus suddenly coming into full flower, unfolding layer upon layer in an instant.
They pulled against each other, forming a defensive domain of continuous inward collapse and devouring, sealing off every possible path Phaethon might take to attack!