Kael's shadow stared back at him from within that shimmering light, its cold laughter creeping in like an echo rising from inside Kael's own mind.
"So amusing…" it murmured, soft yet razor-sharp. "You really think that after all this, there's still a future waiting for you?"
Kael halted. His left foot settled onto a fragment of glowing debris as his narrow crimson eyes fixed themselves on the shadow standing before him.
"And what will you do once all of this is over?" the shadow continued. "When there's no one left for you to save. When no one believes in you anymore. You'll walk alone, Kael. Just like before. Again and again!"
The shadow stepped closer, its voice thinning into a layered whisper, as if many voices were speaking at once. "What if one day you wake up and find that everyone you protected has vanished?! What if the world no longer calls your name… and only the hollow echo of silence laughs at you in the dark?!"
Each word seeped into the air like poison. The shadow lowered its head slightly, then hissed. "What are you fighting for, Kael? For false hope? For a love that's already dead? For a fate you don't even understand yourself?"
"You will keep failing!!"
Kael said nothing. Yet his chest trembled. Something deep within him began to glow.
He heard his mother's laughter, faint but warm, echoing in his mind. His father's stern smile, filled with unshakable conviction. The shouts of his former comrades, the laughter of children among the ruins, the feel of someone's hand—someone who had once promised to meet him at the end of the world.
They all came at once, like countless small lights flaring within a violet storm.
Kael closed his eyes for a brief moment. When he opened them again, the anger was gone. In its place was warmth—and resolve. Golden light from the Abyssal Seal danced along his arm, pulsing in time with his heartbeat.
"I know…" he said softly, his voice hoarse yet steady. "The world can change. Hope can shatter. And I may fall a thousand times."
He tightened his grip on the fusion blade and looked straight at his own shadow, his gaze sharp enough to split the space between them. "But…"
The shadow froze.
"As long as I can remember them—those who once smiled, those who believed in me, even those who loved me—I will never stop."
The shadow sneered. "Pretty words. But they're nothing more than illusions, Kael. You know that. In the end, you'll become just like me! A devil starving for hatred and power!!"
Kael stepped forward—slow, unwavering. "If that's truly the case…" he lowered his head slightly as the aura around his body began to tremble, "then I'll surpass myself—even if it means destroying the shadow that holds me back!!"
CRACKKHHH! CRACKKHHH!
The glass-like barrier protecting the shadow began to fracture, cracks racing across its surface.
Another wave of images surged forth—a mother holding her infant in the rain, a father gazing at the sky at dusk, a friend's hand clapping his shoulder amid the fires of war, and the small smile of someone looking at him with pure hope.
All of it fused within his chest, like thousands of tiny flames converging into a single sun.
Kael screamed—not in anger, but from the weight of every emotion he had buried for so long.
"Everything… love, hope, rage, loss, even hatred—I'll carry it all with me! Until the very end of my life!!"
The light within him erupted outward, flooding the air with a crimson-gold aura that swallowed the remaining shadows around them. The glass barrier before the Shadow of Kael continued to crack, slowly but relentlessly, as Kael kept pushing forward.
With a roar that shook the air itself, he poured every last ounce of strength from his body into the strike and shouted:
"THIS IS THE END OF THIS TRIAL! SHATTER AND FALL WITH YOUR DARKNESS, MY SHADOW!!!"
Crimson-gold light blazed from his entire being, drowning the space of Limbus Reveria.
"HRAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!"
The glass barrier trembled violently—then split apart.
CRAAACKKK—
Shards of light scattered like falling stars plunging into the sea. And in the end, the Astraveil blade pierced straight through the barrier, driving into the Shadow of Kael's chest. And...
JLEBBB!—
Time seemed to stop. The wind died. The world fell silent, leaving only a single sound—the final gasp of breath.
Astraveil ran clean through his body, its tip bursting from his back. The imitation form staggered, dark blood dripping from the trembling blade. The Shadow of Kael lowered its gaze, staring at the golden light now cleaving him in two.
"An unworthy thing like you…" his voice was heavy, nearly breaking. "How… are you still standing? Enough to reduce me to this…"
Slowly, the shadow lifted his head—and saw Kael's left arm completely gone. Blood poured from the ruined shoulder, soaking half his body. Yet Kael still stood there, upright, his gaze straight and unshaken.
"With only that one arm left," the Shadow of Kael continued, his voice faltering, "you should have fallen already. Your body—it shouldn't be able to endure power on that scale. Even I, a part of you, know the limit…"
Kael let out a slow breath, his voice calm amid the roaring, vibrating light around them.
"Yes. I should have fallen," he said. "And because of that… I remembered something."
The Shadow of Kael stared at him, confused. "Remembered… something?"
Kael looked down at the blade buried in his opponent's chest, then closed his eyes, repeating words still carved deep into his memory.
If you pass the three trials—meaning, sin, and honor—then all wounds, all loss, even the fragility of your body… will be restored. For what is tested is not the flesh, but the soul.
"If you pass the three trials—meaning, sin, and honor—then all wounds, all loss, even the fragility of your body… will be restored. For what is tested is not the flesh, but the soul."
Kael's voice trembled faintly, like a forgotten prayer rediscovered in the heart of a storm. "That's what the Inscriptor said, at the beginning of the trial."
The Shadow of Kael fell silent. His black eyes quivered—as if something within him remembered those words as well. Then, slowly… he smiled. A strange, faint smile. Not mockery—but something closer to acknowledgment.
"Haha… so that's how it is," he said quietly. "I forgot something so small." A faint breath escaped him. "Of course. Because I'm nothing more than what's left in your heart. The remnants of fear, the remnants of doubt, and all the contradictions you carry."
Kael did not answer. He simply looked at him in silence—and for the first time, there was no hatred in his gaze.
The Shadow of Kael lowered his head slightly, his breathing heavy. "I was never worthy of remembering it," he murmured. "How pathetic. In the end… I lost to myself."
Golden light from the blade began to consume his body. His skin cracked, crumbling into ashen fragments that were swept away by the current of light.
Kael lifted his gaze just a little, his voice low and gentle, as though speaking to someone he had once known.
"Now… go home, old friend."
The Shadow of Kael fell silent. His eyes slowly closed. And for a fleeting moment, his face looked peaceful—as if a long suffering had finally come to an end.
His body completely disintegrated into glowing ash, dancing briefly in the air before vanishing into the shimmer. Kael watched the last traces of light fade, then bowed his head slightly and whispered, so softly that only the sky and the shadow that had just disappeared could hear him.
"We are Assassins. In silence, we endure. In shadow, we conquer. In our oath… we transcend."
As the final word left his lips, the world began to tremble. The light in the sky cracked like glass. Limbus Reveria—the trial space that had swallowed Kael whole—started to collapse into shards of light and shadow.
The air quivered. The surface of the water split apart. And the space itself shattered like a mirror breaking in slow motion, returning everything to nothingness.
The final light exploded.
—
When silence returned, Kael came to. His eyes opened slowly as he found himself standing in the center of a familiar circular hall. The altar chamber was still, filled only with the echo of his own breathing. The marble floor gleamed softly, and at the far end of the room… stood the figure who had once guided him.
"Inscriptor…?" Kael whispered.
The figure smiled faintly. "Welcome back, Kael Vieron," he said, his voice gentle yet resonating throughout the hall. "You are now—"
The words were cut short.
Kael staggered. His body shook violently. Blood was still dripping from his severed shoulder; his breathing grew ragged, and his vision began to blur.
Before he fell, Kael lifted his gaze toward the ceiling of the hall—where fragments of light from the cascading waterfall still drifted down like stardust. A small smile appeared at the corner of his lips, faint yet serene.
Then he collapsed, sinking into a peaceful darkness.
BRAKKK!
All of this… was only the beginning of the true journey.
The beginning of all the bitterness that awaited him.
That thought echoed faintly, reverberating within the slowly dimming vortex of light.
The bitter journey had just begun—a long road that would lead humanity toward a world they had never truly understood. A new world, where the boundaries between logic and illusion had fused as one. A place inhabited by beings who thought beyond human reason; a place where Aetherial Logic was not merely power… but a new language of existence itself.
And then, everything sank into silence.
.
.
The desert wind whispered softly across a vast expanse of red sand, slipping past jagged, steep rock formations. The evening sky was stained a deep orange, draping its glow over the barren land once known as Nirvana City—the most exalted of cities, now nothing more than the shadow of what it used to be.
Now, that former glory remained only as skeletal metal frames and shattered towers, rising like the colossal bones of an ancient world. Faint violet glimmers flickered between the ruins—residual Aether still pulsing within the corpse of the city, like a stubborn vein that refused to die.
Atop a high, curving cliff on the western edge of the city stood a woman clad in black and white. Her robes billowed in the desert wind, their trailing edges brushing against sand that reflected the dying light of dusk.
An owl mask adorned with gold filigree concealed her face. From beneath her hood, long white hair swayed in the wind—one eye hidden beneath a strip of black cloth, the other a silver gaze that glimmered softly. She did not move. She merely stood there, silently surveying the ruins of the old world stretching endlessly before her.
After a moment, she spoke. Her voice was deep, gentle, calm—yet carried something far older than time itself.
"My mission… is not yet complete."
The words drifted softly, swallowed by the wind whispering through stone and sand. She lowered her head slightly, her fingers brushing against grains of sand that shimmered with a golden hue, then slowly closing around them.
"This world… has changed faster than it ever should have," she murmured. "Humans who once challenged the heavens now stare at the ground in fear. The universe they fought for… was destroyed by their own hands. And the beings once hidden behind myth… now walk beneath the sun with pride."
"Yet from the ruins of that destruction," she continued, "something is rising—born of a will that cannot be stopped."
She lifted her gaze once more toward Nirvana City, where the silhouettes of collapsed buildings formed the outline of a colossal altar.
"From this devastation… a wanderer will be born. One who carries an ancient ember from a world long forgotten by all of humanity. Not a hero. Not a savior… merely a human who refuses to bow to their own fate."
She fell silent, allowing the wind to speak again. Then, slowly, her voice softened further—as if she were no longer addressing the world, but herself.
"I believe that presence truly exists… and perhaps this is how the world calls back its courage."
Silence.
SWWWOUSHHHHHHH!
The desert wind rolled on, lifting and tugging at her black-and-white robes once more.
Then, without turning around, the woman spoke again—this time to someone not yet visible.
"You're late. I told you never to waste the time I give you."
A heavy, mechanical presence answered—not with words, but with the slow hiss of rotating servos.
DRAG… DRUG…
Metallic footsteps pressed into the red sand, each impact echoing long and hollow, announcing the arrival of something no longer fully human.
From within a veil of dust, the silhouette of a tattered, hooded figure slowly emerged—its torn cloak fluttering in the wind, partially concealing a mechanical body of cracked metal beneath. It did not hurry, as though time itself no longer held meaning for it.
DRAG… DRUG…
The unseen viewpoint lowered toward the desert floor. Grains of sand trembled with every heavy step that struck the ground. In the distance, atop the steep cliff, the woman in black and white stood unmoving, the wind continuing to whip her flowing garments in the glow of twilight.
The mechanical steps halted several meters behind her. The wind curled softly, lifting red dust into the air.
The woman did not turn. She simply said, quietly,
"Let's go."
For a moment, the world seemed to hold its breath.
Then—one final step slammed down in front of the camera.
DRUG—
Sand exploded outward, and the screen plunged instantly into total darkness.
Silence.
Only the fading echo of the desert wind remained, swirling between lifeless stones—before everything vanished into perfect black.
***