Chapter 760: [Final Event] [Blood Moon Festival] [End]

-Spurt!!

Time seemed to slow as the blade punched into my chest.

Cold metal split bone. The impact tore the breath out of me and a hot flood of blood burst from my mouth. My head jerked down in disbelief, then lifted with effort.

Kleines stood there, arm extended, face carved in ice, his eyes flat.

"You’ve done enough destruction to my birthplace, monster," he said, voice as cold as his gaze.

My hand moved on instinct.

I grabbed his wrist, fingers digging into the one clutching the hilt of the knife—white, ceremonial, delicate in shape, utterly wrong buried in my chest. For a second, I thought I could force it back out.

Kleines twisted it deeper.

"...!"

My breath caught in my throat. My eyes went wide.

It wasn’t just pain.

Something inside me tore.

The white blade began to glow, faint at first, then brighter. Golden runes engraved along its length flickered to life, one by one, until the whole knife pulsed with light.

Something was getting sucked out of me. I felt it—like my very core being pulled through a pinhole.

No!!.

I tried to push back with everything left, but my body felt heavy, sluggish, emptying. The more I fought, the faster it slipped away. Wrath didn’t answer. Mana didn’t answer. My fingers trembled uselessly around his wrist.

Kleines twisted again.

"This is over," he said.

Light swallowed the knife.

"Agghh—!!!"

The scream ripped out of me as if it was the only thing I had left. Pain didn’t just stab; it burrowed. It clawed through marrow and nerves, sank teeth into places nothing should touch. It felt like hands were inside my chest, ripping out the parts that were me and dragging them along the blade.

Golden runes crawled off the knife and onto my skin.

They spread down my arms, over my shoulders, coiling around my ribs, my throat, my jaw. Each one seared into place like molten metal, burning into flesh slowly. My face twisted; I couldn’t even close my mouth to bite the pain back. All I could do was stare, eyes wide, as the light branded its way across my body.

The agony stretched time.

Every second felt like a minute. Every inch the runes traveled felt like a lifetime. I wanted it to stop. I wanted it to end.

The marks finished their circuit.

Then they moved.

All at once, the runes began to slide—peeling off my skin like molten gold, flowing up and down at the same time. Lines of light crawled over my limbs and chest, converging toward the wound, each symbol detaching from me and sinking back into the blade that had birthed it.

With every mark that left, I felt something else vanish.

Mana. Gone.

Wrath. Gone.

Sloth. Gone.

Every presence, every familiar weight I had carried inside me for so long was ripped free, leaving only raw, echoing hollowness. Even Nemesis slipped away, her existence torn from mine as easily as breath in winter.

Empty.

Completely, utterly empty.

"F—Father!!!"

Christina’s voice reached me through the haze, high and broken. Footsteps pounded behind me, several sets, rushing closer.

Kleines’s eyes flicked past my shoulder.

He yanked the knife free.

-Spurt!!

Blood gushed out, hot and thick, soaking my shirt, spilling between my fingers as I dropped to one knee, then the other. The world tilted. My hand pressed instinctively against the hole in my chest, but there was nothing there for mana to answer, no power to stem the flow.

"Don’t come closer, Christina!" Kleines shouted.

"N–No! Why did you stab him?! He needs treatment!" Christina’s voice cracked, raw with panic.

"I told you he isn’t Amael!"

"K–Kleines... what are you doing..." Alea’s voice trembled, somewhere behind her.

"Observe it."

My vision blurred.

I stared down at my hand pressed against my chest.

Cracks traced across my skin, thin white lines spreading from my fingers, racing up my forearm. It looked like porcelain starting to break, each fracture glowing faintly from within. Blood seeped between them, dripping down in slow, heavy drops from my wrist.

I felt light.

Not in a good way.

Hollow. As if someone had scooped me out from the inside and left only this shell kneeling in a pool of its own blood.

No mana. No Wrath. No Sloth. No Nemesis.

Nothing.

Just me—and I wasn’t sure what that was without all the rest.

Breath rasped in my throat as I forced my head up.

Over my shoulder, I saw it—a white rectangular box a short distance away. The same one Jack Rengel had brought with him. Its surface was smooth, almost featureless, waiting.

Kleines walked toward it with measured steps, the ceremonial knife still glowing faintly in his hand. He knelt beside the box, ignoring the hands that tried to grab his arm, the voices calling his name.

He stabbed the white knife into it.

For a heartbeat, nothing happened.

Then the box pulsed.

Once.

The blade embedded in it lit up, golden light flaring from the runes along its length. That glow spilled over, sliding onto the surface of the box like liquid sunlight. Symbols began to etch themselves into the white material, lines of runes spreading in every direction.

-THUD!

The ground trembled beneath my knees.

-THUD!

The pulsation came again, stronger this time. The runes multiplied, wrapping the entire box in intricate patterns, every new line burning itself into existence with relentless precision.

-THUD!

Each beat was faster than the last, a heartbeat gone mad. The earth shook in time with it, dust raining down from broken stone, loose rubble jittering and hopping with every deep, resonant thrum.

"Fall back," Kleines said.

The others instinctively stepped back.

I sucked in ragged breaths, watching stupidly, emptily. Thoughts wouldn’t line up. Everything that had just happened—everything that had been ripped out of me—left only a dull, echoing space where my mind should’ve been.

All I could do was stare and wait for whatever came next.

The thrumming stopped.

-Crack!

A thin fracture split across the white box’s surface.

-Crack! Crack! Crack!

More fissures spread in a spiderweb, racing over every side. In seconds, the entire box was nothing but a shell of crumbling lines. Light bled through them—amber and blinding—before it burst outward all at once.

A wave of radiance crashed over us.

The white material of the box exploded, dissolving into dust and shards that vanished inside the glare. I squinted, eyes watering, vision washed out in gold.

When the light finally faded, I forced my eyes open—and froze.

A young man lay there, naked on the broken stone glowing with amber liquid.

Snow-white hair.

Spotless skin.

But his face...

It was mine.

Not exactly. Softer. Finer. His features carried more of Alea, and even a shadow of Kleines. Familiar and unfamiliar at the same time, as if someone had taken my reflection and corrected it to its ’proper’ version.

"...!"

Alea’s and Christina’s eyes flew wide in perfect mirror.

Kleines summoned a white cloth with a flick of mana and walked forward with measured calm. He knelt, wrapped the boy gently in it. Then he turned toward Alea, a soft smile ghosting over his lips.

"Amael," he said. "Our son."

I looked at the boy again.

Amael.

He seemed a year or two younger than me, his frame still carrying the last traces of adolescence—but everything in him screamed him. The Amael who should have been. The one this world had been waiting for.

How...?

How was that possible?

Alea stepped forward on trembling legs. Halfway there, her knees buckled and she dropped before him, arms gathering Amael against her chest like she was afraid he’d vanish if she loosened her hold.

His brows twitched.

Slowly, his eyelids fluttered open, revealing deep amber eyes. They focused on Alea’s face, adjusting, anchoring.

"M–Mother..." He whispered, voice weak and soft, gentler than mine had ever been.

"...!"

Tears slid down Alea’s cheeks in silent streams. She stared at him in shock, then turned her wet gaze toward Kleines.

"W–What have you done...?" She asked, voice shaking.

"I brought back our son," he replied. "Our true son, without a parasite from another world."

His eyes flicked to me as he said it.

Everyone’s gaze followed.

Amael clung weakly to Alea’s clothes, breathing shallow and unsteady, but present and real.

"He remembers everything that happened until he was parasitized two years ago," Kleines said coldly.

Two years ago.

The time I awakened Nyrel Loyster’s memories. The time Aurora broke the engagement.

Parasited.

So that’s what they called it.

I never asked for this. Never asked to be here. Never asked to take his place. None of it had ever been my choice.

"Edward!!"

Milleia’s voice cracked as she broke into a run toward me—only to be yanked back. Jayden’s hand clamped around her arm, holding her in place.

"W–What are you doing, Jayden?! E–Edward! He needs help!" She cried, trying to wrench free.

"Don’t you see it, Milleia?" He shot back, eyes never leaving me. "It’s over for him."

"...!"

Milleia flinched, turning to look at me. Her lips trembled, but no sound came out.

Alea stroked Amael’s hair with a tenderness I had never once seen directed at me, not like this. Every motion was gentle, devout, as if she were touching something sacred. Kleines stood over them, expression softening with quiet pride as he watched.

"Ugh—"

Blood filled my mouth as I coughed, body jerking. Christina snapped out of her daze first, eyes flying to me.

"Hey!!"

She tore herself away from the others and rushed in my direction—but Kleines’s hand shot out and caught her by the wrist.

"What are you doing, Christina? Your brother is here," he said.

Christina shook her head, tears already spilling down her cheeks.

"W–What are you saying? He... he is—"

"Enough," I cut in.

My voice came out rough, thinner than I’d expected, but it carried.

They all turned toward me.

Slowly, I lifted my hand to my neck.

Two necklaces hung there.

The first: a chain bearing a black coin—the one Alea had given to Amael before sending him to Celesta, to seal his bloodline.

The second: the Olphean Emblem, that same emblem she’d entrusted to me.

Both gifts.

Both meant for him.

My fingers closed around them. The skin across my hand cracked further, lines deepening as the simple motion tugged at ruined flesh.

I tore them from my neck.

The chain snapped with a dry, brittle sound.

Without looking away from Alea and the boy in her arms, I threw the necklaces toward them.

Seeing both necklaces land there, Alea flinched and turned her gaze toward me.

She gently laid Amael on the ground, as if even the air might hurt him, then pushed herself unsteadily to her feet, hesitation in every step.

"I am not your son," I said. "And I am not your brother."

"N–No, that’s—"

"Don’t deny it," I cut Christina off. "Otherwise nothing like that would have happened."

"I–It may be true..." Christina whispered, yanking her arm free from Kleines’s grasp. "T–That unconsciously I might have treated you differently, and I knew deep down you weren’t my brother, but..." She bit her lip, tears streaming down her cheeks. "After a year... I can’t treat you like a stranger. You’re important to me, so please—"

"Christina! I showed you his true colors!" Kleines shouted.

"It wasn’t him!" Christina’s voice snapped, louder than his. "I–I know it wasn’t him!" She looked straight at me. "He isn’t like that!"

"You don’t know anything, Christina. Look at what he has caused around you. He is the one responsible for that," Kleines said.

"S–Still..." Christina clenched her fists so tightly her knuckles turned white. "I refuse to believe it. He cared and loved us like his true family," she said, turning to Alea. "He saved you, Mother, putting his life in danger!"

Alea’s eyes shimmered.

"H–He saved me too. Without him, I... I don’t know if I would have held it together this year. So I am accepting you, Nyrel," she said, taking a step toward me. "Y–You can’t just leave us—leave me after talking an important place in my heart—"

Kleines’s hand shot out and caught her arm again.

I watched them with a dull, distant gaze and then looked down at my right hand.

Cracks ran across it, widening. Porcelain lines glowed faintly under my skin as fragments began to crumble away into dust. My fingers lost strength. Trinity Nihil slipped from my grasp and fell, the blade stabbing into the ground with a hollow sound.

"My family is dead," I said slowly, feeling the fractures spread over my whole body. "My true father and my true mother died. And I had one younger sister. She died as well."

They weren’t strong.

They weren’t royals.

They were as ordinary as any Earthlings.

But I loved them more than anything.

Christina stared at me, lips trembling, tears spilling faster.

There was no need for explanations. No need to understand anything.

One look at me should have been enough. My body was literally coming apart. I was finished.

"I naively thought I had a family here. That was my mistake," I said, lowering my gaze.

"N–No..." Christina choked out, shaking her head.

"It’s too late anyway," I replied, the words came out cold and dry.

I lifted my eyes to the sky of Central Vedelia.

Dawn was coming. Pale morning light crept over the ruined city, soft and indifferent.

I am sorry, everyone.

Ephera...

I really thought I could find you again. I really believed I could. But in the end, I failed. How pathetic of me—when you, of all people, were the one who proved that life could still mean something even after my entire family had died. You were the first spark in that endless darkness... and I still couldn’t reach you.

Cleenah...

I promised you—promised myself—that I would find you again. That I would come back stronger, worthy enough for you to accept me. I fought, I endured everything just to be able to stand in front of you without shame. But here I am, unable to keep even that simple wish.

Persephone...

I’m sorry. Cleenah once told me that even if I did find her, she wouldn’t accept me—not because she didn’t love me, but because of how pathetically weak I was. Back then I didn’t understand. Now I do. A little too late, apparently.

Nevia...

I didn’t even get the chance to speak to Celeste about her or see her again through her eyes. I thought the day finally I would see you finally together. My love for Celeste had only exponentially rose once I knew for sure she was Nevia’s Vessel but...everything just slipped past me now.

Layla...

I promised her I wouldn’t die. That was one promise I truly wanted to keep. And here I am, breaking it like all the others. She wanted to form a family and I really wished it. I’m sorry.

Alvara...

She always hated seeing me spiral and sad because of that damn Prophecy. She always told me to live and stand proud. In her own way she comforted me. But in the end... it unfolded exactly the way it was written.

Elizabeth...

I freed her from Sloth. I wanted her to live however you wished, to start a new life without any burden and dark memories crushing her. How stupidly optimistic of me. But Daleliah and Sandor should be with her now, so maybe—just maybe—it should be safe. At worst, Alicia would be here, I could trust her on that.

Annabelle... Samara...

By now, both of them should have reclaimed bodies of their own—actual bodies of flesh and warmth. I wanted so badly to see the results, just once. But at least I can die knowing they will get the normal life they deserved more than anyone.

Aunt Belle...

Funny, isn’t it? Out of everyone... she was the one who accepted everything about me. More than Alea, more than Kleines. Even after learning the whole ugly truth, she still saw me as me. I wanted to thank her properly. I guess I won’t get to do that either.

I really hope she becomes a good mother figure for Tihana and Orlin. Someone better than I ever was. I wasn’t exactly a model father—not even close.

Even Freyja crossed my mind in these last moments.

I promised to free her body... yet I couldn’t even manage that. Another promise snapped in half.

But I do wish you will get back your true body Freyja, in all honesty.

Looking back on it now... I didn’t do anything but dig my own grave since the moment I arrived in this world. Over and over again. Every choice, every path, every ’victory’... they all led me here.

And after everything I’ve done, this world is only going to fall into deeper danger once the Third Game begins. But... John and Eric are still here. Rodolf, Cylien... they’ll handle it. They’re better than me—better people, better heroes.

Cracks crawled slowly across my skin. My vision dimmed, colors fading into smudges and shadows. The last thing I saw was Christina sprinting toward me, horror twisting her face... and Milleia’s trembling hands reaching out.

So this is how it ends.

Just like the Game.

The [Main Antagonist] of the [Second Game] huh.

That’s who I became in the end.

Maybe... maybe dying really is the right ending for someone like me after everything I had done.

I just wished—just once, at the very end—

....someone would hold me and tell me it was okay.