"Ah…"

Azriel let out a weak, broken sound before clamping a hand over his mouth.

'No…'

He bit down hard on his lip, his body shuddering, trembling.

'Pol… Pollux…!'

Something dark churned inside his chest, swirling like tar around his heart.

'…Bastard! That bastard..! That rotten bastard! How could he do such a thing!?'

He bit down harder until blood welled and ran over his lips, but he didn't care.

The Marquis's voice broke the silence.

"…What was I supposed to do after knowing the truth?"

His words came out hollow—like a man already dead, a man who had long since surrendered.

Empty, defeated, drained of everything.

Azriel coughed, wet with blood, and grimaced.

'…The air… it's strange.'

But he had no time to dwell on it. The Grandmaster's voice came again:

"I gave up…"

Azriel's gaze rose to meet his eyes, and what he saw there made his chest tighten—despair, loathing, like nothing left but the ashes of bones.

"What else could I do when I stood before him? Everything… everything was meaningless in the end. So the one, single thing I thought still held meaning… I did."

He bent down and picked up a small branch from the ground.

"I went past the village. I stepped into the Forest of Eternity itself. I walked willingly into the spell… to be with her until the end."

Snap—!

The branch broke clean in two.

"Only for him to curse me—curse me so that I could never be touched by the Forest of Eternity."

"…!"

"I could enter and leave as I pleased. Without harm. Without consequence."

The Marquis lifted his eyes to Azriel.

"I thought, like a fool, that he was blessing me. That he was granting me a gift—that this was his way of saying, find her… see her… be with her. But no matter how far I walked… no matter how long I wandered… I never found her body."

Something twisted in Azriel's gut. Something foul. Disgust. Pure, nauseating disgust. It bubbled inside him until he thought he might rip open his own stomach to claw it out. He coughed again.

"When I finally understood how I had been played, he came to me once more. He said, 'You did not deserve her. So you will never see her again.' And then he placed a punishment on me. He said I would repent by carrying an object he gave me until the day I died. He... knew about the future. He told me of the revolutionaries, and of the royal army. He told me to hold both the King of Ismyr and the Supreme Leader at a stalemate… until my last breath. That is the only reason neither has gained the upper hand. My presence has kept the scales balanced…"

His head dropped, hanging loose as his shoulders sank. When he spoke again, his voice was more hoarse than it had ever been—like stone grinding against stone.

"…Everything is my fault."

'No…'

He stifled another cough, lowered his gaze, and scooped a double handful of dirt. He clenched until it bled out between his fingers and silted back to the ground like ash.

"…It's not your fault."

He said it softly. The Marquis lifted his head a fraction. Azriel met his eyes with a sorrowful steadiness.

"None of this is your fault. What happened to you is unjust—unfair. You can't blame yourself for this. You… you didn't give up. You tried your best, and it backfired. I'm sorry for what I said. I shouldn't have—"

The Marquis shook his head, cutting him off.

"You acted with the knowledge you had. And because of my choices, my daughter made you suffer. You have every right to hate me, and nothing to apologize for. Only I do. If only I'd chosen a different path, tried harder… simply been there for her the way a father should have… all of this might have been prevented."

"...."

Azriel fell silent. A breeze breathed through the trees, and a longer quiet settled between them.He couldn't argue—because he didn't know. Perhaps no matter what the Marquis did, all of this had always been inevitable.

With a long, exhausted sigh, the Marquis said,

"I had pieced together most of it while watching you for a while. But I needed to know one thing."

Azriel looked up. The Marquis's eyes shone, on the edge of breaking.

"In her final moments… did she cry?"

Azriel's mouth curved, just barely, and he shook his head.

"No. She smiled. She went peacefully—without suffering."

Another sigh slipped from the Marquis's lips.

Azriel coughed blood again.

"It seems staying close to me is harming your body faster than I thought," the Marquis murmured.

Azriel frowned. No aura pressed on him now, and yet nausea tugged at his insides.

Before he could ask, the Marquis spoke again.

"Across the Blue Waters… is there truly more? We've always believed it was an endless blue, or the end of the world. But you're not from here. You're from somewhere far, far away. Does that mean there is more?"

Azriel hesitated, then answered,

"Yes. There's much more. So much that even I can't comprehend it. Exploring everything in this world is a speck of dust on something endless."

The Marquis closed his eyes.

"I always dreamed, as a child, of sailing beyond the Blue Waters."

"…You still can."

He couldn't. Azriel knew that—because none of this was real. But he couldn't bring himself to say it.

The Marquis chuckled—more laughter than he'd managed in years, all in a single day. Then he looked at Azriel with a warm, gentle smile.

"I made a deal with the devil. The price isn't something I can repay here, where time is short."

Azriel's heartbeat quickened for reasons he couldn't name.

"After learning the truth, anger was all I had left. And when I still couldn't find her body—no matter how I searched—I needed another way. So I began shaping the second-best answer to end her suffering… alchemy."

"…Al… chemy?"

He nodded.

"I studied everything. Years and years. The village advanced with me. The plague—even he stood at my side, helping. All of it, to create the ultimate… poison."

Azriel's voice shook, as did his eyes.

"…What?"

"If I couldn't find her, I would kill the entire forest. I'd end everything and everyone in this damned place. Something so lethal no human—no matter how strong—could escape. When I became a Grandmaster, I learned I couldn't use void rifts or set my anchors. The spell he laid over this world prevents any human from entering the void realm at all. So I had to wait for them to come to me—for void rifts to open here. They fell asleep the instant they stepped foot in here. It took years, but at last I found it: a Dark Basilisk King."

Azriel's eyes flew wide.

'A Dark Basilisk… King?'

He had never heard of such a variant. The name alone told him enough—and still the shock didn't blunt what came next.

"I took its body," the Marquis said quietly, "and brewed the ultimate poison—a death capable of erasing every form of life in this forest. Every tree. Every animal. Every void creature. Every human. My daughter—and even me. The entire south would become uninhabitable forever. The air alone would kill anyone, even dozens more to the south inside the black circle."

He swallowed.

"But…"

His hand tightened into a fist. When he spoke again, his voice cracked.

"I couldn't do it. I couldn't kill my own daughter."

He looked at Azriel with gratitude.

"Thank you… for taking the responsibility I couldn't."

Azriel opened his mouth, closed it again, and coughed. His heart hammered loud enough to drown the wind. Every nerve went on alert; a bad premonition crawled up his spine.

"…My penance for my sins will be far too little if it's judged while I live," the Marquis said.

"So I must beg her forgiveness while paying for them for the rest of eternity… in death."

"No…" Azriel's voice shook harder than before.

"Don't tell me you—"

"The poison won't kill you yet. You're close, but not there. It'll hurt you, weaken you… but by tomorrow it will turn the air itself lethal for the others."

Azriel lurched to his feet, panic burning through him as he wiped the blood from his lips.

"No. No, no—You're messing with me! There's no way you did that!"

"I took it when you fell unconscious," the Marquis said calmly.

"It has been killing me from the inside, and I haven't resisted. It's deep enough now that nothing can help. I'll die tonight no matter what. My storage necklace still holds many high-grade healing potions. They'll cure the side effects you've taken on by staying close to me. I… I apologize for everything."

Azriel crashed into him, tackling him to the ground. He tore the simple chain from the man's neck—the storage necklace—and, seconds later, yanked out a vial, uncorked it, and pressed it to the Marquis's lips.

"Drink!"

"I told you alread—"

"I don't give a fucking damn what you said!" Azriel shouted.

The Marquis only looked at him, oddly serene.

"You think I want you to die like this!? That your daughter would want this!?" Azriel's chest heaved.

"If you're so desperate to atone, then drink—and help me! Help me take down the royal family and the revolutionaries! Help me with Pollux! That's what your daughter would want!"

The Marquis smiled.

"There's no point. What you're trying to do is impossible. It's all meaningless and hopeless—especially if you plan to fight him."

Azriel clenched his teeth.

"The necklace holds another single vial of the same poison," the Marquis went on.

"It can kill both the Supreme Leader and the king. Everything in there is yours now."

"Like hell it is! Like hell any of it is!" Azriel snapped.

"You think death will judge you!? She won't! You're using it as an excuse to run from your misery! And even if you die, trust me—she seems to be more miserable than any of us! She won't give a damn about you! You won't find salvation there!"

"…I don't seek salvation."

Azriel's eyes were bloodshot.

'Fuck! Fuck! How do I get through to this suicidal idiot!?'

The Marquis coughed. Blood sprayed Azriel's cheek—and sizzled. A crawling, corrosive burn skated across his skin.

Azriel's eyes flew wide. He rolled off the Marquis and hit the dirt, nearly striking a dead bird, as pain bloomed hot and savage across his face. He threw ice through his soul veins, flooding his skin with cold. The moment he used his ice affinity, sharp pain lanced through his body, but he forced more mana, cooling himself down in ragged bursts.

'Shit… his blood is melting my face.'

How lethal had he made that poison?

Though Azriel had oddly enough adapted to most levels of pain, burning his skin was still something that hurt him—a lot.

"I'm sorry…" the Marquis whispered.

Hands to his face, Azriel turned. The Marquis lay on his back, staring up.

"At this pace, I'll die by tonight," he said softly.

"And that only makes things harder for you, it seems. I don't want anyone else to suffer because I keep on living."

Azriel pulled his hands away. Blood slicked his cheek; skin sloughed in wet curls to reveal raw flesh.

"The supreme leader is..."

Pain snarled in his nerves.

"...Prince Lykos."

'Huh..?'

"...!"

"Wait—don't!"

Before Azriel could move, the Marquis lifted his hand… and drove it into his own chest.

Azriel froze. Thought, breath, everything stopped.

The Marquis drew his arm back out. In his palm, his heart beat weakly, blotched with spreading violet. His sleeve slipped to his elbow, exposing more purple marbling all along his skin. The heart slipped from his fingers and thudded to the dirt. His arm fell limp.

He kept looking up—kept looking—never blinking again at the cloudy sky.

The Marquis was dead.

The strongest Grandmaster in this world was dead.

Marquis Maxime Rossweth was, at last, dead.

.

.

.

.

Azriel just looked. He knelt beside the body, ignoring the pain. The acrid reek of poison seeped into the air. He stared—

.

.

.

.

—and his breath came in shaky bursts, in and out, faster and faster.

.

.

.

.

His left hand pressed to his knee. His right flattened to the dirt. Ringing flooded his ears.Then he began to claw at the ground, fingers burrowing into the soil—without realizing his left hand was doing the same to his own thigh...

He kept clawing. Kept digging. Kept clawing.

'Dammit! Dammit! Dammit! Dammit! Dammit! Dammit! Dammit! DAMMIT! DAMMIT! DAMMIT!! DAMMIT—!!!'

"DAMMIT!"

He stopped. Another tremor of breath shuddered out of him. When he spoke, his voice was raw and hoarse.

"…I don't want to lose."

Pain lanced through him as he shaped a shovel of ice in his right hand. In his left, he formed a knife of ice.

"...I can't lose."

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