"Hehehehe~ well, come down here, you God! What's wrong? I'm still waiting!"
Noa's laughter, jagged and wild like a serrated blade scraping against stone, echoed through the hollowed-out ribs of the city-state. It was a sound that should have provoked the heavens, a challenge hurled at the silent stars, but there was no answer. The sky remained a bruised purple, and the silence that followed was heavy—not the peace of a concluded war, but the oppressive, ringing quiet of a grave.
Then, the world tilted.
Thud!
"Ouch!"
A sharp impact struck the back of his head, sending a jolt of pain through his skull. It wasn't the bone-shattering strike of an enemy seeking a kill; it was a rhythmic, pointed blow that carried a strange, prickly affection.
Noa turned his head slowly, his neck creaking like rusted iron. A smile, warmer and softer than the predatory one he had moments ago, began to bloom on his face as his chin drifted over his shoulder.
"Shut up, you idiot. There's no god or heaven up there. The word 'god' is just a title," Vionette said.
She stood there like an anchor in the shifting tides of chaos, one hand perched on her hip, her gaze sweeping over the wreckage with the bored elegance of a queen inspecting a messy kitchen.
Thud!
As if her arrival was the final signal his body had been waiting for, Noa's legs gave out. He fell to the ground, a puppet with its strings severed. He remained conscious, his eyes fixed on the darkening sky, but he was immovable—a broken monument of flesh and spent Aether. Blood continued to seep from his pores, staining the dust-choked earth a deep crimson. Beside him, Acheron lay silent, its dark metal humming with the fading echoes of the dragon. Above them, the violet serpent that had devoured a goddess's will dissolved into the clouds, leaving behind nothing but the scent of ozone.
Vionette stepped closer, her shadow falling over his face like a cool shroud. She tapped his cheek with the tip of her heel—once, then twice—a playful, rhythmic measurement of his remaining life.
"You look awful like that," she murmured, her head tilting slightly as a teasing smile played on her lips. "But somehow, with a cheat, we won anyway."
No reply came from the man in the dirt. Noa's eyes remained wide, his pupils reflecting the silhouette of the woman standing over him. He didn't even blink, as if afraid that closing his eyes would make this moment—and her—vanish. Finally, his lips moved, his voice a mere rasp against the wind.
"…I can… see under your dres—kwak!"
This time, it wasn't a light tap. A sharp, decisive kick from her heel sent his face skidding toward the other side, his unstable jaw clacking shut.
"Ask if you want to look," she said, her eyes lowering to a half-lid, her arms folding over her chest. "Don't peek, you moron."
Despite her words, she lowered herself to the ground. Her midnight-black dress, hemmed with threads of deep crimson, pooled around her like the petals of a bleeding rose against the ashen earth. With a flick of her wrist, a surge of Aether rippled through rich fabric, repelling the grime of the battlefield instantly. She reached down, her fingers sliding through his hair, before she guided his heavy head onto the soft, firm rest of her thighs.
"Heal up," she whispered, her tone softening into something that might have been mistaken for a lullaby. "We have more than enough time before the vultures arrive."
…
Moments later,
Noa was now healed on the outside, the jagged tears in his skin having knit back together into smooth, pale surface. His Aether was still recovering drop by drop, but the clothes provided by Nymira's shop had been miraculously restored by his Aether. He looked less like a man who had just dismantled a city's soul and more like a weary traveler resting at the end of a long road.
"Yea, that Null Essence thingy inside your body... it was the reason for your regeneration ability even without a formal skill," A faint, uncharacteristic blush touched her cheeks, a splash of rose against porcelain. "And most possibly the reason for this... good-looking body of yours."
"So I was using negative emotions as just a pathway to channel that unstable energy out, but now I can just directly access the source?" Noa asked, his head still resting heavily on her lap.
"On the topic of negative emotions," she said, her gaze shifting toward a pool of shadow nearby. "I think that thing is about to complete its transformation."
Noa pushed himself up, his muscles protestingly rigid. They waited, two survivors watching the birth of a third. On the ground, the entity—the black, fluid mass that had been an 'It'—began to churn. It was a viscous, obsidian lake that refused to reflect the sun, shimmering with a mind of its own.
Slowly, the fluid rose. It didn't just grow; it sculpted itself, a masterwork of shadow turning into substance. The liquid solidified into slender limbs and an athletic frame, the surface rippling until it settled into the form of a girl, perhaps eighteen years of age, standing roughly 168 centimeters tall.
The sunlight caught the white strands of her hair as they manifested. It was gathered into a side ponytail that rested over her right shoulder, the stark white fading into a soft, luminous violet at the tips—like a cloud caught in the glow of a setting sun. Her bangs fell naturally, framing a face that was both terrifyingly new and hauntingly familiar.
She tilted her head, her movements possessing the fluid, unsettling grace of a predator testing a new skin. Her eyes were the true anomaly. In the purple iris of the left, a sharp diamond-shaped pupil sat; in the right, a distinct heart. Both were black as ink, simple yet unnervingly out of place, moving with a sharp curiosity as she observed the world.
She examined her attire with the same detached wonder. A sleeveless, off-white vest hugged her torso, its clean lines broken by black piping that traced her frame. Over it, a cropped, black jacket draped asymmetrically; the right sleeve reached her wrist, while the left stopped abruptly at her mid-bicep. She flexed her fingers, noting the contrast between the long white glove on her right hand and the short black one on her left, where a dark sigil tattoo sat above it, quietly against her skin like a brand of chaos.
Her gaze followed the lines of her mismatched legs—the left encased in a dark, grounding thigh-high stocking with a buckled strap, the right in a knee-length stocking made of a translucent, lilac-white material that seemed to catch the light.
She tilted her head again, a fleeting, playful thought dancing behind those strange eyes.
"I look… ridiculous?" she said.
It wasn't a complaint, but a discovery. She let out a quiet, amused breath, a sound that carried the weight of a thousand suppressed emotions.
Her boots shifted against the cracked stone—the right one buckled at the ankle, the left plain. Her hands reached for the mask resting at her waist. It was a stark, bone-white object: one eye curved upward in a manic smile, the other closed in a permanent, weeping sorrow with a single tear marked beneath it. The mouth was a jagged, bleeding grin of dark ink. She held it for a moment, comparing the frozen chaos of the mask to the burgeoning life in her own chest, before letting it clatter back against her hip.
She touched the single dangling gem earring on her left side, catching a glint of the dying sun.
For the first time, the colors of her world didn't fade. The void had been forced to stay, and the entity that had been a hollow hunger was now overflowing with the messy, vibrant heat of human emotion.
A Fool who changed masks faster than thoughts had been born.
"She's created according to your thoughts, right? Why did you make it a female?" Vionette asked, her eyes narrowing into a suspicious, sharp glint as she looked at Noa.
"I'd rather see a beautiful woman than a muscular man if I have to look at her every day," Noa said, rolling his shoulders and closing his eyes as if the logic were undeniable. "Though I didn't expect her to look so... young."
Hearing their voices, the girl on the ground lifted her head. Her diamond and heart pupils locked onto the two people standing before her. Then, with a sudden, feline speed—
Grab!
"Huh?"
Noa looked down. The girl had lunged forward, wrapping her arms around his legs in a tight, kneeling embrace. She looked up at him, her purple eyes sparkling with a faint, crystalline light. Her pink lips moved, forming a word that hit the air with the force of an explosion.
"D… dad?"
Noa froze. His mind, which had calculated battle strategies at lightning speed, simply stopped working. Beside him, Vionette's posture shattered, her cool exterior evaporating in an instant.
"D-dad!?" Noa shouted, his voice cracking. "Why are you calling me dad? And get off me!"
"Well… if you like, you can call me mom then," Vionette interrupted.
Her face was a deep, burning crimson, and she covered her lips with a fist, her eyes darting toward the horizon as if she could find an escape in the clouds.
"But you two said you weren't married," The girl said, tilting her head, her side ponytail swaying with the movement, her expression one of innocent, logical confusion.
"That… well… whatever," Vionette stammered, pointing a finger at Noa. "Just call me that if you're going to call him 'dad'. It's simple."
"MOM!"
Suddenly, the girl let go of Noa's legs and leaped. Like a cat pouncing on a toy, she wrapped her arms and legs around Vionette, her face buried in the woman's chest with a wide, triumphant smile.
"Get off! You're heavy!"
"Uh… sorry, I was just excited," she said, though she didn't let go immediately.
"Enough of that," Vionette said, finally prying the girl off and placing a firm hand on her head. The touch was authoritative, but the blush hadn't quite left her face. "Viselle... listen to me."
"Viselle?" the girl asked, blinking.
"Your name. It's Viselle from now on. Now, look over there." Vionette pointed toward the quiet, broken form of Jain. "Go and take that corpse. We have the aftermath to finish."
"Yea, then we can finally go back to Crimvane," Noa added, stepping closer to Vionette.
"Crimvane?" Viselle asked, her brow furrowing.
"It's called home, idiot. So just hurry up with that," Noa said, giving a dismissive thumb-flick toward the corpse. "And you better stop calling me 'dad' once we get there."
"…home…Okie!"
With a rhythmic, playful beat to her step, Viselle sprinted toward the fallen saint. Her hands waved with a childlike rhythm, and her white-and-violet ponytail danced behind her—a flash of vibrant life in a city that had forgotten how to breathe.
...
...
[Illustrations]