In the stream, Elysia's soft voice accompanied the unfolding story.
On screen, Kiana was frantically searching the lower level of the lab for the power room.
Room after room. Corner after corner.
Nothing.
"Why, why can't I find it?"
In the middle of her frantic search, Kiana found a few torn diary pages inside a safe room.
She looked at them, her fingers trembling slightly.
"Why isn't there any hint at all?"
But somewhere in the back of her mind, she sensed something. The child who had written these entries. The child who had been locked inside a safe room, desperately trying to escape to find their mother.
Just like her.
So she gave up searching, turned around, and ran back the way she had come as fast as her legs would carry her.
She needed to go back to Mom.
But when she reached the elevator, it was locked again.
The red warning box glowed coldly, as if mocking Kiana's futile efforts.
Kiana's tears finally broke through.
"No, please, no..."
At that moment, her communicator crackled to life.
Cecilia's gentle voice came through from the other end.
"Please forgive me, Kiana."
Kiana's head snapped up.
"Stay in the safe room like a good girl."
Cecilia's voice remained soft and gentle.
"If the entire lab gets blown apart, you'll still survive."
"The Second Herrscher... leave her to me."
"No! Please, no!"
Kiana shook her head desperately, tears streaming down her face. "I want to fight alongside you!"
"Trust me, Kiana."
Cecilia's voice was still gentle. "I'll defeat the Second Herrscher."
The line went dead.
And Kiana finally cried out the name she had always wanted to say but never dared to.
"I don't want you to leave me, Mom!"
But the only answer was the cold, flat tone of a disconnected line.
Kiana stood where she was, trembling from head to toe.
But she didn't fall. She clenched her fists tight.
After she calmed herself down, she found the backup key to the elevator.
The elevator rose, and she returned to the upper level of the lab.
Then she saw it.
Cecilia, collapsed on the floor.
Her silver hair was spread across the cold metal ground, and those gentle eyes were shut tight.
The Herrscher of the Void hovered in the air above her, gazing down at the body with a contemptuous smile.
Kiana's world shattered in that instant.
"Another one?"
The Herrscher of the Void turned to look at her. "Didn't expect to run into so many people today."
"You monster! Get away from my mother!"
"Your mother?"
The Herrscher raised an eyebrow and glanced down at Cecilia. "You mean the corpse at my feet?"
The breath left Kiana's lungs.
"Don't worry. I'll send you to meet her."
The Herrscher of the Void's attack came surging toward Kiana.
Kiana stood perfectly still. She didn't dodge. She stared at the figure on the ground, the one who would never wake again.
Something inside her broke.
She closed her eyes, and then...
"Huh?"
The attack never came.
Kiana opened her eyes again.
The Herrscher of the Void was gone. Everything around her was gone.
She was standing at the elevator entrance.
Kiana looked around in confusion. "The safe room?"
She looked down at her own hands.
"So... was everything that just happened a dream?"
The chat descended into chaos: "So is Cecilia still alive?!"
Kiana shook her head.
"I can't think about that right now."
Her eyes steadied with renewed resolve. "Mom is in danger. I have to go save her!"
This time she didn't waste effort looking for an elevator pass. She started searching for any other possible path.
And she found one.
A narrow passage, hidden in a crack in the wall.
The walls of the passage were covered in tiny scratch marks and crooked carvings, with the word "Mom" scratched over and over again in countless places.
Kiana went still.
This path had been dug out by that child. The child who had been locked in the safe room, desperately trying to escape to find their mother. The child who had written those diary entries.
She took a deep breath and crawled into the passage.
This time, she made it just in time.
When she reached the battlefield, Cecilia was still fighting.
She was wounded, breathing hard, but she was alive.
Kiana's tears nearly spilled over again, but she forced them back with everything she had.
"Lady Cecilia!" She rushed forward.
Mother and daughter fought side by side, and the Herrscher of the Void was pushed back, step by step.
In the end, that figure dissolved into motes of light and faded into the air.
"We won!"
Kiana jumped with excitement and spun around to throw her arms around Cecilia.
Then she froze.
Cecilia was watching her, a faint, rueful smile in her eyes.
"Didn't I tell you to stay in the safe room?"
Kiana's face went a little red, but she lifted her chin stubbornly.
"I had to protect you, Lady Cecilia!"
Cecilia looked at her without saying anything for two long seconds.
Then she smiled, the same warmth as always, but with something else woven into it now.
"Thank you," she said softly.
The chat finally let out a collective sigh of relief: "They won! They actually won!" "A mother-daughter team is absolutely unbeatable!" "Sobbing, at least it's not a gut punch this time."
On the way to pursue the Herrscher of the Void, the two of them passed through laboratory after laboratory.
The children who had been kept there had all met the same end: sacrificed as weapons. Monsters corrupted by Honkai energy, stripped of themselves.
Cecilia looked in silence at those twisted forms.
Kiana fell silent too.
Then her eyes landed on a test tube.
It was labeled: 51 Sirin.
"This is the Second Herrscher's name."
Cecilia walked over and stood looking at the tube. "So that's it. The Second Herrscher was a victim of this place too."
Kiana stood there, struck still.
The Second Herrscher. The one who had nearly killed Mom. The one who had nearly destroyed everything.
Was also a child who had been locked in this lab and subjected to something no human being should endure.
Then Kiana noticed Theresa standing beside her, as if she had appeared there without a sound.
"Theresa! You took forever to get back! The Second Herrscher's already been beaten, by me and Lady Cecilia!"
Theresa looked at her with a completely blank expression.
"What are you talking about, Kiana?"
She blinked. "There's no one here but me."
The smile on Kiana's face froze.
"That's impossible, ha..."
Kiana laughed awkwardly. "Cecilia, she's right here beside me, she's..."
She turned her head.
No one was there.
No Cecilia. No battlefield.
No Babylon Lab.
Only the central church, deep beneath St. Freya Academy.
"How did you even get in here, Kiana?"
Theresa walked over and took her by the hand. "Come on, let's get you back."
Kiana didn't move.
She stared at that empty space.
At the place where Cecilia should have been standing.
At the place that had never existed at all.