Oh, and what a rise it was—
not just fists flying and lightning cracking,
but souls screaming with purpose reborn.
---
Ian, the storm of fury now calmed, gripped his sword tighter—not with rage, but resolve.
> "I'm my father's legacy. Not his mistake."
His slash manipulation became precise—no longer wild fury, but focused justice.
With each strike, he undid the shame, reclaiming his name.
---
Charles, finally out of stasis, coded a glowing rune into the very air.
The Empowerment Rune, pulsing with logic and love, glowed brighter than the Nicronian sun.
> "You're not weak," it whispered to everyone,
"You're just waking up."
All of them felt it—
The mental fog lifted, their bodies lightened. Their Avia surged.
---
Yyvone, once abandoned, now stood as protector.
She raised both hands, and from her palms, golden barriers erupted like blooming wings.
Dozens of Ghouls slammed into them—trapped.
> "You don't get to twist the world anymore."
She didn't save them because they deserved it.
She saved them because she was worth it.
---
Sonia, despite the ache in her chest, used the spectrum of her own emotions—hurt, hope, doubt, resilience—and poured it into the Nicronians.
They wept. They knelt. They remembered.
And for the first time, their souls were their own again.
> "You don't need to understand me," Sonia whispered,
"But I'll help you understand yourselves."
---
Osei Jerry was a blur, a beast of motion and precision.
Virj and Rix tried everything—deception, brute force, illusions—
But Osei?
He dodged them all with instinctual grace and rage turned to rhythm.
> "This isn't for revenge."
"This is because I finally know who I am."
He didn't need to justify himself to the dead—he honored them by fighting for the living.
---
Kennedy, meanwhile, was a glitch in the battlefield.
With a single smirk, he made several Ghouls move in two frames per second—like broken characters in a corrupted video file.
> "How's it feel… to be out-animated?"
He didn't just fight—he directed.
---
And then—the climax.
The sky cracked.
Jack's eyes turned silver.
His voice echoed with the weight of decisions made.
"Now."
A spiral of divine lightning arced across the heavens.
But it wasn't alone—Henry, with a grin of his own, fed the charge.
His electricity wove into Jack's divine current, amplifying it, stabilizing it, perfecting it.
> "Let's light this world back up."
The bolt hit every Ghoul left on the battlefield.
Seared. Purged. Sealed.
The skies cleared.
The ground steadied.
Nicron pulsed back to life.
The corrupted energy in the air dissipated—replaced by hope.
Not loud. Not dramatic.
But quietly undeniable.
---
They stood, not as legends yet—
But as the ones who chose not to fall.
> Together, they proved that power is not the absence of pain—
But the refusal to let pain define you.
The silence after battle is rarely quiet.
It hums with grief and triumph, like a wound healing under sunlight.
The students stood still, hearts pounding with the echo of combat—
when the sky peeled open once more,
and Redan emerged like a nightmare too proud to die quietly.
---
His eyes burned with cruel calm, his voice as slick as venom on silk.
> "You fought well," he said.
"Too well. So now... you get the second gift of pain."
He turned his gaze, not to Jack, not to Charles or Osei or even the warrior Sonia—
But straight at Ian.
> "Eve Maid.
She's been taken."
"And she's seen the truth."
The way he said it—like truth was a blade she now wields, whether she wants to or not.
Like her mind wasn't hers anymore.
Ian's breath caught.
A memory surged—her laugh, her eyes, the way she talked about stories of old champions as if they were bedtime tales.
Gone.
Redan didn't wait for despair to fully form.
He just smirked—like he'd thrown a match into a library—
and vanished.
---
Ian dropped to one knee, gripping the soil of Nicron like it owed him answers.
He thought he had only lost his father.
But grief, ever the greedy ghoul, had taken more.
"I wasn't fast enough."
"I wasn't strong enough."
But before his thoughts could collapse into self-hate, a hand rested on his shoulder.
Jack.
No words—just understanding.
Ian stood again—not whole, not yet—but choosing to remain standing.
---
The Nicronians emerged slowly from the ruins of their shaken city.
They had watched from the shadows—souls frayed by the Ghouls' corruption, their spirits fragile from deception, from doubt.
And now… they saw students.
Young. Bruised. Burdened.
But undaunted.
Their leader, an elder with luminous skin and a voice like stone softened by time, stepped forward.
> "Are you the new students of Airious?" he asked, eyes wide with cautious reverence.
Jack, still steady, nodded.
> "Yes. We are."
The old Nicronian smiled—not because of the victory, but because of the restraint they had shown.
Because they fought back without breaking the world.
---
He raised a staff, and golden petals—a Nicronian tradition—were scattered across the plaza, drifting like snowflakes of gratitude.
> "Airious taught us strength," he said, "but the Ghouls twisted our fears. They fed us stories about 'freedom,' but only gave us chains that smiled."
He turned to Sonia.
> "You made us feel again."
To Yyvone.
"You protected what we stopped believing was worth protecting."
To Henry.
"You lit a world that was dimming."
To Charles.
"You reminded us that limits… are just waiting for purpose."
And to Ian.
> "Even in fury, you did not forget why you fight. That… is rare."
---
The Nicronians bowed.
And the sky above them shimmered—not with portals or gods or lightning.
But with recognition.
They weren't just kids who passed a test.
They were the living definition of what Airious stood for.
---
Later, as they walked toward the return gate, Jack looked at the others.
Not with pride, but clarity.
> "We didn't win because we were stronger."
"We won because we knew when to stop. When to care. When to hold on."
Ian lingered behind, glancing at the stars.
He whispered her name—Eve Maid—like a promise, not a prayer.
And when he stepped through the gate back to Airious, he didn't look back.
He would return for her.
In the realm where sanity unravels like threads in the wind...
She danced.
Not with joy. Not with madness. But with freedom—the kind so sharp it bled through identity.
---
Eve Maid, once a quiet soul bound by expectation,
now strolled through the Free Abyss—
a realm not ruled, but unruled.
Gone were the chains of perfection, of politeness, of always being the version someone else needed her to be.
Here?
Her Tranquilizer Affinity wasn't a gentle sedative anymore.
It was a liberation field.
It bent logic, broke roles, made reality chill the hell out.
Her enemies would feel peace whether they liked it or not—and then the blade would come.
She had become the Peace Breaker.
A poetic paradox.
She didn't calm the storm.
She made storms fall asleep.
---
Redan stood beside her, his cloak flowing like it's allergic to order.
> "You see now, don't you?" he said, voice like velvet soaked in menace.
"You were never broken. You were filtered. Watered down for a world afraid of who you'd become."
Eve's eyes were different now—no longer seeking approval, but offering revelation.
> "They all said I needed fixing," she said,
"But what if I was only cracking the surface?"
She turned to him, her tranquil eyes glowing with Liberation Force energy—
an evolution of the Corruption Force born of rebellion's logic.
> "Ian will come," she said softly.
"He'll try to save me."
> "And what will you do?" Redan asked.
Eve's smile was bittersweet.
Like someone remembering a song that no longer fits their life.
> "I'll try to save him too."
---
She still liked Ian.
Maybe she even loved him, in that raw, soul-rooted way.
But it was no longer a love that made her smaller.
It was the kind that said:
> "If you truly love me, then meet me here—in the place without walls."
Not to stay forever.
But to understand.
Because Eve wasn't coming back as she was.
If Ian wants to reach her…
He'll have to walk through the Abyss without falling in.