The golden light in Aiko's chest didn't just stutter. It died.
One moment, it was a sun, a warm, brilliant testament to hope and connection. The next, it was a black hole, a sudden, crushing void of ice and despair.
The woman in the white dress stood before them, a ghost made real, her impossible beauty a stark contradiction to the ruin surrounding them. Her eyes, the color of a winter sky, were not looking at Aiko. They were looking through her, searching the empty space behind her.
Yuki.
The name was a shard of glass in Aiko's soul. The myth. The memory. The reason for Kael's centuries of pain. And she was here. Solid. Breathing. Real.
Zara moved first, a blur of tactical grace. She shifted her stance, placing herself slightly between Aiko and the newcomer, her dark blade held low in a defensive posture. Her face was a mask of disbelief and cold, hard calculation.
"Who are you?" Zara's voice was a blade, sharp and demanding.
The woman's gaze drifted from the empty space and settled on Zara. There was no surprise in her eyes. No fear. Just a faint, dismissive curiosity.
"I am a question you cannot afford to ask," Yuki said. Her voice was not the desperate whisper from the rift. It was smooth, melodic, and utterly devoid of warmth. It was the sound of a perfectly tuned instrument playing a funeral dirge.
Her eyes moved to Aiko. She took in the faint, residual glow of chaotic energy clinging to Aiko's skin. She saw the exhaustion, the fear, the defiant spark in her eyes. And she saw the invisible, golden thread of the binding that still connected Aiko's soul to the man she was looking for.
A flicker of something that might have been pain, or perhaps just distaste, crossed Yuki's perfect features. "So, you are the anomaly," she said, her voice soft. "The contamination."
Aiko flinched as if struck. The word, coming from her, was infinitely more wounding than when the Praetorians had said it.
"Where is he?" Yuki asked, her voice still quiet, but now laced with an edge of command that vibrated in the air. "Where is Kael?"
"He's busy," Aiko spat, the words fueled by a sudden, hot surge of rage and heartbreak. "He's fighting for his life, trying to clean up a mess that started with you."
The lie felt good. It felt powerful. But Yuki just smiled. It was a small, sad, terrible thing.
"He is always fighting," Yuki said, a nostalgic sorrow in her tone. "It is his nature. His curse." "But he is not fighting for you. Not really. He is fighting for the memory of me. You are just a convenient, temporary vessel for his grief."
Every word was a perfectly aimed dagger. Aiko felt the truth in them, or at least, the truth she had always feared. That she was just a placeholder. A cosmic rebound.
"You don't know anything," Aiko whispered, her voice trembling.
"I know everything," Yuki corrected gently. "I was there, in the space between. I saw it all. I saw your pathetic, desperate bonding. I saw him choose to protect you, again and again." Her smile faded. "And I saw him break the laws of reality itself, all because he heard my voice."
She took a step forward. "He belongs to me, little girl. His pain is mine. His duty is mine. His soul is mine." "You are just an infection. A fever that must be broken."
"Enough," Zara cut in, her blade humming. "I don't know what you are, but you are not the woman Kael mourned. You radiate the stench of the Void."
Yuki's gaze drifted to Zara's blade. "A Reaper," she mused. "One of the jailers. Tell me, do you still believe in the righteousness of your cause? In the perfect, sterile order of your Council?" "Or have you seen the truth? That your Heaven is a cage, and your God is a lie."
Before Zara could answer, Yuki moved. She didn't rush. She flowed. One moment she was by the altar. The next, she was directly in front of Aiko, her hand outstretched.
Her fingers were long, elegant, and cold as death. She was reaching for Aiko's chest. For the point of the binding.
Zara reacted instantly, her blade a silver-black blur, slicing at Yuki's arm. Yuki didn't dodge. She simply… wasn't there. Zara's blade cut through empty air as Yuki's form dissolved into a swirl of black mist, reforming a few feet away.
"Fast," Yuki commented, her expression unchanged. "But you are trying to cut a shadow. You cannot fight what you cannot touch."
The black mist swirled around Yuki's hand, coalescing into a long, thin needle of solidified darkness. It pulsed with a hunger that made Aiko's soul ache.
"Kael's choice to bind with you was a mistake," Yuki said, her voice calm, conversational, as if discussing the weather. "A symptom of his pain. I am here to correct it." "I will sever the connection. I will purge you of his presence. It will be… unpleasant. But it is a mercy."
She lunged.
Zara met her charge, her blade a flurry of defensive parries. Sparks flew as silver-black metal met solidified void. Each impact sent a discordant hum through the church. Zara was skilled, incredibly so. She was a whirlwind of precise, deadly movements.
But she was on the defensive. Yuki was a phantom, her attacks flowing and unpredictable. Tendrils of darkness lashed out from her, forcing Zara to constantly shift, to block, to retreat. Yuki wasn't trying to kill her. She was toying with her.
Aiko stood frozen, watching the impossible battle. Her mind was a screaming chaos. This is Yuki. This is the woman he loved. And she's trying to kill us.She's a monster. She's one of them.
The thread. The binding. It flared with a sudden, sharp spike of agony. Kael. He was in trouble. He was losing.
Think of him. The command cut through her paralysis. Zara can't hold her forever. You are not a spectator. You are a weapon.
Aiko closed her eyes, shutting out the impossible fight. She reached inward, to the raging, caged star in her soul. She found the center. The core. The feeling of Kael's hand in hers. The memory of his desperate, terrified eyes choosing her.
Love.
She opened her eyes, and the world was bathed in a soft, golden light emanating from her chest. It wasn't the chaotic storm from before. It was focused. Pure.
Yuki, in the middle of parrying a strike from Zara, faltered. Her head snapped toward Aiko, her eyes widening as she saw the pure, golden light. It was the light of a Reaper's love. A light she had not seen in centuries. And it was coming from the wrong person.
The sight of it broke her cold composure. A snarl twisted her beautiful face, revealing the monster beneath.
"That light does not belong to you!" she shrieked, her voice no longer melodic, but a discordant symphony of rage and jealousy.
She disengaged from Zara with a final, brutal attack that sent the Reaper staggering back. Then, she turned her full attention to Aiko.
"I will take it back," she hissed.
She raised both hands, and the darkness around her coalesced, swirling into a vortex of pure, devouring void. It was the antithesis of Aiko's golden light. It was despair given form.
Zara screamed a warning. "Aiko, shield!"
Aiko raised her hands instinctively. She didn't try to make a weapon. She didn't try to attack. She just let the golden light pour out of her, guided by a single, desperate thought. Protect him. Protect his choice. Protect us.
The light solidified in front of her, forming a shimmering, translucent dome. It was beautiful. It was fragile. It was all she had.
Yuki unleashed the vortex of darkness. It shot across the church, a screaming torrent of anti-life that hit Aiko's shield with the force of a meteor.
CRACK.
The sound was both real and psychic. The golden shield fractured, spiderwebs of darkness spreading across its surface. Aiko cried out, feeling the impact as a physical blow to her soul. The energy drain was immense.
But the shield held.
For a moment, the two opposing forces were locked in a stalemate. The devouring darkness of Yuki's despair against the defiant, desperate light of Aiko's love. The church groaned around them, stones cracking, the very air vibrating with the strain.
Through the fractured shield, Aiko saw Yuki's face, contorted with rage and disbelief. She couldn't understand. How could this… this mortal girl… withstand her power?
And then, something new entered the equation. A psychic echo, stretched thin across the dimensions, but sharp as a razor. It was Kael's voice, but not in her head. It was in everyone's head. A memory. A choice. A moment of absolute agony and clarity, broadcast from the heart of his own battle.
He was on his knees, his blade shattered, facing the triumphant Nox Lord. The monster was showing him a vision. A vision of this very church. Of Aiko, her shield cracking. Of Yuki, wreathed in darkness.
Choose, Reaper, the Nox Lord's voice taunted, echoing through the vision. Your past or your future? The ghost you damned or the anomaly that will doom you? You cannot have both.
Aiko felt Kael's decision through the binding. It was a surge of pure, unconditional, self-sacrificing love, aimed not at the ghost of his past, but at the fragile, defiant girl fighting for her life in a forgotten church. It was a choice. It was the choice.
He chose her.
The psychic echo faded. But the choice remained.
And Yuki felt it. She felt him choose another. And it broke her.
"NO!"
Her scream was the sound of a heart breaking for the second and final time. The cold, controlled despair vanished, replaced by a tsunami of pure, unrestrained rage. The darkness she wielded intensified, no longer a focused vortex, but an explosive, all-consuming wave.
Aiko's shield didn't just crack. It shattered.
The wave of darkness washed over her. It was a cold that burned, a silence that screamed. It felt like being erased.
But at its center, the small, defiant flame of golden light still burned. Fueled by Kael's choice, by her own stubborn refusal to die, it flared one last time.
She didn't try to shield. She pushed it all out. A final, defiant nova of pure love.
The golden light met the tide of darkness. For a single, silent, eternal moment, the church was filled with a blinding, impossible fusion of pure light and pure void.
Then, the wave receded.
Aiko stood, trembling, in the center of the nave. She had survived.
Yuki was thrown back, her shadowy form flickering violently, disrupted by the pure, uncorrupted light. She stared at Aiko, her eyes wide with a hatred so profound it was almost a form of worship.
"This is not over," Yuki hissed, her voice a venomous promise. "This is just the beginning." "The real war starts now."
Her form dissolved into black mist, flowing back toward the gateway, which was now pulsing erratically. She vanished through it, and the gateway snapped shut with a final, echoing crack.
Silence returned to the church.
Aiko stood for a second, her body swaying. She had won. She was alive. Kael had chosen her.
She looked down at her hands. Then she looked at her chest. A dark, ugly stain was spreading across the front of her shirt. It was warm, and sticky, and impossibly red.
She hadn't been untouched by the darkness. When her shield shattered, a sliver of Yuki's void-forged power had gotten through. A single, sharp icicle of pure despair. And it had pierced her straight through the heart.
"Oh," she said, her voice a small, surprised whisper. The strength left her legs. The world tilted, the shattered saints and broken angels spinning into a blur of color.
She fell to the stone floor, the impact jarring but distant. The last thing she saw was Zara's horrified face leaning over her, shouting her name. The last thing she felt was the golden thread of the binding, her connection to Kael, flickering, and then going terrifyingly, absolutely cold.