The white light swallowed everything.
Eryndor's scream still echoed in his own ears as the searing radiance burned through his vision. For a moment there was only pain — pure, absolute, and endless. Then the light began to fade, not into darkness, but into something far stranger.
When his eyes finally opened, the world was gone.
He stood in a void of pure, endless white. No ground. No sky. No horizon. Just white stretching in every direction, soft and silent, as if the universe itself had been erased and replaced by blank paper. There was no wind. No sound. No weight. Only the quiet pulse of his own heartbeat and the faint, lingering warmth of the light that had brought him here.
High above the ruined wasteland of the real world, Jae floated beside the Divine Flame of Curses, eyes wide with shock.
"What the hell… where did they go?" Jae whispered. One moment Eryndor had been kneeling over Ellie's body. The next, both brother and sister had vanished into a pillar of white light that simply ceased to exist. The Divine Flame of Curses remained silent, watching the empty snow with something that almost resembled caution.
Inside the white void, Eryndor turned slowly.
And then he saw her.
Ellie stood a short distance away, whole and unbroken. No blood. No missing torso. Her black armor was clean, her blonde hair falling softly around her face. Her eyes — those same eyes that had glowed with the final white light — were calm, almost gentle. She looked exactly as she had before the battle, before the Emperors, before everything had gone wrong.
Eryndor's breath caught. He ran.
His boots made no sound against the white nothingness. He reached for her, arms open, desperate to pull her into a hug, to feel that she was real, that she was alive. His hands passed straight through her body as if she were made of mist. The illusion of her form shimmered where he touched it and then reformed, unbroken.
Ellie smiled softly, a little sadly.
"I'm sorry, big brother," she said. Her voice was the same as always — quiet, steady, carrying that familiar weight of someone who had seen too much. "This is only an echo. Before I died… I used the last of my power. My final ability. I called it the Sacred Echo of the Final Vision. It lets me pull the person I care about most into a space between life and death… just long enough to say goodbye."
Eryndor's hands fell to his sides. The white void felt colder somehow.
"Ellie…" His voice cracked. "You're—"
"Dead," she finished gently. "Yes. The Blood Piercing Spear took too much. I knew it would. That's why I pushed you away."
Silence stretched between them. Eryndor stared at the illusion of his sister, throat tight, eyes burning. Ellie took a small step closer, though she could not touch him.
"I wanted this time," she said. "Just a little time. To talk. About the things I never got to say."
She looked down at her own translucent hands, then back up at him.
"I used to imagine what it would be like if we ever got a normal life. Just once. I wanted to go to one of those festivals in the lower cities with you. The ones with the paper lanterns and the sweet rice cakes. I wanted to see you eat something that wasn't something you already tried. I wanted to watch you laugh without looking over your shoulder for the next fight. I wanted… I wanted to grow old enough that people would stop calling me 'little sister' and start calling me just Ellie. And I wanted you there when it happened."
Eryndor's jaw clenched. He listened without interrupting, the way he always had when she spoke of quiet dreams.
Ellie continued, her voice softer now.
"I wished we could have trained together the way we did before all of this happen. Before the contractors. Before the Emperors. Before everything became blood and contracts and power. I wished I could have shown you the new techniques I learned without it being life or death. I wished… I wished I could have just sat next to you on a quiet night and not felt like the world was about to end."
She smiled again, though it wavered.
"You always protected me. Even when I pretended I didn't need it. Even when I pushed you away so you wouldn't worry. I never told you how much that meant. I'm telling you now."
Eryndor's hands curled into fists at his sides. The white void seemed to press in around them.
Ellie's expression grew more serious.
"There are things you need to know," she said. "About the contractors. About what they did."
She drew a slow breath, as if gathering the last of her strength.
"They didn't just give the Emperors power. They broke them first. They broke me. The training… it wasn't training. It was deliberate. They would force us into realms designed to shatter the mind. They made us kill versions of the people we loved, over and over, until the pain stopped mattering. They starved us of essence until we begged. They made us fight each other while they watched chained us to keep us obedient. If anyone showed too much free will, the contractors would tighten the chains. Some never came back from those sessions. Their bodies walked, but their souls were already gone."
Eryndor's mana began to rise, black and radiant threads coiling around his arms. The void itself seemed to tremble under the pressure of his rage.
"They did that to you?" His voice was low, dangerous. "They put their hands on you?"
Ellie raised a hand, the gesture gentle but firm.
"Don't. Not yet. I need you calm for this last part."
The pressure around him slowly eased, though the fury in his eyes remained.
Ellie stepped closer again, her form already beginning to grow thinner, more transparent at the edges.
"I'm running out of time," she said. "But I can still give you something. My foresight… my eyes… everything I was. The Sacred Echo of the Divine. All of it. Take it."
She reached out. This time her fingers did not pass through him. A soft white light flowed from her hand into Eryndor's chest. The moment it touched him, a flood of memories poured into his mind — every vision she had ever seen, every future she had glimpsed, every moment of pain and quiet hope she had carried alone. He saw the contractors' faces. He saw the rooms where they had broken the Emperors. He saw Ellie, small and determined, enduring it all so that one day she might break free.
The knowledge settled into him like a second heartbeat. New power stirred behind his eyes — the ability to read the threads of fate, to sense the immediate future, to mark and perceive through others, all of it now his to wield alongside the darkness already growing in his heart.
Ellie hugged ernydor and smiled one last time, even as her form began to dissolve into motes of soft light.
"I'm proud of you, big brother," she whispered. "Live. And when the time comes… make them pay."
Ellie began to disappeared in the void.
"Goodbye, big brother."
Eryndor lunged forward, hand outstretched
"Ellie—!"
His fingers closed on empty air. The last of the light faded. The white void shattered like glass.
Eryndor gasped as the real world slammed back into place around him.
He was on his knees in the blood-soaked snow of the northern wasteland. The protective sphere he had built was gone. The place where Ellie's body had lain was empty. No blood. No remains. Nothing. Only a faint residual warmth in the air, as if she had never been there at all.
High above, Jae stared down in silence, the Divine Flame of Curses floating beside him without comment.
Eryndor remained kneeling for a long moment, hands buried in the snow where his sister had died. The new power of the Sacred Echo hummed behind his eyes. The black corruption in his heart pulsed in answer.
Slowly, he rose to his feet.
His voice, when it came, was quiet and absolute, carrying across the ruined landscape like a vow carved into the world itself.
"I will kill every last one of them."