Youri staggered back against the chamber wall, still caught in the strange, lingering sensation of the encounter — but the Necro Wolf had already vanished without leaving a trace of itself behind. A dim red light was bleeding in from outside now, and beneath it he could hear the platform's echo growing louder with every second, which told him plainly enough that someone was on their way down. Still half-shaken by what he'd just faced, he lowered himself back to the floor and took a slow breath, eyes fixed on the rough stone ceiling above him.
Then the chamber lights flickered on, washing the room in a pale white glow — and at the exact same moment, the noise from the platform cut off entirely. Youri didn't bother lifting his head to see who it was. As far as he was concerned, after everything he'd already endured down here, only the guards or Benjamin had any reason to make that trip, and he had no interest in whatever taunts either of them had brought with them this time.
A sharp, deliberate footstep echoed against the narrow walkway outside — the unmistakable click of heels against stone — and that alone was enough to catch him off guard. He had no real sense of how long it had been since Benjamin first threw him down here, but he knew, without needing to think about it, that the sound belonged to no man. If anything, it carried something almost nostalgic, and a single image surfaced in his mind before he could stop it: Leonora, stretched out in a grassy field, his head resting in her lap while she ran her fingers slowly through his hair.
Leonora reached the chamber a moment later and stopped in front of the towering glass wall, her hands trembling faintly at her sides. Whatever she'd rehearsed on the way down here seemed to leave her the instant she actually saw him — sprawled on the rock floor with nothing to his name but his own skin and the tattoos he'd carved into it, years ago, to hide from himself. Youri pushed himself upright at the sight of her, crossing his legs without thinking twice about the modesty of it, and met her eyes — the same obsidian eyes he had once loved without reservation.
"This new look suits you," he said, his voice flat and cold.
Leonora had cut her hair short in the aftermath of the Battle of Hell. What had once been silver hair falling all the way to her waist now ended sharply just past her neck. A faint, uncertain smile crossed her face. "Yours too."
She stood there a moment longer before finally pressing her palm flat against the glass, her eyes never once leaving his. "Why," she said — not a question so much as something she'd been holding onto for a long time. "Why did you leave? After everything, I thought you'd finally found peace."
Youri didn't move an inch. His expression only darkened further as she kept going.
"Whatever those criminals had on you, I could have handled it. I know they tricked you into working for them." He lowered his head, hair falling forward to hide his face, she pressed on anyway, her voice fraying at the edges. "Why didn't you listen to me back then? I told you to surrender. You didn't listen — you threw everything away and turned your blade against the empire instead." Her voice cracked into something close to desperation now. "Look at where that's gotten you. Stuck in a place like this, your time running out, wearing a traitor's brand — after everything you gave them, everything you did whenever they called. What could possibly have been worth all of that?"
Youri lifted his head slowly, his eyes locking onto hers with no warmth in them at all. "Why are you here?"
Leonora had no answer ready for that. Her hand slid from the glass, and for a moment she simply stood there, speechless. Then she turned to the data lock beside the entrance and pressed her palm to the screen. The door to the chamber parted open, and she stepped through it, crossing the small space between them until she was standing directly over him. She held that position for only a few seconds before her knees gave out entirely, and she dropped down and pulled him into her arms, her chest pressed against him, tears already spilling down her face.
"I thought you were dead," she said, sobbing into his shoulder. "After all this time — I can finally do this. I missed you so much."
She held on to him like that for a long while, crying until there was nothing left to cry, before finally pulling back just enough to cup his face in both hands. Her eyes were rimmed red from all the tears she'd shed. She brushed the hair back from his face and managed a small, hopeful smile. "Don't worry. I'll get you out of here. After everything — we can finally go back to how things were."
Youri's expression didn't so much as shift. Leonora noticed immediately. "What's wrong?"
Ever since she'd first stepped into view on the other side of that glass, Youri's mind had been turned entirely inside out, circling back again and again to a single memory he couldn't set down: that fateful moment on the deck of the Tartarusios, the instant Lea's mask had finally slipped, revealing her true face — and the words she had said to him in that moment. Even now, years later, those few words still landed like a cataclysm every time he let himself remember them, the same words that had once torn apart the entire life he'd believed was finally his to keep. That single sentence had left him adrift, purposeless, wandering the stars as nothing more than a renegade ever since.
Looking now into Leonora's tear-streaked eyes, he couldn't help but wonder, just for a moment, how different everything might have turned out if he'd simply gone to her from the very beginning and left Lea's words behind him entirely. It was a brief thought, and a useless one. He had made his choice a long time ago — cast off the empire's leash, and everything tied to the life he'd lived under it. Because if there was one thing true about Youri Kronos, it was this: he had never once, in his entire life, felt truly free — not until the day he took the controls of the Tartarusios beside Oscar Meilton and became a renegade in truth.
His answer to her question came a moment later, quiet and almost warm, a faint smile finally breaking across his face.
"You and me."