Silence.
A silence too vast, too alive.
Erian opened his eyes to a place that wasn't sky or earth — a realm woven of shifting light and color. Threads of starlight floated like rivers through the air, bending and folding into endless horizons. Every step echoed softly, as if the ground remembered him.
He looked down at his hands. They glowed faintly, translucent. The world here was made of memory.
Then, he heard it — that voice.
"You still look the same," Aster said quietly from behind him.
Erian turned, and there he was — the Crown Prince, his armor dimmed to silver mist, his eyes softer than they had ever been in life. Yet there was still that fire beneath, the will that had defied heaven itself.
Erian's throat tightened. "You shouldn't have followed me."
"I told you," Aster replied, stepping closer, "I'm done letting fate decide for us."
Their gazes met — a single heartbeat suspended between realms.
Then the light around them shifted, forming scenes like reflections in water: the academy courtyard, the throne room, the night of the Veil's fall. Memories of both their lives rippled and merged into one another.
Erian reached out, touching a fragment of light showing his past self — the young noble despised by his own house, staring up at a sky he didn't understand. "Is this… all that's left of me?"
Aster shook his head. "No. This is what you gave the world — your light. It never truly faded."
The words struck something deep inside him. Erian stepped closer, his voice breaking. "Then why can't I return? Why can't I exist beside you again?"
"Because this world isn't ready for both of us," Aster said softly. "You bridged heaven and earth once — the balance still remembers that. If we both stay here, everything unravels."
Erian's glow flickered. "So I have to vanish again?"
Aster took his hand, intertwining their fingers. "Not vanish. Merge."
Erian frowned. "Merge?"
Aster nodded slowly. "The Veil feeds on memory, not flesh. If we join — your light and my will — we can stabilize the boundary. You'll exist through me, and I'll carry your strength. The world will remain whole."
Erian's voice trembled. "That means you'll lose yourself."
"Maybe not," Aster said with a faint smile. "Maybe I'll just finally become whole."
For a long moment, neither spoke. Only the hum of the stars surrounded them — soft, steady, eternal.
Erian finally whispered, "You always were terrible at letting go."
"And you," Aster said, brushing a strand of light from his hair, "always found a way to make me believe in impossible things."
The world began to pulse — the starlight dimming, the realm contracting. Time was slipping away.
Aster drew him closer until their foreheads touched, light sparking where skin met starlight.
"Erian Thalos," Aster murmured, "my heart was born in your light. If the stars must remember only one of us—let them remember us as one."
Erian's breath caught. "Then… let it be."
Their voices merged as one, and the realm exploded into radiance.
Light swallowed everything — stars, sound, form.
Then silence fell again.
When Aster awoke, he was lying beneath the dawn sky of the mortal world. The snow had melted around him, replaced by blooming blue flowers — flowers that had not existed for centuries.
Lyra knelt nearby, tears streaking her face. "Your Majesty! You… you're alive!"
Aster rose slowly, his hair faintly threaded with silver, his eyes glowing with a light not entirely his own.
He looked toward the horizon — the stars still faint in the morning haze — and whispered,
"He's still here."
The wind carried a voice only he could hear.
Always.
And as the first rays of sunlight touched the empire, a soft rain of silver light began to fall — neither storm nor blessing, but a quiet requiem for two souls who had become one.