The drain valve of the connection pod let out a dull, sucking sound.
The pale blue connection fluid drained rapidly down the pipes, and the heavy hatch slid open to either side.
Su Yu's hand gripped the edge of the pod wall, the veins standing out on its back.
He climbed out with some difficulty. Hours of high-intensity diving had left his face drained of color.
"Sirin's spirit body has stabilized. She's made it back into the Herrscher Core."
Fenghuang's voice sounded in his mind, her tone looser now. The great stone on her heart had clearly dropped.
"That's not all. The traces of Honkai erosion inside this core have been completely purged. Neither the Herrscher of the Void nor Kiana will have to endure interference from Honkai energy anymore. Their bodies have recovered to peak condition."
Su Yu let out a long breath.
His tense shoulders visibly sagged. Propping himself up on legs gone heavy, he turned and walked toward Kiana, who was leaning against the isolation barrier.
Kiana had only just clawed back some clarity from a tidal wave of sensation strong enough to kill. She stared blankly at the floor.
"Kiana?"
Su Yu called her name, but she gave no reaction at all.
That stopped him for a moment. Puzzled, he stepped closer.
He came up in front of her, raised his hand, and laid his palm on her shoulder.
The instant his fingertips touched her skin through the fabric, the warmth of Su Yu, nothing she was unfamiliar with, passed straight through with no barrier at all.
In that very moment,
everything from the dream detonated at once under this real touch.
Kiana's pupils contracted sharply.
Her legs drove off the floor and she shot upright. The next instant she backpedaled four big steps and slammed her back against the metal wall.
"Y-y-you! I-I-I—"
Her fingers flailed uselessly in front of her. Her face and neck were red enough to drip blood, and after a long stretch of stammering she couldn't assemble a single complete sentence.
Su Yu stood rooted to the spot, watching her stumble backward, and a few question marks slowly floated up over his head.
Su, who had been recording data on a medical tablet, looked up.
His gaze swept back and forth between Su Yu and Kiana several times.
The look was weird to the point of excess. He all but asked outright what unspeakable thing Su Yu had done to this girl inside the pod.
Su Yu met his eyes and gave him a look that said, "You're asking me? Who am I supposed to ask?"
Then, thoroughly confused, he put the question to Fenghuang in his head.
"Kiana must have felt, in sync, the pain from when I was performing the soul-stripping procedure in there, so she hasn't quite recovered yet."
Fenghuang's answer came.
"That was an extreme torment ordinary people can't endure. And you, as the attending physician, must have spent a good deal of effort this trip as well. It can't have been easy."
Listening to Fenghuang's explanation, Su Yu felt the question marks in his head multiply.
Sharing pain with Sirin? The torment of soul stripping?
He opened his mouth, meaning to press Kiana for more details, but the heavy metal door of the medical room was shoved open from outside in a rush.
Cecilia and Siegfried hurried in, one after the other.
Cecilia's eyes locked onto Kiana against the wall at once. Seeing her unharmed, she visibly relaxed.
The moment Kiana saw Cecilia, she bolted over as if grabbing a lifeline and ducked behind her.
She peeked half her head out past Cecilia's shoulder and glared at Su Yu with a look that mixed embarrassment, confusion and something strange.
Siegfried looked at Kiana, who was acting like a startled rabbit, and wore the same blank question marks. He scratched his head, his gaze circling back to Su Yu.
Su Yu gave a helpless shrug.
The aftereffects of overspending his mental strength hit him at that moment, doubled over.
He opened his mouth wide in a long yawn.
"I can't hold out anymore. I'll leave the cleanup to you guys. I'm going to rest for a bit..."
Ignoring everyone's complicated stares, he walked to the wide single-seat sofa nearby and dropped heavily into it.
His eyes soon closed, and his consciousness sank into a bottomless darkness.
———
A little while later, in the corridor outside the rest rooms.
Su stepped out carrying the compiled data report.
Kevin had been leaning against the wall, waiting. Seeing him, he straightened up at once.
"How is he?"
Su glanced at the report and shook his head.
"Severe mental overdraft, and his body took too much load. He needs a long sleep to recover. I've already put some glucose into him."
He tucked the report under his arm.
"Relax. That kid's tough as nails. He won't die."
Kevin nodded. His expression didn't change, but anyone with eyes could feel the tension in the air ease considerably.
At the far end of the corridor, on a row of benches,
Cecilia and Siegfried sat on either side of Kiana.
"Were you feeling unwell just now?"
Cecilia took Kiana's hand.
Kiana pulled her hand back a little and shook her head.
"I'm fine. Really, I'm fine... I'm just a bit tired."
Welt pushed up his glasses and glanced at the clock on the wall.
"It is rather late. Kiana, you fought in the Spatial Rift earlier, and just now you were synchronized with the fluctuations in that spiritual world. Your body must have hit its limit long ago. Go and rest."
Kiana nodded.
She stood up obediently and pushed open the door of the rest room next to Su Yu's.
She went in and shut it.
Cecilia's gentle, worried words were left outside the door.
The big light was off. Only a dim yellow wall lamp by the bed was lit.
Kiana pulled off her jacket, dove straight under the blanket, and yanked it up over most of her head.
She curled into a ball.
She should have been exhausted enough to pass out at once, but lying in that cramped space she tossed and turned and couldn't fall asleep.
The moment she closed her eyes, the memories that had poured into her mind came crashing back, unstoppable.
For as long as she could remember, Kiana's feelings for Su Yu had stayed inside a line she herself had deliberately kept blurry.
She depended on him. She treated him as a guardian, an elder, someone who could shelter her from the storm.
On top of that, there was admittedly a faint, dawning crush, the kind a girl feels for a boy.
But before, her head had been full of her mission, of debts still unpaid, of the world that needed her to go back and save it.
Just as Sirin had said in the dream, she had been afraid all along.
She was afraid to face these feelings. She was afraid they would become an obstacle when it came time to leave.
But today, when the memories synced over through the soul channel exploded across her senses, every excuse she'd used as cover was burned away.
She had been running all along, and now there was nowhere left to run.
Clearly,
this was destined to be a night she couldn't sleep at all.
———
Darkness.
A darkness with no weight and no boundary.
For someone sunk in sleep, this was no quiet dream in which to lay down weariness.
The despair and pain torn out of the bottom of the Babylon Corridor hadn't vanished into thin air. They traveled down the channel of the Spiritual Link and stirred up wave after wave of murky undercurrents in the deep sea of consciousness, battering and tearing without pause.
The price of saving a soul trapped in a hopeless place by one's own strength was never going to be wiped away easily.
The level of the Abyss kept rising, and that crushing pressure clamped down on this body, riddled with wounds.
In that undercurrent that all but drowned everything, a faint red glow quietly spread.
It wasn't especially dazzling, but it carried a tenacity that would not back down, and it forced open a calm patch within the chaos.
Fenghuang's figure appeared in the darkness.
The power that belonged to Yu Ducheng turned into a long, slender stream, mending bit by bit the rifts torn open by overstepping his limits.
As the riotous sensations were soothed one by one, the heavy, hurried breathing in this space slowly eased and grew long and even.
"You're always so reckless."
There was a teacher's sternness in her words, but they also sounded helpless.
"Fortunately... pain of this purely spiritual kind falls within my abilities."
Just as the sea of consciousness was about to settle into stillness, a completely different force seeped in without warning.
At that very moment, another force, entirely different yet supremely refined, quietly flowed in and filled the space.
Fenghuang's hands paused for an instant.
"Aponia?"
No form appeared, but the reply fell clearly across this consciousness.
"It has been a long time since I last greeted you. If I'm not mistaken, you must be the 'companion' Su Yu spoke of."
Fenghuang lowered her eyes.
"Yes."
That compassionate spiritual force flowed slowly around them. It showed no hostility, only quietly watched over everything.
"How remarkable."
The voice echoed through the space.
"You and Hua share the outline of the same soul, and yet within you are entirely different. You must be a Hua from that world, one who endured hardships beyond anything we can imagine."
Fenghuang was silent and didn't answer at once.
"Have I upset you?" the voice asked.
"No." Fenghuang shook her head. "I was only thinking... I know very well that you aren't the Aponia I knew."
She looked at the darkness wrapped in that gentle power.
"But to meet someone so like her in this world, and to be able to talk with her like this, is a great comfort to me in itself. It makes me feel that everything I've done wasn't for nothing."
The spiritual force rippled faintly in the air, as if in reply.
"In any case, you've worked hard, Hua. You're tired too. Leave the rest to me."
The voice held a tolerance that could make anyone lower their guard completely.
"This small thing is the only thing I'm able to do."
———
Reality.
The rest room at Anti-Entropy headquarters.
The overhead light was off. Only a floor lamp in the corner gave off a faint, yellowish glow.
Aponia sat on the edge of a narrow single bed.
Her severe nun's habit gathered in deep creases across the sheets.
Su Yu's head rested firmly on her thighs, covered by the habit and softly rounded.
His eyes were shut tight, his brow faintly knit.
Aponia's pale hand lay on his forehead, her fingertips stroking along his hairline at the temple, over and over.
She made no sound.
That nearly tangible spiritual force flowed steadily into Su Yu's body through the point where her palm met his brow.
Soothed by it, Su Yu's breathing, quickened by exhaustion, gradually evened out, and the furrow between his brows slowly smoothed.
Aponia gazed down at him in silence.
But soon,
the fingers stroking his forehead stopped abruptly.
The decay hidden beneath his skin passed into her senses without any barrier.
She felt the tremor in the deepest part of this body.
The organs worn out by countless overloaded runs, the muscle fibers forcibly torn and rebuilt by the extreme breakthrough method of the Genetic Lock, were making silent sounds of collapse.
The prophecy once made was being proven true in this body. He was heading, inevitably, toward his own ending.
The numbers on the calendar turned over day by day. Only seventy days remained until the Honkai descended.
That crimson shadow of fated death was creeping closer without a sound, squeezing every bit of room to maneuver down to nothing.
Aponia's gaze rested on Su Yu's young face, worn with weariness.
She looked at him for a long time. She changed nothing, only eased the weight of the fingers resting beside his cheek.
"At the very least..."
Her ethereal voice was soft, falling into the quiet room.
"May you sleep peacefully tonight."
She lowered her eyelids, her gaze and her fingertips both resting on him.
"Good night, Su Yu."
Only the sound of even breathing remained in the room, along with the nun's silent prayer.
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