"Ugh..."
Soliette slowly opened her eyes.
The very first thing she noticed was how unbearably stiff her body felt, almost as though she had been unconscious for an extrely long ti.
Even lifting her head slightly required far more effort than it normally should have, while a dull ache lingered throughout her entire body alongside a strange sense of disorientation clouding her thoughts.
For several monts, her vision remained blurry.
She blinked once, then twice, as the world gradually began coming back into focus.
"...."
And the very first thing she saw was a pair of golden eyes staring directly at her.
"...Archmage?"
The voice sounded familiar.
Yet Soliette’s thoughts still felt sluggish, as though her mind had not fully caught up with reality yet.
"Who..."
Her brows furrowed while trying to properly process the figure sitting beside her.
"...Princess?"
"Yes," the woman hovering before her answered imdiately. "I am Astrid."
Princess Astrid let out a breath of relief afterward, almost as though she had been waiting for Soliette to properly regain consciousness for quite so ti now.
"Archmage," Astrid said seriously, "how many fingers am I holding up?"
Soliette blinked again. "...What?"
Astrid raised her hand higher insistently.
"How many fingers?"
Soliette stared at the raised hand in silence for several monts before finally answering in a tired voice.
"...Three."
Astrid relaxed afterward. "Oh thank God."
"Oh thank God."
Only then did Soliette slowly begin properly observing her surroundings.
The place they were currently in looked like so kind of enclosed alleyway hidden between abandoned buildings.
There were several other people gathered nearby as well.
However, none of them were focused on Soliette and instead surrounded soone else.
As Soliette slowly turned her head toward the figure lying nearby, her expression imdiately changed.
"...E-Elsa?!"
The mont she recognized the woman, Soliette imdiately attempted to stand.
But the instant she forced herself upward, her legs nearly gave out. Before she could properly collapse forward, Astrid quickly moved to support her.
"Slow down, Archmage," Astrid said hurriedly. "You’ve only just regained consciousness."
Soliette barely paid attention to her.
Her gaze remained fixed entirely upon Elsa.
"...What happened to her?"
"She’s alive," Astrid answered quickly. "But she only regained consciousness shortly before you did."
"...What exactly is happening?"
At that mont, Ezra quietly stepped forward and began explaining.
"To put it simply... Archmage, you and Headmaster Elsa have been missing for nearly two months."
"...."
"...."
Silence imdiately filled the alleyway afterward.
anwhile, both Soliette and Elsa remained completely frozen.
The words themselves sounded so absurd that neither of them could properly process them imdiately. To the two won, it genuinely felt as though they had rely lost consciousness briefly before suddenly waking up here.
Two months?
That was impossible.
And yet, the expressions surrounding them made it painfully obvious nobody was joking.
Soliette slowly lowered her gaze afterward while trying to organize her thoughts, but the harder she attempted to rember what had happened before losing consciousness, the more scuffed her mories beca.
Then suddenly, a horrifying realization slowly surfaced across her face.
"...Vanitas."
The mont his na left her mouth, Soliette abruptly stumbled forward once more before grabbing Ezra tightly by both shoulders.
Because of the noticeable height difference between them, she had to tilt her head upward just to properly look at him.
"T-That’s right..." Her voice shook. "What happened to Vanitas?!"
"So—"
"No, wait... what happened to everyone else?!"
For several monts, nobody answered her imdiately.
Elsa slowly forced herself upright despite still looking visibly exhausted.
"...I think I understand what’s happening."
Ezra, Astrid, Silas, and Cassandra quietly exchanged glances with one another before eventually beginning to explain the situation surrounding the Empire and everything that had transpired during the past two months.
By the ti they finished, neither Soliette nor Elsa could properly believe what they had just heard anymore.
"Vanitas... is the Emperor now...?"
Disbelief imdiately surfaced across both won’s faces afterward.
"Wait a mont," Elsa suddenly began. "How exactly did you kids even find us? And more importantly... what were we even doing here in the first place?"
"That’s—"
Cassandra opened her mouth to answer.
However, before she could continue speaking, Astrid imdiately cut her off.
"It was purely coincidence, Headmaster," Astrid said. "We just happened to find the two of you while moving through this district."
Astrid’s golden eyes quietly remained fixed upon Elsa while continuing to speak.
"Thank God we found you before anyone else did."
* * *
"Kafka, get over here."
The ritual had already been completely prepared by the ti Vanitas spoke.
By relying purely on mory, he had painstakingly recreated the sa ritual formation Archmage Zen once used when using his younger sister, lissa, as a vessel.
Now, Vanitas had reproduced that exact sa process once again, except this ti, the vessel standing at the center of the formation was Selena, or more accurately, Fyodor.
Enormous magic circles continued rotating on the floor while ancient symbols illuminated the walls.
anwhile, Kafka slowly approached.
"...What exactly do I have to do?"
"Unfortunately, I overestimated my ability to properly interpret the structure of the final seal."
His gaze slowly shifted toward Kafka afterward.
"Fortunately... you’re here."
Kafka remained silent while listening.
Because, despite his age, even he himself understood exactly what Vanitas ant.
Kafka Rossweisse was fundantally abnormal.
His existence itself violated the logic ordinary magic relied upon, allowing him to sever mana, spells, and magical structures before they could even manifest.
And because of that absurd ability, Kafka possessed sothing Vanitas currently lacked.
The ability to brute force the dismantling process itself.
So portions of the seal protecting the dragon bones were simply too incomprehensible to properly decipher through conventional ans within the limited amount of ti Vanitas still had left.
Certain layers of the seal no longer even behaved like ordinary magic anymore, existing instead as conceptual structures intertwined directly with the ritual’s foundational logic itself.
Normally, dismantling sothing like that should have required decades of study.
But Kafka ignored that requirent.
Because what Kafka severed was not rely mana itself, but connection.
The connection between mana and manifestation.
The connection between formulas and completion.
The connection between cause and supernatural effect.
It was why even unfinished spells broke the mont Kafka interfered with them. His ability forcibly interrupted the pathway magic traveled through before reality itself could fully recognize the phenonon being invoked.
And the dragon bone seals, despite their complexity, still ultimately relied upon that sa principle.
As ancient and incomprehensible as they were, the seals still required continuous synchronization between their layered structures in order to remain stable.
Kafka could not properly interpret or understand the formulas themselves the sa way Vanitas could.
But he did not need to.
All Kafka had to do was sever the synchronization holding the layers together.
Without him, Vanitas was no longer certain he would survive long enough to completely unseal the dragon bones himself.
His cancer had already begun deteriorating his body far faster than before.
Even now, maintaining his current condition required imnse effort, while the pain spreading throughout his body steadily worsened with every passing day.
"Fyodor," Vanitas said calmly. "Get into position."
"Right."
The playful deanor Fyodor usually showed gradually disappeared afterward as he slowly stepped toward the center of the ritual formation.
Beneath his feet, enormous magic circles continued rotating across the floor as Fyodor calmly took Selena’s body toward the center of the formation.
Then, Vanitas slowly raised one hand.
The surrounding magic circles imdiately began intensifying.
Countless runic sequences illuminated simultaneously throughout the chamber while ancient inscriptions embedded into the floor gradually activated one after another.
The overwhelming amount of mana released from the ritual alone caused the walls themselves to tremble as though reality itself was resisting what they were attempting to accomplish.
"Listen carefully," Vanitas began. "The mont I begin dismantling the outer layer, the seal’s internal synchronization will begin fluctuating."
His gaze remained fixed upon the dragon bones.
"When that happens, I need you to sever the unstable connections imdiately before the structure attempts to repair itself."
Kafka nodded afterward.
"Fyodor," Vanitas continued. "Are you ready?"
At those words, Fyodor slowly raised his head.
"I’ve been waiting for this day for a very long ti."
To Fyodor, this was enlightennt.
The realization that, despite never truly being chosen by Araxys, despite centuries spent misunderstanding his own role, despite ultimately realizing he had rely been preparing the path for soone else, he would still beco part of the descent regardless.
For him, there could have been no greater ending.
"...Honestly," he said, "I could not have asked for a more beautiful conclusion than this."
"...Disgusting bastard."
"Hehe."
Fyodor rely giggled in response.
The next mont, the ritual finally began.
Vanitas slowly raised one hand while countless interconnected magical formulas unfolded around the seal protecting the dragon bones.
Layer after layer of ancient magical structures surfaced into view, revealing incomprehensible sequences so complex that even observing them for too long caused ordinary mages to lose their sense of direction.
"Kafka."
At Vanitas’s call, Kafka imdiately moved.
The mont unstable synchronization points appeared throughout the seal’s structure, Kafka severed them whenever Vanitas instructed him to.
His ability interrupted the connections holding the formulas together before they could properly stabilize, causing portions of the seal to collapse one after another despite their absurd complexity.
Rumble——
The chamber trembled.
Several layers of the seal imdiately destabilized while ancient mana surged throughout the room like a storm. Yet before the collapsing structures could fully reconstruct themselves, Kafka severed the synchronization again, forcibly preventing the seal from recovering.
Crackle——
The third layer gradually began breaking apart one segnt after another.
Then another.
And another.
Until finally...
Crackle——!
Sothing within the dragon bones itself responded.
The entire chamber imdiately darkened.
The light illuminating the ritual formations disappeared entirely as though swallowed by sothing far deeper than darkness itself.
Even sound abruptly vanished alongside it, leaving behind only silence.
The world turned black once more.
——Welco back.
And Vanitas was dragged back into the void.
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