Consciousness returned slowly, like the tide.
Vergil did not wake up in pain, nor in fear. Just a gentle feeling of floating. His body felt too light, as if the weight of the world had finally been lifted from his shoulders.
His eyes opened slowly, the blue light of the mundane sky stretching over him like a heavenly cloak. The sun hung above, shining tenderly, and soft clouds drifted leisurely. A perfect picture of serenity, so far removed from war, blood, and the weight of everything he had carried for years.
He blinked once, confused.
Water. He was in water.
He felt the long strands of his hair, now white as snow, floating around him like soft seaweed, touching his skin in lazy caresses. There was sothing almost sacred about that mont—the way the ocean held him, as if nature itself were rocking him into an endless sleep.
But it wasn’t a dream. He knew that.
Vergil tried to move, and then he felt it: thin, gentle fingers running through his hair, caressing his wet locks with care and familiarity.
"You took your ti, Master..." The voice was sweet as the sea breeze, light but unmistakable.
Vergil’s eyes widened, slowly turning his face toward the voice. He knew. Of course he knew. That voice... he could never forget it.
But what he saw took his breath away.
In front of him, sitting on the mirror of water as if it were solid, was a woman. No... a Divine Spirit. Her hair was long and danced in shades of sparkling blue, framing a face of supernatural beauty. She wore an ethereal dress, white as the dawn, adorned with crystals and lace, and her eyes—oh, her eyes—contained the entire universe reflected in them.
It was impossible not to recognize her, even though everything about her had changed. Her power pulsed around her like a living, ancient, respectable aura.
"Who are you—" he began, unsure if he wanted to finish the question.
The woman smiled. That smile. It was hers. It always had been.
"It’s , your Viviane," she replied, tilting her face slightly, as she used to do when she was playing with him in the tower garden. "Although I have... regained all my original power."
Vergil looked at her, confused but not alard. There was sothing about her presence that prevented him from feeling fear. It was like being back ho after millennia of being lost.
"You..." he tried to say sothing, anything, but the words got stuck in his throat.
Viviane kept smiling. Her gaze was calm, gentle. There was no pain there. No longing. Just completeness.
She leaned closer, the water not reacting to her movent. She touched his face with her fingertips.
"You’re finally here. I waited for you. All this ti... It took you so long to co back... it was two days..."
Vergil closed his eyes as he felt her touch. The calm he felt in that place was almost unreal. Not even in the depths of his old ho or in the flowery fields of the fairy kingdom had he experienced anything so... absolute. It wasn’t just peace. It was relief.
"But... where are we?" he finally asked, his voice still hoarse.
Viviane didn’t answer right away. Instead, she looked up at the sky, as if admiring the perfection of the world.
"We’re in the ocean," she said at last. "In the middle of nowhere. Where we were before, even though Paimon left as soon as you passed out."
Vergil stared at her, trying to understand. But she just smiled again, and that seed to be enough.
"You’re fine," she murmured, touching his hair again. "As beautiful as the day we t... It seems that deadly corruption has disappeared... Ah, finally your hair is white again."
Vergil heard sothing important. It didn’t matter. What mattered was Viviane.
"Why do you... look so different?" he asked.
Viviane lowered her eyes, and for the first ti her smile beca more... serene, as if a sweet mory passed through her mind.
"Because this is . The real . Before I died and lost all my power, before I was reincarnated by Sapphire as a Demon... This is my complete nature."
She stood up, and the movent was as light as the ballet of the tides. Her dress floated around her like mist. There was no weight in her steps. It was as if she were made of light and water.
"You have recreated a legendary weapon," she said softly. "I already imagined you could do it, but reforging a Divine Heroic-class sword is quite a feat, especially for a demon."
Vergil lowered his eyes. For a mont, the reflection in the water revealed him—his eyes still blue, but now lighter. His features were serene, soft. He barely recognized himself.
"How strange... these feelings," he murmured.
Viviane approached him again, kneeling before him on the surface of the ocean. She touched his chin and lifted his face.
"Thank you, you’ve given a very good reason to live."
Silence settled between them for several long minutes. But it wasn’t empty. It was filled with everything they had never said, with every glance, every touch.
Vergil reached out and touched her face.
"Are you really... okay?"
She closed her eyes and rested her head in his palm. "I’m much better now."
He smiled for the first ti in days—perhaps weeks, perhaps centuries. Ti no longer seed to matter there.
Viviane lay down beside him, both of them floating on the calm waters. The sky above them seed to paint new constellations, and the sun did not set. It was a place outside the natural order, where everything was just... now.
She turned to him, laying her head on his chest.
"I want to stay here with you for a little while," he whispered.
Viviane laughed softly, like a night breeze.
"You can. For as long as you want."
"And then?"
She looked at him, her eyes shining with infinite tenderness. "Then... we go ho."...
[Salem... Kingdom of Witches... Queen’s Tower]
The soft tinkling of magical crystals, the muffled sound of scrolls being leafed through, and the subtle hum of arcane formulas pulsing in the air. A circular hall, surrounded by columns of living obsidian and floating mirrors, hovered in a space beyond ti. Everything there was made of condensed magic, pure and refined, as if the very fabric of reality had been molded into architectural forms.
In the center of the hall, Seris, the Queen of Witches, kept her gaze fixed on a projection suspended before her: a spiral of arcane symbols slowly rotated in three dinsions, tracing a vast and almost indecipherable equation, with lines of silver energy snaking around ancient runes and dinsional fractals.
Her expression was one of pure skepticism.
"This... doesn’t make sense," Seris murmured, her eyes narrowed, following each component of the formula. "A dinsion... anchored directly to the soul? And on top of that... mobile?"
On the opposite side of the projection, sitting cross-legged on a floating grimoire, was Alice. The twelve-year-old girl swung her feet, her eyes shining with expectation, as if waiting for a complint that never ca.
"Do you see that turning point in the third quantum layer?" Alice pointed with her finger, as if showing a simple detail in a child’s drawing. "It connects the core of the soul to the dinsional seal I adapted from the Hexagram of Lugh and the Magic you used to create Salem. That’s why it moves with . Wherever I go, it goes too. It’s like an extra heart."
Seris frowned even more, her trembling hand touching her chin. Morgana, standing beside her, crossed her arms, her black cloak billowing even though there was no wind. The ancient sorceress cast a heavy gaze at the projection, as if each symbol were an affront.
"This is absurd," Morgana said coldly. "A mobile internal dinsion? Integrated into an individual’s soul? The very idea goes against the fundantal laws of magic as a whole. That... would be like breaking the laws of Reality and shaping it to oneself. Creating dinsions is not impossible, but this? This is the craziest thing I’ve ever read in my life. And I’ve seen a lot!"
Seris remained silent for a few seconds. She was still analyzing the magical spiral, as if hoping to find a flaw, a contradiction. But there was none. The logic was irrefutable. The arcane mathematics was precise. And—as unbelievable as it was—elegant.
"This shouldn’t be possible," Seris finally declared. Her tone was more incredulous than reproachful. "Not even rlin, or Nimue, attempted sothing like this. Creating a dinsion is one thing. But making it alive, intimate... linked to the essence of a living being? That’s not just dangerous. It’s... forbidden."
Alice blinked, confused.
"But I already did," she replied simply, as if telling soone she had finished her howork before dinner.
Silence.
Her words hung in the air like silent thunder. Seris blinked slowly, as if her brain was trying to assimilate the enormity of that statent.
"You... what?" asked Morgana, her voice faltering for a mont, a rarity for soone like her.
"It’s already working," Alice continued, without any presumption. She took a small amber stone out of her pocket and held it up. Imdiately, the equation before them folded in on itself, transforming into a luminous portal-shaped crack. Inside it, one could see a starry vastness: floating shelves, objects impossible to na, paths suspended in the void, all contained in a dinsion that vibrated at the sa rhythm as her soul.
"That’s... incredible... what’s it called?" whispered Seris, in absolute shock.
"I nad it the Gate of Babylon," Alice said smiling, "It’s the coolest na I could think of," Alice said, laughing softly.
"Twelve years... and here I am... I’ve never created a Supre spell..." said Morgana, astonished.
"I’m just a kid... with free ti." Alice smiled, shrugging. "And I needed a place to store my creations. The tower’s laboratories were already too full."
Seris took a step back, as if she needed distance to process what she was seeing. She, who had witnessed the birth of magical eras, who had walked among gods and monsters, did not know what to say. For the first ti in centuries, she felt... small.
Morgana, always cold and calculating when it ca to magic, had her eyes fixed on the dinsional opening with sothing bordering on fear.
"A twelve-year-old girl... created sothing that can alter the structure of the soul and open space for internal universes..." she murmured. "If this falls into the wrong hands..."
"It won’t," said Alice. "I didn’t write anything down. It’s all here," she pointed to her own head. "And here," she added, touching her chest. "To be sure, I also created a codex spell that is impossible to decipher since it changes every 0.2 seconds. I believe that not even a god of space can solve it. Well, I don’t know a god to test it on, but gods are dumb, right? They don’t have the intellect for it, so it’s all good!"
Seris looked at her for a long ti. Then she sighed. It wasn’t frustration. It was amazent.
"You... are a prodigy beyond anything I’ve ever seen. Not even the First Witch dared to play with the limits of the Self and Reality in this way."
Alice blushed a little, but smiled. Not out of pride, but because she knew it could be useful one day. That it could protect. That it could create, rather than destroy.
"It’ll be good to help Daddy!! He needs a good world for him and my mommies! So I need to create that world for him so he can spoil without any problems!!" Those were the real thoughts behind the Gate of Babylon.
"It’ll work..." she said softly.
Seris approached, bending down to the girl’s height. "Alice... do you really understand what you’ve created?"
The girl thought for a mont. Then she nodded. "Yes. I created a place that only exists because I exist. If I die, it disappears. If I live, it grows. It’s like a garden. Or a heart."
For a mont, the hall remained silent. The magical crack still glowed, and the equation slowly revolved around it like a halo of cots.
Morgana looked away. For the first ti in centuries, she felt sothing strange: hope.
Seris stood up. She looked up at the enchanted glass sky above the hall and whispered to herself, "How did I beco the teacher of soone like this..."
Morgana placed her hand on her shoulder... "Everything that man touches turns into sothing like this... don’t even waste your ti trying to understand, mother."
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