He stopped playing. Vastarael lowered the Orchestral Violex and let out a slow, exhausted sigh.
The plan was done.
Compared to Spheraphase, the flow of time in this place was slower. The Hidden Citadel had been cut away from the world completely, severed from Spheraphase so thoroughly that it was no longer connected to it in any meaningful way. It was isolated now, floating in its own impossible temporal pocket.
That was the point. That was what he had been building towards to all along.
Luminescent still stood there in the aftermath. His body was rigid from the pressure that had just nearly crushed even an Overlord Rank Krepsuna. Vastarael turned his head and looked at him.
There was no anger in his face as he pushed him away.
The force of it was absurd. Even now, even after all of that, even as an Overlord Rank Krepsuna, Luminescent could not resist it. His Divine Presence slammed into him and covered his body before he could recover, wrapping him in layers of crystalized sapphire until he was trapped inside a massive translucent prison. The sapphire shell flashed once, then settled, hardening into a brilliant giant crystal that looked more like a monument than a cage.
Vastarael threw it across the broken space and vanished in Modernia, leaving only a trail of sapphire afterimage as it fell into the gorge that he made decades ago.
Adelasta was already running.
Panic had overtaken every part of her face that she no longer looked like the composed, brilliant woman who had carried herself through impossible things with cold certainty. She looked like someone whose entire world had just split open in front of her and was falling apart faster than her mind could process. She reached him in a rush with arms out, as if she could physically stop whatever was happening just by refusing to let him go.
"Veneri—"
She passed through him.
The shock of it hit her so hard that her expression shattered in real time. Her arms remained outstretched but there was nothing there. What she had touched was not a body.
It was his soul. That was all that was left. His physical body was gone.
What stood before her now was Vastarael's soul burning with the presence of a Primordial Deity Rank existence. Soul Sacrifice had taken everything physical and thrown it away to force a temporary ascension and the result was standing in front of her in the shape of the man she loved but not the man she could hold anymore.
Adela's face went blank for one second.
"No."
She reached for him again more desperately this time. Her hands were shaking so badly they could barely stay steady.
"No, no, no—Veneri, stop. Stop that. Fix it. Fix your body. You can do Body Reconstruction, right? You can make one. You can—"
Her voice broke. Her pupils had constricted and expanded too fast, like her mind was trying to reject the reality in front of her and failing. He could see her breaking so he smiled at her.
That made it worse.
It was not a cruel smile. It was not smug. It was not even brave in the way heroes liked to pretend. It was the smile of a man who had already decided that this pain belonged to him and not her but was trying to ease it anyway by being gentle with the wound he had caused.
"Adela."
She shook her head immediately, like she could reject the entire moment just by refusing to hear his voice properly.
"No. No! Don't do this! Don't speak like that! You can still come back. You can still make a body! You can still—"
He shook his head once.
"It's what has to be done."
"No, I won't allow it!"
That almost made him smile again, but this time there was pain in it. She was still trying to order him not to die like he was still someone she could command. He looked at her for a long second, and then he glanced to the side.
Alpha II was beginning to vanish as well.
Adela noticed it a moment later and the confusion hit her so hard it nearly knocked the panic out of alignment. She looked between him and Alpha II.
"Wait—what? Why is Alpha II—"
Vastarael's voice was calm when he answered.
"I'm going to die now."
Alpha II faded completely.
Adela stood frozen for a second, staring at the empty space where she had been, then back at Vastarael.
"No, no, no, there has to be another way. There has to be another way, you can still—just reconstruct yourself, Veneri. J-just use Body Reconstruction and make a body. Please. Please, just do that. Please."
Her words were coming faster now, tumbling over each other because her mind was scrambling for any route that did not end with this. Her hands were trembling harder. Her mouth kept moving even when the words no longer made sense. This was not calm pleading anymore.
He watched her for a moment longer.
"Last Epoch Cycle, you felt my death and couldn't do a thing about it."
Her eyes widened. He stepped closer, though there was nothing solid between them now but light and grief.
"Now, you can. So please don't say goodbye with that expression."
That was the moment her face truly broke.
Grief hit her so hard it visibly changed the way she stood. She was losing him right now in front of her. The knowledge that this was the second time she had been forced to watch him die without being able to stop it made the pain become almost unbearable to witness.
She looked like her mind was trying to split apart under the weight of it. Tears spilled down her face while she stared at him as if refusing to accept the outcome as if maybe, if she looked hard enough, the body would come back.
"Adelasta Richinaria, I hereby declare you to be free from me. Your Bane is no longer under my control and I am no longer your master."
Her pupils constricted.
This was the first and last time he had ever given her an order with her Bane, Servitude To One. He was freeing her right before he vanished.
That meant he was really doing it. That meant this was not another one of his tricks. That meant he was not coming back.
Her lips parted slightly, but no sound came out. Her whole body looked like it had forgotten how to stand.
This was the thing she had never wanted.
Even if she had hated the burden sometimes, even if she had cursed him, even if she had resented the way he carried everything alone and turned love into sacrifice and sacrifice into law, she had never wanted him to release her this way. Not like this. Not with that smile, not with those words and not with the knowledge that he was leaving her behind by choice.
He had finally done what she never asked for.
"No, you can't, you can't just—Veneri, don't—don't leave me like this—"
He looked at her with the same gentle expression he had used on her when she was angry, when she was cold, when she was proud, when she was afraid and when she was anything but this. His soul was already thinning at the edges, becoming harder to hold in place. Time itself was beginning to pull at him, trying to carry him away from the world he had just altered.
"Have a safe adventure, My Betrothed."
Her eyes widened in horror as he vanished.
He simply disappeared from the space in front of her. His soul vanished beyond the edge of time and existence itself, leaving nothing but a torn silence behind.
Adela stood there. Her arms fell slowly to her sides.
She stared at the empty air for too long, as if waiting for him to reappear just because she refused to let the moment be real. Her expression did not move. Her breathing had almost stopped. She looked like someone whose heart had been ripped out too cleanly for the body to understand what happened yet.
Her legs eventually gave out. She did not catch herself.
She dropped to her knees in the sand. The sound she made was tiny at first. It was just a breath that broke halfway through, as if her entire body had finally accepted that he was gone and could no longer keep pretending otherwise.
Her hands pressed into the ground and cried. There was no other word for it.
She was no longer a cold Grand Duchess. She was just a wife watching the man she had loved through years of suffering disappear in front of her and taking the full weight of that emptiness straight into her chest.
She did not move for a long while. And then, after a time that felt too long and too short at once, a hologram appeared in front of her. She looked up without lifting her body.
The sight of it hit her with the final mercy of cruelty. It was Phaenora's System. The message appeared clear and cold in front of her vision.
Adela stared at the words. All the light in her eyes vanished. It was the final blow that shattered all her beliefs and hopes.
[The Dynasty Monarch of Richinaria, Vastarael Blossom Richinaria, is dead.]
[The Sapphire Bond connecting Sentina Erideae has vanished.]
[Phaenora Richinaria is dead. The system will therefore exist on automatic control by Omniscient Control.]