Chương 121: CHAPTER 118 - Freedom

The boy's hands thrashed in the dense, calloused darkness. His neck oscillated frantically, driven by fear more than any real need. The muscles of his face contorted, trying to open his mouth wider and wider.

"It's cold. Where am I? Is there air here?" He felt himself sinking, even though his skin was not caressed by any fluid. He gasped, but neither air nor water flowed into his throat. Despite this, his consciousness showed no sign of wavering. He was sure his eyelids were open and dilated, yet he could only see his own white, smooth skin.

"I… I killed Laure and then that smoke…" This time he was sure the words had followed his lips, yet the sound seemed to remain inside his mind. He sank, or at least he believed he did, since above him and below his feet everything was the same shade as closed eyes.

"You're not wrong. You killed her, and this is what that entails." A terribly familiar voice reached his ear, and turning, he recognized the face: strangely darkened, dressed in the same neat and elegant suit.

"Tux?" The man removed his top hat, nodding as they seemed to finally touch the bottom, though what changed was only the consistency of the darkness. Lance pulled away immediately, taking a few steps back. Were it not for the white shirt and the red feather in his pocket, he would have blended with the surrounding tenebrae.

"You're here because Vergehen absorbed a spike of Frequency." Only now did the boy notice that the eternal space seemed to vibrate, as if it were breathing.

"What do you mean by that? Laure isn't dead?" Tux shook his head, pointing a finger at his chest.

"Perhaps this is a bit different, but when a Meta dies definitively, they pour all their Frequency into the environment. Normally it's silent, but when more and more of those Frequencies mix, they lose their identity and can form a singularity, as happened in the War. Icarus's and Laure's Frequencies amplified each other, and that allowed Vergehen to remove that small inhibition I had imposed… Certainly unexpected." He scratched his head, his fingers vanishing into his darkened face.

"Wasn't my ability a siphon?" Tux shook his head again.

"Not precisely. Certainly the damage inflicted tends to process others' Frequency and amplify yours, but that's only a side effect." A sigh rose from his invisible lips.

"Lance, what does it mean to kill, in your opinion?" The boy shook his head, dazed. He looked at his hands, remembering how much he had consumed earlier. To him, killing was a crude but necessary act, made inevitable ever since he had nearly been mauled to death in that clearing. Killing is what had to be done. An alienating but necessary act for Jude, Jeanne, Monica, Lucas, and all the others.

"I need to reap others' lives for them... Without it, I will never be able to reach her." He tried to communicate that idea, feeling almost struck by an invisible gaze.

"I know what you're thinking, because I believed it too. Kill to give someone security, kill to take from the wicked what they never deserved… Kill for the good of others." Tux was motionless, though now Lance noticed that he too was vibrating, completely out of sync with the beat reaching his soles.

"To tear away a life means to possess. By killing, you took something, but I assure you that, although it's easy to take, it's not equally easy to be rid of. Other people's lives are rather sticky." He spoke with a vague sense of nostalgia, tilting his head and relaxing his shoulders.

"They leave their mark on us, they fuse with ours, and sometimes they engulf us, and even by killing their owner we don't free ourselves. Killing is subtracting something from both parties. From the murderer, his individuality, and from the victim, the phenomenon. This, in part, is Vergehen." Lance tried to follow that reasoning, but strange voices never heard before called to him from beyond the eternal darkness.

"It's starting, and soon we'll have company… In any case, these are the viscera of the Ego of the person you killed. All their vital Frequency condensed and inoculated inside your core. Their soul will follow the flow of Hel, but you would be irremediably stained by it." Suddenly the vibrations ceased, and from the void a blade of pure scarlet blood was hurled. Tux grabbed Lance by the neck, hurling him away while deflecting the weapon with the back of his hand.

"Already here?" Tux said with a certain sneer in his voice. Marked by a terrifying reddish halo, the darkness became a horizon, illuminating a woman with alabaster skin and fiery eyes. She was completely naked, yet many of her features were covered by a dense mantle of blood. As her white mane waved behind her, a whistle rose from her fleshy lips.

"You here too? And I, who thought I finally had the chance to take back ██████." The words vanished as she pronounced them, while Lance's head exploded upon hearing them disappear.

"I pity you… You still can't accept what happened to ██████ because of you?" A new blood blade was hurled, shattering against a rectangular shield with rounded edges, and emerged from Tux's shoulders. Eve smiled, showing her canines.

"Curious that you believe you have a say in this discussion, when between the two of us, the less real one is you." Tux didn't respond, merely watching Lance, in pain at every evanescent word.

"You may have manifested, but you, like me, are only a specter of a reality now vanished, and still you cling to it like a parasite." With a snap of his fingers, nine rusty weapons appeared around him, dripping with black slime. A sword made to sever limbs. A club to reduce bones to dust. A dagger to slaughter the victim. A massive hammer to turn vertebrae and organs into pulp. A lance to pierce the sternum. A spiral to prevent wounds from ever closing. A large blade to slice from trapezius to groin.

A sickle to disconnect nerves and tendons. Finally, a rifle with a smoking barrel, to silence all evils in sound. Eve whistled again, recognizing those weapons with a certain enthusiasm. Lachesi vibrated, almost leading Lance to reach toward those inexplicable relics. A spine of blood suddenly emerged from the ground and stopped his attempt.

"You really have fallen low… Those were among the worst Dielmon had to offer." Tux clicked his tongue, while worry became palpable on the boy's face.

"You… What do you know about Dielmon?" Lance's voice was confused and pained, almost broken, and accompanied by a vaguely lucid gaze. Eve stared at him, smiling as she occasionally moistened her lips.

"We speak of an event now vanished, or one destined to happen. It's not my place to explain it to you, impostor." That tone wasn't new to him, and he understood perfectly that behind that smile hid something malignant. Tux vanished from sight, and both of Eve's hands fell, staining the black void with burning red.

"Haven't lost the habit of being a filthy sneaking rat?" The hammer and her leg clashed, pushing everyone away. Tux reappeared before Lance, grabbing him by the neck.

"I'm sorry, but here I can't give you any help. Be faithful to yourself, Lance Klint." Immediately after, the two resumed fighting, immersed in a swarm of multicolored slashes. Lance tried to rise when he suddenly found a strange sensation beneath his feet: something thin and damp, cool and delicate on the skin. His eyes took a few moments to adjust to the light filtering through the pines and oaks in what seemed a perfect spring forest.

The earth and leaves were damp with dew, and a cold, early-morning breeze shook the nature around him with a whistle. Lance moved his steps on the firm ground, orienting himself in that infinite green, occasionally broken by the last stubborn snow remaining.

"Is this Sector II?" A buzz had lodged in his head and beat against his bones almost as if it wanted to guide him. Thus, in pain, he trudged along, resting his cold hand on the damp, moss-rich bark. Occasionally a trampling rose behind him, yet he paid it no mind. The discomfort grew with every step toward a crystalline river, which he saw carrying small chunks of ice downstream.

"Mommy, Mommy! Look here!" Lance had to lean his back against a wide, almost soft tree, slowly feeling his legs go weak under their own weight as he listened to the laughter of a young girl. He turned his gaze, noticing beyond the bushes a pair. A young girl with long black hair, adorned with a worn red cap. Damp patches spread on her yellowish dress as she squirmed with a water snake, its body multicolored except for the round, deep blue head.

The mother chuckled, continuing to wash clothes in the cold river water. Lance watched them in silence, recognizing in that girl the voice of his first victim. That scene had perhaps repeated itself many times; that smile before something dangerous was habitual for the mother, and in his heart he wondered if his mother had ever smiled at him like that, but of that he had neither experience nor proof.

"I still remember this spring…" Lance turned sharply, perceiving a sweet, warm sigh on his nape. His eyes had to adjust again, this time stained by snow. Before him, the same child was wrapped in rags, dirty and worn by time. She was motionless before the door of a dwelling of cracked bricks and rotten wood. She waited in silence, while inside unnatural, brutal sounds rose. Moans and insults shook the windows, culminating in a single orgasm.

Lance watched in silence, now wrapped in garments made pale by the snow, when the window exploded, torn open by a vase. He watched the shards crash into the snow at his feet, followed also by the child, still motionless before the door. He didn't feel powerless. Lance was simply determined to remain still and observe, without taking a position. From the door emerged a plump man, his face obscured by clear smoke. He was so quick to exit that he didn't notice the child he had just kicked into the snow.

From his invisible face emerged a curse, and when he met her dull eyes, a single spit reached her face. As the street began to crowd, the girl was pulled inside by a slender hand. At that moment, Lance came to his senses from his role as spectator, approaching the window. He pulled himself up, ignoring the cuts on his wrists. Inside, the room was barely lit by a chipped lantern, from which the little flame could be seen dancing.

"This is Laure's past..." The oval table had a leg about to break. The chair tilted, and with loose straw, the bed's stuffing hung from the side onto the rough floor. The slender hand now had a priority: the same woman who washed clothes in the river. The child was pulled into an embrace by that skeletal woman, with hollow eyes and cheeks, her gaze perpetually languid. The little one showed no sign of changing expression, merely lowering her head onto her mother's breast.

Neither shed tears, limiting themselves to lamenting in each other's ear. The mother cast an eye on the table, bare of any glint, sketching a grimace.

"Mommy will be fine, I'll go to the doctor, and we'll find another way, here… Together…" Those words Lance shouldn't have heard, yet they reached his ear with alarming clarity. Behind that voice was a veil hiding something he understood well: a lie.

"Laure… Don't leave me." Having said that, the child nodded, without indulging in any smile or tear. Lance pulled away from the window, staring at the stream of people cloaked in marks of snow on their steps. They emitted not a single sound, flanking that depressing house as if it didn't exist. They ignored what was happening, or rather found a way to not care.

"Such is the life for those who can't dream."

"Of that memory I only have the smell of sperm and blood that accompanied my mother's words." In the crowd, Laure emerged, just as Lance had left her: on her chest a trickle of blood beyond the dress, and on her forehead, just above the left eyelid, a slanted hole from which life had stopped gushing.

"At a certain point my mother stopped seeing me as a daughter and more as a flag to return to." The scene changed again, this time a summer clearing with the buzzing of insects resting on dry leaves. The air was vaguely cool, balancing the scorching summer noon sun. Lance headed, eyes wide, toward the center of the clearing. There, lying on the ground, was a Laure a few years older, blood at her mouth and shaken by the vehemence of the stabbings inflicted by an elderly woman.

She jolted rhythmically with every plunge of the blade into her flesh, breaking the brushwood beneath her rigid shoulder blades. Lance came almost to graze the woman's shoulders, stopping close enough to be stained by the drops of sweat spraying into the air. He counted about twenty stab wounds before the exhausted woman rose to vanish into the woods, dragging her limbs.

"That table no longer saw coins after my mother's rape. After all, when your mask of strength shatters, all that remains is a lamb with too much wool." The corpse began to speak, staring with clear eyes at the high sun, which strenuously fought the black clouds approaching.

"So I decided to help her, following her steps to manage to pay for her doctor. After all, she was old and sick, but she was always a beautiful, kind woman. I was just like her, with the stench of first blood still on me." The red, foamy lips creaked to sketch a smile, while the skin on her hands became bumpy, as if mature larvae were busy fleeing. The sun disappeared, buried by screaming cumulonimbus. A black rain began to irrigate the forest, dampening the brushwood and dirtying it with black slime.

"Oh… How that table sparkled when I was there." A lightning bolt crashed near them, radiating a violet light.

"But nothing was more beautiful than Mommy's smile, even if by then for me… There was no more space." Another lightning bolt shot through Laure's body, which had progressively filled with boils swollen with crystals.

"But she smiled at me… Wielding that knife." The first sense to regain capability was hearing, bombarded by terrifying screams of every kind. The second was smell, assailed by the acrid, damp stench of blood. The third was taste, forced to savor the dense air with its iron flavor. The fourth was touch, forcing him to perceive the mixture of freezing air and the warmth spreading at his feet. Finally came sight, leaving him disgusted by the hell he was observing.

Lance Klint had seen Hel on multiple occasions, by now convinced of its existence and nature, but what was consuming itself before his eyes was his world. The blood, the guts, the screams, the unnatural writhing were the fruit of a real lived experience, truly consumed in this citadel called Gevaudan. He advanced in silence with his mouth slightly open and eyes dilated, while mutated men and beasts mauled and leaped around him.

He walked to not lose sight of the only peculiar figure in that crowd: a creature with a slender appearance, curved back streaked with crystalline boils, while all its limbs were sterile and, like the rest of its body, covered in violet or yellowish scales. He was guided by the light refracting on the blade protruding from its arm, exactly between the radius and ulna. He followed it closely, never advancing beyond its shoulders.

In a short time, he reached the same house of the embrace, once covered in snow, but this time it was much more beautiful and cared for: the cracks had vanished, the roof rebuilt, and even the window had been embellished with new frames and a small vase with red flowers with curly petals.

"Are those carnations?" The creature approached the door, trying to grasp it with its contorted hand, making the blade clash against the wood. It tried again and again, failing each time, and with every attempt, choked little cries mixed with the barking of the outside world.

"Mommy…" The creature murmured before slashing the door open with a single stroke. The shards spread inside, breaking the furniture and the new paintings hanging on the walls. Now the beast remained at the entrance, while a man and a woman trembled, huddled next to each other. The woman was her mother, with the same knife wrapped in paper and placed inside an open leather suitcase. Her face had lost every trace of delicacy, becoming a mass of wrinkles and tears as she stared at the creature.

"My mother was happy when she saw him. Look… They're still holding hands." Laure's arms embraced Lance from behind, whispering those little notions while the boy could only watch. The man was elegantly dressed, with a tobacco jacket and a worn red tie. His face was young, yet his fingers were wrinkled and full of calluses. He breathed heavily, trying to calm his tremors. The woman licked her lips, bringing her head forward.

"Laure? You're alive…" The room seemed almost to separate from the world, completely abandoning the bloody madness consuming itself outside. You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

"I loved my mother, but at a certain point she began to transform into something I couldn't tolerate. She was a skein of chains, and I a heavy padlock." Without warning, the mother was pierced through the sternum and lifted. The blade was retracted to deliver a second slash, tearing from groin to shoulder. The doctor watched the mutilated body fall to the ground with a dull thud. He brought his trembling, tear-filled eyes toward the creature, staring at the single greenish eye emerging from the scales.

He didn't move, and she prodded the organs with the sharp organ.

"My mother was pregnant by him. She wasn't that old, actually, since she'd had me young." The man tried to scream, but before he could emit a single sound, the blade pierced his mouth. As he was lifted, he tried to cling to and pull away the chitinous substance protruding from his nape. In a few seconds, however, all his efforts ceased. Now the room was painted red like the rest of the village of Gevaudan.

"No man can love his own chains, unless he is the one who holds their end." Thus the beast became more similar to Laure, or vice versa. It went to consume its meal with its usual features, killing its rivals in the meantime. Thus, shortly after, the woman regained consciousness of herself before disappearing into the woods.

"Perhaps you don't know, but it was the Ruther Institute that cleaned up this massacre. Before NOIR even existed, these horrors populated the earth, and the Institute dealt with them, but this is nothing new, perhaps." She laughed, and Lance turned to chase those evanescent words, finding himself before a window. Beyond the dirty glass was a square his memory could not forget: Arden Ring.

"Here we met for the first time, though here everything was different." He turned, noticing a Laure much more similar to the one he had known, but with hair much longer and braided into a tail. She wore a skimpy sky-blue dress, almost glued to her curves. The boy's head was losing its grip on reality, making him incapable of expressing himself as he wandered with his gaze.

"Perhaps you weren't ready to tear away a life that had weight…" The woman smiled, bending forward to look at him better. The smell of perfume was heavy in the air, trying to cover the smell of any act that had been or was being consummated in the rooms of the corridor. Lance swallowed saliva with a vague floral taste.

"All lives have weight, Laure." The woman laughed heartily, covering her lips with her index and middle fingers. The scene changed suddenly, now finding himself inside a room painted pink and furnished with luxury and splendor beyond anything he had seen on his first visit. On the large canopy was depicted the emblem of Andimica, casting its shadow on the crimson velvet sheets, stained with various damp and oily patches. On the dark, massive furniture hung wet rags, next to various oblong bottles of distillates.

A heavy smell of sweat and bodily fluids had infested the carpet at the base of the bed, while repeated thuds sounded beyond the drape.

"Before this, do you repeat the same idiocy?" Now, by candlelight, Lance noticed the pale arm of a girl, marked by numerous violet bruises not unlike the skin of an eggplant. It moved rhythmically, followed immediately after by a weak moan. It could simply be consummating a coitus, but at the sight of the hairy back bent over her, he felt a distinct disgust, and the sight of that grimace brought Laure to smile. The man was above her, complaining and cursing while his knuckles rhythmically fell on the girl's face.

This continued for about three minutes, until the girl stopped moaning.

"She had a talent for singing, a true nightingale… But in the end even she let herself be caged." The man rose to go dress, pushing the body aside carelessly.

"You see, Lance, it's not a question of talent or events, much less of actions. Men aren't born as livestock. They simply choose to be so themselves. Blood and time flow perpetually, and how do you expect the value of two people's existence to remain unchanged while they themselves change? What value has the life of a man who has forgotten how to live? To me, it might be worth less than a dead man who truly desired to live."

While they spoke, the man had lit a cigar while a group of nurses had run into the room to clean up. The body was hastily collected and closed in a sack of greenish fibers and carried out.

"That girl, I loved her, but in the end even I forgot her name. The same for the man, though I remember precisely his occupation." The scene changed, and now Lance found himself in a cold, lost woods, where not even the burning lights of the village could penetrate. A pungent smell of blood and moss filled his lungs as he tried to orient himself.

"Former Minister of Foreign Affairs of Andimica, 59 years old, abandoned by his wife and fallen into ruin due to collusion with the criminal underworld of the Dedalus. A regular client of Arden Ring, where he enjoyed molesting and venting with the youngest girls. He had a weakness for dark-haired women, and above all…" Lance turned, now with the moon illuminating the brush. His blood froze at the sight of Laure's carefree smile, stained with blood.

At her clawed feet lay rags and offal, and beyond the woman's figure, mutilated remains.

"He tasted worse than his own actions." She spat out the chewed morsel, letting the bitten arm fall to the ground. A wave of anger washed away Lance's dismay, but it vanished with the same rapidity with which it had appeared.

"I ask you… Why go so far?" Laure smiled, bringing her hands behind her back while the wind waved her stained dress.

"Because I was free, without a cage by choice. The door to exit and to enter is always open! People simply don't want to seize the opportunity." The two exchanged a glance before Lance opened his lips.

"Don't you feel hatred for me, who deprived you of freedom?" Laure stared at him in silence before bursting into thunderous laughter.

"You? You're just an interesting brat. You may have deprived me of life, but you couldn't rob me of something I had already thrown to the nettles." The world began to tremble, the sky to crack, and the wind to howl savagely while a powerful metallic roar began to spread from the horizon.

"It doesn't matter how much gold you plate bars with or how many jewels you set in a padlock. They always remain instruments of restraint. Too long, and your wings will begin to atrophy, the cage will appear ever smaller and more suffocating, and you will choose to leave it. Crushed and wounded, you might think to choose to drag yourself away from that mass of prisons, and yet no. You choose the largest cage. The reason is rather banal." Laure swallowed, while an iron smell invaded the forest.

"Because, in the end, you felt at home in that cage." A swarm of sparks devoured them, burning the forest and carrying them onto a field of war. The muddy soil pushed against the trench posts while the screams were suffocated by the constant roar of cannons. Around them, at times, bursts of blood freed themselves from the pits. A black figure leaped from trench to trench, reaping victims with the same frequency.

"I don't think I necessarily need to tell you where we are, though perhaps this is the first time you see it directly." Wherever Lance cast his gaze, he couldn't pull away from the halo of death of that gray field. In the smoke he saw lost figures, shredded by machine guns. Bodies trampled by dirty tanks and wounded filled the mud like bulbs. The screams became ever more horrid as his eyes focused on the gigantic golden crosses populating the horizon.

"For what reason did you choose to enlist, you without identity or party?" Lance couldn't look at her, but strangely he sensed that her face had become more furrowed. A bomb fell near the two, and the black reaper roared before vanishing into the smoke.

"Because I never managed to rebel against the true nature of things." Around them, the war raged, but everything seemed muffled, almost as if the world were forgetting those events.

"I met Malcolm toward the end of the conflict and agreed to enlist in due time in Changeant to prove to myself that I would never follow in my mother's footsteps, that I would be capable of refusing the cage and being free." The world crumbled completely, abandoning them in a space with a slightly cloudy sky and feet immersed in cold, clear water, like a mirror. In that placid space, invisible birds cut through the currents singing, accompanying the two in the final act.

Laure smiled, now dressed the same way as when she was a child, with the same cap covering the scar on her forehead.

"So this was your essence?" Lance smiled, sitting in the water as he watched Laure kick and laugh while trying not to ruin the hem of her white dress. She too turned with a smile on her face, the same as a family member, a sister, or a daughter grown as she should have been.

"In the end… I failed just like my mother." She raised her chin high toward the sky, staring for a brief instant at the sun. The coldness under Lance's sole jolted him awake. Everything around him felt so familiar, yet so distant.

"This world is truly a tragic one..." The water under him stopped rippling for an instant, and Lance fiercely opened his eyes, drawing Laure's attention. Silence fell between them, only slightly interrupted by the strange breeze on the water's surface.

"In the end, men, whether they want it or not, are always slaves to something. Whether chains, nooses, ropes, contracts, or even the red threads of destiny, it matters little. We are always bound to something, and I believe this holds even for those who are no longer quite human." Lance nodded, remembering his own bonds, his duties, and his desires. Human beings and their derivatives cannot escape the slavery imposed by their own existence. Whether natural or an existential dogma, it matters little.

As long as there is consciousness, there is desire, and from desire is born the bond. Thinking this, the two smiled at that shared reflection.

"In the end, not all lives are of equal value, but all have the same potential."

"I failed in my revolt, in the search for freedom to choose a cage…" She smiled, bringing her hands behind her back, crossing them nervously as is customary at that age.

"But I was happy about so many little things. Even though I wasn't able to fly, in the end I managed to touch the sky." Laure extended her hand, devoid of claws, to the great blue, ignoring the ripples caused by the tears falling from her cheeks.

"I'm immature, and perhaps I'm in no condition to console a soul now vanished…" Lance opened his mouth, smiling with arms spread wide.

"But I don't believe you failed." Laure, curious about the smile of that young man who had earlier stared at her with such hatred, let herself go, and with her knees experienced that refreshing, clear water. Now the two looked each other straight in the face, at the same level and illuminated by the same incessant light.

"If we are always obliged to be bound and imprisoned, we can still choose to try to tear away those chains and die trying. We can still raise our fist when our backs are to the wall and choose to scream even when our throat has been cut. No matter how absurd this may be, we can still yearn to be free. Choosing to rebel is inevitably another chain that will suffocate us, yet it is the same one that will lead us toward a vast sky like this. We cannot flee from ourselves.

We cannot forget to be human, because that is the only glimmer toward a world without prisons." Lance smiled, narrowing his eyes to block the pure white light of the sun. He clenched his wet fist, shaking it at every comma and every period of his speech.

"This is what I believe in, Laure."

"The bonds I've created have become other chains, yet I cannot help but follow them and group them with what are my desires. Perhaps one day my grip will be less firm, but I will never have any intention of letting them go. If I must be a prisoner, might as well be one on my own terms!" Laure stared at him in silence, bringing her hands before her lap. Lance didn't have time to lower his fist before the woman, now more adult and mature in features, burst into thunderous applause.

She smiled, ignoring the tears accumulating at the edges of her lips and on the dimple of her left cheek.

"You really are cruel to tell me this…" Lance nodded, rising in silence but never losing sight of her.

"Tell me, though…" The boy pricked up his ears, while the clouds continued to multiply.

"Did your heart beat at least once for me?" Lance listened to that question without changing expression; rather, he merely tilted his head and looked toward the cracking horizon.

"Unfortunately no, I already have someone for whom to create my resistance and my revolt." Laure nodded, satisfied, as she turned to head toward a sudden fog. The water, once clear, was now muddied by black sand, and strange filaments began to dance among the clouds.

"You're a truly selfish man, to the point that sooner or later you'll lose even yourself." Lance nodded, maintaining the same smile. The woman vanished, raising her hand one last time before being definitively swallowed by the dark. The world fell silent and colorless. In his heart, Lance knew that all this was over and that a life had now been lost forever. This time he had been the executioner, but he couldn't leave like this and abandon that little sun to extinguish without due recognition.

"Goodbye, Laure. I hope you can find your freedom elsewhere." The light of Icarus's distorted sky invaded his corneas, while around him the rain of debris extinguished. That entire vision had lasted only a few seconds, and between his fingers the last remnant of smoke vanished. As soon as the dust settled, Lance raised his back, feeling strangely light. He took a step and fell back to the ground, vomiting violet crystals, all too familiar. He felt his bones creak and his joints ache under the weight of the clash.

His breath was laboured, and Lance felt his heartbeat slowly returning to normal. The taste of the sea still lingered on his tongue. He tried to clean his face from the mud and grime, noticing a single tear.

"Dammit..."

"These are… The same ones Laure used?" He felt no pain, simply a strange buzz in his head. Eve and Tux remained silent while he scanned the surroundings, searching for Noel. In the distance, a large pile of rock crumbled, falling to the ground with a crash.

"NOEL!" Lance immediately launched himself toward him with his nimble body, jumping through the ruins with a smile on his lips.

"We have won! We managed to survive!" He landed a few meters from him, wrapped in the shadow of the ruins.

"Lance…" The boy nodded at Noel's words, smiling as he approached with small steps.

"It's me, Noel! We won! Laure is definitely dead. Now we can reunite with the others and…" As he approached, however, he felt something strange in the air. Adam's glasses that he wore on his face had manifested unconsciously during the clash and now allowed him to observe something horrid.

"Lance…" Around Noel had manifested a halo of dark, dense Frequency, twisted and noisy like a mass of condemned souls. The same one he had seen around Laure.

"Noel… Let's go to…"

"LANCE!" The scream shook the air, making the small shelter hiding him from the world collapse. Lance, as soon as he saw him, shook his head, raving some excuse. The dark skin was streaked with strange pustules and reddish venules, accompanied by heavy irregular scales sprouting from the lacerated flesh. The innards, once contained in the abdomen, had hardened to form a sort of spiny plate, and it wasn't the only part to have undergone the same process.

His beloved sword and his prosthetic had fused with the flesh, forming a gigantic yet sinuous and sharp limb. The bones of his shoulders had enlarged, resembling a veritable armor adorned with violet and reddish crystals. His face, by now, was almost completely covered by the plates, and only his right eye and part of his mouth remained free.

"For me… There's no place to return to. This is my stop." His eyes were already infested by the plague of the Hel, now mistaking Lance's figure for a mass of violet flames with a vague anthropomorphic form. When his vision flickered into normality, he distinctly saw the tears on his companion's face. From the metal plates, fused into the flesh, he pulled out a syringe partially full of NOIR's drug.

"Right… We can still force the Overload to recede!" Lance's voice became devoid of jolts as he tried to sketch a smile. Suddenly, however, a moan escaped fatally from his lips. He lowered his gaze, noticing the syringe in his chest. He began to tremble, despite feeling no pain. He tore it out, now empty.

"WHY?!" The boy's voice broke in his throat, fading at the very last to make room for the tears that fell constantly.

"Lance, you know better than anyone… By now I'm a Monstrum, and I have no hope of going back. My core is scattered throughout all the organs of my body, and soon another will form, but I won't be myself anymore. I feel the fragments digging into the flesh, and it hurts…" From the only visible eye, Lance would have sworn he saw a single tear blossom.

"Lucas can…" Noel shook his head, smiling as the scales continued to grow. Lance began to shake his head, vomiting denials and excuses as he brought his hands to his face.

"Don't cry, Lance. I appreciated my life. Despite everything, I would repeat it every time I'm allowed. My ability was plagued from the start. Without Lucas, I would have reached the end of the line much sooner. I wouldn't have known you or Jeanne, I wouldn't have seen Maliard smile, and I would have far fewer memories of Hoku. I'm happy… Happy to have lived together with you all." Red foam exploded from his mouth, forcing his gigantic body to kneel.

"DON'T SAY THAT! WE WON!" His voice growled, and so great was the force he put behind his words that sweat, blood, and tears fell like rain from his body, dampening the arid ground between them.

"No… I don't accept it! This time we won! Why must I always be the only one to think I'm happy?!" Lance clenched his fists, letting his arms fall to his sides like a child being punished.

"I don't want you to die… I wanted another party with all of you!" Noel stared at him, relaxing his gaze as he watched the blood drip from his companion's clenched fists. His vision flickered between normality and the wretched reality that, from the depths, dominates everything. A childish voice, at times mature, begged him to stop approaching, yet those threats were like a sweet melody to him. Noel rose tall, now with his spine beginning to pierce the muscles of his back to form a sort of armor.

"You're selfish, Lance." Like a magic formula, those words made his knees soft until he knelt.

"History is a theater that tells neither tragedies nor comedies, simply a story. So many events add up, great and small, that it's hard to give a distinct color." He stared at the sky one last time before it turned gray.

"This for you is certainly a tragedy, but for me… I find something comical in it." He smiled, looking him straight in the eyes.

"You have to kill me before I can hurt all the others." Lance shook his head, refusing to get up while Noel made a series of convinced nods, decidedly more certain than the boy's trembling prayers. The curse of the Hel advanced to his face, beginning to devour his visage.

"Lance." His voice began to sound distorted to him, like an echoing hiss. The boy nodded, deciding to listen as he got back on his feet.

"Don't let destiny play any more tricks on you. You're strong... Snarling at fate… That's something only you can afford." Having said this, Noel's mature face was engulfed under the thick layers of amorphous, supernatural armor.

"Noel…" Lance sighed as the beast grew and the scales compacted. A deafening roar emerged from the creature without mouth or eyes, tearing the silence of the region. Of Noel, only the silhouette remained, deformed by bones turned to blades and vertebrae fused to form a veritable crystalline exoskeleton. The violet fibers had bound to the red crystal formations scattered among the scales. Its height rivaled a small vessel and was accompanied by a grim, sweetish smell of alcohol.

Thus, as it roared, the boy followed it, tearing his own throat as the relic devoured another piece of his essence. His tears were not for pain, or visions, or his own existence, but flowed for a future without hope. The black of Lachesi ate his arm, creating that strange mantle that had accompanied him against the Architect. Abbondius's cloak followed, wrapping around him, tinging crimson. Imago Residui appeared in his bloodied hand, dragging even the air under its weight.

Last, the glasses, which now made his enemy clear. The creature shifted its attention toward the boy. With every step, the Frequency distorted, bending under the weight of the innumerable tears shed. The two clashed, tearing the ground and sweeping away all debris.

"Let's go home… Noel."