Truth was, Silan had no clue what state Varie and Queen Dreamlan were in; her worry pooled like cold mist, and she couldn’t even tell if they were still alive in the Void Rift. Instinct pushed her to pin hope on the only two who’d once faced a Chaos Beast.

Lucky break: those fears looked needless. They still existed, bright as lanterns in a night that tried to snuff out meaning.

Unlucky twist: neither of them seemed to have spare breath to care about the outside world.

“You… already knew someone would crash the flower‑picking rite?”

“Mhm. I more or less guessed.”

Menglan watched Varie falter, a smile at the corner of her lips; her voice carried a playful, soft lilt, like spring water tapping a rock.

Her gold hair, once shortened by overusing magic, had grown back to her waist, rippling like sunlit wheat.

Something in her had shifted.

Compared to the Elven Queen who, outside, always moved with effortless poise and wore “maturity” like a tailored silk mantle, she now felt younger, more vivid, like a fresh breeze across a lake.

More than that—the distance that had gnawed at Varie since Lama City had vanished, dissolving like frost under dawn.

Right now, she felt like strawberry chocolate cake: bite through a crisp shell and it bursts into easy, no‑distance sweetness; whipped cream lands airy on the tongue, a clean breeze of flavor, and innocent joy pops like cherry petals across the taste buds.

That wasn’t the flavor Menglan usually offered the world.

Why the change?

Because, in her eyes, another shadow reflected—one before whom she didn’t need to hide her true self.

Her lover.

The true Lionheart Hero.

Varie met those burning eyes and felt sun‑heat scorch her skin; she flinched, gaze skittering aside, fingers tightening with no strength.

Menglan stayed light. She touched her chin with a fingertip and laughed, a soft bell.

“After all, a certain nosy someone kept hinting to me. Being unable to guess was the only hard part.”

“…If you knew, why didn’t you stop him?”

Menglan tilted her head. “Why would I?”

She lifted her hand and stroked a “wound” torn in the nearby void; pale green particles trailed from her slender fingertips like fireflies, and the restless, leaking chaos folded shut like a stitched seam.

It wasn’t the only wound. The same particles drifted everywhere, slow snow filling ant‑nest horror, mending the Void Rift’s riddled mouth one glimmer at a time.

“The first seal has lasted so long it’s riddled with holes. An eruption is baked in.” Menglan’s tone stayed unhurried as she asked, “Tell me, Varie—would you rather a controlled burst we can prepare for, or a random detonation that spreads while we’re unguarded?”

“…”

“Right? Pinning the exact time and place of an eruption—what a luxury of intel. We didn’t have that back then.” Nostalgia brushed her face, then she shook it off, voice brightening. “Ah, enough talk. We finally get to meet again. I’ve got a thousand other things I want to tell you, Varie.”

She rose in a skip and walked toward Varie, steps light as petals.

“Because… it’s almost time.”

“…!”

Varie’s eyes went wide. As Menglan drew close, she finally saw it: those green motes weren’t water from nowhere. They streamed from Menglan herself.

An invisible eraser blurred her outline; her border with the void smudged, replaced by pale green threads peeling off her body, then melting into points of light.

It was her most primal power as Elven Queen, stripped like silk from the loom.

“You—!”

Menglan noticed Varie’s stare. She shook her head, soothing as a hand on a skittish foal. “It’s okay. I’ve learned my lesson and slowed the spell. This time I won’t black out before I say goodbye.”

“You—you’re talking nonsense—stop. If you keep this up, you’ll… you’ll—”

“—disappear. I know.”

She finished the dreadful end for Varie, yet her face didn’t gather a single cloud. Instead, she stepped in, then, like an exhausted office worker flopping into a warm, dependable couch, she let out a cheeky hey‑ya and collapsed into Varie’s arms, stretching soft as a cat.

“Huu… I missed this. Varie’s chest and abs are the best pillow in the world—made exactly for me~”

She wriggled, pressing herself against Varie without reservation; even her voice loosened like unknotted silk.

Only now did the Elven Queen show the shy grace of a girl.

But Varie couldn’t smile at that sight. Not one bit.

“Why…”

The question tasted bitter, but its answer arrived before the words could fall.

“Because we agreed, didn’t we? To end our story here, together.”

Menglan pouted, then hooked a finger under Varie’s bandeau, tugging it down a touch, baring a warm sweep of wheat‑gold skin.

Over the place that matched her heart, pale gold lines shimmered.

She traced circles around them with a teasing fingertip, as if marking what was hers.

“Seron~”

—The Co‑habiting Arm.

A once‑in‑a‑lifetime mark the Nacha Tribe gives the one they trust most.

She called her by a word the Nacha hold as dear as life; gilded glow bled from her lips, and beneath her thin satin bustier, matching golden lines flickered, echoing the mark on Varie’s skin.

It was proof of a vow carved to never fade.

Memory surged like a spring tide.

Varie remembered the night they carved that sign on each other’s chests, and the way Menglan’s shy smile bloomed with bliss.

It was pink soap bubbles under night sky, catching moonlight and scattering rainbow glints, turning black velvet into dream—a beauty that hooked the heart.

And now, the woman in her arms wore that same happy smile.

“Speaking of, we should thank that human ‘friend’ outside. He was late, sure, but it’s thanks to him…”

She shut her eyes and fell quiet a breath, then went on, voice gentle as folded paper.

“…that I finally got the chance to do this—fulfill our first vow.”

Varie’s pupils trembled as she watched the beauty in her arms.

“N‑no, the Human King should’ve given you my letter—”

In that letter, she’d laid it bare: she didn’t want Menglan dying for her. She wanted to see her again, in the world outside. Those words—Varie couldn’t finish them. Menglan cut clean through.

“But that letter was a lie.”

Her voice stayed sweet as candied haw, but the warmth of hot cocoa had slipped away.

“You said you’d come find me. All lies. My Varie is trapped here forever, and can never meet me in that other world.”

Menglan’s fingers lifted, plucking the green threads that kept peeling from her; they wound themselves in the void and wove into the silhouettes Varie had seen upon arriving.

“To seal the Void Rift, you don’t need mana. You need proof of existence.”

It wasn’t even about how the Nacha lose memories after rebirth. The price you paid was pouring every memory and feeling you had into the seal—leaving them forever on this side of the Rift. Menglan watched the slices of time that symbolized their past; her tone carried no funeral weight, only a calm statement of a simple truth.

“You know that, don’t you, Varie?”

No matter how many rebirths the Hero named Varie endured, no matter how iron her will, she could never carry those things away. Even now, the instant she leaves, every past memory will strip off her again and return to their post.

Those noisy bickers over wins and losses; that warmth of bodies leaning on each other; those whispers beside the bed…

“They’ll stay here forever. And from them is built ‘Varie’—the you who loved me—who will never return to my side.”

Menglan lifted her face in Varie’s arms and looked straight into her eyes, a gaze that searched the soul like dawn light through clear water.

“You knew, yet you left me that cruel letter. You made me live alone on the other side, nursing a breaking heart, clinging to a lie we both knew.”

—Saying you’d find me the moment you were reborn, that you’d hold me, kiss me…

—The you who wrote that… you were so heartless, Varie.

Menglan smiled as she said it, but under the teasing lay age‑worn sorrow that shattered Varie’s chest.

She tried to speak, but comfort and apology are flimsy reeds against millennia of waiting and hurt.

Menglan lifted a fingertip and tapped Varie’s chest, asking softly, “So, what is this?”

She’d asked that once on the road to hunt the Soul Devourer Sormaidon. Back then, Varie was drunk and missed her chance.

Now, with her memories back, she finally understood what Menglan had wanted to hear.

—A freak who, the first time we met, looked down from on high and jabbed a finger at someone else.

Yes. She remembered the answer.

But this time, the question’s meaning had changed.

“What is it, truly? Is it my lover… or a stranger who, at first glance, pushes me away?”

“I…”

Even now, as much as she wanted to deny or run, Varie had to admit it. She knew why Menglan, after waking, kept that delicate distance.

Like she said—without her memories, Varie was no different from a stranger.

Before the truth, language failed. Menglan saw and didn’t press. She laid her cheek against Varie’s chest again. “It’s alright, Varie. You don’t need to answer.”

“Because none of that matters anymore.”

Her palm rested over Varie’s heart, feeling the faint pulse climb like a small bird, and she went on in a hush.

“Whatever the case, I did everything you asked me to in that letter.”

I learned to stomach shalaguan bitterness. I rebuilt the Nacha Tribe’s home.

I made a waterbed in a sea of roses. I stitched the torn moon back into its old shape.

No matter how unreasonable, no matter how childish—

“Even the outrageous ‘live on’—I did that too. Do you know why?”

Silence held. In the empty void, only Menglan’s voice echoed like a bell over black water.

“Because I thought only then, when I saw you again, you would accept my choice.”

Menglan closed her eyes. At that line, a small, blissful smile rose on her lips.

“Tell me, Varie—now… do I have the right to come see you?”

She’d waited a million years to say that. Joy bubbled in her voice; her face shone like someone offering a ring in a café, innocent and bright, waiting for her lover’s nod—the moment she’d be allowed to stay forever at her side.

After a long silence, the answer came, not as she hoped—a small shake, a denial.

“No, Menglan.”

At that reply, Menglan’s gaze went hazy, like a lantern lost in fog.

Varie left no space for words, like a palm snuffing a candle.

She tipped up Menglan’s face and kissed her—slow as moonrise, firm as an oath.

It was a long kiss, free of heat, yet so full it stilled her breath and wiped the world to white.

Held in Varie’s arms, Menglan drank in the warmth; doubt found no foothold.

Her hands could only clutch Varie’s clothes, wrinkling the shawl as she sank, like a stone into quiet water.

When their mouths parted, the wavering in Varie’s eyes was gone, a lake gone still under the moon.

“My letter wasn’t a lie.”