Lucimia hugged Yuna and flew high, joy blooming like sunrise over frost.

Her heart floated light; she hadn’t thought it would really work. Elyssus must be raging, caged like a storm sealed behind glass in another world.

Yes, yes—that’s it, that’s—

Pfft! A tentacle burst from the earth, shot straight up, and skewered both of them mid-air like a harpoon from a black sea.

“Huh…?” Lucimia’s pupils pinpricked, her breath snapped like a thread in winter wind.

Her body locked stiff as ice. She forced her gaze down, each blink heavy as stone.

A sucker-lined tentacle had punched through both their chests; blood surged out like a spring from broken rock.

“What… is… happening…?” Lucimia’s voice trembled, disbelief like cracks spreading in glass.

Cackle, cackle, cackle~~

The evil laugh rippled through the sky like oil on water. Elyssus’s silhouette pushed through the clouds again, a nightmare surfacing from storm-torn waves.

How… can this be? Elyssus—why are you still here? Why?

Lucimia couldn’t fathom it, eyes wide as twin moons as his form grew solid.

“Yuna, quick—Reversion!” She shouted, hand shaking as she reached for Yuna’s blindfold.

But Yuna was wrong—so wrong. She clutched her head, her cry jagged as a torn reed.

A flood of memories poured back into her skull like a broken dam. Bazeroth—those days—every step laid bare.

“So… much pain… memories… Bazer… oth…”

Memories? Bazeroth? Yuna’s mind had returned like a lost bird finding home.

“…Yuna? Are… you okay?” Lucimia swallowed the pain, tore off Yuna’s blindfold. “First… Reversion… please?”

Yuna knew it was right and snapped her eyes open—yet two tentacles streaked in from afar and speared both her eyes like twin needles through silk.

Pfft! Blood sprayed, warm as fresh tea, flecking Lucimia’s terrified face.

“Ah—uwa… ahhh…” The pain of her pierced eyes ripped screams from Yuna, ragged as wind over broken bells.

She had been wounded before, like Lucimia, and barely cried. Now her voice came in stuttering wails, a failing lantern flickering in rain.

Lucimia froze at the brink of terror. The tentacles seemed born from thin air, and when her mind caught up, the damage was already done.

“Yuna!” Lucimia shouted, voice cracking like ice.

Yuna couldn’t answer. She clutched her eyes, shaking head to toe, hoarse sounds rasping out like sand through a clogged hourglass.

How did it end up like this…

Lucimia went blank, her thoughts turning to ash.

Wasn’t Bazeroth destroyed? Wasn’t the Magic Array erased? Two tasks together should have been perfect. So why did Elyssus still appear?

And Yuna—those eyes… they’re gone, aren’t they? Doesn’t that mean Reversion… can’t be used anymore?

…Does that also mean Elyssus, who needed repeated Reversions to absorb energy, has reached the final moment?

These thoughts crowded her skull like ravens, and Lucimia understood this was a dead end.

A dead end—then… run.

Yes. Run.

She pushed for Teleportation Magic, desperate as a swimmer reaching for shore—but the spell sputtered dead, a candle snuffed in wind.

…Was it this tentacle skewering them that was blocking it, a nail pinning fate?

Damn it.

“Is it… really a dead end this time…?” Lucimia hugged the trembling Yuna tight, staring at Elyssus’s form on the horizon with despair as heavy as dusk.

“Hahaha, Lucimia. Confused, are you? Thinking, ‘Wasn’t Bazeroth dead? So why can I still show up?’”

Elyssus’s body finished knitting itself together, tentacles waving like roots from a black tree, and drifted in front of her.

“Heh-heh. Lucimia.” He bowed his head, eyes like night pools. “You know, in the last few loops, I found holes. Preparations that should exist didn’t. Strange, right? So I wondered—was your Authority Power at work?”

Lucimia didn’t answer. She had no words left, only a weight pressing down like cold rain.

“Ah, that look—no interest in anything—boring.” Elyssus sighed theatrically, then smiled like a blade. “Listen, Lucimia. I saved Bazeroth. With my Deception Power. I guessed your ability erases things—and no creature remembers. Am I right?”

Lucimia’s pupils tightened, shock like frost biting bone.

“Heh. Looks like I nailed it. So I tested it. I had Bazeroth fake his death, then used Deception Power to deceive everyone’s memory of him. Let them all forget Bazeroth.”

“Oh, you were impressive, Lucimia. Nearly flipped my ship. Good thing I kept a spare sail.”

His words and smug grin left Lucimia hollow, a lantern with dwindling oil.

How do you fight an enemy like this?

Strong as a thunderhead, smart as a fox—nothing like the cardboard villains from those tales she’d read before.

Olivya lied to her. Didn’t she say one touch of the Fuzzy Orb would give her power to counter this? Didn’t she say this octopus was small fry?

Liar…

“Oh, and one more thing, Lucimia,” Elyssus cooed, voice sweet as poison. “I only need one last soul absorption to descend into this world. That pink-haired brat over there has no value left. So I broke her ability.”

So it really is like that…

Lucimia listened to Elyssus’s silky cruelty, then closed her eyes, calm as a lake before dawn.

Fine. If death comes, let it. She was tired. If there’s another life, she hopes for a world of peace and laughter.

“Then, Lucimia—let you two be the final key to my descent.”

He finished, another tentacle whipping out, grabbing for Lucimia like a snake from shadow.

She kept her eyes shut, waiting for the cold. And suddenly, a black sphere squeezed out of her arm like ink from bark.

The black Fuzzy Orb opened its mouth and clamped down on Elyssus’s reaching tentacle with a bite like a steel trap.

Crunch.

The tentacle tip vanished, swallowed neat by the little beast.

“Hm?” Elyssus felt no pain—only a flicker of doubt, thin as mist.

“Is that your Evil Entity, Lucimia? It can bite off my tentacle? That’s… surprising.”

The Fuzzy Orb didn’t stop. It spun like a shadowed wheel and bit through the tentacle skewering Lucimia and Yuna, severing fate like cutting silk.

“Hm?!” Elyssus’s temper flared hot, like pitch catching fire. If the meal runs, what then?

He’d saved these two for last; their flavor would be richer than any soul taken before.

He flung out another tentacle to snatch the falling pair—but the Fuzzy Orb sprang off a separate limb like a cat from a branch and devoured a third tip mid-leap.

“You little blob…” Elyssus snapped, mouth unfurling like a nightmare flower. He vomited a cloud of black fog, rushing at the Fuzzy Orb like a tide at night.

The Fuzzy Orb panicked, turned to pure shadow, and dove back into Lucimia’s arm like a swallow into its nest.

It wasn’t the fog it feared. It was Elyssus’s horrible face, a maw of drowned moons, that froze its tiny heart.

Lucimia kept her grip tight on Yuna as they fell, air tearing past like winter knives. Yuna had quieted, weaker now, a candle at its last inch.

Lucimia had seen the Fuzzy Orb’s move.

Since it freed them from the tentacle, she wouldn’t waste the chance. She called Teleportation Magic again, will sharp as flint.

Their figures blinked out mid-air like stars snuffed by passing cloud.

“Tch.” Elyssus flicked a glance at the vanished pair, then looked at his three tentacles with their bitten tips, annoyance simmering like coals.

Thin-black mist seeped from the wounds like smoke from cracked earth.

“Huh? Why… won’t it regenerate?” For the first time, Elyssus’s mouth hung open, surprise stark as lightning.

“Hmph. Whatever. I can descend by absorbing other souls. Let those two live a little longer.”