"Where’s the Holy Blade? Where did my Holy Blade go?" Panic surged cold as seawater as Lilith stared at her right hand. The Little White Dragon pinched her own claw hard, and the rigid scales bit like glass. She sucked in a sharp breath.

Teary-eyed, the Little White Dragon stared at her right claw, now fully sheathed in white scales that caught the light like frost. For reasons she couldn’t name, the Holy Blade wouldn’t answer. Even her Saint’s grace and the Hero’s might thinned like mist in noon sun. This wasn’t the dull burnout of overuse. Lilith felt no resonance with Icarus at all. The string between them had gone mute, as if her call fell into a well. What Icarus had gifted slipped beyond her fingers like water.

She grew frantic and paced circles around her room, a caged bird beating soft wings against bars. She had slain the Demon King, yet the Hero’s power was still her pass on this continent. She couldn’t just lose it to silence. Her slender tail drooped to the floor like a wilted vine. Her bright eyes filmed over, lakewater rising, ready to spill.

“System... are you there? System?” The thought struck her like a rope in floodwater. She reached for that all-purpose little blue guide in her mind and called in a rush. No answer came back, only the hush of snow.

“System, don’t scare me. Come out, please. You said you wouldn’t leave.” Panic pressed first, then her voice chased it through the dark. No matter how hard she tried, her inner world stayed deathly still, like a temple at midnight with no lamp and no echo.

“Liar...” Lilith dropped onto the bed’s edge with a thump, hugged her legs, and hid her face in her knees. The words came muffled, like rain through cloth. Nidhogg couldn’t read the Little White Dragon’s face. At a loss, she sat beside her and patted Lilith’s back, gentle as a wing, whenever it trembled like a leaf.

Slowly, Lilith quieted, drowsiness falling over her like soft snow. Nidhogg sighed, a cave-wind leaving her chest. The Black Dragon girl stood, ready to lift the Little White Dragon onto the bed. Then she paused. This hatchling’s skin was peach-soft; her rest was thistledown-fragile. Doubting her own strength, Nidhogg chose to step out and find Tartarus to tend the little one.

“Are you leaving?” The question came stuffy and low as Nidhogg’s hand touched the doorknob. Lilith spoke through a nose still thick with tears.

Nidhogg turned back and mustered what she thought was a gentle smile, a lantern lit behind armor. “You need some space to settle. I’ll be right outside. If you need me, just come out and find me. Don’t worry, I’ll wait. Uh... at least for today.”

The Black Dragon left the room to Lilith alone. The Little White Dragon lifted her head and wiped the tear-streak from the corner of her eye with her left arm. Red-rimmed, she stared at the dark figure by her side. The Black Swordsman had appeared the moment Nidhogg left. He sat quietly by the girl, no words, no motion, only a body more transparent than before, thinning like morning fog.

“Has she gone?” Lilith raised her right hand, now a dragon’s claw, and asked the Black Swordsman. He nodded, a silent Yes.

“Are you going to leave?” Lilith looked at him. His black clothes had paled like charcoal washed by rain, and the sword in his hand had lost its edge. It looked brittle, a frost-bitten twig ready to snap.

The black-clad warrior shook his head. He pointed to Lilith’s heart. The little Saint understood.

“I see. You haven’t left yet. But you will, won’t you? You can’t stay with me forever, can you?” The knowing hurt first, like salt in a cut. The people who’d walked with her were still here. Yet looking at the Swordsman’s ever-thinner shadow, Lilith knew they would leave in the end. The Black Swordsman would. Mona would. Vera would too.

The Swordsman nodded in silence.

“I see.” Lilith’s mouth hooked into a crooked smile, brave and ugly as a cracked mask. She looked at the Black Swordsman, and yet it felt like she was looking past him. He seemed to slip back to some night from the last three years, when the little Saint leaned against him and talked like this. Back then, a campfire snapped before them like gold fish-scales, and comrades sat beside it, shoulders ready to lock in battle. Now only Lilith curled in a dim room, a wounded cub licking her own wounds.

The Little White Dragon hugged her knees and sniffled. “I’m stupid. I kept thinking none of you would ever leave. That you’d stay with me for a lifetime. Even if I can’t go back to my old world, at least I’d have you. But you’re leaving too.”

“Do you remember that old archbishop? The one who led the ceremony the day we first met? He tutored me for a while, mind-work, he said, so I wouldn’t be crushed by the road to slay the Demon King.” Lilith tipped her face up and let memories drift like dust in sun. The Swordsman watched in silence, a shadow listening. “That old man’s lectures were actually fun, way better than my history teacher back home. He told me to cherish the friends I met on the road, but never forget—even the best companions part ways. I didn’t believe him at first.”

“Back home I didn’t have many friends. Just two or three I’d played with since we were kids. In a dozen years we’d never split. Even after I fell into another world, I was sure we’d meet again someday.”

“So when people left along the journey, I wasn’t sad. Because you stayed with me. You just stood by in another shape, and we kept traveling together.”

Lilith pressed a hand to her chest, where every speck of Taint slept, and every will stained by it. The little Saint wiped the tears clinging to her lashes and spoke in starts and stops.

“But this time is different. We won’t meet again. When I don’t know what to do, the System won’t pop out to offer a plan, even if it was almost useless. When enemies appear far off, Mona and Vera won’t handle them for me. When I fight, you won’t step in. After you all fade, I’ll have to walk alone, right?”

The Black Swordsman had no words. Behind the thick visor, he only watched the girl before him. After years on the road together, Lilith had learned to hear him without speech. He needed only to sit and see her, and the meaning reached her like wind through pine.

They could still go with her for a little while. But she was no longer the child ringed by friends, spared from partings.

From here on, the road was hers alone, a long pale path under a wide, cold moon.