“So… when the fuel is spent… all that remains… is emptiness…”
…
The moment the words left his lips, the gravitational pull of Zephyro’s core reached its peak.
Phainon’s already translucent form could no longer hold itself together.
Like a sand painting scattered by the wind, it collapsed into nothingness in an instant.
His shattered body, his lingering will, the last traces of “Phainon’s” existence, along with the remnants of those golden wings that had once symbolized the hope of salvation, all of it was reduced to a mournful golden torrent and swallowed whole into the crimson core now faintly veined with gold.
…
After what felt like an eternity, Phainon slowly opened his eyes.
He clenched his fists.
“My power… is gone.”
He looked around.
Nothing but endless darkness.
“Where… am I?”
Just as he began to think, a faint pink-blue light flickered weakly in the darkness, like a candle in the wind.
It was March 7th.
Her back was to him, struggling to hold up a massive ice crystal shield.
Its surface was covered in cobweb-like cracks, groaning under the strain.
She seemed to be screaming at something terrifying beyond the shield, but the darkness swallowed her voice.
All that remained was the silent opening and closing of her mouth and the frozen terror filling her eyes.
“March!” Phainon tried to shout, but his throat was seized by the darkness, choking out all sound.
He tried to rush toward her, but his body felt like it was filled with lead, completely immobile.
The next second, the ice crystal shield shattered, silently and completely.
Not an explosion.
It was as if an invisible weight had ground it into the finest powder.
March 7th’s body froze in place.
The terror on her face was instantly replaced by a hollow emptiness.
Then, her body began to crystallize from her fingertips at a visible speed, not the vibrant ice crystals Phainon was familiar with, but a murky, lifeless, ugly, rust-colored crystal.
It spread rapidly, covering her arms, her shoulders, her neck, and finally, that face always brimming with vitality was frozen forever inside the murky crystal, like a cheap sculpture abandoned in a garbage dump.
All that remained was a single teardrop that had just begun to form at the corner of her eye before it froze solid, glistening on the surface of the murky crystal like a desperate amber.
“March…” Phainon didn’t understand what had happened.
March 7th was gone from him forever.
In the desperate silence, a suppressed, inhuman cry of agony reached his ears.
Following the sound, Dan Heng seemed to be fighting something formless in the depths of the darkness.
But its movements grew slower and more sluggish.
Suddenly, the dragon phantom froze completely.
Then, as if seized by two invisible giant hands at each end, it was viciously torn apart.
No blood.
No organs.
Dan Heng’s dragon phantom, along with his barely visible human form, was ripped lengthwise in two like a tattered cloth being pulled apart in absolute darkness.
Where the tear should have been, there was no flesh, only roiling, boiling pure nothingness, like a wound torn open in the universe itself.
In the end, the two halves, along with the agonized dragon’s roar, were swallowed by nothingness.
Not even a ripple remained.
“Dan Heng! What’s happening to all of you? Why can’t I save anyone?” Tears of blood streamed down his face, but they evaporated into steam.
He was denied even the right to grieve.
In an instant, Phainon found himself on the Astral Express.
A warm, familiar scent of coffee drifted toward him, a heartbreakingly false comfort.
Himeko’s figure appeared nearby.
Her back was to him, calmly operating the train’s control panel.
Her silhouette remained elegant as ever.
“Himeko!” Phainon screamed in his heart.
As if sensing something, Himeko slowly turned around.
A gentle, weary smile touched her lips.
Her lips moved as if to comfort him.
“Don’t be afraid…”
Before the words could finish, horror descended.
The space around Himeko, like a massive, invisible press, slammed shut from above and below.
There was no process.
Only the result.
One moment, Himeko was the elegant navigator.
The next, she, along with the air around her, the fragments of the control panel, even the aroma of coffee, was flattened into a sheet as thin as a cicada’s wing.
A “human-shaped picture” floated in the darkness, its colors eerily preserved.
On that “picture,” Himeko’s gentle smile hadn’t even fully faded.
It was frozen on a two-dimensional plane, creating a haunting absurdity and sorrow.
Phainon could even see the trace of shock still lingering deep in her pupils.
“What… is happening?” He held the picture, Himeko’s face frozen in that moment. New chapters come out on g.com first.
“I can’t do anything!”
His tears had long since run dry.
Deprived of all power, Phainon collapsed limply to the ground.
In this space, he could only be a spectator, unable to intervene in anything.
A heavy grunt echoed.
Welt Yang’s figure emerged in the darkness.
He leaned on his Star of Eden, trying to steady himself.
His eyes behind his glasses remained sharp as ever, attempting to analyze the nature of this darkness.
He seemed to be the only one still resisting.
“Mr. Welt! Analyze it! Stop it!” Phainon prayed desperately in his heart.
Welt seemed to have discovered something.
He looked up sharply.
Eden of Stars erupted with unprecedented, heavy light, pointing toward the source of the darkness.
He opened his mouth, as if about to shout out crucial information.
But just as he was about to speak, he, along with Star of Eden and even the light around him, vanished without a trace.
Not an explosion.
Not a tear.
Not a crushing.
It was a complete annihilation, not a single atom left.
As if the cosmic eraser had casually wiped away an insignificant dot.
All that remained in the place where he had stood was an absolute void, so empty that even the darkness seemed less dark.
In that void lingered the final, unspoken warning from his consciousness, slithering into Phainon’s mind like a cold viper.
“…Run… it’s…” Then, even that thought faded into nothing.
The vibration of the train beneath his feet stopped completely.
The darkness thickened like hardened asphalt, sealing everything in.
Phainon found himself standing in the Parlor Car.
March 7th’s crystal sculpture, the rift of nothingness left by Dan Heng’s tearing, the floating two-dimensional picture of Himeko, the void left by Welt’s annihilation, all of it was displayed like the cruelest exhibits in the silent carriage.
Beyond the windows, there was no vast sea of stars.
Only the roiling, howling, pure energy of Destruction.
Was it Zephyro?
Or the relentless malice of the universe itself?
He could no longer tell.