A torrent of black magical power filled the throne room. It was pressure. Not light, not flame—something akin to gravity, crushing the very air itself. In this abandoned city where the atmospheric magical essence—the magical power drifting through the air—was abnormally dense, Raid's unleashed magic swelled while consuming it all. Fine sand fell from cracks in the walls, and half-collapsed stones in the ceiling trembled. Aira took the full brunt head-on. Her feet, trying to brace themselves, lifted from the stone pavement. Her outer coat tore with a sound, and her body was sent flying. The impact of her back slamming against the wall was instantaneous, and in the next moment, rubble was piling onto her shoulders. "——" No sound came out. More than half of her right shoulder guard was shattered. The jagged edge of the remaining metal bit into her skin, and then came the heat. A burn mark from magical power—a sensation like a scorch. Aira silently felt the pain growing sharper with each breath of air. She could stand. Confirming only that, she moved her feet. Pushing aside the rubble, she placed her knee on the stone pavement and raised her upper body. Her lustrous reddish-brown long hair had come half undone, falling across her face. She brushed it aside with the back of her hand and looked forward. The man on the throne was looking at her. It was the black of an abyss. His eyes, which should have been amber-colored, had turned completely black, including the whites. She couldn't read any emotion. But there was a contour—the habit of how he sat, the angle of his arm on the armrest, the way his coat hung. The shape carved into her memory was definitely there. Her hand went to the hilt of her sword. Her fingertips grasped the feel of metal. She stopped. She tried to draw it but couldn't. Or rather—it felt more accurate to say she didn't, rather than couldn't. Something was pulsing violently deep in her chest. Her judgment axis, normally task-oriented, wasn't functioning properly in this moment. There was definitely a contour in the depths of those black eyes. That fact alone kept Aira's hand frozen. (……This isn't a task-based judgment.) Her thoughts stopped there, just once. It wasn't fear. Then what was it? Without a name for it, Aira didn't release her hand from the sword. But she didn't draw it either. Her right hand remained frozen in a place that was neither one nor the other. ──── Lilia was standing with her back pressed against the wall. More precisely, she was trying to stand. After being slammed against the wall by the shockwave, she was supporting her body with both arms as it slid toward the floor. Her knees trembled slightly. But she hadn't fallen. The abandoned city's atmosphere resonated with Raid's magical power and swelled further. The entire throne room vibrated gently. The black magical power at its center spread and contracted like waves. It moved as if alive. And the aftershock from the throne's magical rune—was reaching Lilia. The fragments that came with the shockwave didn't make sense at first. They were more sensation fragments than images. A trace of someone carving something. A nameless vessel. The memory of something shaped as a vessel. Through her magical circuit, dense with the biological magical essence unique to the demon race, it was slowly beginning to take on coherence. Lilia placed her hand on the floor. And remained still for a while. Images came like waves. A black space. A formless voice. Someone said "you are." The words "dark priestess" came. The concept of a soul prepared as fuel for the demon lord's resurrection—arrived as meaning before language. The trace of a contract carved before a name could be given. The reason for her birth. The meaning of her existence. Before she could feel fear— (Ah, I see.) That sensation came. It was a strange sense of acceptance. Not fear, not despair, but as if the answer she'd been searching for so long had finally taken shape—just the arrival of an answer. Lilia, with her pale purple and faint amber-colored odd eyes, stared at a single point on the empty floor, absorbing that sensation. (I guess the strangest part is that I'm accepting it.) She thought that internally. It was something that might have made her laugh, but instead of laughing, she felt the trembling gradually settle. The certainty that her demon race self was real, that the days spent with humans were real, and that both were equally real—spread through her body as a strange sense of peace. She stood up. The ground beneath her feet swayed, but she didn't fall. She peeled her body from the wall and faced forward. That was when Raid compressed the next wave of magical power. The air in the throne room changed. A sensation of compression. It's coming—Aira made an instant judgment and moved. While shedding the remains of her shattered shoulder guard, she threw her body in front of Lilia. She became a shield. The scorching burn mark from the magical power was seared directly onto the exposed skin of her right shoulder. A short breath escaped from Aira's lips. It wasn't pain—it was the shock of heat. Lilia saw that wound. The burn mark running across bare skin—the scar carved in red across the white skin visible beneath the shattered shoulder guard, running from Aira's right shoulder toward her collarbone. Her hand instinctively reached out. Full-power healing magic— She stopped. Her fingertips touched the edge of the wound. And remained in that position, stopped. She didn't use full-power healing magic. She only drew a little heat from her fingertips, applying only the bare minimum treatment. Why? Even Lilia herself couldn't yet put that reason into words. But there was only the certainty that she shouldn't use her full power. If she used it all now, there would be nothing left afterward—that premonition-like feeling stopped her hand. Aira checked the sensation on her shoulder and spoke quietly. "……I'd like to ask about that treatment now." "I'll explain later." Lilia said this and looked directly into Aira's eyes. ──── She had to tell her properly. Lilia thought that. There was no time to hesitate. The magical power in the throne room was rising again, bit by bit. Before the next wave came, she had to say what could be said. "I'll tell you about myself." Aira's gaze turned toward her. Her green eyes tried to read Lilia's expression. "The throne's memory came to me. My part was mixed in—I'm a dark priestess." The words were brief. They came out as pure fact, without excess or deficiency. "To be precise, I think I'm a soul prepared for the demon lord's resurrection. It's like a contract carved before I was even born, and my name was in that throne's memory. So—even if I'm consumed by Raid, that's probably something that was decided from the beginning." Aira's expression froze for just a moment. "That's——" "You want to say it's wrong, right?" Lilia spoke first. Her expression was like crying and smiling at the same time. The corners of her eyes were slightly blurred, but her mouth held a gentle shape. It was a contradictory face, but there was no lie in it. "But it's the truth. So—you should leave. If I stay, there's no point in you being here with me. I'll use transfer magic. It's classified as a forbidden technique, but with this abandoned city's magical essence density, it should work." "That's not your decision to make." Aira said it without hesitation. Her voice had lowered. It wasn't the clear, crisp formal speech she usually used. It was a voice trying to suppress emotion, but failing just slightly. "As a task-based judgment——no." Aira paused once. "I'm speaking as an individual, not a task. Lilia, that's not something you decide alone." Lilia's expression changed slightly. Something kindled in her eyes. A color close to gratitude. It was grateful, yet troubled—a complex light. (I'm strangely calm about this, which honestly scares me.) She thought that internally, yet her hands were already moving. Light patterns spread across the floor beneath her feet. Transfer magic—a high-level technique classified as forbidden, where the caster controls vast amounts of magical essence to forcibly transport a target to a distant location—was beginning to unfold. The excessive atmospheric magical essence of the abandoned city flowed into Lilia's magical circuit. There was a sensation like her core was burning. But she didn't stop. "Lilia." Aira's voice came once more. Aira's arm extended forward. She tried to grasp Lilia's wrist—— Her fingertips reached. Aira's fingers touched Lilia's slender wrist. In that moment, Aira's gaze captured Lilia's eyes. There was no fear in that look. There was no fear in Lilia's eyes. No trembling either. Facing her own decision, she was simply quiet. Not the cowering fear of that night in the stone cell when execution was announced—not the desperate urgency of that morning fleeing the royal capital—just the quiet resolve of being here. Aira's fingertips froze for one beat. (Should I stop her? Should I stop this child's resolve——) Her chest ached. But Aira didn't know what that pain was for. Was it for Raid? For the mission? Or for Lilia——no, it was all mixed together, inseparable. Not emotion for Raid, not mission logic, but trust in this child as the axis—that was what made Aira hesitate. That fact alone quietly solidified within her. One breath fell as silence. ──── That single moment became the decisive difference. Lilia stepped into full activation. Light came. White light so bright it burned the vision poured from the floor's patterns. Aira instinctively covered her face with her arm, but the light mercilessly entered through every gap. "Lilia——!" She shouted. Her voice was swallowed by the roar of magical power. White light enveloped Aira's body. The sensation beneath her feet vanished. A sensation of being pulled by something—the sensation of transfer was new to her, but she had no power to resist. The technique activated using all the abandoned city's atmospheric magical essence unfolded regardless of Aira's will. The last thing she saw was Lilia's face. In the white light, kneeling on one knee on the floor, looking at her. That same face—crying yet smiling—was there beyond the light. Then it disappeared. Consciousness dissolved into the white light. ──── Silence returned. Only two remained in the abandoned city's throne room. The man sitting on the throne, seeping black magical power from his body, and the girl kneeling on the floor, smiling quietly. In the distance, rubble collapsed. Somewhere in the abandoned city, old stone fell with a dull, foolish sound. In the silence after the roar of magical power, that sound rang out with strange clarity. Then it faded. Lilia slowly stood up. The ground beneath her feet swayed, but she didn't fall. She had no time to brush the stone dust from her knees—she simply faced forward. Her pale purple and faint amber-colored odd eyes looked directly at the man on the throne. Black eyes looked back at her. Eyes that couldn't be read for emotion. But Lilia was no longer afraid of that. What the throne's memory had left behind still warmed her core. Her demon race self and the days spent with humans were both equally real—and because of that, there was no reason to flee here. Lilia took one step forward. The abandoned city's stone pavement quietly received that small footfall.