Hundreds of Ether Anchors burned fiercely, and before long, a golden fissure once again appeared before everyone.
Rosemary, Ai, and Himeko nearly couldn't stop themselves from jumping straight into the fissure, because all three knew that beyond it lay the World's Interstice, where someone precious to them was trapped.
But remembering the plan they had agreed upon earlier, the three ultimately gritted their teeth and suppressed the impulse.
Then they turned their gazes toward Luna, who had changed into a white dress and now looked like a maiden about to be married. This had been the vampire girl's only request before setting out.
She wanted to change into something beautiful. She wanted Elias to see her at her very best.
"I can feel Human's presence!"
Luna's crimson eyes stared fixedly at the fissure.
The instant the fissure appeared, the connection between her and Elias that had previously been severed emerged once more.
The vampire girl grabbed the spacetime coordinate sphere, then jumped into the World's Interstice without the slightest hesitation.
"I'm entrusting my Demon King to you, Miss Luna."
"Please make sure you bring Captain back."
"Both of you have to come back safely."
Rosemary, Ai, and Himeko watched the fissure gradually heal, clenching their hands tightly as they offered their prayers.
...
Inside the World's Interstice.
"Damn it. I really screwed up this time."
Elias panted as he stared at the World-Destroying Divine Spear in his hand. He had already pulled the divine artifact from his chest, and the white-haired boy scratched his head hard, feeling utterly depressed.
Ending up in this situation had been completely accidental. Without this World-Destroying Divine Spear, even if the Ferryman had been thousands or tens of thousands of times stronger, he still could never have been Elias' opponent.
If the bubble world's protective shell hadn't been shattered by the aftershocks of their battle, forcing Elias to repair it and thereby giving the Ferryman an opportunity to fire the spear, he never would have been injured.
If Luna and Himeko hadn't been standing behind him, and if he hadn't chosen to protect those two, then Elias definitely would have been able to dodge the World-Destroying Divine Spear.
Unfortunately, there were no ifs in this world.
And he didn't regret protecting the two girls in the slightest. Even if he could do it all over again, Elias would still make the same choice.
But there was no denying that his current situation was indeed terrible.
"So this is the World's Interstice? It really is a world with absolutely nothing in it. Damn it, I can't sense anything. Every connection has been severed. I... have been cut off from the world."
Elias had already tried many methods of escape. The only one that had shown even the slightest effect was the Authority of the Herrscher of the Void, but because he lacked any genuinely useful coordinates, all he could do was teleport blindly.
The result was failure. Elias was still stranded in some unknown corner of the World's Interstice.
Elias crouched down. At this moment, an inescapable fear began to rise in his heart. What if... what if he remained trapped inside the World's Interstice forever and could never get out?
There was absolutely nothing here. Pure white stretched endlessly in every direction, so empty that merely being alive became a form of torment.
If Elias didn't talk to himself, the only sound he could hear was his own heartbeat. No matter how powerful his strength or Authorities were, they all became meaningless in the face of this loneliness.
And unlike that Path of Time from before, Elias no longer possessed the Heart of Eternity trait. This time, he didn't even have a direction to follow. He couldn't sense anything at all.
It was as though the world itself had rejected him.
"Someone... save me..."
The white-haired boy's heterochromatic eyes were utterly hollow. The savior who had saved countless worlds and countless people called for help for the first time, yet there was no one capable of reaching out a hand to him.
But just as his heart was about to fall into despair,
"!!!"
Elias abruptly sprang to his feet. His eyes widened, and his mismatched blue and gold pupils instantly turned blood-red.
"Luna... It's Luna!!"
He could sense the vampire girl's existence.
That night, the two of them had drunk each other's blood, making each other their one and only kin. From that moment onward, an invisible connection had formed between Elias and Luna. No matter how far apart they were, they could sense each other's heartbeat, presence, and existence.
That connection had been severed after Elias fell into the World's Interstice, but now it had appeared again. That meant the vampire girl had entered the World's Interstice as well!
Without hesitation, Elias spread his six wings and pushed the Authority of the Herrscher of Wind to its absolute limit, shooting toward Luna's location at near-light speed.
"You silly girl... You really are..."
At this moment, Elias seemed to become a moth chasing flames, flying alone through endless darkness before suddenly discovering a distant light and exhausting everything he had to pursue it.
In the outside world, only ten minutes had passed since Elias fell into the World's Interstice. But because time flowed differently inside, Elias had already spent a thousand years within the interstice!
Otherwise, how could someone with a heart as resilient as his have fallen into despair so easily? And now, the vampire girl had become Elias' hope.
Elias sensed the distance separating him from Luna. It was so vast that it could almost be described as "infinite." Fate truly seemed determined to exile him within the World's Interstice forever.
But...
"Luna... Everyone is waiting for me too. I have to go back. I! Want! To! Go! Home!!"
...
At the other end of the world, the vampire girl had also stepped into the World's Interstice, arriving at the end of the world.
She looked around in confusion and discovered a world containing nothing but pure white. Yet this white was completely different from Elias' whiteness. The white of this world was unbearably lonely and hollow, enough to make anyone instinctively recoil.
At this moment, Luna was unusually grateful that she was a vampire, because thanks to the blood connection between her and the white-haired boy, she at least didn't have to search blindly with no direction whatsoever.
But...
"How could it be... He's actually... this far away..."
Luna's heart sank halfway into despair. She could sense the distance between herself and Elias, but it was simply far too great, a hopeless distance with no end in sight.
Even if an ordinary person ran with all their strength, ten lifetimes would surely still not be enough to cross it.
The vampire girl couldn't help resenting the cruelty of fate. Yet just as Luna began to despair over the immense distance,
"Human... He's coming toward me?!"
Within the vampire girl's perception, the distance separating her from Elias had shortened by the tiniest amount. Only then did she realize that the connection between them worked both ways!
Both of them were inside the World's Interstice now.
If she could sense Elias' existence, then naturally Elias could sense hers as well. And at this very moment, he was desperately moving toward her without regard for anything else!
"That's right. I can't give up. I'm a vampire. Vampires don't believe in gods, and we don't believe in fate either. Human, no matter how far apart we are, we will definitely meet again!!"
Even if fate was unjust, their hearts would never change.
Even if time and space were boundless, their longing would never change.
Even though light-years separated them, their blood and their longing still bound them together. At the same moment, the white-haired boy and the vampire girl each made a vow within their hearts.
"By the red moon, I swear that we will meet again!"
"With this promise, until the end of time!"
After composing herself, Luna began running in Elias' direction, like a moth pursuing the light.
In this world where only the two of them existed, they were each other's light and each other's hope.
...
"Haa! Haa! Human, wait for me!"
The vampire girl ran through the pure-white world. Looking back, ten years' worth of footprints stretched behind her, yet the distance between them hadn't even shrunk by one percent.
But they truly were drawing closer to each other.
The act of running was monotonous, because this was an endless marathon with no finish line in sight. Luna replayed every little memory she shared with Elias in her mind, using them as the source of her strength.
Just thinking about being able to see Elias again filled the girl's heart with joy. The corners of her lips rose uncontrollably, and even her steps became lighter.
She looked ahead, as though her gaze could cross that infinitely vast distance and see that person smiling at her.
That alone was enough.
This was a pursuit in which both sides were running toward each other.
...
"How long has it been?"
Luna was somewhat dazed. Her sense of time had already grown blurry. Looking back, the trail behind her seemed to span a thousand years, though the distance between the two of them finally appeared to have shortened a little.
A voice appeared in her mind, asking whether what she was doing was truly worth it. No matter how many times she revisited them, no matter how sweet and happy they had been, her memories with that person amounted to only a few days.
"That's right. Human and I only have a few days of memories together, but he's worth everything I have! Because... he saved my life twice. He redeemed everything about me!"
Luna continued stepping forward.
"I am something healed and redeemed by his blood, while he is the one my sins could never conquer. He gave me hope and miracles, and I am willing to burn myself to ashes for him."
Even though they had shared only a few days of memories, those days had truly changed everything about the vampire girl.
The day she met Elias, a miracle appeared in her life. On that day at the amusement park, she escaped from being nothing more than a tool, because he had given this doll—given her—a burning heart!
Therefore, to Luna, this was a journey to find the heart she had lost. She would never stop moving forward.
"His existence is everything to me!"
...
"What do I do? What do I do?! How could I lose the coordinate sphere?! Without it, neither Human nor I can go back!"
Luna searched everywhere in a panic. The white sphere containing the coordinates that would allow them to return had vanished. No one had stolen it. She had simply lost it.
The girl was so anxious that tears had already begun falling.
Luna continuously berated herself for being so clumsy. Worse still, in the World's Interstice, where even space itself wasn't truly stable, the chance of recovering something that had been lost was vanishingly small.
After searching for a very long time without finding it, Luna had no choice but to give up helplessly. But after standing still for a while, she ultimately chose to continue onward.
"Even if the coordinate sphere is gone and we can't go back, I still have to find him because... Human, I miss you. I really, really miss you so much."
"But you'll definitely scold me, won't you? After all, I'm still so useless. Not only did I cause you to fall into the World's Interstice, but now I've even lost our hope of returning."
"But you're all I have left. Every time I think about you, my heart starts pounding. That's the only way I can still confirm that I'm alive."
Vampires truly grew incredibly slowly. Even after a thousand years had passed, Luna had only grown a little taller.
But judging by the distance still separating them, perhaps by the time they finally reunited, she would have completely grown up. It was just a shame that this pure-white dress might no longer fit her by then.
Luna forced herself to stay strong and continued trudging forward.
Even if they couldn't return, that would still be fine. Even in a world where absolutely nothing existed, he would still be there. The two of them could live together forever inside the World's Interstice.
Thinking about it that way, Luna felt that perhaps it wouldn't be so unacceptable after all.
...
Tens of thousands of years passed.
The girl's figure gradually grew taller, becoming even more beautiful than the image she had once imagined for herself as a child. Using omnipotent Honkai energy, Luna wove herself a new formal dress.
She began to worry about whether Elias would still recognize her.
The girl's heart continued to beat. As an immortal vampire, Luna could live forever, yet her heart still felt unbearably empty, as though something precious were missing.
Then, suddenly,
"Lu... na..."
A voice called out from ahead, almost like an illusion.
The vampire girl raised her head blankly. She had been walking for so terribly long that she had forgotten time itself, and even forgotten how to sense her surroundings.
Only that call reminded her.
The destination was right before her. The girl's hollow crimson eyes gradually began to shine again, a crystalline mist gathering over them.
Because at long last, she finally saw that person!
"Human... I finally... found you."