The system message carves itself into my vision, each word like a blade through my chest.
[Your familiar—Malrang—has activated her final skill: Soul Ignite.]
I can't breathe. My body seizes, trembling against the cage of light. My hands claw at nothing, tearing blood from my palms as if I could rip the words from existence.
"No… not you. Not you too…" My voice fractures, too weak to even echo. The battlefield's roar drowns it, yet inside me it tolls like a funeral bell.
Her voice follows, faint but steady, carried like the last fragile thread between us. "Gaon… don't cry, okay? I'm not gone yet, and even when I am… please, don't cry. Don't make this harder for me. You must live. You must fight. I will give everything for you. The day we shared that bond, the day I was tied to you, I swore I would offer this life to you—my only friend, the only one who ever saw me for who I truly was. So fight, Gaon. Fight. And when you break free from that cage, tear him apart for me… alright?"
