Ash remained drifting in the void, yet his thoughts no longer scattered like before.
Love.
People praised it as the highest virtue, the purest emotion, the proof of humanity. They wrote songs about sacrifice and devotion, as if it were law, as if it could absolve the world of its cruelty.
But Ash now saw it stripped of all ornamentation.
Love was attachment.
Attachment was weakness when it demanded sacrifice without return.
And weakness, when exposed to reality, was punished without mercy.
He had not understood this before. Or perhaps he had, but chose to avert his gaze.
He had vowed to protect Elysia.
A vow born from emotion, spoken in warmth and safety, when the cost of keeping it had not yet been revealed. He had believed those words meant something absolute.
Yet when the moment arrived, when the price was placed before him with brutal transparency, he hesitated.
He calculated.
He weighed gains and losses.
That hesitation was the truth.
