>The academy-vern's office
Selene stood in Vern's office, the morning sun tracing cold light through the windows behind him. His desk was cluttered—old reports, mission files, and a long-sealed folder with Noct's name on the spine.
"You still carry his file?" Selene asked, her voice a low hum of guilt.
Vern didn't answer immediately. He motioned for her to sit and handed her a steaming cup of blackroot tea. "Because I don't believe he's dead."
Selene blinked.
"I've seen how this world works, Selene. Too many bodies go missing in those labyrinths. You think Kaedra of the Creed was the last irregularity we'll face?" Vern leaned forward. "If he's alive, he's changed. And if he's dead… then why haven't we found his corpse?"
Selene's fingers tightened around the mug. "I just want to know he didn't die thinking we abandoned him."
Vern softened, then stood. "Then be ready. If Noct comes back, this world won't recognize him. And neither will we."
"As his sister I have to be ready." Selene said with a determined face.
"And the truth I wanted to tell you is that I think the coalition may have something to do with the appearance of the Creed of Evolution, but I'm not sure it's just a guess." She muttered.
> Unknown Labyrinth – Final Floor
The air was sharp and charged. The moment Noct and his team stepped onto the final floor, something shifted—something deep in the marrow of the world.
Wind howled where there were no openings, spiraling around them in unnatural spirals. Water dripped upward. The light twisted in sharp angles that didn't follow the sun, and the stone beneath their feet was humming—a low, resonant sound that throbbed in the back of the skull.
Noct stopped. His eyes narrowed.
"This is it," he said quietly, not out of excitement, but reverence.
Mia twirled a dagger between her fingers. "Feels like we're standing on the throat of something that forgot how to breathe."
Ellen nodded, sword resting over her shoulder. "Or something that's about to scream."
They weren't wrong. The final floor wasn't a traditional arena, nor a dungeon corridor. It was a wide, spherical chamber carved out of mirrored blackstone. The floor was an endless ring of floating platforms, slowly rotating, hovering in an abyss of nothingness. Between the gaps shimmered fragmented space—like time itself had shattered and was struggling to hold together.
In the center of the floor, far above them, hovered a pulsating crystal—the core of the unknown Labyrinth's floor. And just beyond it was a spiral staircase of light… leading out.
Noct took a deep breath. He had to be ready.
>Wind Flow Vector
With a flick of his hand, a glyph shimmered along his arm—a streaking spiral of wind-aligned runes.
Noct's boots scraped the edge of the floating platform. Then he vanished.
To the untrained eye, he blinked from platform to platform—his movement a fluid stream of curved angles, each jump guided not by strength, but by vector mapping. Every breeze, every air current, he calculated and used.
He landed mid-air, flipped, and angled downward—riding a spiraling gust that he generated behind himself.
"He's faster than before," Mia muttered, shielding her eyes from the burst of displaced wind.
Ellen watched with focus, her eyes tracing the invisible paths. "He's not just moving through air. He's drawing lines in it."
> Water Equation
Noct raised both hands. His body exhaled mist—thin strands of vapor drawn from the humid tension of the chamber. Around him, droplets of moisture froze, then reversed and flowed upward in twisting spirals.
He moved like a conductor, each motion drawing lines of water into geometric arcs—triangles, spheres, spirals. Then, with a wordless snap of his fingers, the constructs solidified into blades, and shields of rippling liquid that hovered midair.
A shiver ran through the floor. Each drop of water danced between states—solid, liquid, vapor—and he controlled all three.
Using a curved water blade, he sliced a falling boulder from one of the unstable platforms. With a flick of his palm, a dome of liquid slowed debris mid-fall, catching Ellen as she leapt to a neighboring ledge.
"Thanks," she called, breathless.
Noct nodded once, then glanced upward.
"One left to test."
>Time Gradient
His mind focused. This one was dangerous.
The aether around him shimmered blue, then violet, then red—then folded in on itself.
The moment he activated it, the world slowed.
His breath felt like thunder.
The shimmer between platforms stretched into long threads, and every heartbeat felt like a drumbeat echoing through syrup. But he moved freely. He was the gradient—the slope between slow and fast. He could tilt time around himself, accelerating or decelerating local events.
A falling rock paused mid-air. A ripple in aether was redirected backward.
He stepped forward, and every movement became preordained precision.
Mia watched, mouth open. "Is he... bending time?"
Ellen gripped her sword harder. "Not bending. Leaning. Like he's walking downhill through time itself."
After ten seconds, the effect snapped—and Noct fell to one knee, coughing hard. Blood stained his glove.
"Still unstable," he muttered, wiping his mouth. "But usable."
The platform beneath them pulsed with red light.
A voice echoed across the floor.
> "[You have reached the boundary of confinement. Ascension protocol initialized.]"
From above, the floating platforms locked into place. The spiral staircase of light shimmered solid.
Noct stood.
Mia stepped beside him, grinning. "So, boss. You ready to go home?"
He didn't answer.
He just looked up, toward the sky they hadn't seen in over a year.
And then he whispered, "Yeah. Let's end this."