(The truth is… it was a beautiful life. I have no regrets. Maybe to others it would all seem meaningless. If I wrote a book about my life, they wouldn't understand it… and that didn't matter to me. Because if I understood it, then that was enough.)
Michael thought, lowering his gaze as the cold of the boss chamber still bit into his skin.
Aomine hit the ground after being pushed. His body bounced slightly from the force, sliding across snow and frozen dust.
He had reached his arm out toward Michael on pure reflex, as if his body refused to accept the reality that was already written.
But when he lifted his head again and looked—
Michael was smiling.
A real smile.
Clean.
Free.
Without regrets.
As his lips moved.
Aomine read those silent words.
He understood them.
He felt them pierce through his chest even before any spear did.
"Thank you."
"M-Michael!" Aomine screamed with a broken voice, trying to get up, reaching out to him.
But the cold, sharp, almost metallic sound filled the chamber.
The ice spears pierced through Michael mercilessly.
His body arched from the impact, his silhouette flickered…
and burst into blue particles that floated upward like shattered fireflies.
Aomine stared at the empty space where Michael had been just a second before.
His mind couldn't process it.
His body couldn't either.
First, his pupils shrank, as if the entire world had been swallowed by a single point.
Then his breath failed, breaking in a desperate attempt to inhale.
His lips trembled, opening without sound, as if his throat refused to accept the words he needed to say.
His body fell to the ground, sitting abruptly.
His trembling hands dragged over the snow, searching for support, searching for something… anything to keep his reality from collapsing.
And then, from his throat, a sound escaped that didn't seem human.
A strangled, broken noise—
born from a heart ripped apart in an instant.
It wasn't a scream for help.
It wasn't a scream calling for anyone.
It was the scream of someone rejecting the world.
Of someone trying to force the truth out of existence through sheer emotion.
A mixture of despair and denial, as if his entire soul refused to understand that Michael… was gone.
His face twisted.
His eyebrows curved upward with a pain that had no words.
His mouth quivered open in a shattered expression, while his tear-filled eyes begged a nonexistent void to turn back time.
The snow trembled beneath him as he shook.
Every breath was a poisoned sob.
His hands opened and closed in spasms, trying to grab something he could no longer reach.
There was no strength.
No courage.
No bravery.
Only a boy falling to pieces in front of the death of someone he considered more than a friend.
The others—
Elsa dropped her weapon. Her face pale, voiceless.
Historia covered her mouth, her eyes shaking as if her vision had shattered.
Gundou took a step forward… then a step back, unable to understand, unable to accept it.
Keyki only murmured "no… no… no…" over and over.
Amid all that devastation, Lord Glacius rose.
His face, disfigured by Michael's slashes, looked like a broken mask.
The light around his body flickered like a dying flame.
But the most terrifying thing was this:
He wasn't disappearing.
Even though they had killed him, his body remained active.
Trembling.
Twisted.
His hand extended toward them—rigid, shaking… as if he were trapped between life and death.
Inside him, the soul fused with the boss fought not to die.
In his internal vision, warnings appeared one after another:
Error.
Danger.
Critical instability.
Instant death activated: 15 seconds.
Meanwhile, in the observation chamber, the man in the white coat watched everything as if it were a show.
His face couldn't be seen, but his forward-leaning posture revealed pure fascination.
Almost childlike.
As if he were witnessing the birth of something historical.
A robotic, childlike voice echoed in his ear:
"Subject 025 is surpassing all standards. His soul is 100% compatible, but it is breaking apart. We must stabilize him. Should I stop the instant death?"
The man didn't move a muscle for several long seconds.
He seemed to absorb every detail of the chaos on the screen—the destruction, Aomine's scream, the boss's unnatural resistance.
Then, very calmly, almost satisfied, he replied:
"No."
Lord Glacius lifted one of his hands—rigid, trembling from internal distortion.
And the moment that gesture completed, the ground beneath Historia and Yuna lit up with an unnatural blue, a glow boiling from the very roots of the ice.
Historia's eyes widened as if reality had bitten her.
Yuna, however… bowed her head.
As if accepting her fate.
As if her body had no strength left to resist.
But before the attack surfaced—
—Elsa appeared.
Running clumsily over the cracked ground, breathing as if each breath ripped out a piece of her life.
She jumped.
Literally threw herself between the attack and the two girls.
Her legs trembled mid-air.
Her arms stretched forward.
She shoved Historia.
She shoved Yuna.
And as she fell beneath the shadow of the attack about to erupt, she turned with a broken smile—
a tear sliding down her cheek.
"I'm sorry…" she whispered.
Historia couldn't even react.
A moment later—
The ice exploded upward.
Spikes, stakes, needles, blades.
Elsa's body was impaled dozens of times.
There was no time for a scream.
Only a single wet, sharp sound—repeated, multiplied—
as her figure was lifted into the air like a skewered doll.
Historia fell to the ground, rolling, scraping her arms as she tried to reach her.
She crawled desperately.
"Elsa! Elsa, no—!"
But when she arrived, there was nothing to save.
Elsa's body was so perforated it looked more like shattered crystal than a human.
Historia hugged her anyway.
Held her anyway.
Even when the corpse began to glow, even when it turned to particles, even when she tried to catch those particles as if she could piece them together with her hands.
"No… no… don't go…" she whispered with a broken voice.
The particles slipped through her fingers.
Historia collapsed to her knees, digging her nails into the frozen ground, trembling with helplessness.
Aomine felt his chest sink.
Air vanished.
His hands trembled.
He couldn't move.
And then Lord Glacius appeared behind them all.
He jumped, landing like a living mountain, making the frozen arena quake.
His enormous, deformed, freezing hand closed around Yuna like a living shackle.
She didn't resist.
She just hung there in his grasp like a broken doll.
"YUNA!" Keyki screamed, charging without thinking.
He stabbed his sword into the boss's arm.
Nothing.
Not even a scratch.
Gundou, limping, blood in his mouth, raised his shield and tried to bash the boss from behind.
It was like hitting an iron fortress.
Lord Glacius didn't even turn around.
Aomine watched.
Watched everything.
Watched his friends die.
And he couldn't move his legs.
It was as if his body had surrendered before he had.
Mito collapsed to the ground, hugging her legs, covering her ears.
Her mind simply couldn't process it.
Her breathing was that of an animal trapped in a shrinking cage.
"S-Stop…" Aomine whispered, voice broken.
Lord Glacius lifted Yuna above his head.
She didn't fight.
Her eyes were empty.
And he slammed her into the ground with the fury of a god.
The impact sent blood, ice, and earth flying at once.
Keyki was thrown back.
Gundou too.
When they landed, blood covered their mouths, their clothes, their eyes.
But they still kept looking at Yuna.
Her face…
…was gone.
An unrecognizable mass of frozen flesh, bone, and blood.
Aomine felt the world tilt.
His stomach churned.
"STOP!!" he roared through tears, trying to stand.
His hands failed.
His knee buckled.
He fell again.
And Lord Glacius did not stop.
He grabbed Yuna's ruined body by what remained of her torso.
He used her as an improvised weapon.
Lifted her.
Slammed her.
Lifted again.
Swinging, crushing, smashing—
as if it wasn't a human body, but an object.
Bones cracked.
Flesh tore.
Remains scattered.
"N-No… no… please…" Keyki whispered, paralyzed.
The final blow was aimed at Gundou.
Yuna's body—what remained of it—crushed against his chest.
Gundou was covered in blood, organs, fragments.
His eyes dilated.
His body trembled.
He couldn't breathe.
He couldn't understand.
And then—
Yuna exploded into particles.
But this time… something different happened.
The particles didn't float.
They didn't rise.
They simply vanished.
Teleported.
Torn out of the world.
...................
The darkness opened as if it were breathing.
The lights of the observation chamber—
a circular room with no windows, walls of clinical white that looked freshly born—
turned on gradually, revealing the outline of a capsule in the center.
Inside it, Yuna reappeared.
Her body materialized in a blink of bluish particles,
like luminous ash gathering to form flesh.
She wasn't wearing her combat outfit.
Instead, she wore a simple white dress, thin and almost translucent under the light—
one she didn't remember ever using.
Her legs trembled the moment they touched the floor of the capsule.
Her breathing was weak, more a sigh than a real breath.
In front of her, a row of floating screens hovered in silence.
On each screen, a different angle of the disaster she had just "returned" from was projected:
Michael exploding into blue particles…
Elsa being pierced…
Yuna herself being lifted like a ragdoll before being slammed into the ground, her face shattered.
And lastly:
Aomine, collapsed, his forehead against the floor and his fingers trembling as if they wanted to tear reality apart.
Yuna didn't speak.
She didn't cry.
She simply watched.
With parted lips and an unfocused stare,
as if her mind had not fully returned with her body.
Then a sound.
A step.
A soft tap, clean, echoing in the absolute white—
repeating with perfect rhythm.
Tap… tap… tap…
Yuna didn't move.
She only lifted her head, very slowly.
She saw her.
A girl advanced toward her, more sliding than walking.
A white dress identical to Yuna's, without a single wrinkle.
Straight black hair, perfectly arranged.
Bare feet—yet each step created that soft echo that shouldn't exist in a room with no real floor.
The girl stopped less than a meter away.
She tilted her head slightly, like a curious doll.
And her eyes—black, deep, without light—locked onto Yuna with an impossible tenderness.
Her childlike voice broke the silence with the softness of a caress…
but with a coldness that cut straight through bone.
"Welcome home, Yuna…" she whispered.
....................
0:00
The countdown ended.
Lord Glacius's body arched.
The ice around him burst outward.
And the boss exploded into pale blue particles, roaring with a final sound that didn't resemble a monster…
…but a terrified man.
Above them, a bright message appeared:
[CONGRATULATIONS]
No one screamed.
No one celebrated.
No one raised their hands.
Only silence.
Keyki was bleeding from the mouth.
Gundou was trembling, covered in remains.
Historia's hands were empty, open, shaking—
as if she were still trying to hold something that no longer existed.
Mito cried curled up on the floor.
And Aomine…
Aomine lay face-down, his forehead pressed against the ground,
crying as if his soul had been torn out.
That "CONGRATULATIONS"
wasn't a reward.
It was mockery.
A punishment.
A cruel reminder that they had won nothing.
They had lost everything.