At the outskirts of the battlefield, far from the echo of destruction...
Silence fell.
Frey Starlight finally stopped trembling after vomiting everything in his stomach—after witnessing something worse than a nightmare.
A nightmare that tore open an old wound Frey had buried deep, simply to keep his mind from collapsing.
What deepened his torment was the fact that Danzo was not the only one wandering that sea of blood. Beside him, there was another figure .. a girl with a grotesquely twisted form, roaming aimlessly at the bottom as well. And of course, Frey recognized her.
"I thought I was saving her... but all I did was deepen her suffering," Frey whispered, his eyes darker than they had ever been.
Nameless said nothing in response. Words had lost their meaning now.
That girl was Clana Starlight.
In the past, Simon Manus had somehow turned her into a puppet. The strange part was that she had not been dead in that state .. she had been alive, yet stripped of her will.
The ignition Frey unleashed back then, the one that destroyed the City of Puppets, was what ended her.
Frey had believed he saved her by doing so.
In truth, all he had done was imprison her deep within the dark abyss inside himself.
For a moment, Nameless wondered ..
What must Frey Starlight be feeling right now?
Frey had killed people dear to him. People he loved.
That alone was cruel, leaving pitch-black shadows gnawing at his heart for a long time.
But killing was one thing.
Imprisoning their souls was something else entirely.
For the briefest moment, Nameless felt genuine curiosity .. what did Frey feel upon realizing he had robbed them of salvation and rest, condemning them to eternal torment?
He didn’t need to hear the answer.
Frey’s emotions reached him.
Nameless said nothing. He clenched his fist and pressed it against his chest, trying to suppress the pain.
A savage pain .. as if something were devouring him from the inside, burning him alive with searing flames.
An unbearable sensation, a mixture of grief, rage, and self-loathing.
A crushing burden that made even Nameless curse such emotions.
"What I’m feeling right now is only a glimpse... just a fragment of what Frey Starlight is enduring."
"If this is merely a fragment... a single ember .. then how vast is the pain he’s suffering?"
Nameless lowered his head toward the mountain of corpses. He understood then that the pain likely matched the number of those tortured souls .. souls fated either to remain imprisoned here forever, or to be burned and turned into power for a single man’s use.
Between those two fates, they had no choice.
The decision belonged to Frey alone.
"The sixth stage of Shadow Adaptation is the burning of souls," Nameless said quietly.
"To be precise, that is only half of the ability .. the half bound to death. Souls that die by my hand are destined for torment. Souls that die by another’s hand... I can grant them life."
"That is how this power .. one that shatters the law of life and death .. functions."
"To revive one person, another must die in exchange. That is the balance required to preserve life and death. The two are inseparably bound."
These words reflected the pinnacle Nameless had reached after meddling with life and death for so long.
Yet he had forgotten why he began down that path in the first place. What existed now was nothing more than a distorted shell of his lost truth.
"...Enough. That doesn’t matter now."
Nameless turned his attention back to Frey.
"He won’t be able to stand again—not after enduring this much agony."
Frey Starlight could not burn the souls of his victims. Doing so would mean devouring his friends as well .. and that was too much for him.
Frey could rely on cold logic if it meant burning only the souls of enemies, or even strangers.
But Danzo and Clana ..
That was the exception.
A wall Frey Starlight, a man who still possessed emotions, would never be able to cross.
At least, that was what Nameless believed.
Yet for the first time since meeting Frey ..
Nameless’s eyes slowly widened in shock as he witnessed something he never expected. Something that overturned everything he thought he knew.
Frey Starlight stood up again.
And at that very moment, one corpse ignited, engulfed in raging violet flames.
Just one, at the far edge of the sea of blood.
But then ..
One by one, the corpses began to burn, faster and faster, at a terrifying pace. Violet overwhelmed crimson as Nameless watched in silence.
Within minutes, the mountain of corpses itself caught fire .. burning completely, becoming a beacon of darkness that set the sea of blood ablaze.
Among them burned Clana’s body.
And soon after, Danzo’s.
They burned quickly. Quietly.
Without resistance. Without a single scream.
They burned just like all the others.
No distinction.
No favoritism.
Only violet flames .. reflecting pain and darkness that devoured a human heart.
Nameless turned his gaze back to Frey Starlight, who now stood upright once more.
He was still the same person.
Yet one thing drew Nameless’s attention more than anything else.
Frey’s eyes.
Dark. Hollow. Empty.
That darkness ..
That lethal void ..
Nameless recognized those eyes.
"They’re the same eyes I saw in my memories..."
Within Nameless’s mask existed a vast collection of memories .. reflections of his past.
And in those memories,
Nameless had those same eyes.
Cold eyes, devoid of emotion.
Eyes he had only recently begun to lose ..
Ever since Frey Starlight’s emotions started seeping into him.
But in a twist of bitter irony, Frey now bore the very eyes Nameless believed he had lost forever.
The human had become closer to a monster ..
and the monster, closer to a human.
"You’ve changed... Frey Starlight..."
...
...
...
---
— Frey Starlight’s POV —
Lately...
I’ve begun to question what is right, and what is wrong.
At some point, I’m certain I crossed the line separating those two concepts.
The blood staining my hands is thick—and it will never wash away.
I looked ahead for a moment, toward the raging battlefield.
Gehrman was fighting Amon there, alongside my father.
High in the sky... Snow was clashing with Nito, the Ninth Seat.
And higher still ...
that monster that appeared out of nowhere was battling the Third Upper Seat.
"This is a battlefield... a battlefield where everyone fights for a reason, to achieve some purpose."
Every one of them had their own reason to fight with such ferocity, such desperation.
"I had one too... a reason, a drive to keep moving forward .. protecting my family, and the people dear to my heart."
Slowly, I turned toward Ada, my sister, whom I had left behind .. lying there unconscious.
"That was my reason for fighting up until now. As long as they were safe, nothing else mattered..."
"But in the end... I became the one who tormented the very people I swore to protect."
"Danzo... and Clana. Both of them."
"And not just them. My father was revived only to be used as a weapon against me.
My sister became leverage .. something my enemies could use to weaken me.
And Carmen died right before my eyes, without me being able to do anything to stop it."
It felt inevitable.
No matter how I tried...
No matter what I did...
I always ended up facing the same outcome.
"I tested countless paths... countless possibilities .. yet all of them ended in failure."
I even turned myself into a blood-soaked butcher just to walk the Path of Blood.
I slaughtered tens of thousands in war without discrimination, slowly casting away my humanity.
And it led me nowhere.
"All those corpses... all those souls suffering inside me... they must curse me every day, wishing for my death—don’t they?"
It was obvious.
They clung to me in despair, trying to drag me down with them into that mire of blood and death.
"All of this... is my fault."