The moment the Lonely King lowered its gaze, the battlefield changed.
Not violently.
Not with the catastrophic destruction that had accompanied every movement of the abyss until now.
But quietly.
Almost imperceptibly.
Yet every living being standing beneath the fractured heavens felt it immediately.
The pressure crushing Valthorin lessened.
Only slightly.
But enough for the ruined city to stop trembling for the first time since the abyssal breach had opened above the valley.
The dozens of enormous hands clawing through reality slowed their descent.
The black storms spiraling across the heavens weakened.
Even the unstable fracture splitting the sky seemed to hesitate, as though the abyss itself had momentarily forgotten to continue devouring the world.
And at the center of that impossible silence—
The Lonely King watched Kazuto.
The exhausted human still standing beneath the apocalypse with blood running down his body and a sword trembling in his hands.
Kyūsei could feel the confusion radiating from beyond the breach now more clearly than ever before.
Not rage.
Not hatred.
The Lonely King genuinely could not understand him.
Because somewhere across endless ages of isolation and despair, the abyss had forgotten a simple truth humanity carried instinctively.
That fear and courage could exist together.
The abyss understood power.
Dominance.
Survival.
But Kazuto had admitted fear openly…
And continued fighting anyway.
To the Lonely King, that contradiction was incomprehensible.
The second eye narrowed slightly while observing the mortal below.
Then the voice echoed once more across reality.
Softer than before.
You fear death.
Kazuto wiped blood from his mouth weakly.
"Obviously."
The abyss fell silent again.
Kazuto sighed.
"Do cosmic entities think humans enjoy almost dying all the time?"
Rufus raised a hand from the ruins below.
"For the record, I strongly dislike it."
Even now.
Even now the idiot kept joking.
Kyūsei's chest hurt unexpectedly.
Because suddenly he understood something painful.
Kazuto wasn't fearless.
He never had been.
All this time, through every dungeon, every battle, every impossible situation—
He had simply chosen to move forward despite fear.
And maybe that was what real courage actually meant.
The Lonely King spoke again.
Then why resist oblivion?
The fractured heavens stirred softly.
Why cling to fleeting existence?
Kyūsei slowly looked upward.
Because honestly…
That question was difficult.
Human lives were short.
Fragile.
Painful.
Everyone died eventually.
Everything ended eventually.
Compared to the abyss stretching endlessly across eternity, humanity truly was insignificant.
And yet—
Kazuto answered without hesitation.
"Because temporary things still matter."
The words echoed softly across the battlefield.
The Lonely King became still again.
Kazuto glanced sideways briefly toward Kyūsei before continuing.
"If something being temporary made it worthless, then nobody would laugh, or love people, or protect anything."
The winds surrounding him weakened further now as exhaustion visibly dragged at every movement of his body.
"But humans do those things anyway."
Kyūsei swallowed hard.
The abyss beyond the breach churned uneasily.
Not violently.
Emotionally.
As though something ancient buried beneath endless loneliness had begun remembering feelings it abandoned long ago.
The whispers inside Kyūsei's mind returned faintly.
Not hostile now.
Conflicted.
Temporary warmth…
Fragments of impossible emotion flowed through him again.
A throne surrounded by silence.
A king watching civilizations rise and disappear like brief sparks in endless darkness.
Hands reaching toward others—
Only to lose them every single time.
The loneliness inside the abyss suddenly made terrible sense.
Because eternity turned every connection into grief eventually.
Kyūsei's chest tightened painfully.
"You were afraid too," he whispered upward before realizing he spoke aloud.
The second eye widened slightly.
Kyūsei forced himself to continue.
"You kept trying to hold onto worlds because you couldn't bear being alone again."
Silence spread across the fractured heavens.
The Lonely King did not deny it.
And somehow—
That felt tragic beyond words.
The abyssal creature beneath the breach, however, reacted violently.
Darkness exploded around its broken form while countless eyes burned with furious devotion.
THE THRONE MUST NOT WEAKEN.
The atmosphere trembled again.
The creature pointed upward toward the Lonely King while screaming in distorted rage.
MORTAL EMOTIONS ARE CHAINS.
The black storms across the heavens intensified once more.
The creature had realized the danger.
Not physical danger.
Emotional danger.
The Lonely King was hesitating.
And fanaticism could not tolerate hesitation.
The creature roared and suddenly forced more abyssal energy into the fracture again, causing the widening breach to destabilize violently as dozens of pale hands resumed clawing deeper into reality.
The temporary calm shattered instantly.
Lena's face paled.
"No— if the breach destabilizes further, it could collapse dimensional boundaries permanently!"
Kazuto cursed under his breath.
"…there goes the emotional progress."
The creature lifted both arms toward the sky again.
This time, however—
The Lonely King moved first.
The massive silhouette beyond the fracture slowly raised one chained hand.
And the entire abyss froze.
Absolute silence descended.
Even the storms stopped moving.
The fanatic creature trembled violently.
Then the voice of the Lonely King echoed across reality once more.
Not loudly.
But with authority so absolute that existence itself obeyed.
Kneel.
The creature collapsed instantly.
Its massive form slammed against the shattered summit beneath unbearable pressure while cracks spread across its body faster than ever before.
The pale hands descending through the breach halted completely.
The heavens stopped widening.
Kyūsei's eyes widened slowly.
The Lonely King was suppressing its own servant.
No—
Rejecting it.
The creature screamed furiously while trying to rise again.
THE THRONE HAS GROWN WEAK—
The sentence never finished.
Because suddenly the chains wrapped around the Lonely King moved.
For the first time since appearing beyond the breach, the endless chains surrounding the ancient king shifted violently through the abyssal darkness.
And one of them shot downward.
The chain pierced directly through the fanatic creature's chest.
Silence crushed the battlefield.
The abyssal creature froze.
Its countless eyes widened in disbelief.
Not pain.
Betrayal.
The Lonely King spoke quietly.
We are tired of endless emptiness.
The chain tightened.
The creature began breaking apart.
And for the first time—
The abyss turned against itself.