The banquet ended with grace. Polite nods. Courteous smiles. A toast that went half-drunk and half-watched.
But something had shifted.
Seraphine retired early.
Victoria walked silently beside Hector through the lantern-lit halls, saying nothing. There were no more words that could give shape to the thoughts echoing in both of them.
Their footsteps parted at the guest wing.
A glance.
A hum.
And silence once more.
---
That night, Hector dreamed.
Only one dream.
A rare thing.
And it was not of tragedy.
It was a memory of potential.
He saw a great mage, robes tattered by time, standing atop a plateau carved by storm and will. His beard was ashen, his eyes clouded with too many truths. For thirty years the mage had cultivated beneath the scorching sun and biting snow.
And then, in one final act, he broke his core.
Not in desperation.
In clarity.
"I sacrificed time," the mage whispered into the dream. "A decade of my life… for a step forward. The future is long for those with power. Short for those without."
As the core shattered, the mage glowed. Power surged. But his hair grayed, and his bones bent just slightly more.
When Hector awoke, the pain in his chest wasn't from sleep.
It was purpose.
---
The night had grown cold.
He sat on the edge of the bed, fingers gripping the sheets. The air shimmered faintly around him—his mana already swirling. The dream wasn't a coincidence. It was a sign.
Abbadon was far stronger. Too strong. Every moment Hector hesitated was a moment wasted. He could feel it—the ticking clock of fate.
He took a breath.
And then… he began.
He gathered every ounce of the Spiral's evolved power, every echo of Thren's imprint, every piece of his soulweave. The 1,440 souls he'd sacrificed… the memories they'd left… the weight they'd carved into him.
He tore into the core.
And screamed.
---
Not far away, Victoria stood at her balcony, the moonlight shimmering against her silver nightdress.
Her hand hovered over the mirror-core etched into her chest. She, too, had felt the pressure. The urgency.
So she acted.
She let go.
She sacrificed.
She tore out versions of herself she'd grown to rely on — the Victoria that learned to survive betrayal, the one who mastered diplomacy, the one who once ran from love. Each one let go, folded inward, and poured their clarity into the core.
The mirror darkened.
And then it glowed.
She gasped—power flooding her limbs.
But just as the core sealed…
A scream ripped through the palace.
---
She ran.
The guards tried to stop her, but she brushed past them like wind.
She reached Hector's door. It was unlocked.
Inside, he knelt on the marble, hands shaking, eyes red and streaming, blackened blood pooling beneath his mouth. His robes were soaked with sweat. Veins glowed faintly with residual light.
"Hector!"
He didn't answer.
He clutched a book — the Grimoire. His most sacred item.
He flipped through its pages.
Over and over.
And then he looked up at her, tears streaking down his cheeks.
"I don't remember them," he whispered.
"W-What?" she stepped closer.
"Their names… two thousand souls. I can't… I can't remember them."
He collapsed forward, the book landing with a thud.
"I promised I'd remember them all. That I'd be the one… who carried them. That they'd never fade."
She knelt beside him, pulling his trembling frame into her arms.
His sobs were quiet. Raw.
"You still have the book," she whispered. "It wrote down what you remembered. Even if you lost it… their names live there."
"But not in me," he said. "I let them go. I let them go for power. I swore I wouldn't."
Victoria looked into his eyes.
And she saw it: the echoing guilt of a thousand lives.
"You were never meant to carry them all," she said. "No one was. Not even an angel-born."
He tried to respond.
She placed a finger over his lips.
"You remember what the Hollowed taught me?" she said softly. "Let go of what you carry… or you will carry only it."
He closed his eyes.
Breathed.
And nodded.
She pressed her forehead against his.
"And never again," he whispered. "Unless I'm about to die. I'll never do this again."
They stayed like that, on the cold marble, surrounded by moonlight and silence, and the whispers of forgotten names that the world had tried so hard to erase.
Then, his voice broke the stillness again.
"I saw their faces," he said, voice shaking. "In the dreams. I felt their pain. Their love. Their losses. And now they're just… shadows."
"They're not shadows," she whispered. "They're pieces of you. They helped you become you."
He looked down at the Grimoire again. The pages were inked in a script only he could read, names looping in calligraphy that bled magic. Some entries had faded to gray.
"I feel empty."
"You're not."
"Then why does it feel like a funeral?"
"Because in a way, it is," Victoria said. "But sometimes, you bury what you cannot carry. So you can move forward."
He leaned into her.
"I don't want to forget again."
"You won't," she promised. "Because I'll remember them with you."
His breath hitched.
"You would do that?"
"I already have," she said. "Through you."
The two sat quietly, the book between them, the memory of souls long passed fluttering like ash on the wind.
And for the first time in a long while, Hector felt like he wasn't carrying the world alone.