Chapter 641: Die

~Days earlier. End of the first arc~

Elowen had barely finished kissing Grey when his body went limp in her arms.

For several seconds she only stared at him, completely frozen by the realization that she had somehow managed to knock the idiot unconscious with a kiss, but everything around them was already moving too quickly for embarrassment to last. Mauve rushed over, Brad helped lower Grey to the ground, and within minutes the entire battlefield had shifted from celebration to crisis management as everyone realized that Grey wasn’t waking up anytime soon.

The catacomb formation still needed to be completed, and Grey was the only person with enough understanding of the Mech Soul to finish the process properly. Mauve solved that problem in the most practical way available to her, taking control of his unconscious body and guiding his hands through the final steps while everyone else protected them.

Grey’s fingers moved under her command, the Mech Soul sank into place, and Melix changed.

Energy flooded through the repaired network beneath the capital, ancient channels reconnecting one after another while walls, roads, towers, and defensive structures began shifting in response. Elowen watched the transformation with everyone else until a small pulse of pain suddenly appeared behind her eyes, sharp enough that she pressed two fingers against her temple.

Brad noticed immediately. "You alright?"

"It’s nothing," Elowen said after the pain faded almost as quickly as it had appeared. "Just a headache."

She meant it at the time.

Not long afterward, the remnants of Melix’s authority finished reorganizing themselves around the new order, and with the Valdi line gone, the Pope dead, and almost every competing structure of government collapsed, recognition settled onto Elowen almost naturally. The moment the title of Empress became hers, something inside her snapped.

Elowen screamed, but nobody heard it.

Her body remained perfectly still while congratulations came from every direction, her lips even curving into the appropriate smile while something cold forced its way through her mind. Inside, Elowen fought with everything she had, clawing at an invisible presence that seemed to spread through her thoughts faster every time she tried to push it back.

Hours passed like minutes.

Then suddenly it was night, and Elowen was alone in her room.

One half of her face was covered in tears while the other remained perfectly calm, the difference so unnatural that even looking into the mirror terrified her. She tried moving her mouth and only managed a twitch, then fought for control of one hand until her fingers finally curled hard enough to draw blood from her own palm.

That first night lasted forever.

The next day, nobody noticed anything.

Elowen walked the Palace, spoke to officials, listened to reports, and answered questions while screaming beneath every word that came from her mouth. The thing controlling her knew her memories, her habits, even the small shifts in her expression well enough that Mauve, Brad, Xerchen, and everyone else accepted what they saw without hesitation.

Elowen told herself Grey would know.

Grey was different.

He noticed things nobody else noticed, picked apart lies from tiny inconsistencies, and somehow managed to understand people even while pretending he didn’t care. All she needed to do was hold on until he woke up, and once he looked at her properly, he would know something was wrong.

She fought through the second night.

Then the third.

By then, resistance had become nigh impossible. Every thought she reclaimed disappeared a moment later, every movement she stole back lasted only seconds, and the tears running down her face at night became the only proof that some part of Elowen still remained beneath the thing wearing her body.

The fourth night was worse in a different way.

There was less pain.

Elowen understood immediately that this wasn’t improvement. She had simply lost enough of herself that there was less left to hurt.

During the day, she watched through increasingly distant eyes while her body spoke and smiled without her. People bowed to their new Empress, servants brought reports, Brad occasionally joked with her, and Mauve never once looked at her with suspicion.

’Grey will know.’

The thought repeated itself until it became almost everything she had left.

’He’ll know.’

By the fifth day, even the nights became quiet.

Elowen no longer had enough control to cry, and the presence inside her no longer needed to crush every attempt at resistance with overwhelming force. It could simply wait, allowing each weak flicker of rebellion to exhaust itself before closing over the gap.

She knew what that meant. There wasn’t much time left. ℴ

On the sixth day, Elowen’s thoughts had become little more than a whisper buried somewhere so deep inside herself that even she struggled to hear it.

’Just wait.’

Grey would wake up.

He had to.

If she could hold onto anything until then, even the smallest fragment, he would see it.

And then Grey opened his eyes.

Hope exploded through what remained of her so violently that Elowen almost felt whole again.

She watched him stumble into the throne room later, ridiculous and half-dressed, watched his eyes fall onto her, and waited for that familiar narrowing of his gaze. She waited for the pause, the question, the tiny sign that Grey had noticed something wrong.

Instead, he walked straight toward her.

He lifted her from the throne.

Then he kissed her.

The thing controlling her responded perfectly, startled in exactly the way Elowen would have been, while Grey looked triumphant afterward as though he had finally gotten one over on her.

He couldn’t tell.

He couldn’t tell at all.

Whatever had remained of Elowen fractured.

**

Grey stared at the golden-eyed woman across the courtyard while Holy Energy flooded through the catacomb formation in increasingly violent waves.

Her lips slowly parted.

"You couldn’t tell."

Grey’s expression changed.

"You couldn’t tell at all." Her voice trembled between fury and something far more broken as more of the false flesh peeled away from her face. "You never cared."

Holy Energy erupted.

"Die."

She disappeared from Grey’s sight and reappeared directly in front of him, golden claws tearing across his shoulder before Shadow Forces could fully react. Flesh scattered through the air as she twisted, another hand carving across his ribs while the formation beneath them poured more power into every movement.

"Die."

Grey tried to retreat, but she stayed attached to him like a shadow, claws slicing strips from his arms, chest, and sides faster than his regeneration could close them. Every wound carried Holy Energy deep into the flesh, disrupting the healing pathways while the chains restraining the Elementals continued dragging at his Neural Frame.

"Die."

Another claw ripped across his back and tore away a long sheet of flesh.

"Die."