By the time Evan noticed all this, it was already too late.
The massive body cast him into shadow. He was shoved aside, and in the instant he lost his balance, he instinctively turned his head and saw Miriam's tear-filled eyes.
In that instant, countless tangled emotions flashed through those brown eyes.
Gratitude, reluctance, relief, acceptance...
All those emotions intertwined, finally becoming a gaze filled with love.
Her life had been so bitter. Fortunately, that encounter when her emotions had been at their most fragmented had become the only ray of light in her eternally dark world.
That day, she found the courage to live and hope for the future. Though the ending did not seem perfect after all, perhaps... this was enough.
At least during those days, she had truly "lived."
So she smiled and took one last deep look at him, as though she wanted to carve that figure into her soul.
"Miriam—!"
Amid the boy's hoarse roar, the Great Axe descended upon the girl without the slightest mercy, just like every cruel reality that had come before.
Her body flew away like a tattered scrap of cotton.
At that moment, something seemed to explode inside Evan's mind.
It was what he had always dreamed of, finally fulfilled at this very moment, yet Evan felt nothing but sorrow.
He climbed up from the ground, gripping the sword in his hand tightly as an inhuman growl spilled from his throat.
Following his instincts, filled with fury and crushing grief, he swung the most perfect and fiercest sword strike of his life—
"Clang—!"
The blade struck the Great Axe, but in an instant, it was sent flying back without any power to resist.
Reality was not a movie. Burning rage could not erase the gap in strength. Even with the