"What did you mean by that?"
Ye Qiong's voice was a little hoarse.
Dahlia still did not answer immediately.
She merely raised a hand and lightly traced a line through the air with her fingertip.
A faint glow rippled out from her fingertip, like a stone dropped onto water.
"The truth of the sweet dream..." Dahlia's voice was soft. "Was it really so?"
Ye Qiong's pupils contracted.
Dahlia raised her hand and spread open her palm.
At some point, a black cat had appeared beside her feet, its golden eyes quietly watching him.
"This is a fragment of Terminus. Your past is its future."
Ye Qiong's Adam's apple bobbed.
Finality!
That Aeon who traveled against the flow of time!
"So, what is the true ending?" Ye Qiong asked.
Dahlia crouched down, her fingertips gently stroking the black cat's back.
Ye Qiong looked at the cat, and his gaze immediately went blank.
Ye Qiong abruptly opened his eyes. On the dark surface of the water, a small figure stood far away, like the only point of light in the night.
She spoke, her voice soft, yet every word struck his heart:
"The name I gave myself is Firefly."
She lowered her head and gently pressed her fingers to her chest, as though what beat there was not a heart, but a lamp that could go out at any moment:
"I used to think it was because I felt I was very much like a firefly—just a fleeting glimmer of light..."
Her silver hair fell around her shoulders. Her eyes shifted from pink to blue, as though they held both dusk and dawn within them.
Yet those eyes did not hold light. Tears shimmered in their rims, stubbornly refusing to fall.
She gave a bitter smile. The curve of her lips