Zero's words still echoed faintly through the light-filled space, and his familiar smile, edged with relief and resolve, seemed to dispel the last trace of gloom.
Yet in the very next second, Plasma Belial, who had just radiated supreme majesty and steady brilliance, swayed ever so slightly.
"Hm?" Zero keenly caught that tiny discordance. His smile vanished, and his golden eye lamps fixed on Belial.
"Hey, what's..."
He never finished.
"Ding-dong!" The Color Timer suddenly sounded.
Belial's body swayed violently. He lowered his head and looked at his gold-and-silver hands, once crowned by the supreme light.
Now, a gentle yet unstoppable translucence was spreading through that sacred form, beginning at his fingertips. This was no encroachment of darkness. Rather, the light energy that made up the body he had fought in here had finally reached its limit, after the ultimate confrontation with darkness and the release of the radiance that had purified Zero's mindscape.
Every second he maintained this form as Plasma Belial consumed his body's energy at a tremendous rate. Not to sustain his own existence, but to atone, to cleanse this darkness and bring Zero back. Now, his mission was complete.
"...Looks like my time is up."
Belial's voice remained steady, betraying little emotion. But within its deep resonance was a barely perceptible weariness, the exhaustion of someone whose work was finally done.
He raised his head, his bright white eye lamps turning toward Zero, then looked down toward a spot behind him-the direction connected to Shinji's consciousness.
His body was becoming transparent faster now.
First, the brilliant golden markings grew hazy, like thin gold melting away in the dawn, turning into countless tiny motes of light that drifted apart. Then his sacred silver-white torso began to crumble and break down like a sandcastle, becoming an even greater