A dying wind swept through the ravaged ruins of Life God City, sending dust pattering down.
Ailiya and Lina stood upon the shattered earth, the lingering heat of slaughter still clinging to their fingertips after killing the City Lord's own son.
Their great vengeance had been fulfilled. The shackles of humiliation that had weighed on their hearts for hundreds of millions of years had shattered in a single day. They should have felt nothing but supreme joy and satisfaction.
Yet as the two women gazed at the deathly silent city and the Human Emperor Banner hanging quietly in the void, the satisfaction in their eyes quickly faded, replaced by bitter smiles filled with an indescribable ache.
They had witnessed it with their own eyes and taken revenge with their own hands, watching the destruction of the enemies who had massacred their tribes, hunted their people, and enslaved the Human Race. Much of the hatred in their hearts had dissolved.
But the more thoroughly they took their revenge, the more fiercely sorrow surged within them.
Their enemies could be killed. Blood debts could be repaid.
But the kin who had died beneath the blades of the Different Races, the Human Race warriors who had fallen in battle, the infants who had died in their swaddling clothes, the women of their race who had been humiliated and abused to death...
They would never return.
Their joy was real. The profound satisfaction of avenging their great wrongs and restoring the Human Race's dignity was etched into their hearts.
But their regret was real as well. Countless departed souls had lain buried through the ages. No amount of slaughter or reckoning could bring back those once-living people or heal the countless wounds the Human Race had suffered over a million years.
"We've avenged them...