Melina turned her head slightly, giving the player a hauntingly beautiful over-the-shoulder look at a forty-five-degree angle.
"I know my origins. Everything I grasp turns to radiance, everything I abandon turns to coal... little sister, it is time to wake. Let me wake you from your deep slumber."
Melina turned back and somehow pulled the Glintstones out of the player's inventory bag. She crushed the seven Glintstones the player had collected over the long journey. The shattered powder mingled with motes of light, and in the name of death, they forged a short dagger.
Holding the short dagger, Melina solemnly cast herself onto it, without a single farewell.
Only when the black blade's "death" pierced her chest did the dumbstruck Tarnished reach out.
The blade buried in her chest burned with a new fire. Melina had understood the plan from the very beginning: she needed to use her identity as the "Kindling Maiden" to ignite a new Spiritflame, and with that as the symbol, put a complete end to the god of "Ancient Death."
Collecting Glintstones had been a smokescreen from the start. A thousand years ago, Horace had already spread the word: gather seven Glintstones to open the Spirit World and resurrect the dead.
This was both true and false. The Glintstones were her Soul Materialization. They could establish contact with "Hötter," the god representing reincarnation, who was also Hecate. Of course she had the authority to let souls in the Spirit World return to the mortal world, but there was no necessary causal relationship between collecting Glintstones and resurrecting the dead.
Whether she resurrected them or not was merely a matter of her whim, was it not? And Melina had accepted Uncle's commission and plotted to replace an Outer God. Miquella's plan had been a predetermined game of