Chapter Text
A military alert?
The air smells of gunpowder and blood. It's horrible.
The battlefield is a pool of red sludge mixed with black goo.
All the grass and trees in the neighbourhood are burnt. Crows screaming to death. Live meat walks through the woods looking for survivors. These.. These Herrshers.
.... Herrshers.
Welt.
You're with them now, aren't you?
Are you involved in the massacre, or are you standing in the shadows again? Are you waiting again for the crow on your shoulder? Will you again go out and stand in the distance, letting no one see? Will you kill innocent bystanders again?
Are you sure? You're the Welt I .....
"Why did you leave?"
...
"Do you remember those days, those nights?"
Do you remember that promise?
......
It must have happened in the spring. Or autumn.
It must have been autumn, I don't remember, because everything is blurred except your face. Although that was starting to get a little fuzzy as time went on.
We walked through the narrow streets of an old town where there were never any people.
I can't even remember the details of the conversation. Only that you made another stupid joke about the "unfair world" and the destruction of that unfair world. And the killers will be. 14 apostles of hell.
And you've never dared to really blame them.
"An unjust world needs a just judgement." But was it really fair in your eyes?
.....
It's really no use asking you now, is it?
You've been on their side for a long time.
You've gone, you've left us. You left me.
You left everything here to start over.
You left your whole life behind.
The only thing that's been bothering me for a long time.
"Is there room for me in this clean slate?"
Can I be anything more than a memory, Welt?
.......
I don't recognise you, but the situation seems familiar.
The cracking of mirrors..
The sound of dripping blood...
Those deafening footsteps in the silent wilderness.
Why did you come back? Will you end it all?
Kill me?
After everything that's going on in the world, it's the best thing that could happen.
You hesitate. You stand silent, slow to strike. There's a war behind us. They're there too. Ours. No. My friends are dying now and for what?
.....
"There's always a choice, Lieserl, think about what's most important to you." He used to say to me. But he's dead. And it's because of you, Joyce. I know you didn't mean it.
The advice may be good. But it's impossible to choose between them.
"Help me save them. "You're not who you seem to be right now. I know you are."
You're wrong, Ein.
You actually said that. Or it's my sick fantasy, I don't know anymore.
I remember the screams. I remember the sharp pain and not being able to think for fear of not having time.
I remember the fire right in front of me. And it's getting harder and harder to breathe.
Is this my end?
Does it really have to end like this?
In that dream.
amidst the ruins and the scorched grass, it was just us. No one else. I couldn't hear, not you, not anyone. Not a sound at all. Even my own thoughts have seemed suspiciously silent these past few days...
Now I'm finally able to put the dream puzzle together.
First the one where I'm sitting alone on my knees with blood on my hands.
Then. Where you reach out your hand without a word.. help? I don't know, but I take it. I want to squeeze harder, but something won't let me.
And then you put your arm around me and--
It hurts..
Something...
Warm, sticky...
Empty in the eyes...
Of all those dreams, the only thing I could hear was.
"Good night, Lieserl. Carl would be proud of you."
***
And then I realised it wasn't a dream at all. It was real. They've been confusing so much lately.
Reality. The reality where things ended differently. A reality where Honkai erased any memory of you in history..
A reality where you caused my life and my death at the same time..
A reality where I'll never say:
"You were ready to burn the world down for me. But in the end.."
And a reality where you'll never go on to say:
"But in the end, I burned it down with you."