Chapter 84 Ruins That Cannot Be Found
Several nights after the council meeting, as rain fell like the mournful sigh of a weary sky, Rinoa sat alone at the pinnacle of the Northern Tower, enveloped in the solitude of the storm. In her hand, she clutched a small piece of stone—jet black with faint blue veins, the sole remnant of Gamma that she had managed to salvage from the ruins of the Heaven Wars. The stone felt cool and heavy, an inescapable burden of memories that weighed on her heart like the clouds above.
Suddenly, Fitran emerged from the shadows, quietly, like a dim beam of light piercing through the thick darkness of the night. He seemed almost ethereal, a ghost of hope in a world shrouded in twilight.
"Did the council allow you to be here?" he asked softly, his voice resembling the whisper of wind rustling through the trees, blending seamlessly with the sounds of the rain.
"They allow my death... if I am wrong," Rinoa replied, a sneer creeping into her voice like a bitter shadow. "But that's not the issue. I... don't know where Gamma is. I have searched every corner of existence, mapped all continents, even traversed the vast voids beyond the folds of the atmosphere," she continued, despair tightening its grip on her heart like iron chains.
She gazed deeply at the small stone, allowing it to anchor her thoughts, before turning her attention back to Fitran. "But you know, don't you?" Her question hung suspended in the damp air, trembling as it awaited an answer she might dread to hear.
Fitran did not respond immediately. He merely closed his eyes, as if feeling for something intangible, gathering strength from the shadows that danced around him, nurturing the silence of the night.
"Gamma is no longer in this world," he finally said, his voice weighed down by the gravity of his words. "He was torn from reality when 'The Heaven Wars' ended, his essence scattered among the crevices of existence itself. Time does not flow in that void; light does not dare to penetrate its depths. Only those who have ever erased something from existence... can hope to find him again."
Rinoa fell silent, a profound hollowness settling within her as she stood amidst the raging storm of despair that threatened to consume her. Finally, with a voice barely above a whisper, quivering with an unsettling mix of inquiry and accusation, she asked:
"Because you were the one who erased Gamma?"
Fitran's gaze locked onto hers—his black eyes, deep and unfathomable, resembled an abyss filled with hidden truths and the weight of unspoken darkness.
"No," he replied firmly, his voice reverberating through the oppressive silence that enveloped them. "I erased his last people when they dared to defy the new order. I witnessed their destruction, and... I was the one who scrubbed their final signature from the sacred parchment of history."