CHAPTER 48: FINAL MEMORY
The banquet hall tore apart, but instead of the void, a blinding, apocalyptic white light flooded her vision.
Time itself seemed to violently stutter and freeze.
Hania slammed into frozen snow. Looking around, her breath caught. Dozens of high-ranking imperial mages and elite knights were scattered across a ruined crater, but they were completely stationary. A spell blast was frozen mid-air like a shattered glass sculpture. A knight was caught mid-stride.
Everyone around them was frozen, like time itself had stopped.
In the center of this frozen apocalypse surged a creature of terrifying proportions: a colossal, ancient dragon. Its scales were midnight-black, jagged, and bleeding rivers of corrupted, volatile purple mana that hissed against the snow. In standard historical records, the ancient dragons had gone completely berserk, driven by a mindless, primal rage to destroy everything in their path.
But as Hania staggered closer, her heart was beating loudly.
The dragon was weeping.
Great, steaming tears rolled down its massive, scaly snout. Its colossal head was lowered into the ash, its golden, slit-pupil eyes wide. It was looking at the figure standing before it, and through its ragged, failing breaths, its voice echoed directly into the soul—a telepathic, desperate plea.
"Kill me... please... end it... before the darkness takes what is left of my mind... kill me..."
Hania gasped. Why is it begging to be killed?
Her gaze snapped to the person holding the weapon. Standing on the dragon's snout was a young man clad in heavy battle armour. But Hania's mind short-circuited as she looked at him.
He had short, jagged black hair.
Black hair? Hania's thoughts raced in utter confusion. Why is Dad's hair black?!
Dravin's hair was as dark as the midnight void. His face was younger, completely devoid of the frost he wore now, but his eyes, even trapped in this horrific moment, were undeniable. They were the crimson eyes of her father, suffocating reluctance. He didn't want to swing the blade.
"Dravin."
A trembling voice broke through the silence. Beside the black-haired young man, a woman stepped into view. Hania tried desperately to look at her face, but her features were entirely blurred, obscured by the erratic flow of time magic.
The faceless woman gently reached out, her fingers closing over Dravin's trembling, armored hand.
"We have to finish this tragedy," she whispered.
The moment her fingers brushed his skin, the blood-red crescent moon mark on young Dravin's forehead flared. The dark crimson light bled down his face, and as it did, a shocking mutation occurred: the deep black strands of his hair began to bleach, turning into a stark, absolute silver from the roots out.
With a silent sob, the silver-haired Dravin brought the blade down.
The sword flashed. The dragon's head was severed, its weeping golden eyes finally glazing over in a peaceful death. The massive shockwave of the blow finally shattered the localized temporal freeze, and the world snapped back into motion.
"Hania! This is the core! The absolute bottom of his soul!" Truck-kun's voice pierced through the blinding light, his engine screaming in a final, desperate overdrive. "The memory cascade is complete! Hold on to his mana signature, we are breaching the final wall right now!"
The battlefield, the dragon, and the black-haired version of her father dissolved into a million cascading shards of glass, dragging Hania downward into the waking world.
Before the fragments of the frozen battlefield could completely vanish into the void, the environment shifted one last time, replaced by the familiar, soft pink twilight of the pocket dimension garden. The lotus pond was pristine, the cherry blossoms were floating gently in the air, and the great willow tree stood tall and unburdened.
This was it. The most precious memory at the very core of Dravin Noctis's fractured soul.
Hania found herself standing a few paces behind the trunk of the willow tree. Through the sweeping green curtain of the branches, she saw two figures sitting together on the soft grass.
One was her father, his silver hair catching the pink light of the sky. Sitting close beside him was a woman. She had long, glossy black hair that fell like silk down her back. Though Hania was behind them and couldn't see her face, the warmth radiating from the woman was palpable. A comforting presence that Hania had never felt before in her life.
The woman leaned her head slightly toward Dravin, her voice full of bright anticipation. "What should we name this child?"
Dravin stared straight ahead at the rippling pond. He closed his eyes, paused for a long moment, and let out a dry rumble from his chest.
"Hmm."
The black-haired woman immediately stiffened, turning to glare at him. She reached out and exasperatedly smacked his armored shoulder. "'Hmm' is not a name, Dravin! I am carrying our child, and the best you can offer me after months of waiting is a grunt? You are impossible! If I leave it up to you, the poor thing will grow up being called 'First Born' or 'Hey You'!"
Dravin didn't flinch from the scolding, but the corner of his mouth twitched in that hidden amusement Hania knew so well.
"Fine," the woman huffed, crossing her arms and looking back toward the twilight sky. "If it's a girl, let's call her Hania. And if it's a boy, Hanza. But whatever it is..." She turned her head back to him, pointing a strict finger. "...I am praying to the God that they do not inherit your dreadful personality."
Hania stood frozen in the shadow of the tree, her heart hammering wildly against her ribs. Tears welled in her eyes, blurring her vision. Is that... my mother? The mother I've never seen? The one who gave me my name?
A desperate courage surged through Hania's tiny body. She couldn't let this moment pass. She had to see her face. Lifting the skirt of her rumpled dress, Hania took a frantic step forward, running past the trunk of the willow tree to peer around and look at the woman's features—
Crack.
The fabric of the memory stuttered. The figure of the black-haired woman rippled like water and instantly disappeared into a mist of glowing white particles.
"No! Wait!" Hania cried out, reaching her hand into the empty air.
But the memory didn't shatter into the void. Instead, it seamlessly overlayed with another scene in the exact same spot. Dravin was still sitting beneath the willow tree. The space beside him was empty.
Instead, cradled awkwardly but securely in his powerful arms was a tiny baby with a tuft of silver hair.
The baby babbled, her tiny, chubby hands reaching up to clumsily swat at Dravin's stern face. Her small lips parted, pushing out a stumbling sound.
"Da... da... Dada..."
Dravin looked down at the tiny infant. His expression remained stoic, but he leaned down slightly, resting his forehead gently against the baby's small brow.
"Hmm," he murmured softly.
It was her father's most precious anchor—the singular reason he chose to keep fighting against the darkness devouring his soul.
CRACK!
The final illusion shattered completely. The entire mirror dimension erupted into a blinding cascade of crystalline shards.
"HANIA! HOLD ON! WE'RE BREACHING!"
Truck-kun's engine roared again. The front bumper of the interdimensional transport vehicle slammed through the collapsing conceptual space, his headlights piercing the darkness of the void. With a violent, twisting lurch, Truck-kun scooped Hania up, slipping entirely out of the fractured mirror of past memories and violently tearing a hole back into the real dimension of the present time.
They were back. This was the real pocket dimension in the present time.
"Ouch! My oil pan!" Truck-kun groaned, his wheels spinning uselessly in mid-air. His chassis was firmly wedged between the massive forks of a giant cherry blossom branch, smoke billowing from his dented radiator. "Hania! I'm stuck! Give me a push before the spatial feedback locks my gears—"
Truck-kun's voice faded into static in Hania's ears.
A sudden wave of goosebumps erupted across her skin. Every instinct in her soul screamed in terror. The air grew thick with something so profoundly ominous. Left completely paralyzed by the sheer malice in the air, she momentarily abandoned Truck-kun, leaving him hanging from the branches as she bolted toward the source of the feeling.
She tore through the weeping curtain of the willow tree and skidded to a halt.
Standing directly in front of the stone markers was the woman from the memory. She had the same long, glossy black hair, but the warm, comforting aura from the illusion was entirely gone, replaced by a suffocating pressure.
The black-haired woman.
Hania's heart started to beat louder. She couldn't see her face clearly, but the urge to reach her overrode all logic. "Wait!" Hania screamed, throwing her weight forward. She ran with everything she had, her tiny legs pumping, stretching her hand out desperately just to touch the hem of the woman's dark robes.
The woman didn't turn around. With a casual flick of her wrist, a swirling, obsidian spatial portal tore open in the fabric of the garden right in front of her. She stepped forward to disappear into the rift.
No! I can't let go of this opportunity!
Hania refused to lose her. Flaring her mana signature to its absolute limit, she triggered a burst of kinetic energy from her feet, throwing herself through the air like a launched projectile straight toward the closing rift.
But as her body flew past the willow tree's roots, her eyes locked onto the ground. The grave markers.
Before she had entered this dimension, there had been four filled graves and three empty ones. But now, right beneath the shadow of the closing portal, a fresh mound of earth sat beneath a newly carved stone.
The fifth grave was full. Only two remained empty.
"HANIA, NO! STOP!" Truck-kun's voice echoed through the garden in a desperate scream. His headlights flashed wildly from the tree branches. "The portal's spatial geometry is completely foreign! If you force your way in while your mana is this unstable, the pressure will tear your soul apart! HANIA!"
It was too late.
Driven by absolute panic and the desperate need for answers, Hania didn't look back. She plunged headfirst into the swirling obsidian vortex just as it snapped shut, the dark rift devouring her whole and throwing her into an unmapped abyss.