Episode-944
Chapter : 1887
Evan was the one in the bed this time. He was old. His skin was like paper, translucent and fragile. His breathing was shallow, a rattling sound in his chest that marked the end of a long campaign. The machines around him beeped in a steady, rhythmic countdown.
Eun-ha sat beside him. Her hair was grey now, cut short and practical. Her face was lined with wrinkles, maps of the decades they had spent together. But her eyes were the same—dark, intelligent, and fiercely dry. She refused to cry. She held his hand with a grip that hadn’t lost its strength.
"Don't you dare leave me with all this paperwork, Evan," she scolded him gently, though her voice wavered. "The patent office is a nightmare this time of year."
"Sorry," Evan wheezed, a faint, tired smile on his lips. "I think... I think I’m retiring early this time. You’ll have to handle the board meeting on Tuesday."
"Coward," she whispered. She leaned down and kissed his forehead. Her lips were cool. "Go on, then. Scout ahead. Secure the perimeter. I’ll catch up."
"I’ll be waiting," Evan breathed.
The monitor flatlined. The high-pitched tone filled the room, a singular note that signaled the end of the mission.
________________________________________
The memory didn't end with his death.
Lloyd felt a jolt, a sickening lurch in his stomach. This was new territory. This was a memory he didn't have. This was the "Echo."
He was seeing through Eun-ha’s eyes.
He—or rather, she—was standing at a grave. It was raining again, just like in the garage. A simple stone marker read KM Evan.
She was alone. The funeral was over. The guests, the politicians, the generals—they had all left. She stood there in the mud, holding a black umbrella that did little to stop the cold.
"Three years," she whispered to the stone. Her voice was hollow. "That’s how long the doctors give me. Three years without you."
The scene fast-forwarded. It was a montage of loneliness, a high-speed blur of a life losing its color.
Eun-ha sitting in a large, empty house that felt more like a museum than a home. Eun-ha accepting awards on his behalf, her face blank and polite. Eun-ha sitting in their old lab, staring at a silent, deactivated mech suit, running her hand over the cold metal where his hand used to rest.
She wasn't sad in the way people usually were. She didn't weep uncontrollably. She was just... empty. The efficiency was gone. The spark was gone. She was a machine running on reserve power, just waiting for the battery to die.
Then, the final scene.
Eun-ha was in a hospital bed. It was the same room where Evan had died. The symmetry was perfect, logical. She was alone. There was no family left. No children. Just the nurses checking the machines and the quiet hum of the city outside.
She felt her heart slowing down. It wasn't scary. It felt like relief. It felt like finishing a long shift.
She closed her eyes. And in that final moment of darkness, she had a single, powerful thought. A wish that burned brighter than any sun, brighter than logic, brighter than science.
I don't want to rest, she thought. I don't want heaven. Heaven sounds boring. Heaven is passive. I want to work. I want to build something. But I don't want to do it alone.
Her mind reached out into the void, searching for the only signal that mattered. It was an impossible variable, a rejection of death itself.
Evan. Wherever you are... I want to go there. Even if it’s hell. I want one more lifetime. Just one more chance to fix your messy code.
The monitor flatlined.
________________________________________
Lloyd gasped, his eyes snapping open.
The sterile smell of the hospital and the scent of rain on asphalt vanished, instantly replaced by the cold ozone of the Abyss. He stumbled back, his hand slipping from Leviathan’s grip. The connection broke, but the feeling remained—a heavy, aching resonance in his chest.
They stood in the silence of the throne room, two souls who had found each other across the dark. The memory of her death, and the revelation of her wish to follow him, hung in the air between them.
Chapter : 1888
Eun-ha lowered her hand slowly. The violet light in her eyes dimmed, replaced by the soft, dark look of the woman he remembered. They didn't need to say anything. The vision had said it all. She wasn't just a Devil Prince. She was the echo of everything he had lost, and everything he had found again.
Lloyd straightened his coat, the "Major General" mask sliding back into place, though it felt lighter now. He looked at her, ready to ask the question that would define their war.
"You changed," he said softly.
"The hardware changed, Evan," she replied, a sad smile touching her lips as she prepared to explain how she conquered Hell. "But the software... the software is exactly the same."
Lloyd looked between them, a sudden laugh bubbling up in his chest. It was a hysterical, relieved sound.
Here he was, in the heart of Hell, standing between his resurrected wife—who was now a demon queen—and his bodyguard—who was a former super-soldier from another dimension. And they were bickering. They were trading barbs just like they would have in the lab back on Earth.
The tension in the room broke. The crushing weight of the past, the tragedy of the first life, the confusion of the second... it all seemed manageable now.
He wasn't just a man fighting a war anymore. He was part of a team. The Engineer. The Soldier. And the Architect.
"Okay," Lloyd said, stepping between them. "That’s enough. We can measure egos later. Right now, we are alive. We are together. And we have a lot of enemies who need to be dealt with."
Leviathan smiled. It wasn't the sad smile from before. It was a sharp, dangerous smile. "He is right, Ben. We have work to do."
"Fine," Ben grumbled. "But I expect a full briefing on the structural integrity of this facility. If we are going to use it as a base, I need to know the load-bearing limits."
"I'll give you the blueprints," Leviathan said. She turned and walked back up the steps to her throne, her starlight gown trailing behind her. She sat down and crossed her legs, looking every inch the sovereign ruler of the Abyss.
"But first," she said, her eyes glowing with violet power. "Welcome to the Envy Faction. Try not to break anything."
Lloyd stood tall, the "Major General" persona locking back into place. He looked at Ben, who gave him a sharp, confident nod.
"Ready when you are, Professor," Lloyd said.
The reunion was over. The tears were dried. The team was assembled. Now, the real work was about to begin.
________________________________________
The silence that filled the crystalline hall was heavy, but it was no longer the silence of danger. It was the silence of understanding, a pause between two people who had traveled across time, death, and dimensions to find each other again. However, for Lloyd Ferrum, that silence was filled with a noise that only he could hear—the screaming of his own conscience.
He stood in the center of the vast chamber, his boots resting on the dark, polished floor that hummed with a low, rhythmic blue light. He couldn't take his eyes off the woman standing before him. To the rest of the world, to the terrified humans of the North and the warring tribes of the Abyss, she was Leviathan. She was the Prince of Envy, a monster of the Seventh Circle, a being of unimaginable power who ruled over shadows and water.
But to Lloyd, she was Song Eun-ha.
He looked at her, really looked at her, trying to reconcile the two images in his mind. He remembered her from their first life on Earth. He remembered a woman in a white lab coat that was always stained with coffee and machine grease. He remembered her pulling her hair back with a pencil when she was frustrated with a line of code. He remembered the smell of ozone and old paper that always seemed to cling to her. She had been small, fierce, and brilliantly human.
Now, she was something else entirely.
She was tall, her presence commanding and regal. Her skin was pale and flawless, glowing with a faint, ethereal luminescence that seemed to drink in the light around her. Her hair, once a messy black bun, now flowed like a river of obsidian down her back, moving as if it were underwater even though the air in the room was still.