“I knew it…you aren’t my Catalina.” Grinzam threw his arms out and spat in anger. “It would have been better if you had never been born!” Light emitted from his hands. Realizing what it could mean with a start, Cliff looked behind him. Engrave Incantations were engraving Jair’s corpse outside the tower, through Grinzam’s Remote Engrave Incantation.
“My name is Asusrad Grinzam. With truth as my witness, I give thee the name Jair.”
Cliff trembled, the greatest rage and fury he had ever known rising within him.
“Grinzam…you scumbag! How dare you!” Catalina cursed, squeezing the words out.
Grinzam continued chanting over them. “Live as one with me and return to dust with me. I order thee to remove the Sehem-hamphorasch from that woman’s chest and to kill that boy!”
Jair sprung to his feet and rushed into the tower. He lunged to pummel Cliff, but Catalina cut between them and held Jair back.
“Cliff, now’s your chance!”
Cliff nodded and steadied the gun. He pointed the muzzle at Grinzam’s chest.
I can’t let Catalina be the one to kill him! The thought granted Cliff a resolve of steel. He held his breath and pulled the trigger.
The gun fired with a shockingly powerful recoil that threw his arm back, causing the bullet to only graze Grinzam’s flank. Cliff clicked his tongue and cocked the gun again. He heard a scream behind him as he did. He glanced back to where Jair was kicking Catalina.
“Catalina!”
The kick knocked her outside the tower and she tumbled on the ground. Jair turned toward Cliff, who ground his teeth. Their eyes met. Jair was going to attack him next. Now was his only chance. He only had two shots left!
Cliff adjusted his grip on the revolver and shot Grinzam as he turned toward him. Gunfire cracked into the air and blood sprayed everywhere. The bullet hit Grinzam—not in the torso or head, but his arm.
“So close, yet so very far!” Grinzam taunted, his lips curling in a sneer as he held his bleeding arm.
One bullet left!
Cliff felt a sudden sharp blow to his broken ribs while he tried to aim again. Jair had driven his fist into Cliff’s ribcage from behind.
“GUAH!”
Cliff flew with the impact and crashed into the tower’s inner wall. Agony roared over him, and his brain went numb. The gun slipped from his hand and slid across the ground, coming to a stop in the space between Cliff and Grinzam.
Cliff shoved Jair away and darted for the gun. Grinzam bolted to pick up the gun.
“URAAAAAAH!” Cliff yelled as he ran. His ribs screamed with agonizing pain with every jolting step. His broken arm jostled against his side. He endured the unbearable pain and dove for the gun. His fingers touched the grip!
Jair grabbed the back of Cliff’s shirt and dragged him away with his inhuman strength. The gun slipped from Cliff’s fingers and into Grinzam’s hands.
“…It’s your loss,” Grinzam jeered. Jair strangled Cliff from behind.
A weak cry lodged in his throat and his conscious mind instantly started to fade into the dark. Hands with strength impossible to throw off strangled Cliff. The strength drained from his body and his vision dropped away. Through his dimming senses, he felt Grinzam hold the gun to him.
Damn it! Damn it! Cliff screamed a voiceless curse and Grinzam wrapped his finger around the trigger.
A silver light soared toward them, cutting through the darkness.
Cliff opened his eyes as wide as they could go and saw it through blurred vision—the flash of light stabbed Grinzam’s chest.
“GAH!”
The blow sent Grinzam flailing through the air, and his back banged against the spiral staircase. The strength evaporated from Jair’s grip on Cliff’s neck. Cliff’s rapidly fading vision returned, and he located the source of the light.
It was a knife; the one and same knife that had pierced through Jair’s chest and lodged in the Great Bell Tower’s outer wall. Large amounts of blood gushed from Grinzam’s pierced chest.
“Im…possible…” he breathed, spitting up blood.
Did she do it? Cliff pushed off the ground with his good hand and looked in the direction the knife had come from.
Catalina stood in the tower doorway with the light of the rising sun at her back. Her shoulders labored with heavy breathing, in the same stance she had taken to throw the knife.
“Catalina…” Cliff said her name, his voice trembling.
She answered him gently, “…I told you, I won’t let you shoulder the whole burden.” As Cliff heard her soft voice, Grinzam tumbled and fell in a heap on the tower floor.
“This isn’t…how it’s supposed to be…” he said, voice hollow, continuing to cough up blood. “We’ll redo it…I’ll relive our…lives…together with her…” His voice quickly faded and Grinzam sank in a pool of blood.
Cliff paid him no mind. He ran to Catalina’s side without looking back. Grinzam had died, which only meant one thing for Catalina with her Restrictor, “can’t kill humans.”
“If it’s a Restrictor that can never be kept again after it’s been broken once—like ‘don’t kill’—the Golem will never be able to move again after breaking it the first time.”
Cliff hung his head in despair. The rules he had explained to her days ago pressed down on his chest.
I tried to kill him in her place because I knew this would happen.
He reached Catalina and lifted his head. There, he found her illuminated by the dawn’s light with a peaceful expression on her face.
“It’s all over, Cliff… Now I can disappear, and my daughter will be freed.”
“Catalina…!” Calling her name was the only thing he could do. She smiled at him and weakly shook her head.
“It’s Lovel… That’s what you’ve been calling me this whole time.”
Tears rushed to Cliff’s eyes.
She stared at him and said, “Say, Cliff? Weren’t these past five days a blast?”
It was true. They were the most fun days of his life. Cliff nodded over and over again. It was just, now those fun memories were being overshadowed by his sorrow. He was heartbroken that the girl he had fallen in love with was disappearing in his arms.
“Cliff, you know, I’m really glad I met you.” Her legs were shaking. Cliff wrapped his good arm around her and held her up. “It’s because I met you that my life, that was created against our will, gained meaning. I only lived for a short five days, but thanks to you, I’m glad I lived them.”
Tears spilled from Cliff’s eyes without pause. He let them stream down his face.
“Lovel, I’m glad I met you too. I began to live, in the realest sense, since meeting you…!” he whispered against her. She hugged him back. The strength was draining from the arms wrapped around him. Cliff could feel the soul slipping from her.
She flashed him a faint smile and whispered in a ghost of a voice, “Goodbye, Cliff…”
The life went out from her body with those last words.
“Lovel…” Cliff said her name for the last and final time.
He no longer got a response for it.
Cliff embraced Lovel’s body and cried nonstop in front of the Great Bell Tower, where no one else was left moving.