Veronica’s arms trembled as she faced the First Bahamut.
“Why…”
The divine blades scraped against each other with an unholy screech as her sword slipped toward the hilt. Across the gleaming edge between them, the Bahamut’s pupils reflected her tear-streaked face with cruel clarity.
“Why must you be so merciless?” Veronica demanded, her voice breaking.
The two divine swords clashed before finally breaking apart. The momentary opening vanished in a heartbeat—It immediately brought its blade down with terrifying speed. With a resounding clang, sparks erupted like angry fireflies as Veronica raised her sword to block the blow aimed at her head. The powerful vibration coursed through her arm. She gritted her teeth and endured, her muscles screaming in protest. Each deflection sent shockwaves through her body that threatened to shatter her bones.
The only reason she hadn’t been overwhelmed despite her wounds was because of Genesis. In hands not meant to wield it, a divine blade was merely common steel. While Veronica fought in harmony with her own sword, the Bahamut was attacking with brute force alone.
“Stop this!” she cried out. “If you want me to be your family, then fine! I’ll do anything you want, so just leave him alone!”
Her anguished voice created massive ripples like a stone dropped in a still lake. As the air expanded in concentric circles and burst the heads of the surrounding Bahamuts, It twisted its head at an impossible angle before leaping backward. Veronica seized that precious moment to adjust her grip on the sword while gasping for breath.
“This was always between you and me,” she said. “There was no need to harm Leon.”
She had known from the beginning that he wouldn’t be able to kill the First Bahamut. Veronica was the one destined to have blood on her hands. She should have warned him, or at least tried to stop him from facing this monster alone.
She had known this, but couldn’t bring herself to say it. Everything had happened too late. She had been too slow to come to her senses and too slow to fight her way through the Bahamut legion. The sudden, excruciating pain in her leg had delayed her as she struggled to stand again. By the time she had finally arrived, the sight that greeted her had turned her blood to ice—Leon, hanging like a lifeless corpse, impaled on the cave pillar.
Blood poured in crimson rivulets from Leon’s wounds, pooling beneath him. Veronica stood frozen, her mind blank with horror. Her heart shattered before she could even draw breath.
No, no. Not Leon. Anyone but him.
She had lunged forward recklessly, reason abandoned. When she realized the sword that violently clashed with hers was Apocalypse itself, hot tears erupted unbidden. A knight of Leon’s caliber would never have lost his divine blade by accident. He must have surrendered it willingly—to protect her, and to save her.
She bit her lip hard enough to draw blood as she glanced down at the black cloth tied around her hand. She had to save Leon. Things were different now. She had trained with the sword so that she wouldn’t need to hide behind others. She would no longer weep helplessly while he fought her battles for her.
“Then tell me,” commanded the Bahamut.
“…Tell you what?”
“Can’t we become like you?”
For a moment, Veronica caught her breath, struggling to comprehend the unexpected question. As bewilderment crossed her features, It continued with haunting persistence.
“The Red Knight said we couldn’t ever be like you, no matter how perfectly we imitate you.”
A heavy silence hung between them, thick as the blood pooling at their feet.
“Can’t we become like you?” the Bahamut repeated.
Veronica hesitated—not because she now understood the source of the creature’s unprecedented rage—but because the longing and jealousy etched across its face were so painfully transparent.
I knew it all along, but you’re truly…
“Is that what made you so mad?” she asked. “Mad enough to reduce Leon to… this?”
Instead of answering, the Bahamut’s unearthly eyes dilated then contracted in an inhuman rhythm. Veronica stared at the face identical to her own for a moment before shaking her head slowly.
“I’m sorry, but I can’t answer that question,” she said. “I’m not a divine being but merely human, and humans can’t tell the future. But…”
As she spoke, she noticed that the legion had silently reformed around them. Everywhere she looked, presented the same nightmarish tableau: Bahamuts, Bahamuts, and more Bahamuts. They stood shoulder to shoulder but were eternally isolated, unable to truly embrace and connect with each other.
“Perhaps it’s only natural that you can’t become exactly like us, who were born and raised on this land,” she continued. “You yourself said that you came from beyond the celestial veil.”
Perhaps their obsession with reproduction stemmed from their profound loneliness—a desperate attempt to fill the void within their hollow souls. After all, the sea could be painfully, achingly cold in its emptiness.
“So…”
Veronica was about to tell It to abandon this futile quest, but her words died on her lips. A sudden wrongness prickled at her awareness, and she quickly glanced down at her sword hand. To her horror, her fingers no longer obeyed her will.
“What—” she gasped.
Her fingers twitched before betraying her completely, dropping the sword with a clang. Only when the metallic echo faded did she realize the terrible truth—the First Bahamut had seized control of her body. Just as Veronica had once been able to back when she had God inside her, It now manipulated her limbs like a puppet master, forcing her legs to move in an unsteady, shambling gait.
“Can’t we become like you?”
The haunting question assaulted her again. Veronica lifted her ashen face, helpless against the invasion. Her body, no longer her own, limped forward until she stood before It. She felt as if her consciousness had been torn from her physical form, trapped in a waking nightmare. With arms stiffly outstretched against her will, Veronica embraced It, who had planted Apocalypse into the ground before her. Her eyes widened in shock.
She had expected it to immobilize her before delivering a fatal blow. But instead of death, it sought… connection.
“Can’t we become like you?” it whispered, the words brushing against her ear.
Veronica remained silent, her voice trapped in her throat.
The voice that reached her ears carried an unexpected sorrow. Though it repeated the same haunting question, something had shifted in its tone. Veronica’s mind drifted back to when she’d first encountered It at the lake. Back then, the Bahamut had given her a similar impression—like a child throwing a tantrum or a shadow desperately clinging to her feet, seeking acknowledgment. It was both terrifying and pitiable. Meeting this creature felt like discovering a twin sibling whose existence she had never suspected.