When Alex saw the scene in front of him, he imdiately grasped an overall impression of what had happened around him.
There was no confusion in his understanding, no frantic attempt to piece things together. The arrangent of bodies, the silence that lingered too heavily, the absence where presence should have been. It all ford a single, unmistakable conclusion in his mind. He did not need to look twice to know what he was seeing.
Both his wife and his best friend were gone.
The realization settled without resistance. It did not crash into him or demand a reaction. It simply existed, immovable and complete. A part of him wanted to reject it, to deny what his eyes confird so clearly, but that impulse never grew strong enough to matter. Denial required effort. Reality did not.
He stood there, breathing evenly, letting the truth take its place. There was no use pretending that this was temporary, or that so explanation would soften it. They were gone. Nothing more needed to be said.
Acceptance ca quietly.
Not because it was painless, but because there was no alternative worth entertaining. To deny it would change nothing. To fight it would only waste ti he could never reclaim. So he allowed the reality to remain exactly as it was, unchallenged and absolute.
He looked at his father, and then toward his son; at least he was safe.
That single certainty anchored him, thin as it was. His gaze lingered longer than necessary, as if confirming it again might make it more real. Breathing steadied, just enough to keep him upright. Just enough to keep him functioning.
But no matter where he looked, his wife's body was not visible. The absence was louder than any sight could have been. He could feel her death in the air, in his chest, in the hollow certainty that had settled into him. There was no mistake there. No room for doubt to hide.
A small glitter of hope still rose inside his chest despite himself; maybe he sensed wrong, maybe she was still alive. It was instinctive, uninvited, and fragile. Hope had always been like that. It didn't ask permission.
It didn't last.
"I tried to, but I can't recover her body."
Gereon's words fell with no ceremony. He obviously was referring to Eleyn. There was no need to clarify. The na didn't have to be spoken to be understood.
Alex felt his legs give out.
It wasn't sudden, not dramatic. Strength simply abandoned him, as if it had decided it had done enough for one lifeti. The news had not changed what he already knew, and that was the cruelest part. It only stripped away the last place where denial could pretend to stand.
All the calm acceptance he had clung to shattered in that mont. He saw it for what it had been. A lie he told himself so he could keep breathing.
He could never do nothing. The thought scraped against him, irrational and raw. The logic didn't line up. He understood that. He knew it in the distant, useless way one knows facts during grief.
But emotions did not follow logic.
Gereon sighed. Loss was inevitable. That much had never troubled him. But there was a difference between the losses people learned to live with and the ones that tore sothing essential out of them.
He had lived long enough to know both.
He could compare the lives of people to a cigar. Once it was lit, it would be finished after a while. Slowly, predictably, burned down to nothing. That was the kind of ending most people expected. Ti did its work, and no one was surprised when there was nothing left to hold.
But sotis the cigar wasn't fully used.
Sotis it was set aside midway, crushed out not because it had reached its end, but because sothing interrupted it. In those cases, it was thrown away and never touched again. Not finished, but just as gone. The ashtray did not care how much remained.
To the cigar, the difference ant nothing.
To the one holding it, it was wasted.
Gereon had always understood that distinction. Ending and waste were not the sa thing, even if they led to the sa result. One could be accepted. The other lingered. It asked questions that had no answers and demanded reasons that no one could provide.
This was not a life that had burned down naturally.
And that, more than death itself, was what made it unbearable.
His gaze lingered on Alex for a brief mont before he reached for his catalyst. Or rather, the catalyst flew from his pocket on its own. He had already spent much of his ether fighting, then teleporting outside the barrier, then forcing his way back through it. What remained would have to be enough.
But the next step was erasing a literal god from existence. The world had long adapted to the current perception as its truth; there was no need for the true god of perception anymore.
The catalyst flared, its light swallowing the space, and everyone present vanished from the spot.
The next mont, Gereon found himself holding an unconscious Judge, standing beside two dead bodies, and facing an Alex who rose unsteadily and said he needed so ti alone.
Servants soon arrived, moving with care as they took the bodies away. Their motions were quiet, practiced, respectful.
Gereon watched Alex walk off. He understood that kind of pain too well. Alex and his elder sister had been young when their mother died. In the years that followed, it had been lina who supported them emotionally, not him.
He sighed inwardly and turned toward Judge's room.
The boy still radiated sothing strange, faint but unmistakable. Gereon recognized it. He had sensed it before when Judge used his unusual teleportation principle. He felt it most clearly when Judge's eyes glowed purple in monts of emotional instability. Back then, Eleyn had been forced to suppress those emotions.
Lediya approached when she saw Judge. She bowed, saying nothing. There was nothing to say. Gereon paused, allowing her to clean him with ether before continuing.
He nodded once and moved on.
Eventually, he reached Judge's room. He changed the boy's clothes, careful not to wake him, and tucked him into bed. Only then did Gereon allow himself to leave, closing the door softly behind him.
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