Final Echo

The science lab smelled faintly of dust and old chemicals—an antiseptic emptiness that pressed against the skin and caught in the back of the throat. Rain tapped against the windows in an uneven rhythm, streaking the glass with rivulets that distorted the world outside. The clouded afternoon sky cast the room in a dim, bluish light that made everything feel underwater, suspended.

Owen couldn't keep still. His weight shifted from one foot to another, eyes moving from Lilith to the scroll resting on the metal table between them. The parchment looked deceptively ordinary—ancient paper bound with silver cords, sealed with wax pressed into the royal insignia of Alaric.

Nothing about it felt ordinary.

The scroll had appeared that morning, discovered by Rei in the faculty mailbox of all places. As if the dying breath of another dimension could be delivered alongside electric bills and school newsletters. Rei had texted them both during lunch period: Science lab. After last bell. It's here.

No one had asked what "it" was. They all knew.

Now the three of them stood in the empty lab while rain whispered against the building. Rei Voltaire leaned against the far wall, arms crossed over his chest, his face carved from stone. Water droplets still clung to his dark coat, catching what little light made it through the cloud-choked sky.

Lilith stood closest to the scroll. Her fingers hovered above it, not quite touching. For once, her usual imperious confidence had faltered. She looked young suddenly—frighteningly young—her crimson eyes wide with an emotion Owen couldn't name.

When Rei gave a small nod, she reached forward. Owen noticed her hands trembled—just slightly—as she undid the cords and broke the seal. The wax cracked with a sound like ice splitting.

The moment her fingers brushed the parchment's surface, light spilled into the air.

Not the harsh fluorescent glow of the lab, but something older. Something that didn't belong in this world at all. Golden light pooled and shaped itself, forming a flickering projection that shimmered like heat over pavement. A man in royal armor materialized, his form incomplete around the edges, features blurring then sharpening like a radio tuning between frequencies.

Owen recognized him instantly, though they had never met.

The King of Alaric.

The resemblance to Lilith was unmistakable—the same proud bearing, the same angular features softened just enough to avoid harshness. But where Lilith's eyes burned crimson, the King's were a deep blue, like twilight oceans.

When the figure spoke, the words flowed in perfect, formal Latin.

"Haec epistula in duodecima die noni mensis ab Alaricorum computo scripta est."

Owen's mind shifted, recalibrated. Latin.

Shizuka High's classical curriculum had been grueling—one of the few schools that still demanded Latin proficiency alongside English and classic Japanese. Owen had never excelled with numbers; mathematics remained a foreign language he could never quite master. But actual languages? They unwound in his mind like music, patterns revealing themselves without effort. Where most students had struggled through those ancient texts, Owen had found himself translating almost instinctively, as if his brain were wired for it.

His mind kicked into translation mode before conscious thought, the words reassembling themselves behind his eyes.

"This message is recorded on the twelfth day of the ninth moon by the reckoning of Alaric."

The king's voice continued, each word weighted with dignity, yet somehow worn at the edges. Tired. Like a man who had been carrying something too heavy for too long.

"To my dearest daughter, Lilith of House Alaric, heir to the throne of Alaric."

The projection flickered, struggling to maintain cohesion. The King's eyes—so similar to Lilith's yet so different—seemed to search the emptiness between worlds.

"Dear daughter, by the time you hear these words, Elarion no longer exists."

The words hung in the air like smoke. Owen felt them settle into the room, into his bones. The rain outside intensified, drumming against the windows in a sudden downpour that seemed to echo the weight of that statement.

"We have fought. We have hoped. We have prayed." His voice remained measured, but something beneath it trembled. "But nothing could stay the end."

The King's image wavered, as if the very memory of him struggled to persist.

"I know this truth strikes like lightning through your heart. I know the weight of it will make the words that follow seem distant, hollow."

Owen glanced at Lilith. Her face remained perfectly still, eyes fixed on the projection, not blinking. But her shoulders had gone rigid, tension visible in the line of her neck.

"But I ask you—listen. Listen, even if your heart rejects every sound."

The King straightened, armor gleaming in some unseen light. A light that no longer existed anywhere but in this fading message.

"When you came to me, speaking of the prophecy, believing it could save us, I wanted to believe too." The projection paused, features softening. "Not as a king. But as your father."

The ghost-light from the message cast Lilith's face in gold and shadow, turning her white hair to spun amber, her skin to alabaster touched by sunset.

"The scholars doubted. The priests hesitated. Even I doubted. But I saw the hope in your eyes—and I could not bear to crush it."

The image flickered more pronouncedly, as if the connection to a world no longer existing was growing tenuous.

"So we made a choice." The King's voice lowered. "We sent you away. We sent you not to save us, but to save yourself."

A pause stretched between worlds. So long that Owen wondered if the message had failed. The lab felt impossibly still despite the storm raging outside.

"Forgive us."

Another pause, longer.

"Forgive me."

The King's projection faded almost to nothing, then strengthened again, as if fighting to remain. Owen felt something twist in his chest—the desperation of someone reaching across impossible distance, across time, across the death of a world, just to speak one last time to their child.

"Two weeks have passed here since you departed."

Owen's lips moved before he could stop himself.

"Two weeks... that's six months he—"

Realization cut his words off mid-breath. The implications hit with physical force, like air being punched from his lungs. Time moved differently between worlds. Six months here, two weeks there. If Elarion was already gone when this message was recorded...

His throat closed around unspoken calculations. Around the terrible math of how long ago Lilith's world had actually ended. How long she had been here, searching for him, believing there was still something to go back to.

Rei's voice broke the frozen moment—low, measured, but with an edge that cut through Owen's thoughts.

"Listen," Rei said, eyes never leaving the projection. "She won't open this again."

Owen clamped his mouth shut.

Not because Rei commanded it—but because the truth burned too bright to ignore. This wasn't simply a message. This was the final breath of a dead world. A letter no heart could bear to replay.

He swallowed hard, forced himself to stand still. To witness properly what couldn't be witnessed twice.

"If you are hearing this, it means you survived." The King's voice had softened further. "It means the one who was meant to find you... has found you." The projection's eyes seemed to flicker toward Owen for a heartbeat, as if somehow aware of his presence across dimensions. "We prayed for that."

The light pulsed weakly, as if struggling to maintain form.

"We prayed you would not be alone."

A crack had entered the King's voice now, barely contained. He was a ruler giving his final address, but also a father saying goodbye to his child.

"Our studies confirmed what we long feared: crossing dimensions distorts the body. Those who pass between realms become phantoms, trapped between existences until anchored by human recognition."

Owen felt cold spreading through his chest. Six months. Lilith had wandered this world for six months, unseen, unheard. A ghost in truth.

"Sir Rei Voltaire confirmed this. Upon his arrival to your new world, he could not be seen nor heard. Only when a stranger's gaze fell upon him was he truly born into that world."

Owen glanced at Rei, whose face remained impassive, though something flickered behind his eyes—a memory, perhaps, of his own arrival. His own transition from ghost to solid flesh.

The projection looked directly at Lilith now, its gaze so intense it seemed impossible it couldn't truly see her.

"Thus, we hoped—you would find an anchor. Someone who would see you, when all others could not."

The light surrounding the King's form trembled, the colors beginning to wash out like watercolors left in rain.

"Our world fades, daughter. But you—you must live."

His voice grew softer, more urgent.

"Live brightly. Love fiercely. Find joy, even among strangers."

The edges of the projection began dissolving like salt in water. Only the core of the image—the King's face and upper body—remained clearly defined.

"Make their world your home."

Only the King's face remained clear now, everything else bleeding into formless light.

"And know—even across death, across realms—we are proud of you."

The projection was almost gone. The glow that had filled the room dimmed to little more than a candle's worth.

"Your mother, the queen, and I love you."

A whisper now, barely audible over the rainfall.

"Always."

The light shivered once more—and vanished.

The scroll fell still on the table, a dead thing once again. The lab was plunged into sudden dimness, the rainy afternoon now seeming colder and more desolate than before. The fluorescent lights overhead buzzed faintly, their artificial glow insufficient after the warm gold that had filled the room moments before.

For what felt like minutes, the room remained silent.

No sound but the rain. No breath but their own. Just the humming silence of a world knocked out of orbit.

Owen realized—somewhere, dimly—that for the entire message, he hadn't once looked at Lilith. His heart stumbled painfully in his chest.

He turned.

Lilith sat frozen on the lab stool, head bowed so low her white hair fell forward to hide her face. Her shoulders trembled visibly, hands clenched into fists so tight the knuckles had gone bloodless.

Her whole body shook, like a building with its foundations cracked.

A small, broken sound slipped from her lips.

"This is absurd," she whispered. "This can't be it."

The words fell into the silence like stones into a deep well. No splash. Just gone.

Owen took a step forward. He felt hollowed out, emptied of any words that could possibly matter. But still his hand reached out, instinctively trying to turn her toward him, to see her face, to offer something—anything.

But Lilith jerked away from his touch as if burned.

She staggered to her feet, her movements no longer carrying that preternatural grace that had marked her from the first moment beneath the streetlight. For the first time since he'd known her, she looked truly fragile, brittle enough to shatter at a single wrong word.

"Leave me alone." Her voice cracked into pieces on the final word.

Without looking at either of them, she walked out of the room.

Her footsteps—soft, almost soundless—faded down the empty corridor. The sound of a distant door opening and closing told them she had left the building entirely, walking out into the rain without hesitation.

Rei said nothing. Only watched her go, his expression unreadable in the dim light. After a moment, he moved to the window, looking out at the downpour as if searching for Lilith's retreating figure.

"She should not be alone right now," he said quietly. Not an order. Just a statement of fact.

Lilith had lost everything. Her world. Her family. Her purpose.

After a long, heavy moment, Rei sighed—low and almost tired—and reached for the scroll. He closed it gently, as if afraid to wake a ghost, and placed it back into Owen's numb hands.

"She will need this," Rei said, his voice careful, measured. "Not today. Maybe not for a long time. But someday."

Owen's fingers closed around the scroll automatically. It felt lighter than it should, as if the message inside had taken physical weight with it when it disappeared.

"I should..." Owen began, then stopped, unsure what he was trying to say.

"You should," Rei agreed, though Owen hadn't finished the thought.

Outside, the rain continued to fall. Steady. Relentless. Washing away a world that now existed only in Lilith's memory.

Owen stood there, scroll clutched against his chest, staring at the door where Lilith had disappeared. The weight of what had just happened pressed down on him like gravity doubled. Like the whole sky collapsing.

The world hadn't ended today.

But for Lilith, it might as well have.

And Owen, for all his careful plans to avoid complications and drama, found himself facing the most complicated question of all: how do you comfort someone who has lost not just everything, but everyone? How do you reach someone whose entire world is gone?

He had no answer. Only the rain, the scroll, and the haunting echo of the King's final words.

Always.