Chapter 20:

  "Please, a Good Life"

  Arc 2: Chapter 9

  POV: "???"

  Time, in these final stages, no longer flowed. It was a thick, heavy liquid in which Empty slowly drowned. Each month was a descending step into deeper, more silent darkness. His existence was reduced to the room in Flávio's house or the reserved bed in the quietest wing of the Tower of Light.

  Luna, however, became a constant that defied the passage of time. In the final months, she was there. Not as the queen, but as an obstinate presence. She read reports beside his bed, whispered news of the kingdom, or simply stayed in silence, her hand resting on the cold armor of his arm. Empty spent hours writing in his diary, trembling letters trying to capture the ineffable. But his greatest writing was done with his eyes. They followed Luna wherever she went. It was not the curious observation he gave Flávio, nor the silent analysis he reserved for Fencer, nor the fraternal and understanding gaze for Raphadun. It was something deeper, more concentrated. A silent study of a phenomenon he would never understand, but felt like a pull in his chest whenever she approached. Luna was different.

  The pain was now a permanent resident. A bone-deep cold that blankets could not warm. A weakness that turned every breath into a calculation. Smiles were rare, treasures he granted only when their presence—especially hers—managed to penetrate the fog of exhaustion and wear. They were lights flickering in a sky that was quickly going out.

  One month before the end, the kingdom reached the peak of its post-war glory. Politics, under Luna's firm hand and Luka's strategic mind, was an impeccable clock. The Infernal Zone, once a death sentence, was now a restoration project, its boundaries receding year after year. Happiness was not just hope; it was a mandate. And the great year-end event, named after the motto Luna had coined, "Please, A Good Life," was the ultimate celebration of this.

  The whole city was adorned, a pulsing organism of lights, flags, and expectation. Nobles from both great provinces, common citizens, all converged on the heart of the kingdom. It was the celebration of a year of victories. And, in secret, the silent farewell to a personal victory about to be lost.

  The night arrived, cold and clear. Luna, sensing the last flicker of consciousness in Empty, arranged an intimate moment before the grand party. She guided the wheelchair to the highest terrace of the noble sector, overlooking the river where the fireworks would be launched. They formed a small silent line against the parapet: Luna, Raphadun, Fencer, Luka, Flávio. And in the center, anchoring the scene, Empty.

  The tension was a steel thread beneath everyone's skin. They wanted to celebrate, raise glasses, laugh. But every laugh was muffled by the specter watching from the chair. Flávio bit his lip until it bled. Raphadun had clenched fists, eyes fixed on the horizon to keep from betraying him. Luka maintained professional serenity, but his gaze rested on Luna with constant concern. Luna herself was a statue of sad determination, her hand resting on Empty's metal shoulder.

  Then the first firework burst.

  A green flash tore through the velvet night and painted everyone's faces with a supernatural glow. A soft roar reached them.

  And something happened.

  Empty's eyes, which had been dull like frosted glass, suddenly captured that light. They were not just illuminated; they were inflamed. They narrowed, the familiar wrinkles deepening at the corners. It was not the tired smile from before. It was a true, deep smile born from the depths of what remained of his soul. A smile of pure and absolute fascination.

  It was a gaze that contained everything: the wonder of a child seeing magic, the love for those people around him, the simple joy of witnessing beauty, the peaceful acceptance of being there, in that exact instant. It was so intense, so alive, that it seemed to defy death itself.

  Luna was the first to notice. Her face, previously a mask of contained pain, turned completely toward him. The queen vanished. What remained was a woman, shocked, amazed, and devastated by that last and most beautiful expression of life. Her green eyes filled with tears that did not fall, only shone with their own light, reflecting the fireworks' colors and the flame burning in Empty's eyes. She did not hide it. She looked directly at him, and a small, trembling, completely disarmed smile touched her lips.

  Luka, beside her, saw the exchange. He saw Luna's gaze toward Empty—that gaze laden with brutal intimacy and admiration. For an instant, a smile of bitter and resigned understanding appeared on his face before dissipating under the weight of duty and reality.

  The scene was of unbearable beauty. While the fireworks painted the sky in a spectacle of gold, red, and blue, a silent storm of emotion swept the terrace. Flávio and Raphadun trembled, holding back tears with Herculean strength. Fencer watched, his face impassive, but his fingers gripping the stone parapet with white force. Luna held everything: the crying, the scream, the despair. They wanted to celebrate life, but the shadow was long. Every explosion of light in the sky was one instant less. Every color, a goodbye.

  And then, almost like a ritual, without planning it, they turned and embraced. Not an embrace of joy, but of farewell. Raphadun enveloped Flávio, who grabbed Fencer. Luka placed a firm arm on Raphadun's shoulders. And Luna, for an instant, let the hand that had been on Empty's shoulder slide to envelop Luka's shoulder, closing the circle. A group united by love, by loss, and by gratitude, under a sky exploding in fleeting colors. The last fireworks Empty would see.

  The main party in the Great Hall was a whirlwind of light, music, and collective euphoria. Empty, however, was catatonic. The brief moment of clarity on the terrace had consumed his last reserves. Now he lay in his chair at the edge of the hall, his eyes glassy, lost in the void between the dancing bodies. He was a ghost amid the celebration of the life he had helped guarantee.

  Luna disentangled herself from the crowd. Her gala dress, a masterpiece of fabric and light, seemed a cruel irony before the scene. She knelt beside the chair, her dazzling glow contrasting with his mortal stillness.

  "The party… is incredible, isn't it?" her voice was a hoarse whisper, trying to reach him. "The whole kingdom is here. Because of you too, you know?" She swallowed hard, the mask cracking completely. "Empty… I… I'm so happy. So happy to have been close to you. Until the end. Did you understand me?"

  Her green eyes, moist, sought his through the visor.

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  And even in that abyss of exhaustion, in the dark well where his consciousness drowned, something responded to the sound of her voice, to her proximity. His eyes, which wandered without focus, slowly fixed on her. The fog seemed to recede a millimeter.

  And he tried. With an effort that seemed to come from the confines of his being, his eyes narrowed. It was only a tremor, a flicker of the old gleam, but it was a smile. Tenuous, fleeting, but undeniable.

  For him, that was a shared, precious moment. While everyone in the hall looked at each other, at the queen, at the future, there, in that small island of quiet, all the gazes that mattered were on him. Luna, Raphadun (watching from afar), Flávio (pretending not to cry), Fencer (analyzing with a tight heart). They looked at him not with disgust, not with pity, but with a love so pure and painful it was almost physical.

  Could it have been just the reflection of Luna's light on him? It could.

  But in that last instant of connection, that was irrelevant. What mattered was that, at the end of his solitary and sacrificial journey, he was not alone. And that simple, monumental fact, even filtered through a fog of agony, was enough to touch what remained of his soul with one last, sweet, and agonizing fragment of happiness.

  After the clumsy dance, a whirlwind of nonverbal thoughts—shadows of impulses and inarticulated desires—stirred in Empty's mind. They were fragments of borrowed memories, echoes of primordial instincts, an obscure will that could not be deciphered, not even by him. The moment called for action, not understanding.

  Seeing Raphadun especially drunk and sentimental, his eyes moist with an emotion the wine had unleashed, Empty acted. With a slow movement, he took a folded note from the pocket of his blanket and extended it to the prince.

  Raphadun read. The paper trembled in his hands. Written in Empty's trembling, childlike handwriting were only three words: "Take me there." And a rough but unmistakable sketch: the symbol of the Universal Stones, the kingdom's greatest secret and danger.

  His loyalty, forged in hell and tempered by the guilt of lost time, spoke louder than any protocol. Without questioning, in an act of irresponsible and desperate love, he grabbed Empty's arm. The air around them distorted with the sound of tearing fabric, and they vanished from the hall.

  They materialized in the Chamber of the Universal Stones. The air was thick and dead, laden with ancient and dormant energy. In the center, on black crystal pedestals, the three stones pulsed with their own lights: Destruction, a threatening black; Creation, a deep gray-white; and, between them, the Restoration Stone, emitting a soft yellow light.

  Raphadun, unbalanced by alcohol and the violence of the teleport, staggered, beginning a drunken and solitary dance in the middle of the forbidden room, laughing without grace to himself.

  Empty, however, stood paralyzed. His gaze did not leave the Restoration Stone. It pulsed in a frequency that echoed in his own chest, in the waning spark that kept him alive. It was a call. An echo. A response. His hand, skin and bone beneath the glove, rose, trembling. It hovered centimeters from the containment glass, which emitted a low hum of suppression. The primordial instinct within him roared to touch.

  "Who's there?" Luka's cutting voice echoed from the door, followed by Bruce's heavy, silent steps. The room's containment magic had alerted the leader of the Mages. They found the scene: Raphadun, staggering and confused, and Empty, his hand extended like a supplicant before the world's greatest power.

  Luka entered, his face a mask of shock and severity.

  "What are you doing here? This is forbidden!" his purple eyes flashed between the drunk prince and the dark figure. "Empty. You know what these stones are. They are dangerous. Cataclysmic. We keep them contained, not as treasure. A reckless touch could unleash energy enough to tear the fabric of reality. To destroy the world you helped save."

  Raphadun, pulled from his stupor by Luka's voice, seemed to grasp the gravity. His face paled.

  "Luka… I… he asked… sorry, it was my stupidity…"

  "Take him out of here. Now," Luka ordered, his voice leaving no room for discussion.

  With one last confused and guilty look at Empty, Raphadun grabbed him again. The air cracked, and they were gone.

  Bruce, who had remained at the entrance like a cliff of silence, entered after the sound of the teleport faded. His emerald eyes, trained to perceive the imperceptible, swept every inch. He approached the pedestal of the Restoration Stone. And he saw. On the immaculate glass, exactly where Empty's hand had hovered, there was a mark. A faint, almost misty fingerprint, but indelible. It was as if the stone's own energy had drawn and recorded the essence of his touch.

  He said not a word. But when he returned to the party, it was as if a silent storm accompanied him. His fury was a pressure field preceding his steps.

  He found Empty near the balcony, already back in his chair, a diminutive and broken figure. Without ceremony, without warning, Bruce moved. His hand, capable of crushing skulls, closed around the neck of Empty's armor. With a single fluid and brutal movement, he yanked him from the chair, lifting him into the air like a doll. Empty's feet dragged uselessly on the floor.

  "Why did you touch the glass?" Bruce's voice was a growl between clenched teeth, laden with ancestral contempt. "Your disgusting curse. I knew. I knew you were nothing but a treacherous animal. That all this sacrifice was just a disguise to reach this."

  Luna appeared like a bolt of maternal fury.

  "LET HIM GO! BRUCE, FOR THE LOVE OF LIGHT, LET GO!" her scream cut through the music and laughter, silencing the hall. She did not use physical force; she unleashed a concentrated pulse of golden light that struck Bruce's arm, not to hurt, but to force release. "He did nothing!"

  Bruce, surprised more by his granddaughter's violent reaction than by the attack, released his grip. Empty fell to the floor with a weak, metallic thud, a pile of bones and metal.

  "You defend this thing," Bruce spat, pointing an accusing finger at the curled figure on the floor, "but open your eyes, Luna. Look around. No one else needs to pretend to please the queen."

  Luna then looked. Really looked. And for the first time, she saw the naked truth. In the eyes of elegantly dressed courtiers, of guards with gleaming armor, of servants with trays. There was no fear, no curiosity. There was disgust. A deep, visceral revulsion for the monstrous creature breathing the same air, treated with kindness by royal decree. It was the same expression she had seen in the water park, now multiplied, undisguised.

  Empty, on the floor, also saw. But his perception overlaid. The human faces of disgust began to dissolve, melting like wax. In their place appeared the faces from his diary. The hundreds, thousands of human faces of the curses he had freed. All smiling. All waving silently to him with gratitude and peace. Those were the only faces that had never, at any moment, looked at him with revulsion. His true family, his true legion, existed only in memory and on paper.

  Luna, trembling with rage and shame, placed Empty back in his chair with fierce care and took him out of the hall, into an empty corridor.

  "I'm so sorry, Empty! I swear, I didn't know it was like this… that they…" her words tumbled, mixed with tears of frustration and guilt.

  But Empty did not hear her. His mind was elsewhere. In the call of the stone. In the mark on the glass. In the last act that needed to be written. He looked at her for a long moment, his eyes strangely calm. Then he took his slate and wrote:

  "Say something."

  "What?" Luna asked, wiping her eyes, a thread of hope pulling at her heart. "He'll comfort me," she thought. "He'll say it's okay."

  Empty closed his eyes, concentrating not on the remaining darkness, but on the memory of the stone's light, on the feeling Luna awakened in him—the closest thing to a sun in his inner universe.

  From his open hand, the usual darkness did not emerge. Instead, the air around him seemed to contract, be drawn in, woven. A rose formed. Not of shadow, but of something rarer: illuminated darkness. Its petals were a red so deep and velvety they seemed to drink the light from the nearest torch, glowing with an inner radiance. It was perfect. Alive. A flowered paradox. He extended it to her, a silent offering.

  Luna froze. The air escaped her lungs. Her heart, already racing from adrenaline, lurched violently. A hot blush rose from her neck to her face. The flower was the most beautiful and impossible thing she had ever seen. And the gesture…

  "Empty…" her voice came out a breath. "I… I'm married." The words came out by instinct, a reflex of duty hammered into her mind. "I… can't…"

  He seemed genuinely confused. The light in his eyes flickered. He understood "married," understood "Luka." But he did not understand why this prevented a gesture of… what? Gratitude? Beauty? Connection? Slowly, he began to withdraw the rose, a pang of pain and incomprehension clear in his gaze.

  "No, that's not it, Empty!" she exclaimed, grabbing the hand holding the flower before he could retract it. Her touch was warm and firm. "Listen to me. I like you. I respect you more than any man in this kingdom. You are my greatest inspiration, my anchor. When I look at you… I feel something here"—she placed her free hand on her chest—"that I've never, never felt. Not for Luka, not for my destiny, not for the Light itself. It's something only mine. Only ours."

  She took a deep breath, tears returning, now from a different pain.

  "But I can't. Because of my marriage. The alliance. The kingdom that depends on this union. The expectations of millions." She looked at the flower, then at his eyes, her voice becoming an agonizing whisper. "And not with you… being… like this. Not because you are you, but because the world… the world wouldn't understand. The world only sees the armor."

  She released his hand, the weight of her crown and her broken heart crushing her. Empty held the impossible rose, a symbol of a feeling born pure in the wrong place, at the wrong time, in a body the world would never accept. The tragedy was not that he was dying. It was that, even alive, the love he inspired and felt was condemned to silence.