"Rin! Rin! Please, open your eyes!"
"Oh my God, is she dead? Make her wake up! DO SOMETHING!"
"BlackRose, please calm dow—"
"SCREW YOU! FIX HER!"
Their voices sounded so distant and hazy that I wasn't even sure if I truly knew the people that produced them. I could feel my body, sure, and the wall I slumped against. However, opening my eyes or moving my limbs seemed impossible. I felt trapped inside myself, screaming and pounding away at my thoughts to open up and let me out.
Suddenly, a pair of lips spoke next to my ear. "Keiko," a deep voice addressed, sending my heart into a wild fit of beats, "please open your eyes. Tell us you're okay." As if the voice unlocked the chains that bound me, my eyelids fluttered open, revealing a group huddled around me. Their forms were fuzzy, but after a few harsh and rapid blinks, they cleared up.
BlackRose let out a sigh of relief, as if she'd been holding her breath for hours. Kite smiled and patted Balmung on the back, who hung his head and chuckled. Mistral and my sister jumped in place, pumping their fists in the air like some sort of cheerleaders. There were others there, too: Wiseman, Helba, Lios, and all the other players that had joined our cause.
"What happened?" I managed to croak out. My words sounded slurred to me, but nobody noticed.
"The bracelet was destroyed in the battle with Cubia," Wiseman gravely informed me. I nodded and averted my gaze, an overwhelming wave of guilt flooding over me. I was the one who took my staff to it after all. I was the one who destroyed it.
Balmung wrapped his arm around my waist and pulled me toward him as he lifted me from the ground. My vision cleared completely and once it did, I could see that everyone had been teleported back to Lia Fail. Other than the characters in our group, the town was devoid of any players. Allowing himself to support my body weight, Balmung tightened his hold on me.
"There is one more Phase, correct?" he questioned Wiseman, who nodded slowly.
"There is."
"So, what can we do without the bracelet?" BlackRose chirped. "That was the only way we've been able to defeat the Phases until now."
Wiseman began to pace absentmindedly. As he circled the different kinds of players in our group, his voice began as a low mutter directed at himself. Eventually, it grew louder and louder until we could understand what he was saying. "'Power – all now to droplets, and the world dwindles into twilight.' Just like the Epitaph," he said.
"About that," Kite said, speaking for the first time since my eyes opened. "I don't think 'twilight' is a fitting term for this. I'll use Aura as an example. When I look at her, I don't picture the ending of a day where the world is being thrown into darkness. Instead, I can more clearly picture the beginning of a new day – of a dawn, a daybreak. Maybe that's what Harald meant by 'twilight.'"
A low hum of agreement fell over all of us. I caught myself nodding along with his words. Helba lifted a hand, silencing the group. "Certainly it carries both meanings," she suggested. "We cannot be too sure."
"Even so, how does that affect anything?" Lios inquired.
Kite fell silent for only a short moment, gathering his next thoughts to place into words. "If Harald designed the game after the Epitaph of Daybreak, then would he have prepared an end where the world is destroyed by the Wave?"
Katashi stepped forward then. "So, there's a loophole there," she pointed out.
"It seems so," Balmung replied, giving my sister a small smile.
"What do we do then?" I asked Kite. Everyone turned toward him for an answer, including Helba, Wiseman, and Lios. Even though they had been the ringleaders this entire time, it seemed that our final action boiled down to what Kite wanted.
The Twinblade glanced around before clapping his hands together once and inhaling deeply. "All right," he said. "We need to herd the Wave to a specific area. Once we have it cornered, we'll hit it with an all-out attack."
Finally, my body felt decent enough to support myself. As I leaned from Balmung, his hand drifted down toward mine. "Sounds pretty aggressive," I commented. "But what else can we do, right?"
"It does sound dangerous," Balmung added.
"Well, it hasn't been decided yet," Kite retorted, his eyes flicking around to each and every one of us. "I won't hold anything against you if you decide to leave. I understand many of you may not want to put yourself at such a great risk. I'm going to count down from three. Please, make your decision by zero. Three…"
A few of the players unknown to me shuffled their feet uncomfortably in the back of the cluster. They seemed anxious, but remained in their places.
"Two…"
Next to me, Katashi exhaled slowly. Part of me wanted her to log out and do her homework in the safety of our house, but I knew she would argue with me if I tried to convince her to do it. She was stubborn, just like our father.
"One…"
Balmung's hand squeezed gently around mine. I tilted my head, glancing up at his worried expression. I forced a tiny smile through the swirl of terror in my gut. I lifted myself to my toes, planting a kiss on his cheek. "Until the end," I whispered against his skin, "I'm with you."
"That decides it," Lios stated at the end of Kite's countdown. Every single player remained, ready to support the Twinblade by whatever means necessary.
Before anyone had the chance to say anything else, static filled the air. Weapons instantly came out, poised to attack. "We're the ones who have been herded," Helba remarked as she looked around nervously.
Kite immediately formed his party consisting of BlackRose and Mistral. Balmung laid a gentle hand on Mistral's shoulder while I kept our hands together. Katashi began to walk toward us, but Lios floated in front of her.
"I need you here," he told her. Instead of bickering with him like I expected of her, my sister simply nodded and fell back to Helba's side. When her eyes met mine, she gave me a wide grin and a thumbs-up.
"See you in the real world!" she called.
Her figure, along with the group behind her, disappeared in an instant. What replaced them was familiar and unwelcomed: the Phase ground. The last Phase had found us before we were able to execute Kite's plan. Either way, it didn't matter. It came right to us, lessening our work.
"Corbenik," Kite mumbled, his eyes settling on the creature floating not far from us.
Corbenik, the final Phase of the Wave, resembled a giant peanut, both in shape and color. Down the sides of it, images that looked like eyeballs had been carved in its shell. It was slow and didn't defend itself at all. Actually, it allowed us to relentlessly attack it while it just hovered in one place.
"Rin, stay back," Kite ordered. "None of us have healing items from our battle with Cubia, so you and Mistral are our only hope. I have a bad feeling about this."
I followed his instructions and avoided Corbenik whenever it floated too close to me. While they hacked and slashed away, I casted strengthening spells on them and weakening spells on our foe. The fight became extremely boring and uneventful that I found myself wishing for something more to happen.
Unfortunately, something did eventually happen. From the top of the monster's shell, large seeds sprouted out and fell onto the ground. Timers appeared above their glowing bodies, counting down the seconds from five. Not knowing what would happen if one of them reached zero, Balmung and I took it upon ourselves to destroy them.
Just when we thought we finished them all off, I turned to Balmung and from the corner of my eye, I watched as the final and forgotten seed reached zero behind him. "Move!" I screamed. Overlooking the fact that my teammates were yelling for me to run away from Balmung, I charged at him. As the seed exploded in a wave of fire, I lunged at him and pushed him from the heat.
As the excruciating pain overtook me, I pictured Balmung pushing me from Skeith's first Data Drain. I clearly remembered his pained face at the exact moment his character's body became his real body just as my world faded to black. Although I hadn't been in any pain, it was obvious now that he was. Now the tables were turned: the winged man was safe from the seed's attack while I felt as if I couldn't move. I screamed in pain, expecting the flesh on my body to be burning and dripping from my bones.
"Oh my God, Rin," Mistral hissed as she skidded to her knees next to me. "Shh, shh, it's okay. Phal Repth."
My cries became tiny moans. The pain faded into a small feeling of discomfort, but with Balmung's help, I was able to stand onto my feet once more. Tears remained in my eyes as I glared at Corbenik. In my moment of helplessness, it had transformed into an entirely new creature: a single leaf with three oval holes haphazardly cut into it.
"I'm done," I growled in a fit of rage. "I want this thing dead and I want out of this game."