To the Family or the IPC, Robin's worth exceeded ten Caspelinat-VIIIs combined.
To Anming, Robin was priceless—beyond comparison, beyond measure.
Robin would always come first. No matter what lay on the other side of the scales, the result would never change.
The lives of others, their tragic pasts, their suffering futures—they deserved sympathy. Anming was willing to help.
But they should never have raised their guns at Robin.
No one was allowed to point a weapon at Robin. Compared to her life, all others paled into insignificance.
Anming acknowledged his selfishness when it came to her.
His hands were already stained with blood. A little more meant nothing. If it kept Robin safe, these lives were a negligible cost.
Robin stared at the boy in the blood pool, her smile bitter.
"Not everyone deserves saving. That's what you wanted to tell me, right?"
"Thank you..."
Her steps trembled, but she pressed on.
If she gave up now, what did her ideals amount to? Just laughable self-delusion. A mockery of her own naivety.
Reality shattered dreams, exposing the bloody truth beneath.
Rebel Base
"What the hell?" Eskii hurled his binoculars into the sand. The cracked lenses reflected broken corpses. "You're scared of a single woman?!"
Rage burned—until Harmony's melody seeped into his mind, summoning memories of better days.
But had those days ever existed?
The parliament's oppression. Relentless exploitation. Taxes bleeding them dry.
They weren't wrong. They never had been.
Eskii ripped off his pendant, loading the Sage's Bullet into his rifle.
This last hope would shatter the absurd dream holding them back.
The song's beauty had never blessed him. Its fantasies only replayed the past—never a future.
How could you paint a future that didn't exist?
"Drowning in that song changes nothing!" He stormed outside. "Pick up your guns! Make that future yourselves!"
Then—
BOOM.
Holy fire erupted, swallowing the base whole.
Eskii never reached the battlefield. The liquid-crystal blast vaporized him—and everything within hundreds of meters.
Only smoke remained.
Anming watched impassively, then lifted his gaze to the colossal ship hidden in the clouds.
Somewhere up there, Pearl met his eyes across the distance.
If there's no fuse, create one.
A single spark could ignite all of Caspelinat.
Hatred as fuel. Liquid crystal as the vessel. One touch—
Bang.
War would explode beyond control.
Playing savior was never easy.
With Eskii's death, the war became unstoppable. The truth didn't matter—only who the people blamed.
"Go."
Anming seized Robin's arm, pulling her from the frontlines.
Where Harmony had once tempered the fighting, now only chaos remained. Sometimes, death accomplished what life couldn't. Eskii's end proved that.
The air thickened like a descending abyss.
Robin's voice was hoarse from singing. Under the ashen sky, she numbly followed Anming.
Gunfire drowned out Harmony's last echoes.
Lives vanished before her eyes. If birth here was a sin, then death was the only absolution.
Was this right?
Maybe numbness was salvation. Not coming. Not seeing. That would've been kinder.
Robin remembered Kakipe's sky—the day the Stellaron came. It had looked just as terrifying.
She'd wanted to fly to prove she wasn't that helpless little girl anymore.
In those ruins, Anming had lost his right arm for her.
Back then, she could do nothing. Only watch as Anming was pinned under rubble. Only feel their mother's embrace grow cold.
That girl had become a superstar, thinking it would make up for the past.
Yet here she was—still powerless.
What was it all for?
Still protected by Anming. Still unable to save anyone.
"Don't think about it."
Anming's voice was steady as ever. His radiant halo had always been her lighthouse.
"You did everything you could. No one has the right to blame you."
He left the rest unspoken: Except yourself.
You couldn't outrun your fragile self forever. Only by facing it could you conquer the past.
Explosions echoed as they reached safer ground.
But the dead wouldn't return.
Anming handed her water. "You did your best."
People called this fate—when effort couldn't change a thing.
Robin took the cup. Through the glass, her teal eyes caught a glint—
A girl in the ruins, picking up a bloodied gun. Her hollow stare held only sorrow.
"Why… did you kill my brother?"
She might as well have been talking to herself.
Then—
Crack.
A gunshot rang out. A crimson Sage's Bullet streaked toward Robin like a meteor.
Die.
Die die die!
Why are you alive?
Why didn't you die too?!
Anming's pupils constricted. No time to push her away—
So he chose to embrace her instead.
A grotesque flower of blood bloomed across his back. Time froze.
"Robin."
The world narrowed to his voice.
Gentle, even now:
"Don't cry."