Adela remained pressed against him for a long while after the crying slowed down, though her grip never loosened in the slightest. One of her hands still clutched his clothing tightly while the other rested against his chest. Somehow, seeing the world continue normally while hearing something this devastating felt deeply unfair.
Eventually, after sitting in silence for several minutes, Adela finally spoke again.
"How long do you have?"
Veneri immediately looked away.
"Adela—"
"No. Do not avoid the question."
He sighed and rubbed the back of his neck.
"I'm fine."
Adela slowly turned to stare at him and the expression on her face somehow looked more offended than sad.
"Veneri, I am not stupid. You calculate possibilities for everything and you always prepare contingencies for situations nobody else would even think about. You would never talk about body erosion, sleep, and destroying your own body unless you already knew exactly how bad the situation is. So tell me the truth. How long?"
Veneri did not answer. The silence stretched just long enough for Adela to feel dread slowly creeping into her chest. He looked at the ocean as if somehow the answer would become easier to say if he avoided looking directly at her. When he finally exhaled, it sounded tired in a way she rarely ever heard from him.
"Twenty days."
The words were so absurd that for a moment she thought she misheard him. Twenty days sounded ridiculous, absurd even, especially for people like them who measured existence in centuries rather than years. Yet the expression on his face made it painfully obvious he was not exaggerating.
"What do you mean twenty days?"
"After twenty days, the erosion intensifies. If it reaches the next stage, my body becomes unstable enough that staying awake starts accelerating damage faster than I can contain."
"And then what?"
"Then I go back to sleep. It's the kind where I barely exist."
Adela stared at him in disbelief while the ocean breeze suddenly felt colder than before.
"What about your Body Reconstruction? You literally rebuilt your body before. Why can't you just fix this?"
He shook his head slowly.
"It isn't strong enough anymore. Whatever this erosion is, it damages me faster than reconstruction can properly stabilize. So the only real option is destroying the body entirely and rebuilding from scratch."
Adela immediately sat upright.
"What do you mean destroying?"
He hesitated again, which somehow terrified her more than anything he already said.
"I would have to completely dismantle my current body. Everything gets erased, and I reconstruct a new physical existence from my soul. As I said, I lose my memories. The other versions of me lose theirs too. Since we're connected, it resets everything."
He gave a weak laugh that sounded painfully forced.
"It's basically being born again."
Adela simply stared at him as if her mind physically refused to process what he had just said. The idea of Veneri forgetting everything felt impossible to even imagine, especially considering how deeply rooted he was in every part of their lives. The thought of him looking at her one day without recognition felt genuinely horrifying.
"And honestly, I would rather avoid five apocalyptic women destroying reality because their lover forgot they existed."
The joke landed terribly. Adela did not smile. She barely blinked.
"So instead, I've been sleeping."
"For how long?"
"This next one? Probably a few centuries."
Adela looked away immediately. She took a slow breath and looked back at him.
"Can't you dismiss yourself?"
"All five versions are still me. If one disappears permanently, that Divinity disappears too. If I die, the Protection Divinity vanishes with me and Magecraft disappears forever too."
"How long would the sleep actually last?"
Veneri hesitated again.
"Adela—"
"How long?"
He sighed.
"Sleep slows the erosion enough for my body to recover stability. The problem is that using abilities accelerates the damage, which means staying active—"
"How. Long?"
Her voice had become sharper now.
"You are skipping the question."
Veneri froze for a second.
"Two hundred and fifty years," he admitted quietly. "Possibly four hundred."
Silence settled over the beach again.
The waves continued crashing softly against the shore while moonlight shimmered across the water beside them. Adela slowly wiped her tears away before taking several steady breaths, forcing herself to calm down enough to think properly. When she finally looked back at him, something in her expression had changed.
She looked furious.
"We are in the Second Epoch Cycle. If you disappear for four hundred years, you will not be there when the Cycle ends."
He opened his mouth.
"Adela, I—"
"No. You are not speaking right now."
He immediately stopped.
"You have been suffering for too long. You have been sleeping through pain, destroying yourself slowly, and handling this completely alone while pretending everything is manageable."
She stood abruptly.
"And now you are sitting here telling me you have twenty days left like this is somehow normal?"
"In fairness—"
"In fairness? In fairness? You disappear for 160years, return covered in black veins, casually explain that your body is eroding, tell me you have less than a month left before another centuries-long sleep, and your response is 'in fairness'?"
"That… sounded better in my head."
"You always do this. You always decide to suffer alone because somehow you convince yourself your pain matters less than everyone else's. And now what? You expect us to wait four hundred years while hoping you wake up eventually? You think we can just accept that?"
Veneri stayed silent. For once, he looked guilty. Adela clenched her fists tighter.
"No. We are finding another solution, and I do not care what we have to destroy to make it happen."
She immediately pointed at him before he could speak.
"You are being quiet right now because I am mad at you."
He closed his mouth immediately. Honestly, he looked mildly intimidated which only somehow made her angrier.
"I am not giving up. I do not care how impossible this looks or how many centuries you have spent searching for answers. We are finding another solution."
Veneri sighed softly and leaned back against the sand, staring at the dark ocean.
"Adela, it has been a long time. I already tried everything I could think of. I spent decades searching for alternatives, speaking with people smarter than me, experimenting with runes, reconstruction methods and every stupid possibility I could find. There is not another option. These are the only choices I have."
Adela stared at him for several seconds without saying anything.
"You spent years suffering alone, believing that because you could not find an answer by yourself, then the problem suddenly became impossible. You have no idea what a woman in love is capable of."
"What?"
"You heard me. Do you honestly think I am going to sit here, nod politely, and say, 'Oh, alright Veneri, go disappear for four hundred years while I patiently wait for you to wake up someday'? Do you seriously think I can live through that?"
Veneri opened his mouth to respond, but nothing came out because the answer was obvious. He did not think she could. Honestly, he barely trusted the others not to start collapsing emotionally after a few months, much less centuries.
"And before you even try to soften this situation, I already know what your actual plan is."
"What plan?"
"If you go to sleep, then your Pentarchs go to sleep too."
Veneri looked away immediately. Adela narrowed her eyes so sharply that he almost felt bad for existing.
"There it is. That guilty expression you make whenever you intentionally forget to mention extremely important details."
He rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly.
"I was going to explain eventually."
"You mean after I found out myself?"
"Possibly."
"You always do this. You always carry everything alone because somehow you convince yourself suffering quietly is noble. You always omit information to make everyone feel better, except it never actually makes things better because eventually somebody finds out and then we all realize you have been destroying yourself in silence. But I know you too well for that now."
She took a slow breath.
"If you sleep, the other Pentarchs sleep. That means you'll not be here. And then what? You expect me to just exist for four centuries pretending everything is normal?"
Veneri stayed silent because there was no answer that would not sound terrible. Adela slowly sat beside him again, though she looked significantly more frustrated now.
"I am not letting my husband disappear again. I would lose my mind."
She sighed deeply and wiped at her face before suddenly shifting gears entirely.
"Fine. Then we stop crying and start thinking. We have fifteen days. You said twenty, but considering how casually you mention life-threatening disasters, I am assuming the time is worse than what you told me."
He looked mildly offended.
"That feels unfair. It is fourteen, actually."
"My Existence Divinity only functions properly through destructive authority. If I had constructive authority, rebuilding your body manually would have been possible. Richinaria archives might contain something involving soul-body instability, but there is no way we can return and search everything in time."
She paused.
"Mintherenia?"
Then immediately shook her head.
"No, World Tree restoration works through natural balance and stabilization, not forced regeneration. The erosion is bypassing Body Reconstruction itself, which means the problem is conceptual or existential."
She suddenly looked at him.
"What exactly causes the erosion?"
"No clue. I tried figuring that out too."
She clicked her tongue in annoyance.
"That is inconvenient. What about this realm? Musicum resonance clearly operates differently from normal Divinities. Maybe their principles could stabilize rhythm in your body somehow."
Veneri quietly watched her as she kept thinking of options.
Adelasta was a woman who refused to surrender no matter how impossible something looked. She was the kind of woman who would rip apart worlds rather than sit quietly while someone she loved suffered. The woman somehow looked terrifying and beautiful while aggressively trying to solve his life-threatening problems.
He missed her stubbornness and the absurd determination.
Adela suddenly stopped talking and narrowed her eyes.
"Why are you smiling?"
"Nothing."
"You are thinking something."
"I just forgot how devoted you are."
She frowned immediately.
"That was not romantic."
"I think it was."
"It was not."
"It kinda was."
She looked like she considered throwing him into the ocean.
Behind the smile, his thoughts were silent because there was something he had not told her. Something he could not tell her. This was always supposed to happen. His future self had already warned him during the Submerged Islands.
He had to go to prison to unlock the Tenth Star Magecraft, which was he only way for him to advance to the Fifth Enlightenment. Well, the Protection Pentarch that is. Back then, he did not understand. Now, he finally did.
Quietly, without showing it, he apologized in his thoughts. This really was the only path left. He lied about the erosion as well. After all, using Body Reconstruction to fake an illness to make her focus on one thing and avoid the other is not that hard.
It was finally time to go away.