"Yes," she murmured, her voice like mist over marble, "as I told you—I am your goddess. Or perhaps… you prefer to be called Axel." Her gaze, ancient and luminous, held his. "Tell me, what brings you to my sanctuary? The last time we met, we stood in ※※※※※, before ■■■■, when…"
Her words dissolved into silence.
A weight settled between them—thick, suffocating—not born of anger, nor even grief, but of something far more sacred: the unbearable weight of memory too terrible to name. Axel broke it first.
"It all slipped… out of control."
Afrodita had been there. He knew it. And yet, he needed her to confirm it.
He spoke calmly—too calmly—as if stitching together a shattered soul with threadbare composure. But calmness is a fragile veil. It frayed quickly.
"I'm being honest with you," he whispered, voice trembling now, "my memories are… fragments. Smoke. I woke here—in this■■, this nostalgic twilight—and wandered like a ghost through the village clinging to your temple's skirts. I climbed that endless stairway, step by step, drawn as if by an invisible tether… until I found you. Your voice was the last thing I heard before falling into that dreamless sleep. Everything is blurred. Nothing is certain. I awaken in this place—this sanctum—and you are here. Tell me the truth: What happened to me?!"
His voice cracked.
"Are you lying to me?!"
And then, softer, broken, desperate—
"If not… my goddess, I beg you… who am I?"
He had begun with restraint. Now, he trembled. Each breath was a question unasked: Am I Axel? Or merely the echo of someone who once was? Is Afrodita real—or a hallucination spun from a dying mind? Are we in a dream? Or am I already dead, floating in some coma's limbo, while my body rots somewhere beyond these stones?
Thoughts surged—chaotic, violent, luminous. Voices whispered names he could not recall. Faces flickered like candleflames in a storm.
Then—
"Axel," she said, tears glistening like dew on moonlit petals, "you are him. You are the one I have waited for. At last… you have returned."
She was not weeping from sorrow. Not from joy.
But from pure, unadulterated elation—the kind that comes only after centuries of waiting, after the world has forgotten you, after the heavens themselves have turned their backs.
"I waited here," she breathed, "always here. I never left."
As night descended, velvet and infinite, Afrodita stepped onto the balcony before the statue—a silent sentinel carved from eternity. Above them, the stars blazed with a brilliance no mortal sky had ever known. They did not twinkle. They burned. As if the cosmos itself had paused, holding its breath, to honor the moment.
"They told me you were dead," she whispered, eyes fixed on the horizon where sea met shadow. "That ■■■■ slew you. The souls—all of them—they came to me, whispering, screaming: '■■■■ did it.'*'There is no heaven,' they said. 'No hell. Only oblivion.'"
Her fingers clenched.
"I watched them take you. I saw the blade pierce your chest. And in that final instant, I gave you my only command—■■■■!"
A pause. A shudder.
"But you… you simply died. Your body unraveled—scattered into a thousand petals, carried away by the treacherous wind. I chased them. For years. For lifetimes. I hunted every petal, every fragment, hoping… hoping to find you again."
She turned to him.
Axel followed her to the edge.
Her face—now streaked with tears—was beautiful in its devastation.
Below, the ocean roared against the cliffs, a relentless hymn of salt and stone. No moon graced the sky. Only stars—brilliant, merciless, defiant—as if the heavens had chosen this darkest hour to shine their most exquisite light upon tragedy.
How cruelly ironic.
Perhaps they did not know—those radiant lights—that they, too, would fade. That even beauty perishes. Why, then, did they burn so fiercely?
Axel's expression darkened with dread.
And then—he remembered.
"Are you certain," she asked softly, "of what you intend to do?"
He did not answer immediately.
Then, quietly;
"Even if I am not… there is no turning back."
"Are you tired?"
And then—it came.
Not in clarity. Not in order.
But in waves.
Fragments. Flashes. A tide of forgotten moments rising from the abyss of forgetting.
-You… waited for me.
The memory surfaced like a corpse from deep water.
-I remember your face. You were crying… when I died. You were so…
And now he knew.
It was true.
"I am Axel," he whispered, voice raw with revelation. "A prophet of ■■■. And you… you are Afrodita."
She smiled.
A smile like dawn breaking over a graveyard.
Then she turned again toward the endless sea, stepping closer to the precipice.
Her voice, when it came, was a hymn sung in the language of lost things:
"A sweet lie… the only one I clung to… has finally betrayed me with its bitterness."
Before him, a spectral maiden—ethereal, indistinguishable from flesh and blood—stood at the brink.
In the cruellest twist of fate, she leapt.
Not in despair.
Not in anguish.
But with a painter's serenity—a smile painted across her lips as though she were dancing into a dream.
She fell.
White robes swirling like petals caught in a tempest.
Vanishing into the abyss.
Axel did not hesitate.
He followed.
His final words echoed above the roar of the waves:
—"No… it wasn't a lie. It was your hope."
And then—
The stars went dark.
A single, thunderous crash echoed from the base of the cliff—quickly swallowed by the sea's indifferent, selfish rhythm.
Time slowed.
Axel plummeted—not from the balcony of a temple, but from the ledge of his own soul.
He reached for her.
Desperate. Feral. Sacred.
To grasp the hand of the love that refused to die—even as death claimed her.
—Axel… is not finished.—
—This… is not real.—
End of Chapter