"Please come with me over there for a moment," Shane said softly, turning to the goddess at his side.
Ereshkigal gave a slight nod and asked no questions.
Lifting the golden spear-staff glowing with divine light, she calmly parted a path for him through the darkness ahead, thick as spilled ink.
A short while later, a few somewhat abrupt knocks echoed through the ruined village wrapped in endless black.
Knock, knock.
Inside the house, Wendy instinctively hugged the white cat in her arms a little tighter. She had only found the little companion in the nearby forest not long ago.
"Don't be afraid. I'll go take a look."
Leaning on his cane, Roubaul gently soothed the girl before turning to open the door.
The door swung open, revealing the black-haired boy they had met once before.
Only this time, instead of the companion he had last time, there stood a blonde girl at his side—someone so imposing that just meeting her gaze made people lower their heads without even daring to look too closely.
"Yo, old man. Came to chat with you again," Shane said with a grin, leaning lazily against the doorframe.
"At a time like this… why would you be—"
Roubaul's face had only just started to show confusion when his gaze passed beyond the two of them and landed on the gray-white curse slithering like a snake along the edge of the spear's light, trying to worm its way into the house.
The old man reacted instantly.
"No… wait. All that commotion outside—was that your doing?"
At that moment—
"Carla, what's wrong?"
Wendy suddenly felt the little body in her arms begin to tremble violently.
"I-It's nothing…" said the white cat called Carla, staring fixedly at Shane's face, her eyes unable to hide her fear.
Like Happy, she spoke human language. Then she forcefully wriggled free from Wendy's arms and bolted into the inner room without looking back.
"Uh…"
Even someone as thick-skinned as Shane felt a little wounded at that.
Was he really that scary? Even a cat wanted nothing to do with him.
But there were more important things to deal with. He put away the joking expression and said seriously, "Old man, take everyone and leave this place. Now. Earlier, in order to stop Nirvana, I used a special kind of magic. That aura… it's going to draw the black dragon here any minute."
"Acnologia? How did that disaster get involved?" Roubaul sucked in a breath and stared at the boy in shock.
"You know about him? Good. Then if you know how terrifying he is, hurry up and get out," Shane urged.
But to his frustration, Roubaul stubbornly shook his head. In his clouded old eyes was something like the calm resolve of a man prepared to die.
"I am Nirvana's guardian. My duty is to watch over it. I'm staying here. I'm not going anywhere."
"Nirvana? But Grimoire Heart already destroyed its core!"
Shane felt a surge of irritation at the stubborn old man.
"I know. I felt it the moment it stopped moving."
"And because of that, I've finally lost the reason to remain… and the responsibility I was meant to bear…"
Roubaul murmured, a complex look crossing his eyes.
Now that the thing he had been created to guard had been destroyed, it seemed only natural that he too—a thought-form made from magic—should fade away with the wind.
But Shane seemed to see through him and abruptly cut off the mood he was trying to build.
"You still have unfinished responsibility."
Shane grinned wickedly and pointed at Wendy, who was standing off to the side and looking over nervously.
"This one hated me earlier, and I'm the petty type. I'm not about to generously take her out of here myself."
He waved a hand dramatically. "Ah, what a pitiful girl… all alone, nobody to look after her. Even if she gets lucky and really does make it out of this darkness, I'm sure the rest of her life will be absolutely miserable."
"That's not true! I can do just fine on my own!" Wendy shot back loudly like an angry little rabbit with its fur standing on end.
She still remembered that the man in front of her was someone the "Jellal" who once saved her had absolutely hated.
"Is that so?" Shane ignored Wendy's protest completely and only raised a brow with a faint smile. "Old man, do you think so too?"
Roubaul's expression shifted violently.
He had originally intended to let go of everything and disappear once his duty was gone.
But when his eyes fell on the tiny blue-haired girl stubbornly staring back at him, the old man's heart—one that should have long since dried up—softened in the end.
"…Sigh."
He let out a long sigh. "I understand. Wendy, go get Carla. We're leaving."
A few minutes later, after Roubaul had brought Wendy and Carla out of the village, Shane turned once more to Ereshkigal at his side.
"Turn your protection toward them. And toward Fairy Tail's retreat route too."
"If I do that, the protection on your side will fail," Ereshkigal said, holding her spear-staff, a faint ripple passing through her golden eyes.
"The moment you lose my protection, the curse will swallow you at once, and then I'll hide you deep beneath the underworld."
"There's still a little time left. Are you sure you don't want to stay awake a bit longer and look at this world while you still can?"
"There's nothing left to deal with. I'd rather go down and rest early," Shane said with an easy shrug.
Roubaul had already confirmed that Nirvana was destroyed.
As for the information he'd promised Hades, he wasn't worried about that at all.
Given Ultear's intelligence, she would surely handle it beautifully.
Maybe she'd even give Hades a version of Zeref's information that was mostly true with one crucial lie mixed in.
And if that old madman Hades really went charging after it, and if he somehow actually had the power to revive the dead—enough to draw a god's curse and Zeref's attention—
Just imagining the desperate look that would be on Hades' face at that point was enough to make Shane smile.
"In that case, rest well here."
Ereshkigal said nothing more. She lightly tapped the spear-staff in her hand against empty air.
Hummm—
The divine radiance surrounding Shane drew inward and shifted away.
The instant the suppression vanished, the gray-white curse that had gathered all this time finally found an outlet and surged toward Shane in a frenzied torrent without the slightest resistance.
At the same time, darkness embraced him.
The breath of the underworld swallowed his figure whole.
…
On the other side, the cold wind howled.
Wendy followed close behind Roubaul, unable to resist reaching out and stroking the white cat in her arms, who had been trembling with bristling fur ever since earlier and still hadn't fully calmed down.
"What's wrong, Carla?"
"That guy just now… I think I saw him in a dream once. He was a terrifying monster!"
Carla buried her face in Wendy's arms, her voice still full of lingering fear.
"Huh?" The blue-haired girl widened her eyes and clenched her fists indignantly. "So he really is a bad guy after all!"
"Wendy, you mustn't say that. That boy… is probably a very good person."
Roubaul, walking ahead, stopped and turned around, correcting her with complete seriousness.
"But… just now he was obviously looking down on me, and he wasn't polite to Grandpa at all!" Wendy asked, utterly confused.
Roubaul only smiled and shook his head. Rather than answering directly, he lifted a finger and pointed toward the road ahead—a road that by all rights should have been too dark to see even one's hand in front of one's face.
Following the direction of his finger, Wendy finally noticed in surprise—
Along both sides of the road they were retreating on, tiny blue flames had lit up one after another at some point.
The fire gave off no heat. Instead, it carried a deeply calming presence, blending perfectly with the terrible blackness all around them and making people want to stop and stare.
"Look. Beautiful, isn't it?"
Roubaul rested a hand on Wendy's head and said earnestly,
"When you look at someone, don't judge only by what's on the surface. Learn to remember the kindness they never say out loud, but quietly show through what they do."
"…"
Looking at the trail of ghostly blue flames stretching far into the distance, Wendy slowly lowered her head in thought.
In her arms, Carla lifted a little paw and lightly tugged at Wendy's clothes.
Looking at the peaceful flames, a trace of confusion flickered through the fear in her eyes.
"The aura around him really did feel a lot like the monster from my dream, and just now… I really was terrified. But thinking about it now… they don't seem to be the same person."