Disorder dominated the salon. The hallowed geometry lay in ruins marked by scraped lines flailing forms and the primal instinctive noises of awareness restored. Flavio Fergal remained at the heart of the devastation amidst the chaos. He ignored the sobbing Croft and the trembling Kane. His eyes remained locked on the room's point, where Belphegor's void still hovered, though now it bore signs of injury. It throbbed unpredictably its borders unraveling its quiet shattered by the mental cries of the reactivated circuit.
This represented the culmination of his efforts. Not a victory,. A dissection. He had failed to establish peace; instead he offered a euphoric numbness before suddenly withdrawing it leaving the sufferer exposed and wailing on the operating table. His empathy had transformed into a kind of cruelty.
He recognized the reality in Devon's remorseful gaze: This is the reality you attempted to end. It is suffering.
An intense utter hopelessness engulfed Flavio. It was not the blazing despair of anger. The chilly quiet despair of a mathematician who understands his flawless formula reveals not a cosmic truth, but an exquisite deadly mistake. The burden of all the agony he had observed—Sarajevo, Goma, Aleppo—returned with force no longer kept at a distance, by the refined reasoning of the Lethargic Calculus. It was all genuine.. His resolution had merely introduced a fresh deeper level of anguish.
He stared into the emptiness. It wasn't a solution anymore. It had become a sanctuary. The sole remaining one.
"It was meant to be gentle " he whispered, his tone hardly noticeable, above the cries. Moans. "A smooth arrival. Not… this."
He moved forward into the warped void. The turbulent force in the chamber appeared to clear a path, for him.
"Flavio stop!" Hugo Hubert shouted, letting go of Croft and moving ahead. Luna Lorelei glanced up her enforcer's composure shattered by a brief glimpse of fear.
However it was already beyond the point of return. Flavio wasn't being dragged along. He was moving forward on his own. Not, as a victor. As a remorseful one. As the individual who had witnessed the torment crafted the serene conclusion and instead had only intensified the pain. His resolve, the force that had driven this whole plan now reversed not against the outside world but against its own shortcomings.
He arrived at the area below the emptiness. He did not lift his hands in invitation. Instead he spread them wide signaling surrender—not toward the emptiness. Of himself, to it.
"If I'm unable to provide you tranquility " he murmured, to the space to the sufferers to the globe "then allow me to bear the burden of that failure. Let me become the center. Not of rest…. Of regret."
He glanced back once his gaze meeting Devon's. Within them lay no animosity, a deep mournful recognition. You were correct. It is merely chaos and pain. Pardon me for attempting to silence the melody.
Next he shut his eyes. Released.
The unstable void lacking submission and thriving on turbulent anguish did not consume him. It fused with him. It poured into the emptiness of his anguish. His body did not disappear; it transformed into a lens. A human-shaped concentration, for the fading energy of Belphegor.
A gentle grey glow radiated from him. Not the radiant promise from before. A somber quiet. The frantic anguished energy, in the space seemed to strike him and… dull. Not end. It wasn't calm. It was a focused silencing. The victims' screams did not end,. Their harshest tones were muted, enveloped in a thick veil of grief. The struggling eased to shivering. The psychic resonance diminished.
Flavio Fergal, the humanitarian had transformed into something different.. A demon nor a god. A symbol. A living, breathing symbol of mercy's failure of the hopelessness of answers. He was the Avatar of the Un-Answer. His mere existence absorbed the intensity of the turmoil not by fixing it. By silently acknowledging its unsolvability, with endless quiet sorrow.
He remained motionless eyes shut, tears gently streaming down his face vanishing into the grey haze encircling him. The emptiness had disappeared. Instead stood a man who had cherished the world deeply he sought to lull it into rest and when that effort faltered he had transformed into its quiet mournful cornerstone bearing the burden of its unhealed anguish in an everlasting intimate balance.
The Grand Conjunction had found its anchor after all. Not in Devon's defiant struggle, but in Flavio's perfect, despairing surrender. He had not stilled the world. He had become the prison for his own shattered dream of stillness, and in doing so, had imposed a terrible, gentle quiet on the immediate chaos. It was a peace born of grief, not grace. And it was the only peace left in the room.