"We all wear masks, and the time comes when we cannot remove them without removing some of our own skin." — André Berthiaume
"…though possessing only a frail human body, Furina committed herself to acting out her part every second of every day for five hundred years — a true battle of the spirit. Her willpower has indeed reached the level of a god." — Venti
Once, in another world.
Furina POV
"All the people of Fontaine will be dissolved into the waters. Only the Hydro Archon will remain, weeping on her throne."
Had she heard of it?
Of course she had.
She had lived with those words for five hundred years.
They were etched into Fontaine's soul—recited in hushed tones by scholars, twisted into spectacle by the courts, transformed into fear by the people. Furina herself had repeated the prophecy countless times, sometimes mockingly, sometimes theatrically, always with a smile sharp enough to hide the terror beneath.
She had ruled beneath that sentence.
She had performed beneath it.
But when the waters finally rose, when the great wave came crashing down and swallowed everything she had known, the prophecy ceased to be a distant threat.
It became her reality.
Her mind, fragmented and exhausted beyond measure, was still sinking as the ocean claimed her. The colossal surge tore through Fontaine, ripping streets apart, consuming buildings, memories, lives—and her with them. Tears slipped from her eyes even underwater, absurdly visible as they drifted upward, dissolving into the very element she had pretended to command for centuries.
Wear and tear.
That was the truest description.
For a human—just a human—who had borne the weight of an entire nation for five hundred years, the long-awaited trial was supposed to mean liberation. Closure. An end.
Instead, it dragged her into hell.
It was as if the exhaustion of five centuries had arrived all at once. Not gradually. Not mercifully. It struck her like a collapse of time itself, heavier than any wave, more brutal than any blow.
Her thoughts slowed. Her body refused to respond. The moments when she had collapsed alone in private—those rare instants when the mask cracked and she allowed herself to shake—had grown more frequent in recent decades.
But this was different.
This was total.
There was no one to reach out to her.
No hand to pull her from the depths.
No voice calling her name.
She was sinking, deeper and deeper, unable to rise.
And yet—
It was not that she did not know how to swim.
It was not that she did not know how to fight.
In secret, away from the eyes of Fontaine, she had trained. Awkwardly. Quietly. Not to become strong—but simply to feel less helpless. To reassure herself that if the day ever came when the mask shattered, she would not be entirely useless.
But none of that mattered now.
She was broken.
Completely.
For five hundred years, she had played the role of the Hydro Archon without allowing a single flaw to show. Every gesture calculated. Every word polished. Every emotion exaggerated or suppressed according to what the audience needed to see.
And then—
The Opéra Épiclèse.
The stage she had presided over her entire life.
Transformed into a courtroom.
She remembered it with horrifying clarity.
The lights.
The murmurs of the crowd.
The familiar grandeur now turned against her.
She had stood there, on her throne, smiling as she always did. Confident. Smug. Untouchable. That was the image Fontaine expected.
That was the lie.
The accusations had come like a flood. Logical. Precise. Merciless.
Questions she could not answer.
Evidence she could not refute.
And then the verdict—not just of the court, but of the people.
Disappointment.
Confusion.
Betrayal.
She had felt it ripple through the hall like a physical force.
To be exposed there—there, of all places—hurt more than anything she had ever endured. The very opera house she had ruled from had become the site of her undoing. Her entire existence, revealed as theater.
It had been predictable, perhaps, that her mind would shut down.
Her body stopped registering sensation.
Her ears stopped processing sound.
Her heart kept beating, but without direction.
As she drowned, confusion blurred into dull pressure. Pain radiated through her limbs, her chest burned, her lungs screamed for air—but she did not react. Her body submitted to a slow, inevitable death by suffocation, and she could not even summon the instinct to struggle.
And still—
This pain was nothing.
Nothing compared to the suffering of five hundred years.
The loneliness.
The fear.
The constant performance.
The knowledge that if she ever failed, an entire nation would collapse with her.
Her vision darkened.
Her muscles slackened.
The world began to fade.
She was already shutting down when the final surprise Focalors had left behind—never meant to be more than a final message, words Furina had not yet fully understood—activated.
Above her, something appeared.
An Eye of God.
A Vision.
An external organ. A conduit of power.
Something she had never possessed in her entire life.
The water around her shifted. The crushing pressure vanished. Her lungs filled—not with water, but with air. She could breathe again. Death retreated, reluctantly.
And yet—
It meant nothing to her.
The jeers.
The shocked silence of the courtroom.
The disappointment etched onto countless faces.
The sound of her own name spoken with doubt.
They replayed endlessly in her mind.
Breathing again brought no relief. Living brought no comfort. Power, arriving five centuries too late, felt less like salvation and more like mockery.
She drifted.
Unmoving.
Until she heard it.
A scream.
A child's scream.
A little girl—no more than six years old—crying out with lungs already half-filled with water. It cut through the numbness like a blade through silk.
Then another.
And another.
She heard them all.
Every cry.
Every desperate gasp.
Every plea swallowed by the flood.
And she understood.
Even if the people of Fontaine were not dissolved by the waters… many of them would still drown.
That realization ignited something within her.
A spark.
Small.
Frail.
But alive.
Light returned to her eyes.
…
Five hundred years.
The number had always sounded abstract when spoken aloud, like a statistic carved into stone rather than something meant to be felt. Five centuries. Five hundred cycles of seasons, of tides rising and retreating, of generations being born, growing old, and vanishing while she remained. Watching. Smiling. Applauding. Judging.
Performing.
At first, it had felt almost noble.
A role bestowed upon her by a higher will, wrapped in riddles and solemn words. You must endure. You must play the part. When the time comes, all will be worth it. A vague promise, shimmering like light refracted through water—beautiful, unreachable, impossible to grasp. She had clung to it like a drowning person clings to driftwood, convinced that meaning alone could justify the pain.
She had not yet understood that a promise without a date is not hope.
It is a sentence.
Every morning, Furina woke knowing she was not allowed to be herself. Whatever "herself" even meant anymore. She had learned quickly that sincerity was dangerous, that doubt was fatal, that a single crack in the façade could doom everything. So she polished it. Reinforced it. Turned it into spectacle.
The Hydro Archon was flamboyant, theatrical, capricious. She laughed loudly, gestured grandly, spoke with authority and flair. She ruled from a throne not merely of stone, but of expectation. Fontaine did not want a god who hesitated. Fontaine demanded confidence, drama, certainty.
So she gave them exactly that.
What they never saw was the exhaustion beneath the applause.
Every trial presided over, every verdict delivered, every performance staged within the Opera Epiclese carved another layer away from her. Not physically—her body remained unchanged, frozen in time—but mentally, emotionally, relentlessly. She listened to pleas, to screams, to accusations soaked in despair, and she rendered judgment with a steady voice while something inside her quietly rotted.
She could not confide in anyone.
Not the people — they believed in a god, not a girl.
Not the Melusines — they trusted the symbol, not the truth.
Not even Neuvillette — especially not him. Because if she faltered, if she admitted weakness, then the entire illusion would collapse. And with it, Fontaine.
So she smiled.
She exaggerated.
She turned herself into a caricature so convincing that even she began to forget where the act ended and where the pain began.
There were nights — countless nights — when she sat alone, the echoes of the courtroom still ringing in her ears, wondering if this was what eternity was meant to feel like. Not glory. Not transcendence. Just endless repetition, obligation without relief, duty without recognition.
She had no Vision.
No divine authority of her own.
No power to justify the suffering she endured.
She was human.
Human, bearing the weight of a god's role for half a millennium.
Time did not harden her, as legends liked to claim. It eroded her. Slowly, imperceptibly, like water wearing down stone. Each year took a little more from her: a little patience, a little joy, a little certainty that what she was doing mattered.
And yet—
Fontaine.
Despite everything, she loved it.
She loved the sound of water cascading through the city, the laughter of children running along the canals, the brilliance of invention and art that defined the nation. She loved its chaos, its curiosity, its relentless pursuit of spectacle and justice. She loved the people who argued passionately about trivial matters, who lined up eagerly to witness trials as if they were theatre, unaware that for her, they were both.
They lived.
They dreamed.
They trusted.
And she protected them.
That love was the cruelest part of all.
Because it was real.
It was not an act.
Even when resentment gnawed at her, even when bitterness whispered that none of this was fair, even when she hated the throne and the title and the endless charade — she could never bring herself to hate Fontaine. The thought of failing it, of letting it drown because she had grown tired, was unbearable.
So she endured.
She swallowed fear when rumors of prophecy circulated.
She laughed off whispers of doom.
She dismissed unease as theatrics.
The Hydro Archon will witness the destruction of Fontaine.
She had heard the words before. Many times. Repeated by scholars, murmured by citizens, recorded in ancient texts. Each repetition chipped away at her resolve. Each one planted the same question in her mind:
If I am destined only to watch… then why endure at all?
But the promise remained.
Vague. Unfulfilled. Unchanging.
Five hundred years spent waiting for a moment that never clarified itself.
Five hundred years spent believing that suffering was temporary, that endurance was meaningful, that sacrifice would eventually be rewarded.
And when the trial finally came — the one that was supposed to be her deliverance — it became her execution instead.
The pain of that moment did not come from humiliation alone. It came from betrayal — not by others, but by the promise she had trusted for centuries. The realization struck with brutal clarity:
She had suffered for nothing she could understand.
And still—
As the waters rose, as Fontaine faced annihilation, as voices screamed and lungs filled with water, her first instinct was not anger.
It was fear.
Not for herself.
For them.
Even broken, even exhausted beyond comprehension, even stripped of her role and identity, she listened. She heard the cries. She felt the panic. She knew, with absolute certainty, that she could not abandon them.
So she spent what little strength she had left.
She gave everything.
Five hundred years of restraint shattered in an instant, poured into a single, desperate act of salvation. A final performance, not for applause, not for belief, but for love.
For Fontaine.
And as the water closed over her, as her consciousness faded, one thought lingered — not regret, not bitterness, but quiet resolve.
If this is the end… then at least let them live.
"Do not cry. I am here," she whispered—yet everyone heard her.
And in that instant, a miracle occurred.
Across the vast, flooded territory of Fontaine, every person struggling beneath the waves was enveloped in a perfect sphere of water—balanced, stable, breathable. Panic turned into shock. Despair into disbelief. One by one, they began to rise.
They ascended.
Furina did not.
The power she had coveted for so long—the power she had desperately needed across five centuries—had finally come.
And she spent all of it.
Without hesitation.
Without reserve.
She poured herself into saving the people she had ruled over, lied to, protected, and loved in her own broken way for five hundred years.
Her body trembled violently.
Her strength evaporated.
The Vision dimmed.
She sank further, deeper, emptier than before.
And in her exhaustion, she found herself thinking, "Damn that blonde and her pet food…"
But her expression was peaceful.
For the first time in five centuries, she had acted without a script.
Without an audience.
Without applause.
She was no Archon.
No actress.
Just Furina.
And in that moment—
Furina died.