They looked at each other.

For a brief, fragile instant, the devastation around them seemed to lose meaning. The ruined land, the torn sky, the watching gazes of distant monarchs, all of it faded into irrelevance as Belle Ardent and Black stood facing one another in silence.

No words were exchanged.

None were needed.

Something passed between them—an understanding forged from shared history, shared sin, shared power. A mutual recognition that what came next could no longer be contained within the fragile skin of the world.

As if guided by the same thought, the same breath, they spoke at the same time.

"Domain Expansion — Death Without Witness."

"Domain Expansion — Pain of Burned Memories."

Reality broke.

Not shattered, unmade.

The space around Belle folded inward, collapsing into a singularity of black. Sound vanished first. Then distance. Then meaning itself. The world she knew peeled away like rotting skin, replaced by something older, quieter, infinitely deeper.

Belle's domain bloomed.

A black moon hung in the sky, enormous and unmoving, its surface etched with a faint white outline like the afterimage of something once holy and long since dead. It didn't glow, yet it illuminated everything beneath it with a soft, funerary light.

The ground beneath Belle's feet transformed into water.

Still.

Endless.

A perfectly smooth, mirror-like surface that stretched in every direction, its depth unfathomable. There were no waves, no ripples, only the subtle distortion caused by Belle's presence, as if the world itself hesitated to touch her.

Belle changed.

Her black hair bled into color, strands unraveling into a flowing river of purple and pink light that drifted behind her as if suspended in a current only she could feel. Her armor dissolved into nothingness, replaced by a long black dress that hovered just above the water's surface, untouched by it.

Her boots were gone.

In their place were bare feet, sculpted from the same violet-pink luminescence as her hair, glowing softly against the dark water. She didn't sink. She didn't float. She simply existed.

Beneath her, in the mirror-like depths, her reflection stared back.

And it was wrong.

The reflected Belle was sharper. More chaotic. Her posture carried a violence the real Belle had long buried beneath discipline and control. Her smile, if it could be called that, was too wide, her eyes too knowing.

A truth Belle had never fully accepted.

The most profound change, however, lay in her eyes.

They burned with violet light.

And for the first time since the curse had claimed her sight...

Belle could see.

Not merely shapes or colors.

Everything.

She saw sound as ripples in the air, emotions as distortions in space. She perceived mana as an endless river of overlapping currents, vespera as jagged fractures of inevitability cutting through reality. She saw time dragging its wounded body forward, causality snapping and reforming with every breath.

She saw Black's domain unfurling before her.

Pain of Burned Memories.

The world around Black crystallized into something obscene.

Glass erupted outward in every direction, jagged shards twisted and bent, jutting from the ground like the ribs of a dead god. Each surface reflected something different: memories, moments, screams frozen in time.

Faces screamed silently from within the glass.

Laughter echoed without mouths.

The ground was a field of broken reflections, each step a potential wound, each shard humming with agony. The sky above dripped blood, not falling, but suspended, as if gravity itself had been flayed and left bleeding.

And layered over everything.

Screams.

Not heard, but felt.

The cries of the damned, memories burned so deeply into existence that they could never fade.

Belle turned her gaze to the center of it all.

And finally.

She saw him.

Truly saw him.

Black stood within his domain, no longer hiding behind silhouettes or curses. His body was composed of flowing darkness, a living shadow constantly shifting and reforming, as if his shape were merely a suggestion. His build was small, compact, deceptively fragile.

Short black hair framed a face that was, disturbingly, beautiful.

Too beautiful for the horror he embodied.

His eyes glowed with dim blue light, cold and distant, like dying stars. There was no madness in them now. No mockery.

Only certainty.

Recognition flickered across Belle's face.

Three years.

Three years since she had last truly seen her first student.

Black looked at her, really looked at her, and for the briefest moment, something human crossed his expression.

Then it was gone.

Belle slowly raised her hand.

Her skin shimmered, the same purple-pink light as her hair and feet flowing through her fingers. She extended her palm toward the water beneath her.

The surface rippled.

At first, gently.

Then violently.

The reflection beneath her began to move.

The mirrored Belle pressed its hands against the underside of the surface, as if against glass, its face twisted in something between agony and delight. Cracks spread outward, and pale, skeletal fingers pierced through, gripping the edge of reality.

The reflection crawled upward.

Bone-white limbs emerged first, dripping with black water. Its body followed, dragging itself out like a corpse clawing free of its grave. As it rose, flesh formed around it, not rotten, not corrupted, but something beautiful and complete.

A manifestation of everything Belle had killed within herself.

Everything she had buried.

Everything she had denied.

The whole complete Belle Ardent.

Black watched, unblinking.

"So," he said softly, his voice echoing unnaturally through both domains, "this is what you became."

The reflected Belle pulled itself free, standing beside the real one. It turned its head, smiling with its teeth, eyes glowing with a warped echo of violet light.

Belle didn't look at it.

Her gaze never left Black.

"And this," she said calmly, her voice carrying absolute authority within her domain, "is what you chose to keep."

The black moon overhead pulsed.

The water beneath them darkened further.

Glass screamed.

Both domains pressed against each other, grinding, overlapping, trying to overwrite one another. Where water met glass, reality bled, reflections warping, memories dissolving into black ripples.

Two worlds.

Two philosophies of death.

Two failures standing face to face.

And this time.

There would be witnesses.

Even if the world itself couldn't survive to remember them.

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