The Heroine is My Stepsister, and I'm her Final Boss
Chapter 194 - 195: Reasons

Chapter 194: Chapter 195: Reasons

Smoke from scorched parchment still lingered, swirling like threads of a forgotten prayer. The air shimmered in waves, where magic once sang and now screamed in silence. Valora—bloodied, weary, cracked open with purpose—stood motionless, her eyes wide as the scroll dissolved to ash in her hands. Two mages had stood beside her not moments ago, their spells prepared, their hearts calm in resignation. Now they were gone.

Gone—swallowed whole by something not meant to exist.

A shadow—no, a wound—had opened and consumed them.

And from that wound, he came.

A ripple in the fabric of light. A stutter in reality. Then a form—bent, hunched, unclean in shape but clean in hunger—rose from the gaping scar of air.

Veil.

He did not roar. He burped. A sound so stupidly human it desecrated the scene around him. He shivered and reassembled into a humanoid mass, skin dripping off as if borrowed from a dream. The battlefield, already haunted, seemed to still itself in the presence of his grotesque rebirth.

Valora didn’t move. She didn’t even breathe.

But Eli did.

The Empress opened her eyes—eyes that had seen too much and still refused to close.

Two of her gifted mages, personal students, were gone. Their names had not even finished echoing in her thoughts before they were erased from existence. But she didn’t scream. Didn’t ask why. There was no need.

She knew who it was.

Her voice was quiet, but it struck like an arrow.

"...Veil?"

His name crawled from her throat like the last word before drowning.

Veil stretched. His body cracked in odd directions, dislocating and popping back into shape. "It’s been a while," he murmured, his voice like oil over static. Smooth, but wrong.

Eli’s fingers moved with practiced violence, tearing the emergency communication scroll. It glowed blue as it burned, sending a signal across planes. Her hand trembled slightly as she let the ashes fall.

Veil’s eyes moved to the limp form in her arms.

Atlas.

Still. Silent. Pale. A sheen of sweat coated his brow, and his skin looked almost translucent under the moonlight. His breath was shallow—too shallow. Mana wasn’t just low. It was curling in on itself. Like a dying star.

Veil tilted his head. "What happened to him?" His voice lost its sharpness. There was something softer now. Almost afraid.

Eli’s eyes fell to Atlas’s face. A flicker of something human—regret?—passed through her gaze, but she swallowed it like poison and raised her chin.

"...You already know how much I love him," she said, and her voice didn’t tremble. Not anymore.

Veil stepped forward, the scent of ozone and devoured magic following him like a curse. He crouched slightly, focusing. He didn’t need eyes to see—Veil was not of this world. He felt.

He felt Atlas’s soul splintering under the weight of something deeper than magic. Something unnatural. His nerve threads, mana roots, spirit circuits—veinlike networks that connected body to essence—were shivering.

"I know, Eli," Veil said. "I know. But what did you do to him?"

There was no judgment in his tone. Only dread. Like someone staring at a wound that kept bleeding long after it should have clotted.

Eli didn’t answer immediately.

Because she had done something.

Not out of hate. But from love. That cursed word that justified every atrocity.

Atlas had always been her salvation and her ruin. Even now—dying in her arms—his presence made her feel complete. Whole. Like a child clinging to the corpse of her parent, she refused to let go. Even as his pulse faded.

"I... protected him," she whispered.

Veil’s face tightened. "Eli, I’m saying this in the best way possible... please, give Atlas to me. He’s sick..... I can sense it."

He held out his hand—not in command, but in offering.

Eli didn’t move. Her hands tightened around Atlas’s body, one arm around his back, the other cradling his head like a lover refusing to surrender her loved one.

She bit her lip. Rage—or perhaps grief—crashed against her skin like fire. "You’re just like them," she said through gritted teeth. "...Y..You want to take him away from me."

"No," Veil whispered. "That’s not it."

His voice was desperate now. Pained.

"I’m not naïve like before, Eli. What you’re doing—it’s a form of love, I get it. But it’s obsession. I read abo—"

"You know nothing about love!" Eli snarled.

The battlefield hushed. Even the wind paused, afraid to stir.

"I loved him," she continued, her words cracking like broken glass. "I loved him and he... he used my feelings. My feelings for an eventual attack."

Veil’s breath caught.

"He doesn’t love me, Veil. Not like I love him. So I will do what I must.... To make him mine."

Veil’s shadow form twitched. His hands slowly turned into long, sharp blades—curved and spectral, almost translucent, like scythes shaped from moonlight and sorrow.

"You’ll make him yours by killing him?" Veil growled. "His breath is getting slower. He’s dying. And if you really loved him, you’d see that."

Eli took a step back, dragging Atlas with her. Her boots crunched against shattered bone and scorched steel.

"No," she said. But it wasn’t an answer. It was a vow.

Veil’s shoulders slumped. His eyes dimmed. "He’s my friend, Eli. You both are. I didn’t come here to fight."

But the air shifted.

Too late.

Eli’s lips curled upward into a bitter smile. "Finally showing your true colors, I see..."

A second later, she raised her voice—not at Veil, but toward the sky.

"They’re here."

Wind screamed.

Veil had a split second to move before the impact.

A blast—not of energy, but of sheer force—slammed into him, launching his body like a ragdoll across the broken plain. He skidded over cracked stone and fractured obsidian spires, his body folding in unnatural angles before unfolding again, mid-flight. He wasn’t human. But he wasn’t supposed to be moved like that. Veil was shadow. Formless. Untouchable.

Only light could hurt him.

And what struck him... was made of something wrapped in death.

Veil landed hard—his body dispersing briefly before reknitting in pulses of midnight smoke.

He looked up.

And froze.

Two figures stepped from the blur of momentum. Their presence was not loud, but loudness had nothing to do with it. They were felt..... Off.

One knight in golden armor, the number Three engraved across his chest. His hair shone like polished brass, and his eyes—blue, sharp, endless—stared like he had seen too many centuries and wasn’t impressed anymore.

The other...

A female knight, silver-armored, a hybrid weapon in her hands: a staff with the end split into a deadly axe-blade. Number Two etched into her shoulder plate. Her silver hair curled like frostbitten silk.

They didn’t speak.

They didn’t need to.

They reeked of something ancient and forbidden. Magic laced with something more primal. Dust clung to their steps—not of soil, but of forgotten spells and condemned rituals.

Veil’s one eye narrowed. A thought slid across his mind like ice. A suspicion.

’.....Fairy dust?’

He coughed once, body still glitching back into form. "Okay..." he wheezed. "...this just got interesting."