The Foot-Step-Filled Sanctuary (the traveler's mirage)

Quest 4 (finale)

                                        •  •  •

From where they stood, Aether could almost see those familiar, tall pillars in the distance. He walked far behind the others including Paimon who was chatting with Fischl and Oz. His heart skipped a beat while his eyebrows furrowed. The feeling of melancholy slowly waned on him by every step he took.

                                        •  •  •

After a bit of sight-seeing, Kazuha sensed danger but was unsure of its location. Was it there? Or over there? He couldn't tell...

No, it was everywherep.

His body quivered the moment he felt it.

'Everyone! I sensed something dark and ominous—'

A feeling of dread and terror envoked the samurai making his spine shivver and his goosebumps react. His eyes widened as his mind fell to despair for only just a second.

But that second was enough to make him reawaken the feeling of witnessing his dearest friend fall before the roaring thunder that was the Electro Archon.

Paimon gasps, following her stumbled words. 'Wh—Wh—What was that?!'

'You felt it too?...'

'I think we all might've felt it!' Xinyan said to Kazuha, in a pitch much higher and staggered compared to her normal voice.

Aether marched to the front of the group. He raised his head to the top of a tall structure resembling the Tenshukaku.

At its doors emerged a figure. One that belongs to the sole person he'd call "family". And yet he still knew it wasn't her.

The clouds mustered together, dyed in red. Trees, buildings, tiles and even lumps of dirt flew up in the air into the tornado that formed from the clouds. Cubes stained in blood slithered around the atmosphere meanwhile the wind began to pick up speed.

Mona held tightly onto her witch's hat. 'Ah! My hat!'

Oz, who nearly got blown away, was saved by his dearly beloved master.

The twins stared at each other, dead in the eye. Giving each other disappointed looks. The figure appeared more frustrated than the latter, quenching her fist and standing so stiffly. He knew damn well that wasn't her.

Even so, he couldn't deny it.

That yearning in his heart.

The aching feeling in his chest and soul.

The trembling in his fingers.

And the ever blazing flame of hopefulness in his eyes.

The dreamy sanctuary of the boy who refused to falter, fell into utter chaos.

He reached out to the figure and tightly held onto that imaginary girl who was not Lumine.

                                        •  •  •

They reappeared on top of a wide, glowing platform bedazzled by star-like sparkles and surged into the clouds.

The moon had never looked so close. It was bright and almost blinding to one's eye.

Or... to everybody else at least.

Aether had seen skies like this many times before over the course of his travails. However... After all that has happened, he had never felt as nostalgic as now.