CRASH!
Not long after that moment, Selene—who still managed to flash a sweet smile before fate took her—fainted. She collapsed, face-first, into the ground.
The earth clung to her body, as if to confirm: her time had come.
SIZZLE... SHATTER!
The imitation of Helena shattered apart, cracking and crumbling into oblivion.
Fine fractures snaked across her surface before she splintered into fragments, leaving behind a mound of shapeless quartz sand—like raw glass yet to be sculpted into art.
There was no echo of victory, only silence that swallowed every shard.
To win is to turn to coal, to lose is to become ash.
That proverb painted this moment perfectly. Not just as some old saying, but as a bitter pill of reality scattered before me right now. At this very moment.
My head bowed low, emptiness gaping within me.
The tears swollen in my eyes had long dried—replaced by a suffocating void.
It felt like staring at the remnants of a dream that could never become true again.
