“Kuh—!!”

A gurgled choke erupted from her throat as a thick splurt of blood burst from her lips, splashing across Aestrea’s face and soaking the frostbitten petals beneath them.

Her head swam.

Drip… drip…. drip.

Blood fell in warm, steady drops onto the ice.

She looked down, trembling, trying to make sense of the pain blooming inside her.

The dagger was there, its jagged blade had sunk in deep, twisted, cruel, buried to the hilt just beneath her ribs, sliding between bone and organ with terrifying precision.

Her eyes widened in pure disbelief. Not pain, not yet, but confusion. That sick, hollow feeling of not understanding how or why.

Her fingers weakly grasped at Aestrea’s collar, her lips trembing as her throat struggled to form his name.

“Ae…stre…a…?”

Her voice cracked, thin as glass.

But he didn’t answer her.

He didn’t blink.

He just looked at her.

His gaze was a sheet of winter glass.

Then, slowly, his hand moved.

He tightened his grip around the hilt.

Click.

He twisted the knife.

CRRUNCH.

Her body convulsed instantly.

A fresh burst of blood exploded from her throat, her lungs giving out as her chest heaved violently. Crimson drenched her chin, soaked down her breasts, spilled between her thighs, pooling around her on the shattered ice.

Her breath was no longer a breath—it was a death rattle.

She gasped, choked, the pain finally catching up to the betrayal. Her hands clawed at his shirt, not in anger, but desperation.

As if trying to hold on.

Her body slumped against him, shivering uncontrollably.

Her legs folded, her arms dropped.

Her body slid from his lap and hit the ground hard, her knees buckling beneath her as she collapsed sideways onto the frost-covered petals.

Her mouth opened again.

No words.

Just blood.

It streamed from her lips, a steady, unstoppable flow, and her eyes still widened, still beautiful began to lose their light.

And he stood there.

Over her.

Watching.

The heat of her dying body soaking into the ice beneath them.

His expression never changed.

“…You shouldn’t have tried to kill me.”

Aestrea finally spoke.

And just at his words, Selene’s lips trembled as more blood spilled from her mouth, thick and warm, staining her tongue, her teeth, the ice-cracked ground beneath her.

Her fingers twitched, barely able to lift from the frost.

She had finally realized she was going to actually die.

Her eyes, still wide with shock, slowly found his face, and saw that he was even closer to her than before.

Selene tried to lift her head, but it barely moved. Her hair stuck to her face, matted with sweat and blood. Her lips parted again, but no words came.

Only another stream of crimson.

Then, he crouched right beside her.

“…If you didn’t attack me, we could’ve had a good relationship,” he spoke in a unusual soft tone, “However…. you did try to kill me.”

Selene’s eyes flickered at his words

Her hand reached up, barely, and touched his wrist.

She was still warm.

Still trembling.

Her eyes were glassy now. She wasn’t exactly seeing him anymore, not really. Just fragments… just echoes of who he was… and who she had thought he was.

Her mouth tried to move again.

It shaped a word, perhaps his name, but it got lost in the blood.

Fsssh…

He caught her wrist as it slipped down.

Held it.

Even though it was too late.

Her eyes were wide open, but the light had faded.

Her lips parted one last time, but they didn’t close again.

The heat between them was gone.

Only the cold remained.

And silence.

Aestrea stayed there, crouched beside her, holding her lifeless hand in his blood-stained one. And since she had died, the spell had ended, and Aestrea’s body wasn’t that excited anymore.

He spent a few minutes looking at her, and then, sighed.

He loosened his grip on Selene’s lifeless hand, and that’s when he saw it.

Just beneath the thin glove she’d worn torn open from their struggle, on the underside of her wrist, something caught the moonlight.

A mark.

Not a wound.

Not a bruise.

A symbol.

A crescent symbol.

It glowed faintly, a pale white against her skin, almost like frost that hadn’t melted.

His eyes narrowed as his breath hitched.

“What…?”

It wasn’t there before.

He was sure.

He grabbed her wrist and pulled it up, gently peeling the torn fabric away. The mark was fully visible now. Smooth, perfect, like it had been etched into her soul.

A crescent moon.

But that wasn’t the only surprising thing.

Despite her dead body, the crescent moon was flickering, shining in a glowing white color.

“This… why does this mark feel so familiar?” Aestrea frowned slightly.

Then, as if he remembered something, he took out his black gloves, and looked at the black moon symbol on his hand.

Strangely… it wasn’t a full moon, but it had shape of a moon who had a crescent part missing.

It was also flickering, but in a deep black color.

He looked at her mark and than at his, and furrowed his eyebrows.

Both symbols pulsed in perfect sync.

White and black.

Opposites.

Reflections.

And they seemed to be calling to each other.

“…What the hell is this?” Aestrea whispered.

The moment the words left his mouth, a strange chill slid through his spine, not the cold of ice, not his own mana, but something far different.

The wind shifted.

The air grew heavy.

Selene’s body twitched.

Just once.

So slightly he might have missed it, if he hadn’t been watching her so closely.

His eyes narrowed as his body tensed slightly.

“No…” he whispered. “You’re dead. You can’t—”

But the white moon flickered again—

And this time, it pulsed.

Hard.

A beat, like a second heartbeat, thudding through the ground.

And then—

The black mark on his hand answered.

A low hum began to build between them.

Soft at first.

But growing.

Deep.

Like the echo of something ancient stirring far beneath the surface.

Aestrea took a slow step back.

His hand clenched, the symbol on it glowing brighter with each pulse. He looked at Selene’s face, still slack, still lifeless, but now…

Now she looked like something sleeping.

Like she hadn’t died just early.

And the system, quiet until now, suddenly lit up behind his eyes.

[Linked Marks Detected.]

[Condition: Unknown.]

[Synchronization: 13%]

[Warning: Seal destabilizing.]

“…Seal…?” Aestrea whispered, lips parting in disbelief.

The white mark on Selene’s wrist glowed brighter.

[Warning: Seal destabilizing.]

[Awakening…]

The mark on Selene’s wrist flared, pure white light blooming like fire beneath her skin. It traced the veins up her arm, delicate and glowing, like threads of moonlight woven into flesh.

And then—

Her fingers twitched.

One.

Two.

Her hand curled slightly, just enough to make Aestrea stagger a step back, eyes wide with something he hadn’t felt in years.

It wasn’t fear, no.

It was a memory.

He had seen this before.

Not in this life, no… but in the flickers of strange dreams.

A half-white and half-black moon…. and a battlefield soaked in silver light and blood.

A girl with eyes like dying stars.

And a voice—

A voice that had once screamed his name as she fell into darkness.

“Luntheris…”

He blinked, almost as if he had seen a ghost.

However, he could not deny that the sound had came from her lips.

Selene’s lips.

Her eyes were still closed, her face still slack, but her mouth had moved.

And that voice…

It was layered—double-toned—one voice mortal, and the other deep and ancient.

The kind of voice that didn’t speak to you.

It spoke through you.

And his mark responded.

A pulse of darkness shuddered across the back of his hand. The veins in his arm stood out, blackened briefly by whatever power lay sleeping beneath his skin.

“…What are you?” Aestrea muttered.

Selene’s chest jerked once, like someone had yanked a cord attached to her heart.

Her eyes opened.

Not fully.

Just a sliver.

And they weren’t her eyes anymore.

Where once there had been blue, there was now blinding white.

No pupil nor iris.

Just light.

[Synchronization: 31%]

His vision blurred.

The world around him cracked faintly, like glass under stress. He clutched his temple as pain lanced through his skull, memories that weren’t his, voices whispering in languages that sounded older than the planet itself.

And then, her lips moved again.

“A twin moon… cannot be severed.”

A pause.

“Even in death.”

Aestrea stumbled back.

Fwoop!

The air between them warped.

The white light from her crescent mark coiled upward like smoke, and the black from his own rose to meet it, twisting, intertwining.

And as they touched, the system gave one last warning.

[Reawakening: 3% Complete]

Thud.

Crunch…

Aestrea passed out, falling into the pools of blooded snow beneath him.

And slowly, Selene—no, whatever intentity was inside of her, approached Aestrea. She suddenly let her body go, falling right beside Aestrea.

Her hand reached out to stroke his cheek softly, as her white eyes stared intently at his face.

“Luntheris… how I miss you so much,” she muttered softly.

“I’m sorry that I had to make you fight that demon, but if you didn’t kill Selene, I wouldn’t have a way to contact you,” she smiled depressingly.

Her long cyan glowed faintly, turning into a completely snow white color as her eyes took shade of a glowing golden color.

Two moon were imprinted on her pupils.

A white moon and a black moon.

Then, she shifted her body slightly, and pressed her luscious red lips against his.

Glow…

Aestrea’s body started glowing in a deep white and black color. The glow lasted for a few minutes before the entity parted her lips away from Aestrea’s.

Then, she brought her fingers to his eyes, and slowly opened, just to see a crescent shaped mark on both of his eyes, one black, and the other white.

The tattoos on his body had also disappeared, and seeing this, the entity seemed satisfied.

“…I’m sorry Luntheris. But… it’s still too soon,” she added suddenly, putting her head on his chest, feeling his accelerated heartbeat.

“For now… just forget about everything, and instead… you and Selene successfully destroyed the Star Society’s base, and your friendship even elevated to the next level.”

“…You two developed a strange liking for each other.”

As she finally finished those words, her snow-white hair turned back to normal along with her eyes, and then, Selene’s body fell on top of Aestrea’s.

And then…

Blink.

Aestrea parted his eyes open, and then, the memories of him destroying the Star Society’s base and his relationship with Selene improving coursed through his mind.

But strangely…

As he looked at Selene’s sleeping body, he couldn’t help but feel weird.

“…Why do I feel like I’m forgetting something?”

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep