Chapter 508: A Christmas Goodbye

A Christmas Goodbye

The devil stared at Niva in disbelief.

For a moment, it wondered if it had heard her wrong.

The words that had just come out of her mouth were nothing like what it had expected. Not even close.

The battlefield fell silent.

The devil had imagined many things. It had expected a hero to stand against it. Someone who carried the light of righteousness in their heart. Someone who wielded a legendary weapon and swore to protect the world, even if it meant sacrificing their own life.

That was what a hero was supposed to be, wasn’t it?

Someone noble. Someone selfless. Someone willing to put the lives of others before their own.

But the woman standing before it?

Niva was nothing like that.

Her clothes were torn and stained with blood. Her body was covered in wounds, and exhaustion clung to her like a second skin. Every breath she took came with an effort.

Yet her eyes remained clear.

There was no righteous anger in them. No burning desire to punish evil. She wasn’t standing there because she wanted to become a legend, either.

She didn’t care if anyone called her a hero.

In fact, Niva was probably the last person who would ever describe herself that way.

She was selfish. Crude. And far from innocent.

Her hands had been stained with the blood of countless people and monsters. She had killed without hesitation when the situation demanded it. She had lied to survive, deceived those who tried to deceive her, and crushed anyone who stood in her way.

She had never pretended to be a saint.

If someone judged her by her actions alone, they would probably call her a ruthless woman. Perhaps even a monster.

A hero?

That would have been the last word to cross their minds.

And yet, as the devil looked into her eyes, it slowly came to understand something.

Something that Niva herself might never have realized.

She was exactly the kind of person who deserved to be called a hero.

Not because she wanted to save the world.

Not because she wanted people to worship her.

And certainly not because she believed herself to be righteous.

No.

It was much simpler than that.

Niva had something she refused to abandon.

Her family.

That was all.

The devil continued to stare at her.

For a creature that had witnessed countless battles and watched countless lives rise and fall, there was something almost incomprehensible about this human’s determination.

People could be tempted.

Those who craved glory could be promised fame. Those who desired power could be offered strength beyond their wildest dreams. Even those who claimed to fight for justice could sometimes be swayed by the right words.

Everyone had something they wanted.

And most people could be made to abandon their principles if the price was right.

But Niva?

What could it possibly offer her?

What could ever be worth more to her than the people waiting on the other side of that tunnel?

The devil searched for an answer.

It found nothing.

Niva had already made her choice.

The tunnel was closed.

Her world was safe.

Her family was safe.

For her, that was enough.

She didn’t need a reward. She didn’t need recognition. She didn’t even need to survive, so long as the people she loved could continue living.

Slowly, the devil’s expression changed.

Perhaps, for the first time, it finally understood.

This woman hadn’t endured everything because she was particularly noble or because she possessed some extraordinary sense of justice.

She had endured it because she had someone to return to.

And when everything else had been stripped away from her, that one reason had remained.

Niva had never thought of herself as a hero.

She had simply refused to abandon her family.

The devil let out a quiet breath.

Then, without another word, it moved.

Niva moved at the same instant.

There was no need for another exchange. No point in wasting time on meaningless declarations.

They both knew how this would end.

Or, at the very least, they knew what they had to do.

The moment they collided, the surrounding space trembled.

Niva’s battered body surged forward. Every remaining ounce of strength gathered into her attack. Her muscles screamed in protest, and the wounds covering her body threatened to tear open.

She ignored all of it.

The devil met her head-on.

Its overwhelming power crashed against hers, sending violent shock waves through the battlefield.

BOOM!

The earth shattered beneath their feet.

Cracks spread across the ground. Rocks were torn apart and hurled into the air. The space around them twisted under the sheer force of their attacks.

Neither of them backed down.

Neither gave the other a chance to breathe.

Niva knew she might die here.

There was no point pretending otherwise.

Her body was already pushed to its limit. She had suffered too many injuries, endured too much pain, and spent too much of herself reaching this moment.

But she didn’t hesitate.

She had already done what she came here to do.

Her family was safe.

The tunnel was closed.

Whatever happened next, she had no intention of letting the devil undo everything she had fought for.

The devil, too, understood what was at stake.

It could destroy Niva.

It possessed enough power to crush her completely.

But as long as she stood in its way, it couldn’t reach its goal.

And so, neither side yielded.

One fought to protect the world she had returned to.

The other fought because a mere human had dared to stand in its path.

Their final clash lasted only an instant.

Then the entire battlefield disappeared beneath a blinding explosion.

The light swallowed everything.

The earth.

The sky.

The shattered remains of their battlefield.

And the two figures locked in their final confrontation.

When everything was over, the devil was dead.

And so was Niva.

...

Niva remembered those final moments as though they had happened only yesterday.

Even now, the memories remained painfully clear.

The explosion.

The overwhelming force of the collision.

The moment she realized that she might never see her family again.

But out of everything she had experienced, there was only one thing she truly regretted.

She hadn’t been able to say goodbye.

Not properly.

Not for a second time.

That thought hurt more than any wound she had ever suffered.

She had spent three whole years trying to return home.

Three years of fighting, struggling, and clawing her way through one nightmare after another.

There had been countless moments when she thought she wouldn’t make it. Countless nights when she had wondered if she would ever see her family again.

And yet, somehow, she had returned.

She had seen their faces.

She had heard their voices.

For a brief moment, she had been able to believe that everything was finally going to be all right.

Then she had been forced to leave again.

And this time, she hadn’t even gotten the chance to say goodbye.

Niva lowered her head.

Her eyes slowly closed.

A tear slipped from the corner of her eye and rolled down her cheek.

Then another followed.

She didn’t bother wiping either of them away.

What was the point?

There was no one here to see her crying.

And even if someone did see her, she didn’t particularly care.

For the first time in what felt like an eternity, she allowed herself to feel the sadness she had kept buried deep inside.

Her shoulders trembled faintly.

She tried to hold it back at first. It was an old habit by now, one she had developed through years of hardship.

Whenever things went wrong, she endured them.

Whenever she was hurt, she kept moving.

Whenever she wanted to cry, she swallowed the feeling and dealt with whatever came next.

There had always been something more important to do.

Someone she needed to protect.

Some obstacle she needed to overcome.

She had never really given herself the chance to stop and feel sorry for what she had lost.

But now?

There was nothing left to fight.

No enemy waiting around the corner. No dangerous journey ahead of her. No desperate struggle to survive.

For once, she could simply sit still.

And that was when the sadness finally caught up with her.

She had faced devils without fear.

She had walked through hell.

She had survived battles where death had been no more than an arm’s length away.

Yet none of those things had hurt quite like this.

Because no matter how strong she became, there was one thing she could never do.

She could never go back and change that final moment.

She could never return to the day she had left her family behind and tell them everything she had wanted to say.

She couldn’t hug them one last time.

She couldn’t reassure them that she would be all right.

She couldn’t even tell them that she loved them.

Niva’s fingers curled into her palms.

Her throat tightened.

I should have said goodbye...

The words echoed inside her mind.

She wanted to say them aloud, but her lips barely moved.

In the end, the words never left her mouth.

They remained trapped somewhere deep in her chest, tangled with all the feelings she had spent so long trying to ignore.

Niva sat there quietly.

For a little while, she simply let herself feel miserable.

She had no desire to think about the future. No desire to figure out what came next.

Right now, she just wanted to be left alone with her regrets.

Then, suddenly, a familiar voice broke the silence.

"Big bro, why are you crying?"

Niva’s eyes snapped open.

Every trace of movement vanished from her body.

For several seconds, she simply sat there, staring ahead.

She knew that voice.

She knew it so well that she could have recognized it in the middle of a storm.

But that was impossible.

There was no way she could be hearing it here.

Slowly, Niva raised her head.

She almost didn’t dare to look.

Some foolish part of her was afraid that if she turned around too quickly, whatever she was hearing would disappear.

Her breathing grew shallow.

Then she saw them.

Standing right in front of her were the people she had thought she would never see again.

Her family.

Her little sister.

Her mother.

Her father.

All of them.

They were right there, close enough for her to see their faces.

Niva stared.

She forgot to breathe.

For a moment, her mind simply refused to process what her eyes were showing her.

Her lips parted slightly, but no sound came out.

She couldn’t speak.

She couldn’t even bring herself to move.

Her little sister was looking at her with that same familiar expression Niva remembered from childhood. There was a hint of curiosity on her face, mixed with the sort of concern that had always made Niva feel both helpless and strangely comforted.

Her mother stood nearby.

Just seeing her brought back more memories than Niva could bear to face all at once. The warmth of her presence, the familiar look in her eyes, the countless little things Niva had once taken for granted.

She had carried those memories for what felt like hundreds of thousands of years.

And now, somehow, the woman herself was standing in front of her.

Her father was there, too.

Calm as ever.

He looked just as Niva remembered him. There was something reassuring about that familiar expression, something that made her chest ache even more.

It was impossible.

It couldn’t be real.

Could it?

Niva stared at them for another few seconds.

Then her mind began searching for an explanation.

Did I do this?

Perhaps she had unconsciously used the power of her soul to recreate them.

Perhaps this strange place had sensed the deepest desire buried within her heart and brought it to the surface.

Maybe it had taken her memories and given them familiar faces.

If that was what had happened, then the people standing before her weren’t really her family.

They were only copies.

Puppets made from her memories.

Imitations that looked, sounded, and behaved like the people she loved.

Niva’s heart sank.

She knew better than to mistake an illusion for reality. She had lived long enough and suffered enough to understand how cruel such things could be.

An illusion could show her everything she wanted to see.

It could let her hear every word she wished she had heard.

It could even give her the chance to say all the things she had left unsaid.

But that wouldn’t make any of it real.

No matter how convincing these people were, they couldn’t replace her actual family.

They couldn’t erase the fact that she had failed to say goodbye.

They couldn’t undo what had happened.

And yet...

Niva slowly lowered her gaze.

A faint, bitter smile appeared on her face.

Even if they’re fake...

She paused.

Maybe that’s okay.

At least for now.

She was feeling like absolute shit, and she didn’t have the energy to pretend otherwise.

She knew that speaking to these fake versions of her family wouldn’t magically make the pain disappear. It wouldn’t change the past or give her back the time she had lost.

Nothing could do that.

And when the illusion ended, she would still be left with the same regret.

She understood all of that.

But right now, she was tired.

Tired of fighting.

Tired of pretending she was fine.

Tired of carrying everything alone.

For once, she didn’t want to be strong.

She didn’t want to act like someone who had everything under control.

She just wanted to sit with her family for a little while longer.

Even if they weren’t real.

Even if every word they spoke was nothing more than an echo of her own memories.

Even if she knew that, sooner or later, she would have to say goodbye all over again.

Niva slowly lifted her head.

Her eyes were still wet, and the tears hadn’t stopped falling.

She looked at the familiar faces before her, trying to memorize every little detail, even though she already knew them by heart.

For a brief moment, she hesitated.

There were so many things she wanted to say.

So many things she had kept inside for far too long.

But when she finally opened her mouth, all she could manage was a small, trembling breath.

She looked at her little sister again.

And for the first time since arriving in this place, Niva didn’t try to hide how much she was hurting.