She grew more agitated as she spoke, feeling more and more wronged. "And what's more! Ever since you cleared the River of Souls, sister, those souls lingering in Styxia should have been smoothly ferried to the Nether Realm.
But you must have noticed too, sister? There are practically no new souls in the underworld now! I've been waiting all this time! Not a single one has shown up! It must be him again! He must have intercepted them halfway again!"
"Ahem, ahem..." Phaethon listened to the frantic stream of [Archiving Successful!] prompts from his system in his mind, *ding-ding-ding-dinging* like New Year's fireworks, and awkwardly rubbed his nose.
But... with this batch, it seemed his system had almost collected the "folders" for all the departed from this lifetime?
No wonder his System had gone quiet ever since entering the Nether Realm. It was probably busy in the background now?
"And also! Sister!" Polyxia, as if having found her protector, began enumerating Phaethon's "crimes." She tugged at Castorice's sleeve, pointing at herself.
"Have you ever seen a good person who, upon first meeting, stabs someone with a big, hot, long sword? And stabs them several times over! The first time was a sneak attack from behind... *Pffft*! And then the pain I felt..."
"Hey, hey, hey! Hold on right there, Miss Polyxia! Please watch your wording!" Phaethon felt his scalp go numb. He had to refute this statement immediately, as it sounded incredibly strange no matter how you heard it, seriously damaging his upright image!
"That was to help your sister wake you up! It was a tactical necessity! A necessary combat exchange!"
"Wah... Sister, look at him! He's being mean to me!" Polyxia immediately retreated behind Castorice, letting out a whimpering sound like a small animal.
Castorice looked at the two "clowns"—one pitifully tattling, the other helplessly defending himself—and then at this peaceful, serene, yet utterly empty sea of Nether Realm flowers. For a moment, an expression of helplessness surfaced on her usually cool face.
...
Finally, as if having poured out a thousand years' worth of loneliness and words, Polyxia's voice gradually softened, like a tranquil beach after the tide recedes.
Her agitation and grievance quietly faded, and she reverted to the quiet, gentle girl who sat eternally at the heart of the flower sea with sorrow and tenderness, though a sense of release now lingered in the depths of her eyes.
Castorice also finally regained some composure, but her heart grew heavier from what she had heard.
She relaxed her tense shoulders, her voice so soft it seemed afraid to disturb the tranquility of the flower sea:
"Now... can you tell me? Polyxia, why do you call me sister? What exactly... did you do to make me 'return'?"
"Where should I begin?" Polyxia's voice was gentle as if singing an ancient elegy, completely different from before.
"Perhaps... from the very beginning. From the moment the prophecy descended."
On the other side, Phaethon did not overly disturb the sisters' reunion.
He wandered through the violet-blue flower sea, his fingertips tentatively tracing the void, sensing the Nether Realm's unique and complex spatial laws, studying the possibility of stably opening the Infinity Gate here.
As for Castorice and Polyxia's past, he already understood the tragic outline in his heart—a simple yet unbearably heavy story.
Once, there were twin sisters, of the same origin, hearts connected. An ancient prophecy decreed that one of them would become the successor to the authority of Death, supporting one pole of the world's cycle.
Yet fate played a cruel trick. The price of godhood was brutal—they had to personally take the life of their closest kin as a sacrifice to fully align with the law of death.
At the final moment, Castorice chose self-sacrifice, gifting the chance for life and the divine seat to her younger sister Polyxia, while she herself embraced annihilation.
But Polyxia could not accept the cold throne bought at the price of her sister's eternal disappearance.
Therefore, at the very moment of ascending to become the new world's Titan of Death, fueled by immense grief and obsession, she leveraged her nascent, unstable authority to defiantly shatter the absolute, unbreachable boundary between life and death.
This heaven-defying act had terrible and far-reaching consequences:
Castorice returned, but in another form—she became the "living half" of the Death Titan, yet was burdened with a cruel, touch-of-death curse, becoming a walking incarnation of death herself.
And Polyxia, who should have presided over death as the "dead half," "died" in the mortal realm at the moment of the law's reversal. Her existence became deeply bound to the Nether Realm, never to leave again.
From then on, the cycle of life and death was completely severed. The souls of the dead could not cross the River of Souls, forced to wander endlessly on the shallows. Styxia perished completely due to the disorder of death's rules.
Polyxia's selfish desire to save her beloved's life ultimately wrote a fate heavier than death itself, for both Castorice and the entire world.
...
"So... has this moment finally arrived?" As Polyxia's gentle narration drew to a close, Castorice's heart trembled violently. She finally understood everything completely.
Understood the cruel, singular trajectory of fate laid before them—a dead-end path paved by Polyxia's own hands, yet ultimately leading to separation.
If she wished to retrieve the lost Coreflame of Death, reshape the order of life and death, and become the complete, stable death demigod the world needed...
She had to personally end her sister's life—the life extended for her sake, yet bound for a thousand years because of her—completing the sacrifice delayed for a millennium.
"All of this is my punishment for recklessly altering life and death, for defying the rules. But I have never regretted bringing you back..."
Polyxia's voice remained gentle, carrying a heartbreaking sense of release and no regrets.
"Sister, I believe you are prepared now. But, sister, you must absolutely not... forget me..." Her smile was pale and beautiful, carrying the weight of a final farewell.
She softly recited the long-fated, cold divine Prophecy: "After all... as the prophecy foretolds: "At the end of the sea of flowers, the souls of the living shall warm thy fingertips and after an embrace… there shall be eternal separation."
"Polyxia..." Castorice's voice was utterly broken. Trembling, she stepped forward and tightly embraced her frail sister in the wheelchair, as if trying to meld her into her very bones and blood. Silent tears soaked into the other's cold garments.
A gentle breeze, from nowhere in particular, softly blew through, sweeping up a sky full of violet-blue petals like a beautifully sorrowful rain of flowers.
Amidst the swirling petals, the weight in Castorice's arms quietly vanished... Polyxia's form dissolved into fine motes of light dust, gently dispersing into the Nether Realm air along with the scent of flowers, as if she had never existed at all.