Chapter 605: Chapter 605 - Taming Hate Larissa continued telling Luna everything she had just remembered. The words flowed slowly at first, then with more fluidity as she described the events. She explained about the mutants’ retreat in more detail after they had made sure they’d gone far away, about the future situation with the ’bad Starweavers’, about the political implications Luna would have to solve little by little. Luna listened in silence, occasionally asking questions to clarify details, but mainly absorbing the information with intense concentration. When Larissa finished, the room remained silent for several seconds while Luna processed everything she had heard. But then Luna looked at her directly, and Larissa immediately recognized the serious expression in her eyes that meant her friend had detected something that wasn’t being completely honest. "All that information is very thorough, thank you," Luna said slowly, "but you didn’t tell us what happened with you specifically at the beginning." Liora, who was beside Luna on the bed, nodded repeatedly with an expression of wanting to hear more about that too. Larissa blinked, trying to appear confused. "What do you mean?" "You fused and disappeared the moment you read Julius’s message. When you realized Ren was with him." Luna sat up more in her bed, ignoring the murmurs of protest from María and Matilda who were trying to keep her resting. She couldn’t follow as Liora and her had to keep defending the wall, but they wanted to know. All of it... "What happened in those moments, Larissa? What exactly happened where Ren was?" she asked, slightly blushing. Larissa felt her cheeks flush slightly as well. She had hoped to avoid the more personal details of her experience, but she knew Liora, Mayo, and Luna well enough to know they wouldn’t drop the subject. She closed her eyes for a moment, allowing the memories to return with complete clarity. ♢♢♢♢ The moment she had read Ren’s name in Julius’ letter, something had broken inside her chest. All the time avoiding him, all the emotional defenses she had carefully constructed, had disintegrated in an instant. The fusion had been instinctive, desperate, driven by a need that went beyond logic. Her Greater Spiritual Fairy and her Horned Snow Spirit had combined and duplicated within her in a configuration she had never attempted before, forming a wing of light with each of the resulting clones. But the wings of pure light that had propelled her through the air at extreme speeds hadn’t been the most useful help for the journey. Rather, her incredibly long jumps had been. With Larissa elevated high in the air above the wall, visibility was excellent. Each jump had covered kilometers, her fused form harnessing mana with great efficiency to maintain momentum that would otherwise have been impossible. She had been a blur of speed and light. Everything had happened incredibly fast, but paradoxically, in her light form her thinking that had functioned much faster, made it as if the entire world moved in super slow motion around her. During those stretched moments, while flying and leaping toward the epicenter of the strange but familiar energy she had sensed, her mind had been a whirlwind of conflicting emotions. Of course she wanted to know if Julius and the others were okay. Of course she wanted to help if they needed assistance. But what had stressed her most, what had dominated every accelerated thought, had been a much more personal and terrifying question. What would she do when she finally saw him? What would she say after years of silence? What would she feel when standing before him for the first time since that terrible day when he’d had to take away the fragment? Would there be hatred in her eyes? The thoughts had swirled in her mind throughout the entire flight, every possible scenario playing out at accelerated speed as she drew closer and closer to her destination. But when she had finally arrived, when she had seen the scene unfolding below, everything had gone blank. The image she had witnessed hadn’t been anything she would have expected, even in her worst nightmares. Was that really Ren? Was Ren really attacking Selphira and Julius? Her accelerated mind had processed the visual information at high speed, confirming what seemed impossible to believe. Ren, wrapped in corrupted energy, with eyes blazing intense violet light, raising his hand to attack two people who had repeatedly tried to protect him. She didn’t want to believe it, but... Indeed, Ren was acting like the villain. The perfect moment to hate him, to reproach him for everything that had happened, to attack him and confirm that it had been a mistake to trust him from the beginning. All the pain she had been carrying, all the repressed rage, could have finally found valid justification. But instead of hatred, she had felt pure terror. Terror not of him, but for him. She had seen Selphira preparing a final desperate attack. At the same time, Larissa had pushed her last spatial jump without thinking, driven by pure instinct, positioning herself directly in front of Ren. She hadn’t known exactly what Selphira’s attack was, nor had she planned to use or amplify it upon arriving just afterward. She had simply jumped... She had been trying to take advantage of something happening, hoping that after Selphira’s attack she could make some difference. But unintentionally, she had arrived at the exact instant before the drop touched Ren. Unintentionally, her luminous presence had amplified the attack’s effect, her elemental nature resonating with the purifying energy and multiplying its potency. The result had been that Ren’s face, freed from darkness, had ended up directly in front of hers as the light gradually cleansed the corruption from his features. In that moment of time stretched to the maximum by her accelerated form, Larissa had looked directly into Ren’s eyes as a small part of the darkness slowly faded. And what she had seen had destroyed her. Even filled with violet corruption, even distorted by energies that shouldn’t exist in a human body, his eyes had been charged with emotions that even corrupt mana couldn’t lie about. Immense pain. Fear that went beyond the physical. Anguish that seemed to be tearing him apart from inside. And above all, regret so deep it seemed to be drowning him. All of that exploding in him just from seeing her for a moment. Her heart had tightened with an intensity that had been physically painful. Was Ren really feeling so much upon seeing her? Had her mere presence affected him so much even in his corrupted state? She had known he was empathetic, that he would surely feel bad for her. But to that extent? To being devastated by emotional pain... Understanding had come like an avalanche. She couldn’t hate him. Maybe she already knew that... but it was much clearer after understanding that he had been suffering as much as she had, maybe more. As the energy on his face had slowly cleansed itself of the dark energy and his transformation had gradually reverted, Larissa had remembered Liora and Luna’s mentions of their "dates" with Ren. Their kisses on the cheek, their stolen romantic moments. She had resigned herself to the fact that she had arrived late, that her friends had moved forward while she had been hiding in her pain. But now she was also glad, because she had finally understood something fundamental about herself. Deep down, she simply couldn’t hate him. So she had closed her eyes and given him the kiss she had been imagining after hearing about Liora’s one and discovering Luna’s secret one too. It hadn’t been planned or calculated. It had been the most honest thing... a moment of pure emotional truth that cut through all the barriers, pretenses and fears that had kept them apart.