Reinhard drew in a breath. "You never once had a sister. That girl you call Hel, she isn't real. She's just something created from your delusion and trauma as a way to cope-"

Instantly, Reinhard was knocked back down onto the ground with a familiar boot slamming into his chest. Reinhard's groan cut off as air exploded from his lungs. Then instantly, a spear point pressed against his neck, breaking skin, drawing blood that ran down.

Martha's face transformed into something terrible.

Rage twisted her face, pulling lips back from teeth, and fury blazed in those light blue eyes. But underneath her expression were signs of denial and disbelief flickering.

He saw how her entire body trembled, how the hand that held her spear was trembling, and how she bit her lips.

Around them, gasps erupted.

Joseph tried to push forward, and Marie shouted something incoherent. Even Phineas fell silent, lowering himself onto golden strands that materialized beneath him, his expression shifting into something approaching genuine shock.

"You! You! You!" Martha's voice emerged as a strangled sound. "That's low, even for you, Reinhard. To come up with such a lie-"

Reinhard shook his head, the movement restricted by the spear at his throat, and fresh blood welled from the cut. "I'm not lying."

"Stop-"

"The reason you can't find her. The reason you could never sense her signature." Reinhard's words came faster.. "It's because she never existed-"

Martha's scream tore through the chamber as she lifted the spear, which rose high above her head, and then it plunged downward.

It struck stone inches from Reinhard's head, the point sinking deep into the polished floor with a crack that echoed like thunder. Stone chips flew, cutting his cheek, and the shaft vibrated with the force of impact.

Martha's face loomed over his, twisted beyond recognition. Tears streamed down her cheeks, mixing with the violet-blue strands of hair that fell around them like a curtain. But the rage in her eyes seems to have grown even more with flickering signs of hurt and denial.

"The next lie-" Martha's voice emerged as a whisper more terrifying than any scream. "And you die. Even if that means throwing away any goodwill and care I have for you."

But Reinhard didn't flinch.

His eyes remained calm and steady, watching her face with something close to understanding. There was no flickering of fear, anger, or disgust, but simply calmness, sympathy, and understanding.

Because he understood.

If someone tried to deny Klein and Anna's existence to him. If someone tried to destroy the image he held of his siblings, tried to touch it and corrupt it, tried to tell him Anna had never been real.

He would react the same way, but far worse.

Reinhard would be the one screaming, the one with the spear, the one striking with the spear, and not even threatening.

He closed his eyes as he released Zenuken, and the weapon dispersed into particles of light that faded against the stone floor. His hand moved slowly, toward the bag lying beside him, while his eyes were still closed.

Martha's entire body tensed with her fingers tightened on the spear and her gritting her teeth. Before he raised her spear, but then she froze with her eyes widening.

Her head turned to the right side, and she furrowed her brows while staring at empty air beside her.

Martha's lips parted as she said. "W-Why are you stopping me, Hel?"

There was silence as nothing responded.

"Don't you see this bastard is trying to divide us?" Martha says softly.

Reinhard's fingers found the files.

Paper crinkled as he pulled them free, the sound impossibly loud, and he raised them slowly toward Martha's face.

Martha turned back with brows still furrowed as her gaze dropped to the documents in his outstretched hand.

Her eyes widened as she saw the writing on the paper, even as they bent and were lifted up awkwardly.

"No." The whisper barely carried sound. The spear slipped from her nerveless fingers, and it clattered against stone, the sound echoing l

Martha's hands rose, shaking so badly her fingers blurred, and she looked away, head turning sharply to the side, teeth grinding together. Then she bit her lower lip hard enough to draw blood and turned back.

Her hands snatched the files from Reinhard's grip. Papers rustled as she tore through them, eyes racing across words, across data, across photographs and test results, and clinical observations.

Reinhard's eyes opened before his expression grimaced as he saw the blood draining from Martha's face. He saw her lips going pale, then her cheek, and then everything else while she shook the paper harder after every page.

Martha then stumbled backward before her legs gave out. She hit the ground hard, knees cracking against stone, but she didn't seem to notice. The files scattered around her as her hands flew to her face, fingers pressing into her temples. Then she gripped her head, nails digging into her scalp hard enough to hurt.

"That's an amazing twist!" Phineas's voice cracked through the silence, pitched higher than usual. He'd half-risen from his golden throne. "This is beyond messed up, beyond terrible, this is-"

"They were helping me!" Martha's voice exploded from behind her hands while rocking back and forth. "The researchers were helping me! The doctors were very kind, they wouldn't! They couldn't-"

Martha's hands dropped as she stared at the scattered papers around her knees. In photographs of a young girl with violet-blue hair standing alone in empty rooms. Clinical notes describing delusions, dissociation, and trauma responses. At the test results documenting a single child where there should have been two.

"The tests..." Reinhard flinched at how hollow Martha's words sounded. "The trials they had me do. The rooms where I'd talk to her and they'd watch through the glass." Her breathing quickened, chest heaving. "How none of them could see Hel. How some said she wasn't real. How they'd try to make me understand and I'd-"

Martha froze as she blankly stared.

"I killed them." The words emerged flat, emotionless. "The Mehko researchers who tried to tell me Hel wasn't there. Who said I needed to grow up, to face reality, to let go of my imaginary-"

Martha turned her head slowly to the side, staring at the empty space beside her.

"Hel..." Her hand rose, reaching out toward the emptiness, fingers curled in the air, and grasping nothing. "Why can't I see you anymore?"

Reinhard lightly bit his lip as he saw her hand fall, dropping onto her lap.

"I see." The laugh that escaped her throat was broken glass and shattered bells. "Hahahah. I see now. I see…"

Martha then screamed out loud, one that was nothing like a human, as tears streamed down her face.

It was the sound of something fundamental breaking, of a foundation crumbling, of a world collapsing inward. Her head tilted back, throat straining, face turned toward the fifty-foot ceiling, lost in shadows.

Her expression was frozen in shock, in horror, in the terrible understanding of someone who'd just realized every choice they'd made. Every sacrifice they'd offered, and every line they'd crossed, had been for nothing.

For a sister who had never existed at all.

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