"Ch...Chopper-san...", my voice drowned in the screams that covered the sky above us.

But Chopper didn't even look my way. His eyes were glued to the core of the void that denied any and all light. Only Lady's small figure struggling against it was visible in the sky, which looked like a dark abyss at this point.

"Chopper-san!", I grabbed him by his shoulder and shook him.

He had a horrified look on his face, as he stared at Lady. Most of us were the same.

Grim was the only one who wore a sullen face instead. It looked to me like he'd been expecting something like this but had thought that Lady avoided this outcome. He must have been relieved at the moment because now he looked crushed.

"She should just let go", Grim murmured.

Despite everything, he was one of us. At the very least, he knew Lady before I did.

No, I wasn't even in a position to compare myself to him. I didn't know anything about him or Lady. I wasn't even capable of understanding them.

Because I was at fault. At my core, I really believed that you could fix people like them. EVEN people like them. Fix, perhaps, isn't the right word. There wasn't even anything to fix. But I falsely believed there was. And that meant I was rejecting their wholeness. What I was seeing as cracks and voids in them, were just spaces that made them, them. One whole.

I wasn't able to see that. I deeply regret that. If there is one thing I truly regret, it isn't Prophet's murder at my hands, it isn't Chopper losing his arm for me, it isn't Deli turning into a monster when that was all she wanted to avoid...my regret is that I hadn't met Lady earlier. And I hadn't understood her before it was too late.

"We should-", I couldn't finish what I was about to say.

"No...", Chopper tried to speak but his voice failed.

I'm sure he was able to see, like always, something that the rest of us couldn't. He looked back at Sight.

"Old man..."

Sight read his face. He lifted his hand in front of him again and deployed a barrier all around us. But it was very weak. Soon cracks appeared in it and it shattered just like that. Sight was looking more like a husk at this point.

He quickly redeployed another barrier but soon enough it fell apart too.

"Put some back into it, old man", Chopper said in a low, authoritative voice.

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Sight took a long deep breath and as if, pulling everything together, deployed a barrier.

"It's coming", Grim murmured just before a wave of some immense force emitted out of the void and leveled anything that came in its way.

The wave shattered the barrier.

"Old man!", Chopper yelled as another wave headed our way.

Sight put his all into it. One by one his barriers shattered as the waves ran them down. But the waves were getting more frequent. With every barrier that came down, we were losing ground.

Lady was being swallowed from the inside, getting pulled into the void. But at the same time, it looked like she was the one pulling the void inside herself.

"She should just let go", Grim murmured again.

"And let you win? Heh...", Chopper chuckled, "Ain't no way, right Grim?"

"I wish she would just let go. When will this come to an end?", Grim pondered aloud, as if he wasn't the one to bring this all on us.

"Ya better be ready for when it does", Chopper was grinning and he sounded so bitter.

Sight was spitting blood. We had nowhere to turn to anymore. When his arm dropped by his side, unable to deploy any more barriers, a shredding wave headed towards us.

Chopper cut through it with his dragonized arm. With the other arm, he slashed the air and created a pocket, a small void, to prevent the waves from reaching us.

But they did, and he had to rely on his Ivory arm again to cut through it.

But all the same, we were losing ground. I carried Lubbock back to where Sight and Deli were. Chopper kept cutting through the waves but they were faster than he could keep up with. Even if one of them hit us, we'd all have died.

"Seraph, stay back!", he yelled, pushing me back.

"No", I muttered, foreseeing something sinister lurking around the corner.

I felt something slipping from under my feet, as if I was losing ground. And the sky overhead too, it was getting distant too.

"And besides, it was just the duty we took on years ago. If I'd lost my head instead, I wouldn't have regretted it. But if I'd let down Lady, that...now that would have been a problem."

Chopper's words came back to me and triggered a trail of thought.

"I kept thinking why...she let you have your way. It made me so angry but then I suppose...you really are special."

Deli said that after our duel. Why was I special?

"Once you die, Seraph, you can't go back to the living."

Why had Lubbock said something so obvious, so insignificant?

No. He said it because he knew I'd already have that answer.

And so I did. I knew the answer. But I just wasn't able to see it. The ground was intact beneath my feet. The sky was adequately far away and hanging right over my head.

And Chopper...he was right in front of me.

One, two, three.

The waves were repelled one by one.

"Sight!!!", Chopper yelled for the last time, as a huge wave shredded him to pieces.

Wide-eyed, I gaped at the gruesome act. But I stood there, intact. A barrier shattered in my place.

A barrier...

I looked back. Sight's arm had flung a way back, the same arm he must have used to cast the barrier to protect me. That was all that was left of him. A single arm.

Deli's head rolled to the side. She had shielded Lubbock's body with her own. But to no avail, Lubbock was just a splatter of blood, much like her.

"Aa...", my voice failed me.

Where was the next wave? I was next, right?

RIGHT?!

But it never came. The stillness, the silence, the peace...I hated it. It was disgusting. The fact that it was sticking so close to me made me so mad. I wanted to rip myself to pieces.

In that brief moment that I lost my mind, I knew nothing but pain. A sharp pain that welled from my chest and engulfed me. I shed my humanity then and there. I lost the cover, the deceit.

Ah, I thought, it had finally come.

"If someday you look at yourself and no longer realize it, then you'll know that you've become a monster."

Dear father, I've become a monster.