The Heroine is My Stepsister, and I'm her Final Boss-Chapter 64: Elizabeth

Atlas’s golden eyes blazed like molten suns, reflecting not just the cold truth before him but the inferno raging within. His hands trembled—not from pain, but from restraint. He clenched them tightly, nails biting deep into his palms as if trying to anchor himself, to keep from unraveling under the weight of it all.

Don’t break. Don’t give in. Not here. Not now.

He didn’t even realize he was holding his breath until the air caught in his throat, thick with the scent of cold metal and old regrets.

Eli stood before him—no, not Eli. Elizabeth. Empress. Enemy. Her frost-crowned silhouette framed by the ruins of something sacred. The walls of the cave groaned as temperature dropped again, and the last of the mist hanging between them crystallized mid-air, shattering like promises too brittle to survive.

Her violet gaze flickered. Just once. A single crack in the armor. Atlas saw it—caught it like a blade between the ribs—and for a moment, it staggered him. Because behind the crown, behind the mask, behind the duty—

She was still her.

And that was the cruelest part. "No...," she whispered again. Softer this time. Her voice trembled. "If you don’t want me.....if ....you dont want me, Atlas. I will just take you. You and your beloved kingdom."

The voiced with ambition.

Atlas gritted his teeth. Hearing her insanity. then—

The firelight memory rose.

A little boy clutching a sister’s hand. A battlefield strewn with corpses. Dracula’s castle, soaked in red. The sound of children sobbing beneath burning rooftops. Lara’s voice screaming his name, fractured in horror.

His jaw clenched.

".....No?"The word cleaved the silence. It struck like thunder.

Each syllable carried the weight of centuries.

Each pause burned like law being rewritten.

"Your words have no power on me....Not anymore," he said. "And, I will not let my kingdom down. You will never win....And certainly you will never have me. "

Elizabeth staggered. Not visibly—but Atlas felt the recoil. The air pulsed. A spiderweb of fractures spread across the icy floor at her feet.

"You think I want this?" she choked. "You think I ’chose’ to stand here and offer you ultimatums? To watch you look at me like... like I’m some kind of monster?"

"You chose your crown," Atlas growled. "And I chose my kingdom. Even if it’s broken. Even if it’s bleeding."

He stepped closer. His mana flared brighter with every footfall, a golden aura haloing his figure like a sun burning through stormclouds.

"My father was a rot itself. A drunk bastard who buried his own blood for pride. But Berkimhum isn’t his anymore. It’s mine. It belongs to its people. And if you think I’ll kneel while your empire burns what is mine—"

His eyes narrowed. "Then you’ve underestimated me worse than anyone ever has."

Elizabeth’s shoulders trembled. "Atlas....i know your power. Its not enough." She voiced, as she gulped.

"I beg of you again. Please...This doesn’t have to be the end," she said, but her voice was unraveling. "We could rule together. Side by side. Imagine it—no war, no death. A union of empires. You’d never have to lose anyone again."

She stepped forward, hands outstretched—not commanding, but begging. For the first time in her entire life. She pleaded. Not for herself but for him.

And for the smallest moment...

Atlas hesitated.

Because he saw it. The vision she painted. He saw Lara alive, untouched by war. Sansa baking in a quiet town. He saw himself at peace. Not as a king, not as a soldier. Just a man. A man who had finally stopped fighting.

But that vision came with a cost. One he’d have to pay in silence. In complicity. In memory.

And that was a currency he no longer had.

"For the last time, i will say it again.....I don’t need your throne," he growled, stepping back until the distance between them felt like a void carved by fate. "And I sure as hell don’t need your pity."

His voice rose with the wind. His aura crackled, golden lightning dancing across the frozen stone.

"If the Empire wants war, fine. They’ll get it. But know this, Elizabeth..."

He locked eyes with her. And this time, there was no warmth.

"If you march against Berkimhum, I won’t hold back. I’ll burn your armies to ash. I’ll raze your cities to the ground. And when your people beg for mercy..."

His voice dropped, sharper than a blade drawn across skin.

"I’ll make sure they remember who gave the order."

Elizabeth’s breath caught.

And then he said it.

"And you—you’ll regret it for the rest of your life."

Something broke in her. A fissure, deep and unseen. She opened her mouth to speak, but no sound came. Her fingers rose, trembling, reaching for something already fading.

A memory. A man. A future never meant to exist.

I’m losing him, she thought.

I already have.

Atlas turned away. His presence stretched across the glittering floor, long and sharp, like a scar drawn across crystal.

I can’t watch her become this, he told himself.

But a part of him screamed. The boy in him. The one who’d once laughed with her under stars, with mud on their faces and blood on their hands.

That boy wanted to turn back.

But the man? The man had already chosen.

[Deactivate ’Observer Perspective’.]

The world flickered—colors bleeding away. The cold of the Sixth realm receded. The image of her froze one last time, mouth open, hand reaching.

And then it vanished. freeweɓnøvel.com

Outside the void of sight, a single tear finally escaped Elizabeth’s eye—too late, too cold.

It struck the stone, hissed, and vanished in steam.

Like a memory burned before it could freeze.

Elizabeth didn’t move.

Not right away.

She simply stood there, motionless, as the illusion of his presence faded from her senses like smoke through open fingers. Her arm was still half-outstretched, palm hovering in the air where she had once felt his presence —a futile gesture, a relic of hope already dead.

The silence that followed wasn’t quiet.

It was punishment.

Atlas’s absence didn’t feel like a vanishing. It felt like an eclipse—like the world had dimmed in his wake, like the light had chosen to follow him and leave her in shadow.

She lowered her hand slowly, fingers curling inward until her nails bit into her palm. A shallow sting. Not enough to draw blood. Not enough to distract her from the chasm splitting open inside her chest.

He had called her by her ’real name’. Not Eli. Not Captain. Not partner.

Elizabeth.

The word was clinical. Distant. Like a verdict.

And worse—he hadn’t just turned away.

He had turned her into a stranger.

Her knees buckled. She dropped to the ground with no grace, no ceremony. The cold bit through the fabric of her leggings, through skin and bone, until it settled deep in her marrow. Still, she didn’t shiver. ’Grief was a better freeze than ice’.

She stared at the floor. Cracks spiderwebbed through the frost. The ground hadn’t splintered from magic, but from choice. His.

She clenched her fists against the stone, breath catching on a sob that refused to escape. The wind howled through the cave mouth behind her, threading itself around her like a noose.

She tried to hold onto anger.

But all she had left was ’hollowness’.

The kind that echoed.

’Why did you hesitate?’ she screamed inwardly. ’Why didn’t you just say yes? Lie. Just this once. Lie to him the way the world always lied to you.’

A memory surged—him laughing, once, during one of their first camping. He’d been covered in mud, one boot stuck in a sinkhole, and still he’d grinned like a boy seeing the stars for the first time.

That version of him had died long ago. Maybe she’d killed him, piece by piece, with every secret, every withheld truth, every step deeper into the Empire’s cold machinery.

She had begged him to join her.

Not as a soldier.

Not as a pawn.

But as something far more dangerous: her ’equal’.

And he had looked her in the eyes and said no.

Not for cruelty.

But because he ’still believed’ in something she had long since burned to the ground.

That made it worse.

"Why couldn’t i just lie to him...?" she whispered aloud, her voice breaking like thin glass under strain.

She wiped her eyes with trembling fingers. Her tears had frozen against her skin before they could fall. They left thin white streaks—like the trails left by meteors across a night sky.

The realm felt enormous now. Empty. Too wide for a single body. Too loud for a single silence.

Elizabeth curled inward, resting her forehead to the cold ground where his shadow had been moments before.

She pressed her lips to the frost—like a prayer, like an apology, like a goodbye.

But it gave her no warmth in return.

***

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