The Heroine is My Stepsister, and I'm her Final Boss-Chapter 174 - 175: Deal?

The border was a charnel house, the crimson sky torn by dragon roars and the wreckage of imperial airships, their mana engines burning like fallen stars. Smoke twisted like dying prayers, black and sulfurous, heavy with the iron scent of blood and the sour stink of burnt flesh. Fairy core dust swirled through the air—a plague of shattered souls, each speck a whispering wail, voices caught between death and memory.

Atlas stood on grass, his golden eyes narrowed to razors, his black hair glued to his skull with sweat, blood, and ash. His body was a ruin—nerve endings frayed, bones cracked like brittle glass, virus and Yggdrasil clawing at his core.

[Healing mitigated... process... healing continued... 36.1%]

He ignored it.

Pain didn’t matter. Not now.

Eli’s presence hit him like gravity bending wrong. Her soul was a storm wrapped in the scent of crushed roses and smoke, familiar and terrifying. Her gaze cut down his spine like a guillotine, unseen but undeniable. She was here. No longer a dream, no longer a shadow wrapped in throne-silk and memory.

"Eli...." He voiced, with ache and longing.

Claire gazed at him—at Atlas—her breath catching slightly as he uttered that name, not like a soldier naming an enemy, but like a man recalling a wound that never healed. There was something in the way his voice broke on the syllables. Ache. Longing. And his eyes... they weren’t on the sky, or the battlefield, but on the imperial crafts above as if searching for someone not yet seen.

Her heart skipped, uncertain. Confused. Thinking the worst possible outcome like it was a habit she could not let go.

’Is he... in love? With someone from the Empire?’ The thought struck her like a stone to the chest, absurd and invasive—but it wouldn’t leave. ’But he never even went to the Empire... not before now. So then—’

Her eyes widened as the realization tried to claw its way into clarity.

The Dark Continent...

The Empress... and Atlas...

The pieces didn’t make sense, not at first. Not fully. But something in her gut twisted, hollow and sick. Like she’d stumbled onto a truth too awful to say aloud.

She stared at him—at the tension in his jaw, the shadow behind his smile, the silence that followed her question. And then, something cracked within her.

’No... no, it’s impossible,’ she told herself. ’She’s the Empress. A legend. A god to some. He wouldn’t—he couldn’t—’

Her throat tightened.

’He wouldn’t choose her.’

But the maybe lingered. It clung to her ribs like a thorn. It haunted her now with every quiet second he didn’t deny it. Every flicker of pain in his expression that didn’t belong to war.

"...Impossible..." she whispered under her breath, shaking her head as if to banish it. "Impossible to the very end."

But her own voice didn’t sound convinced.

She couldn’t ignore it. "Atlas..... what happened..who’s Eli...?" she whispered, voice hollow, as if afraid the answer might shatter something vital.

He didn’t speak. His gaze was fixed skyward, where black airships crept like vultures toward carrion. Their mana fields crackled against the air, warping light like oil on water. He watched without blinking. Without breathing. He’d hoped Eli would stay in her palace of gold and lies. Hoped she’d let him disappear behind the smoke. Hoped wrong.

The second sun—the spell that turned an army to ash—had screamed too loud.

Or maybe it was him. Maybe he was the scream.

{{{...}}}

Claire flinched, eyes flicking from the wreckage to Atlas, No she has to snap out of it... "If they land," she said, voice tight, "what do we do? Your legs are shot. Our scrolls are gone. Our army’s just fodder for those airships."

He didn’t respond immediately. Just stared at the sky as if searching for something deeper than ships. His thoughts bent back—Eli barefoot in a summer field, placing a ring of ivy and wildflowers on his head. A laugh like chimes. Her fingers in his. That warmth. Before it all. Before betrayal, before gods and thrones and ghosts in his blood.

He exhaled. "Same thing I always do."

He met Claire’s eyes. A flicker of madness there. "Win."

Claire’s mouth opened, but no words came. She felt it—something old and terrible curling beneath his skin. Something ancient that should not have survived.

Atlas’s gaze dropped to the her mage staff. Its core hummed softly, the attraction glyph still active. A beacon. The spell aurora reversed engineered.

A spell he now turned to a summoning.

"Still there... mother of dragons," he said aloud. Not to Claire. Not to anyone present. To the sky. To the force beyond it. The one who was always there, wherever the dragons lingered—her presence lingered with them, for she was their mother. The Mother of Dragons.

{{{...}}}

A voice answered—not sound, but sensation. A roar in his bones. A hatred molten and endless.

"What happened?" Atlas hissed. "Mourning your children?"

Atlas smirked. His Truth Eyes flared blood-red. ".....or...Thinking of torturing me to death?"

{{{No, fool. A way to make you beg.}}} she finally responds.

"Oh, don’t give me that angry voice," he replied, his tone edged in mockery. "You sacrificed your dragons to bombard my capital, just for a threat. Don’t pretend you care."

Silence. Then:

{{{...Are you sure?}}}

His lips curled. "Your firstborns. Slain by the Guide and the demons..... I can give them back."

{{{????.....Foolish human... your powers are just because of you are the avatar of the Guide. What could—}}}

Atlas moved.

The knife was already in his hand, cold and whispering with layered enchantments. Before the healer or Claire could shout, he plunged it into his own chest.

The blade sank through flesh, through rib, beside his heart. Blood sprayed, red and thick and wrong—laced with black veins, coiling serpentine.

Jormungandr.

The World Serpent.

Old as the first god-thought. Bound to his soul.

Claire screamed. "Atlas!"

The healer dropped her staff. "Your Highness!"

The mother’s voice faltered. A gasp without lungs.

{{{How... you’re tied to her... Jormungandr... the one who is older than me...}}}

Atlas gritted his teeth, pain flaring like a second sun behind his eyes. "So," he whispered, pulling the blade free with a wet sound, "do we have a deal?"