Yoona let out a slow breath as she watched Jessica collapse onto the dirt, dust clouding around her still frame. Pausing for a moment, Yoona willed her heart to calm. She did it. She had defeated Jessica.

With this realisation at the fore, Yoona sluggishly made her way over to Jessica. Feet dragging, Yoona was well aware of the serious wound on her chest but she found she couldn't care less. Fatigue had etched itself onto her skin and settled into her bones. Her face was streaked with dirt and blood, her clothes cut and tattered in places. Evidence of the battle lay in burning debris, blackened corpses and crumbling ruins around her but she paid them no mind. Even the faint flicker of her magic didn't alarm her as it should have.

Sica put up quite a fight, Yoona thought dryly.

Kneeling beside her opponent's body, Yoona eyed Jessica's features and noted that she was still breathing. Albeit very faintly, it was still something. Physically though, Jessica looked better off than her. Jessica's dress weren't ruined and her porcelain features were only slightly smudged with soot. She didn't bear any cuts and hadn't shed a drop of blood, but that was simply because Yoona had been careful. Severing magic from the soul was a complex process. Yoona had tried not to hurt her too much.

"Why did you do it, Sica?" Yoona asked her, her voice cracking.

Jessica had been staring at the grey sky with a blank face, unmoving and growing faint. Their battle had been so fierce that they had destroyed the city and managed to create a film of black and grey that blocked out the sun and thickened the air for miles around. The wreckage could not have harboured any survivors. That was the sort of devastation she had caused.

At the question, Jessica turned her baby-brown-eyed stare at Yoona and though she said nothing, her eyes spoke volumes. Jessica only reply for Yoona was a minute jerk of the hand resting on her chest.

Yoona bowed her head. "I managed to get most people to safety but I–" she paused, pain flashing across her youthful features. "I couldn't save everyone. I can't, that's what you always told me." Her tongue was parched but she tried to level her voice. "You were the know-it-all, after all."

The corner of Jessica's mouth twitched. The inflections in Yoona's voice were very alike to her eyes, always speaking more than they had ever bothered to say.

"And despite of everything you knew, you decided to destroy everything anyway." A heartbeat passed. "You grew up in a happy household, Sica. You smiled readily to everyone you saw. You had people in your life who loved you. I thought you were happy. I..." Yoona paused. "I never saw this coming. No one did. Deep down, did you really hate the world that much?" She peered into Jessica's face but Jessica was much too weak to show her anything.

It didn't make sense at all. In Yoona's mind, she still couldn't connect Jessica and this calamity together. Both were such polar opposites that she had trouble with the fact that it was reality. Jessica was a ray of sunshine. She was bright, optimistic, cheerful. In Yoona's mind, Jessica didn't destroy or murder. What could have gone so wrong to have brought this down on them?

Swallowing, Yoona scrambled to continue before her arid throat finally got the better of her. "I'm sorry, you know, if you do hate the world enough to try to destroy it. I blame myself for not noticing earlier." She her lips. "I'll always ask if it was my fault. That, somewhere, I messed up. I only realised what you were up to when you... gave me that look." Yoona remembered Jessica's face clearly in that moment several hours ago. Jessica had looked at her with eyes that simply whispered I'm so sorry. Yoona hadn't fully understood the meaning until Jessica had let loose a pillar of flames from her hands. The images were burned into Yoona's memory, vivid and horrific. She shook her head as if to clear it. "It doesn't make sense. Sica... What did you have to gain?"