The Heroine is My Stepsister, and I'm her Final Boss
Chapter 86: I’m Coming

Chapter 86: Chapter 86: I’m Coming

The town wasn’t even marked on most maps. It sat hunched at the edge of two dying trade roads, forgotten between the folds of lowland hills and choked rivers, where the fog came early and the sun always seemed a little too far away. The stone here was soft, brittle from years of rain, and the rooftops sagged with the exhaustion of time. Shutters banged against cracked walls in the wind. Chickens pecked in the mud. The scent of damp wood, sour ale, and boiled grain clung to the air like mildew.

It was a ghost-town with people still in it.

And in its silence, it held something more dangerous than soldiers or spells.

It held Atlas Von Roxweld.

He walked with no fanfare. No escort. Just his cloak, road-dusted boots, and a shadow that didn’t quite match the shape of his body. His hood was low, concealing his face, but not so low that he could not see them—the townspeople. Their gazes were like nails hammered into his spine. Not hostile. Not welcoming. Just... tired.

They did not speak.

They watched.

And every now and then, one of them would look east.

Toward Berkimhum.

Atlas stepped into the clothier’s hut with a quiet creak of the door. Inside, the light was dim and warm, filtered through old curtains. Bolts of fabric lined the walls like faded banners, and behind the counter, a short man with oil-stained fingers was mending a cloak with the quiet patience of someone who had never known wealth.

The moment Atlas pushed back his hood, a single strand of black hair escaping its fold, the tailor froze.

His fingers stopped.

His breath caught.

"P-Prin—?"

Atlas didn’t speak. He held up a hand.

A gold coin landed on the counter with a soft ’clink’. Then another.

The tailor’s mouth closed.

His hands trembled, but he nodded.

"I need clothes," Atlas said simply. "For a friend. Tall. Built like a forge with a.... god complex."

The tailor blinked. Then nodded again. "Yes, Your—yes, of course."

Atlas smiled faintly. "Don’t call me that."

He didn’t stay long.

Outside, the town moved as though underwater. Slow. Murky. A baker shoveled ash from an oven that hadn’t worked properly in weeks. A group of elderly farmers leaned against a crumbling well, sharing weak ale from a dented mug. Children played with a ball of rags, their laughter muted like a memory from another lifetime.

No dreams. No songs.

Just the slow turn of survival.

No sleep. No dreams.

That much was clear.

Atlas could see it in every face.

Red-rimmed eyes. Slowed movements. A collective dullness, like a great breath had been held too long.

The people were tired—’bone-deep’ tired. Not the kind that sleep cured, but the kind that soaked into the soul, when even rest refused to come.

But it wasn’t chaos.

No rioting. No shouting in the streets. No ragged thieves looting bread or desperate men preaching doom from crates and corners. No noble sons riding through on horseback pretending to restore order by violence.

There was ’no panic’.

And that unsettled Atlas more than anything.

This was a kingdom on the verge of war. A kingdom whose soldiers couldn’t sleep, whose nobles plotted behind thin curtains, whose prince had supposedly died and whose heir had returned alone and bloodstained.

He expected to see Berkimhum cracking.

He expected collapse.

But instead...

They stood.

The people walked their slow walks, faces pale, shoulders tense—but they nodded to one another. Traders still haggled over the price of apples, albeit with fewer words. Children played, if quieter. Old men smoked pipe-root with sunken eyes, their silence not hollow, but waiting.

They were afraid, yes.

But not broken.

And there, beneath all the weariness, was something else.

A pulse.

A hum that didn’t come from mana or systems or divinity.

’Assurance.’

A quiet certainty that did not belong in this moment of pre-war dread.

Hope.

’How?’

Atlas slowed as he passed the stone well in the square. A mother was holding her child in her lap, humming something faint and half-forgotten. Across the road, a smith paused his hammer to hand a traveler a drink.

’How are they still standing?’

He narrowed his eyes. He watched more closely.

These people hadn’t been spared the weight of the world. They bore it openly, on bent backs and hollow cheeks. But they bore it anyway.

And now that he was looking for it, he could see the pattern. A shared rhythm. A single center holding it all together.

Not a god. Not a hero.

But a name.

A memory.

Someone had reminded them to believe.

Someone had told them that the dark would pass—even if it hadn’t.

Someone had held a blade not just for victory, but for them.

He didn’t need to ask who.

He felt it in the way they looked eastward, instinctively, as if drawn toward something—or someone—they didn’t even understand.

"...Lara," he said softly, the name blooming like warmth in his chest.

His voice caught, the smallest crack in it betraying what he wouldn’t admit aloud.

She had been the fire while he burned away.

She had spoken for him when even the dead thought him gone.

She had been hope when the kingdom had none.

A strange smile played across his lips.

He looked down at his hands. Still marked with the remnants of shadow and divinity. Hands that had torn through knights and monsters alike.

He had walked through hell.

But she had walked through it without him.

"You... charming little one."

His voice was almost a whisper, drifting with the breeze as his gaze lifted north—toward the capital, where banners still flew and where footsteps waited in echo.

Toward her.

He wondered if she’d felt it too.

That stillness beneath the storm.

That eerie, aching calm that wasn’t absence...

...but anticipation.

He adjusted the bundle of clothes in his arms and turned away.

Toward the forest.

Toward the naked.

The shadows were long when Atlas returned to the edge of the woods. The sun had lowered behind the distant mountains, draping the forest in a veil of dusky gold. He heard it before he saw them—bickering, familiar, alive.

"You know," Loki said, somewhere between smug and theatrical, "I still think I should have gotten silk. It fits my whole tragic aesthetic better."

"You nearly lit your last pair on fire just by sighing too hard," Veil muttered, unfurling from the tree line like a slow exhale of shadow.

Atlas stepped between them, boots crunching against pine needles and soft dirt.

"We ready?" he asked.

Loki turned and struck a mock pose, arms wide. "As I’ll ever be, oh Prince of Ash."

Hey! What took you so long?" came the sharp, wounded voice of a man too proud to admit he needed pants.

Atlas found Loki pacing behind the trees, arms crossed, his very large... everything still swinging in the breeze.

"You know," Loki huffed, "some of the humans already saw me. One old lady giggled. Giggled. Do you know what it feels like to be mocked by someone who smells like pickled cabbage?"

Atlas tossed the clothes at his face.

Loki took the clothes , taking them with mild offense, holding up the green pants with visible disgust.

"...Green?"

"You’re literally naked," Atlas said. "Be thankful I didn’t buy you a dress."

As Loki grumbled and changed behind a tree, Atlas studied him.

The giant’s body was shifting again—his glowing torso dimming, his burning head slowly giving way to hair. Hair like fire woven into shape: gold at the roots, red at the tips. Not quite human. Not quite divine.

"You look more human now," Atlas said. "What is this sorcery? Are all giants like this?"

Loki peeked out, one arm still tangled in the leather jacket.

"Excuse you? Did you just lump me in with those morons who eat rocks and cry when they stub their toes?"

Atlas raised an eyebrow.

"So... yes?"

Loki finally emerged, now dressed in mismatched green pants and a shaggy leather jacket lined with wolven fur. He looked like a warrior who’d lost a drinking bet with a druid.

"I’ll have you know," he said, striking a pose, "I am not just a giant. I am Loki. The most gifted, most irregular, and absolutely unreasonable giant ever banished from polite society."

Veil’s voice cut through the air like a knife through cloth.

"Unique, my ass. You’re a walking embarrassment."

A shadow twisted at Atlas’s feet as Veil emerged, arms crossed, eye glowing faintly.

"Why the fuck can’t you just admit you’re an outcast?"

Loki went still.

His eyes dropped to the ground.

His flame-hair flickered once.

"...Tch."

Atlas gently stomped on Veil’s shadow.

"Hey—!"

"Quiet."

Veil sighed, curling back down.

Loki looked up, surprised to find Atlas reaching out—his hand resting on his shoulder.

"...Sorry about him."

"Wha—? I’m not sorry!" Veil yelled from the ground. "He should be sorry!"

"Shut up."

Atlas sighed.

Loki looked down at Atlas’s hand.

Then grinned.

Wide.

Burning bright.

"Got you," he said, teeth flashing like fire-touched ivory.

Atlas laughed.

"Damn. Here I was, worried you’d gone sensitive on me."

"Sensitive? Me?" Loki stepped forward, arms flaring dramatically. "Please. You think I’d be hurt by the shadow tantrum of a glorified fog-worm?"

"I’M STANDING RIGHT HERE."

Atlas just chuckled, brushing dirt off his cloak.

He walked beside Loki, patting him once on the back.

"I know, buddy. I know."

He glanced up at the sky—soft gray clouds now bleeding into the orange of late afternoon.

His body was fourteen.

But his mind... older. Wiser. Bent beneath gods, guided by demons, touched by truths.

And yet—he felt grounded here.

With them.

One a fire-clad fool.

The other a talking shadow still learning empathy.

’How the hell am I going to guide these two?’ he thought with a sigh.

They started walking.

Their destination was clear now.

The capital.

His kingdom.

Atlas didn’t know what awaited him there. Whether they had started the war, or still assumed he was a corpse rotting in the Dark Continent.

The shopkeeper’s stunned face had told him enough.

They thought he was dead.

They were wrong.

And now, the prodigal son walked quietly through towns that didn’t know whether to fear him, worship him, or pretend he didn’t exist.

But one thing was certain.

He was coming home.

And nothing would ever be the same again.

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