The inside of the German base was a silent stone tomb.
The torches barely flickered.
The echo of Joseph's footsteps bounced down empty corridors, growing more frantic with each step.
Beside him, Lisa Lisa remained composed—but her Hamon crackled uncontrollably. The tension was overwhelming her.
"Caesar said he was coming here," Joseph muttered through clenched teeth. "That he could handle this on his own. Damn stubborn idiot!"
No one answered.
Not the wind.
Not the stone.
Not the script.
Joseph clenched his fist.
"He said he just wanted to check something… and I let him go. I LET HIM GO!"
They turned a corner. A collapsed wall.
A wide, damp space, stained by war.
And there they saw it.
The cross.
The bloodstains.
A torn scarf.
Faded bubbles.
And nothing else.
Joseph froze.
His throat tried to form words, but none came.
He just took a step.
Then another.
He knelt before the wreckage.
There was no body.
But there was far too much silence to lie to himself.
"…No," he whispered.
Lisa Lisa approached.
Placed a hand on his shoulder.
"Joseph—"
"NO!" he yelled, shoving her aside.
He dug through the rubble, desperate, searching for… something. A hand. A leg. A bubble.
A miracle.
But he didn't find one.
"Caesar! Caesar, answer me, goddammit!
This can't be happening! Not like this!"
His voice cracked.
The tears fell without permission.
Lisa Lisa looked down. Her expression was steel… but her white knuckles betrayed the pressure.
Joseph raised his face.
Trembling.
Speechless.
And then the world paused with him, for just one second.
"CAESAAAAAAAAR!!!"
The scream echoed like a cannon blast.
The columns trembled.
The sound raced through the halls.
Birds flew out through gaps in the ceiling.
And the tears, at last, fell without shame.
Lisa Lisa took a step back.
She let him cry.
And among the rubble, as an unwritten witness…
Leo watched.
Hidden in a high corner of the room, his Stand cloaked in silence, spinning slowly with floating pages suspended in midair.
[Critical emotional scene: completed.]
[Canonical scream: registered.]
[Dramatic impact: intact.]
[Core narrative: slightly altered, no decomposition.]
Leo crossed his arms.
"This is what they wanted.
The pain.
The loss.
The growth through sacrifice."
He looked at Joseph.
His grief was real.
His rage was pure.
"But this time… they won't get it."
The reader had chosen not to close that chapter.
And though the protagonist would suffer…
Caesar was still alive.
A few hours later, Caesar opened his eyes.
Light filtered through the gaps in the ruined base.
He felt broken bones. An aching back. A pounding chest.
"…Am I dead?"
He tried to sit up.
A sharp pain knocked him down again.
No.
He wasn't dead.
But he should have been.
He looked at his arm.
Dried blood.
The shattered cross nearby.
And on his chest…
a circular mark.
A pulsing energy, foreign to Hamon, but not hostile.
"…Who saved me?"
And then he remembered:
A shadow.
A man.
A cold voice:
"You're more useful to me alive."
His eyes opened wide.
That wasn't JoJo.
Nor Lisa Lisa.
Nor an ally.
It was… something else.
In another corner of the building, Leo slowly descended a broken staircase.
Every step was calm.
Controlled.
Authorial.
"Now they think they've lost something," he murmured.
"But they'll never know that what they lost… was control."
His Stand, The Archive Over Void, floated behind him—its form more stable than ever.
The pages spun slowly. Some, when touched, showed fragments of canon… and others, new drafts.
[Caesar Zeppeli Archive – fully assimilated.]
[Narrative fragment 'heroic death': suspended.]
[Caesar's status: active, conscious, unstable.]
Leo exhaled.
"This was the most delicate chapter.
And I mastered it without a single extra line."
He smiled.
Not from joy.
But from control.
Because he hadn't just saved Caesar.
He had rewritten the most symbolically tragic moment of all Part 2…
and no one knew.
Still in the ruined hall, Joseph picked up the scarf.
He held it tightly to his chest.
"I swear you won't have died in vain," he whispered.
From afar, Leo lowered his gaze.
"He won't die, JoJo.
But that doesn't mean…
he'll still be the same."