The world had vanished in a scream of light.
Arata couldn't breathe. Couldn't speak. Couldn't move.
He floated—no, existed—in a void that felt older than time. Around him, the remnants of Tenryuu Academy spiraled like broken glass, suspended in a white-blue nothingness. The fragments slowed, then stilled.
A heartbeat pulsed in the silence.
Not his.
> "You burned first. Now, you burn last."
The voice of the Legion still rang through his mind like a divine sentence. He clutched his chest, where his mark had blazed so hot moments ago it felt like it had been branded on his soul.
Then he fell.
Not physically, but mentally—slammed back into his body like crashing into a frozen lake. His breath hitched, eyes snapping open, lungs burning for air.
He was back on solid ground.
Sort of.
Everything around him had changed.
Gone were the trees, the dorms, the walls of Tenryuu. Instead, he stood in a twisted reflection of the academy—bleached bone instead of stone, towers made of ancient fossilized steel, skies the color of bruised ink. Everything shimmered like it wasn't quite there, like a photograph soaked in poison.
Karin was beside him, bleeding from a gash across her forehead. Her twin blades glowed dimly. Reiji knelt nearby, loading a fresh cartridge of null rounds into his revolver.
And Daigo… was sitting upright, wide-eyed, not shaking. Silent.
Yuna lay at the center of a glowing circle of symbols. Her body was suspended midair, twitching as if something inside her was being rewritten. Glyphs streamed from her chest into the sky.
Above them hovered the Legion.
Its true form.
Hundreds—no, thousands—of screaming faces twisted in and out of a mountainous cloak. Eyes blinked in strange sequences, some vertical, some shaped like spirals. Its skeletal body stretched into infinity. A halo of broken memories spun around its skull.
And at its center… a throne of swords.
On it sat a girl.
The Star Warden.
She was no longer observing. She was commanding.
"System: full overwrite," she said calmly. "Arata Hoshino, you are the anomaly. I'll end this before you can fully awaken."
Arata stood. "You're with the Legion?"
"No," she said. "The Legion is memory. I am control."
The Legion let out a sound like a choir being reversed.
Karin wiped blood from her cheek. "I vote we kill her first."
"Agreed," Reiji muttered.
"I-I second that motion!" Daigo squeaked, barely sounding like himself.
The Star Warden stood atop the throne, drawing a blade made of star fragments. "You can't win. Not in this broken world. This is the Nullplane—the battlefield between timelines. Your academy no longer exists."
Arata narrowed his eyes. "You're lying."
"No," she said. "Your timeline was erased three minutes ago. Only fragments remain… and you're standing on them."
He looked around. The sky flickered. Pieces of the real Tenryuu were floating like debris in a flooded sea.
His mark burned again.
A memory that wasn't his surged forward.
A sword.
A name.
A war.
His own voice—older, colder—echoed in his mind:
> "We are Legion. But only one of us will survive the end."
Arata took a step forward.
Karin touched his arm. "What do we do?"
"We fight," he said.
The Star Warden raised her hand.
The Legion moved.
It wasn't a single creature anymore—it was an army. A legion, in every sense. Armored ghosts with cracked helmets, star-born beasts shaped like wolves made of iron flame, floating wraiths whose faces flickered with memories not their own.
The first wave descended.
Karin leapt.
Twin blades blazed crimson, carving through the first three beasts with a dancer's precision.
Reiji stood firm, his revolver roaring. Each shot disintegrated a creature into dust that screamed as it vanished.
Daigo stood his ground, both palms open. Wind twisted into a vortex, forming a dome around Yuna's body.
"NOT. TOUCHING. HER," he yelled.
Arata ran forward—directly toward the throne.
The Star Warden descended to meet him.
Their swords clashed—hers made of star-iron, his summoned from the mark on his chest, shaped from fractured light.
The clash sent out a shockwave that cracked the sky itself.
"You still don't know what you are," she hissed, slashing forward.
Arata blocked, barely. "I'm Arata Hoshino."
"No," she said, blade whirling. "You are the Key of Oblivion. You hold the memories of every version of yourself that ever died."
He hesitated.
And she struck him.
Her sword pierced his shoulder. Blood spilled—but not red.
Silver.
Time slowed.
A memory not his flooded in:
He stood over Karin's dead body in a world made of ash.
He buried Daigo in a city of glass.
He watched Reiji vanish into nothing.
And Yuna—Yuna had begged him not to forget her, even as the stars consumed her name.
> "You've died one hundred times, Arata. But this is your last."
He screamed.
The mark on his chest exploded in black fire.
The Star Warden was thrown back.
The sky cracked again.
From the shards, more figures emerged—teens wearing familiar uniforms, but with altered symbols. Tenryuu cadets… from different timelines.
One of them landed beside Reiji, holding a spear that buzzed with time-distortion.
"You guys are the anchor point, huh?" she grinned. "Nice."
"Who the hell—" Reiji began.
"We're the Variants," she said. "And we're not letting your timeline fall without a fight."
A hundred Variants descended.
Each one a version of someone they knew—or of themselves.
Karin looked up at the chaos. "Okay. That's trippy."
Arata stood, clutching his shoulder.
His silver blood dripped onto the ground, forming symbols.
He finally understood.
"I'm not just the Key," he said aloud. "I'm the reset switch."
The Legion froze.
So did the Star Warden.
"If I die here," Arata realized, "all timelines collapse. That's why you're afraid of me."
The Star Warden's eyes widened. "You… remembered too early."
Arata's blade ignited.
The battlefield shook as he lifted it skyward.
Then someone appeared behind him.
Not a Variant. Not a cadet.
A boy.
Maybe sixteen.
Dark blue hair. One eye covered by a scratched lens. Calm smile. Casual posture.
He walked through the chaos like it wasn't even there.
Reiji noticed him first. "Wait… who's—?"
Karin blinked. "I don't… know him."
Yuna's body twitched in midair.
Daigo gasped. "H-he's… humming."
The boy reached Arata.
And stopped.
"You unlocked too early," he said. "Guess I'll have to move things up."
Arata stared. "Who are you?"
The boy smiled.
"I'm the one who killed your first timeline."
And then—he stabbed Arata through the back with a blade of black mercury.
Everything went white.