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Author Note:
' ' = Thoughts
{ } = Telepathy
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Books.
A lot of books.
Then more.
And more still.
For several seconds, even Kaelthorn remained perfectly still, his hidden gaze moving slowly across what stood before him as though his mind needed a moment to decide where observation should even begin.
The Library stretched in every direction.
Shelves rose from the floor and disappeared into impossible distances. Balconies circled through enormous chambers before branching into corridors whose ends vanished beyond sight. Staircases climbed toward higher levels, crossed one another at strange angles, disappeared behind walls of books, and sometimes seemed to continue upward without ever reaching another floor. Every visible surface that could hold a book did so.
Books filled the walls.
Books covered the galleries.
Books occupied alcoves large enough to contain houses.
Books continued through distant archways and into chambers whose ceilings could no longer be seen.
There were so many that eventually the number itself became meaningless.
Kaelthorn slowly raised his head.
A balcony waited above him.
Above that was another.
Then another.
And another.
They continued upward into darkness until his eyes could no longer tell whether he was looking at distance, height, or something for which neither word was suitable. The architecture seemed to fold into itself as it rose, repeating structures without truly repeating them, like a maze that had forgotten the need to fit inside ordinary space.
From what he could tell, the Library had no sensible dimensions.
Perhaps it had dimensions of its own.
Perhaps the concepts of length, width, and height were merely conveniences here.
Kaelthorn turned and looked behind him.
The entrance remained there.
Yet something about it was wrong.
He had taken only a few steps into the Library, but the doorway already appeared impossibly far away. It looked smaller than before, like an opening seen from the opposite end of an enormous hall rather than something he could reach within several strides. Beyond it lay the world he had entered from, but even that now seemed distant enough to belong to somewhere else entirely.
Kaelthorn listened.
Nothing answered.
No voices.
No footsteps.
No pages turning.
No movement hidden among the shelves.
There was only silence.
The kind of silence that did not merely surround a person but slowly forced them to become aware of themselves. Kaelthorn could hear the faint movement of his coat whenever he shifted. He could hear the muted contact of his shoes against the floor. Even the rhythm of his heart, slow and controlled inside his chest, seemed louder than it had any right to be.
Every sound he made felt intrusive.
As though the Library had been silent for so long that his existence itself had become noise.
He looked around once more.
Books.
Nothing but books.
There were no paintings decorating the walls, no windows revealing what might exist outside, no statues, banners, clocks, or ornaments. There were no reading desks waiting beneath lamps, no carts stacked with returned volumes, and no signs pointing toward different sections.
More importantly—
there were no signs of people.
Nothing suggested that a librarian had ever walked these corridors.
Nothing suggested that a reader had ever sat beneath these shelves.
There were no forgotten cups, no abandoned notes, no worn chairs, no fingerprints on polished surfaces, and no evidence that anyone had ever taken one of these countless books down and opened it.
That was what made the Library disturbing.
A library was supposed to contain more than books.
It was supposed to contain people who wanted them.
Librarians moving quietly between shelves. Readers searching for particular titles. Whispers kept low out of respect for others. The occasional cough. The faint scrape of a chair. The soft turning of pages.
All of those ordinary sounds were absent.
Only the books remained.
Endless rows of them, silently occupying a place where people should have been.
Kaelthorn turned his gaze toward one of the corridors ahead.
Its shelves stretched into darkness until even his vision could no longer follow them. Somewhere beyond that darkness, the corridor appeared to divide into others. Those would likely divide again, and whatever waited after that would continue the same pattern.
There was no visible destination.
No central hall.
No edge.
No end.
Only more Library.
The realization settled without drama.
He was alone.
Not alone in the simple sense of being the only person in a room. This place gave no indication that another living being existed anywhere within it. Kaelthorn could walk for hours and perhaps find no one. He could walk for days. Years. Centuries.
There was nothing here to suggest the result would change.
Ordinarily, that thought might have created unease.
For Kaelthorn, it merely deepened his assessment of the place.
He looked again at the endless shelves.
Books.
A lot of books.
Many more books.
A massive number of books.
Countless books.
Only books.
Somewhere beyond his sight, the Library continued expanding into its own darkness, indifferent to whether he explored it or turned around and left. It gave the impression of something that had existed long before his arrival and would remain long after even the memory of his presence disappeared.
Yet Kaelthorn remained completely calm.
There was not the slightest ripple in his heart.
He had spent countless years within the Dark Multiverse. He had crossed places where time broke down, walked through realities that failed to remain real, endured the Interstice, stood before entities whose mere presence reduced ordinary logic to irrelevance, and witnessed phenomena that would have shattered a normal mind before understanding even began.
An impossible Library was not enough to disturb him.
Perhaps once, long ago, a place like this would have made him cautious in a different way.
Now it was simply familiar.
Not because he had been here before—
but because impossibility itself had stopped being unusual.
Another place without an end.
Another silence without an owner.
Another structure that refused to explain why it existed.
Another corner of existence where the rules ordinary beings depended upon were little more than suggestions.
Kaelthorn had simply grown accustomed to such things.
And so, surrounded by enough books to drown civilizations in knowledge, he finally took another step forward.
.
.
.
After walking for some time, Kaelthorn stopped in front of one of the countless shelves and examined the books resting upon it. From where he stood, only their spines were visible, and every one of them was completely blank. No titles. No names. No numbers. No symbols. Nothing that could tell him what any particular volume contained.
There was no system he could immediately recognize.
So Kaelthorn reached out and pulled one of the books free.
The cover was equally unremarkable.
He opened it and began reading.
The contents themselves were perfectly clear. Whatever knowledge the book held, Kaelthorn could understand it without difficulty. He read page after page in silence, following the information until he eventually reached the end. Once he was finished, he closed the book and returned it to the exact place from which he had taken it.
Then, just as his hand left the spine—
he stopped.
Not because something had restrained him.
Kaelthorn had stopped himself.
His hidden gaze remained fixed on the book.
He could no longer remember what he had just read.
Not a sentence.
Not a word.
Not even the shape of a single written character.
The information had vanished from his memory so completely that it felt less like forgetting and more like the act of reading had never happened at all.
Kaelthorn reached out and touched the book again.
Nothing changed.
He still remembered taking this particular volume from the shelf. He remembered standing there and reading it. He remembered how long he had held it.
But he did not remember the contents.
He opened it once more.
The moment his eyes fell upon even the smallest mark on the page, everything returned.
Every sentence.
Every detail.
Every connection.
The entire contents of the book restored themselves inside his mind with perfect clarity, as though they had never been lost in the first place.
Kaelthorn closed the book again.
Everything disappeared.
He repeated the process several times.
The result remained the same.
This time, while reading, he tried to force the knowledge deeper. He did not rely only on ordinary memory. He carved the information into his mind, then deeper into his soul, and finally into the foundation of his existence itself.
It made no difference.
The moment the book was closed and returned to the shelf, the knowledge vanished from all of them.
Mind.
Soul.
Existence.
Gone.
Kaelthorn slowly returned both hands to the pockets of his coat and remained standing in front of the shelf, thinking.
'Kaelthorn: Now then… is this a property of the books, or of the Library itself?'
If he could remember the contents after closing the book, he might have been able to compare the effect with something else and reach a proper conclusion. But because the information itself disappeared, there was very little left to examine once contact ended.
Still, there was one detail the Library had not taken from him.
Kaelthorn remembered exactly which book he had chosen.
The knowledge disappeared.
The object did not.
That distinction was important.
After considering it for a moment, Kaelthorn selected another book from the shelf and read it as well. Once again, he understood everything while the pages remained open. Once again, the moment he returned it to its place, the contents vanished completely from his memory.
So he tried something else.
He opened Null Archive: Anchored Continuity and attempted to store the book inside.
Nothing happened.
The book remained in his hand.
Kaelthorn tried again through a different method.
Still nothing.
Apparently, he could remove a book from its shelf. He could carry it through the Library. He could read it wherever he wished.
But he could not take it away from this place.
That restriction was not entirely surprising.
After all, he could not leave either.
Yes.
Even Kaelthorn was trapped inside the Library.
He had already tested the entrance.
He had walked toward it.
He had attempted to leave through it.
He had tried other methods as well, some simple and some far less so.
None worked.
Even without using the forbidden power that had once allowed him to tear a hole through a story itself, Kaelthorn could already tell that using it here would not solve the problem.
The situation was unusual.
Because the Library did not seem to be keeping him prisoner.
There was no barrier pushing him back.
No intelligence closing doors in front of him.
No hostile force changing his path.
In fact, the Library seemed completely indifferent to everything he did.
Kaelthorn had already walked for what should have been a considerable amount of time. Yet no matter how far he traveled, the scenery refused to meaningfully change. More shelves appeared. More balconies. More staircases. More books. He could move, but there was no sense that he was approaching anything.
And still, he did not feel watched.
That was what made this place different.
The Library did not hunt him.
It did not torture him.
It did not judge him.
It did not tempt him with forbidden knowledge, whisper promises into his mind, attempt to corrupt him, consume him, punish him, convert him, or demand anything in exchange for his presence.
Most dangerous places at least acknowledged those who entered them.
A monster recognized prey.
A prison recognized prisoners.
A god recognized worshippers.
Even hatred required the hated object to matter.
The Library offered Kaelthorn none of that.
He was not a victim, because a victim required something that had chosen to harm him.
He was not an enemy, because an enemy had significance.
He was not a guest, a trespasser, a reader, or even an intruder.
As far as the Library was concerned—
he was nothing.
A speck of dust inside an infinite cathedral.
And perhaps that was more disturbing than anything else he had encountered here.
The Library did not want him dead.
It had never decided to imprison him.
It had never, even for a single instant, acknowledged that he was alive.
Kaelthorn could vanish inside these endless corridors and the shelves would remain exactly as they were. The books would continue occupying their places. The staircases would continue climbing into impossible darkness. Whatever purpose this place served would continue without interruption.
The Library had existed before him.
It would continue after him.
His presence changed nothing.
And that was the true horror of it.
Not hatred.
Not death.
Not imprisonment.
Irrelevance.
.
.
.
THUD!
Kaelthorn closed another book and returned it to the shelf.
As always, the moment his hand left the cover, everything he had read disappeared from his memory. Not slowly, not like ordinary forgetting, but completely. Every sentence, every word, every symbol vanished as though the act of reading had never happened.
And, as always, Kaelthorn moved toward the next book.
This had become his routine.
Take a book. Read it. Understand it. Close it. Forget it. Return it.
Then repeat.
Again.
And again.
And again.
There was no change in the Library, no reward waiting for him at the end of a shelf, and no indication that he was approaching anything meaningful. Yet Kaelthorn continued because countless years had already passed since his arrival here.
Yes.
Countless years.
The amount of time he had now spent walking through these endless corridors had surpassed even the time he endured within the Interstice. Entire ages had passed while he moved from one nameless volume to another, and yet he still could not remember a single complete line from any of them.
Still, somewhere deep inside himself, Kaelthorn felt that the effort was not meaningless.
He could not explain why.
He had no proof.
But the feeling remained.
Something was happening.
Perhaps the knowledge was not remaining inside his memory. Perhaps the Library was taking it away every time he closed a book. Perhaps the result was something he could not yet perceive.
Whatever the reason, Kaelthorn trusted the feeling enough to continue.
During those countless years, he had also learned more about the restrictions placed upon him here. Just as he could not put anything from the Library into Null Archive: Anchored Continuity, he also could not retrieve anything from the Archive while remaining inside this place. Whatever he had stored there still existed, preserved exactly as before, but some unseen boundary prevented him from bringing anything out.
Fortunately, one connection remained untouched.
The Hollow Core.
Kaelthorn could still enter it.
And because of that, he could still spend time with Io.
That alone made the endless years inside the Library far less empty.
Time also continued doing what little it could for his damaged existence. The dark violet terminal lines across his body had receded further, painfully slowly but noticeably enough to matter. His body had gradually recovered from ordinary-human condition back to roughly peak-human levels.
Compared to what he had once been, it was insignificant.
But compared to the state in which he had escaped the Entity, it was still progress.
Kaelthorn reached toward the next book.
Then—
THUD!
His body suddenly dropped.
One knee struck the floor while one hand slammed down to support him. His other hand moved immediately to his head as an unfamiliar pressure erupted from somewhere deep within him.
'Kaelthorn: What the—'
Something had awakened.
That much he understood.
What he did not understand was what it was.
And that was the problem.
Kaelthorn had encountered countless powers, strange laws, corrupted worlds, impossible beings, and things that ordinary lifeforms could not even perceive without breaking. Even when he could not immediately understand something, he could usually observe enough to identify its nature.
This was different.
Whatever had awakened within him existed beyond his current comprehension.
Worse—
it was erasing him.
Kaelthorn felt it immediately.
His body was beginning to disappear.
Not decay.
Not break.
Not burn.
Disappear.
The same process spread through his mind, then his soul, and then deeper still, into the very foundation of his existence. It was not merely killing him. It was removing him piece by piece from everything that could define him as Kaelthorn.
And he understood something else just as clearly.
There was no return from this.
No healing.
No resurrection.
No reconstruction.
No hidden fragment that could survive somewhere else.
No matter what he did, he would not be able to save himself.
This was true death.
Even then, Kaelthorn did not panic.
There was not the slightest ripple in his heart.
Death stood directly in front of him, and still his thoughts remained calm.
Because he had already prepared himself for this possibility long ago.
The Dark Multiverse was never a place meant for beings like him to survive forever.
It contained things that should not exist, places that could erase entire realities without noticing, and entities so far above lower lifeforms that strength alone became meaningless. Kaelthorn might once have stood among the strongest of those lower existences, but before truly higher beings, that strength meant almost nothing.
He had understood that truth a long time ago.
Any day could have been his last.
Any world could have contained something capable of ending him instantly.
Any step could have led into a place from which there was no escape.
Because of that, Kaelthorn had already accepted death.
Not welcomed it.
Not desired it.
Accepted it.
If it came, then it came.
There was no point screaming at an ending he had always known was possible.
THUD!
The remaining strength left his body.
Kaelthorn collapsed fully onto the floor.
He could feel himself fading now.
The Library around him began to lose definition. The shelves, the books, the endless corridors, and the distant balconies all blurred together as darkness slowly crept across his vision.
His thoughts became quieter.
And in what seemed to be his final moments, only one person came to mind.
Io.
The one person he loved most.
The one existence he cared for beyond all others.
A gentle smile appeared beneath the visor.
It was small.
Almost invisible.
But real.
'Kaelthorn: Let's go on our next journey, Io.'
The thought carried no sadness.
Only acceptance.
Kaelthorn and Io were connected deeply enough that if he truly died, she would follow. That meant even if this was the end, he would not face whatever came next alone.
Io would be there.
As always.
With that final thought, Kaelthorn closed his eyes.
And the darkness claimed him.
.
.
.
.
.
K… ae…
…Ka…
…el…
Kae…
Kael…
Kael!
Kaelthorn's eyes snapped open.
His upper body rose sharply from the ground before his mind had fully caught up with what had happened. For several seconds, he remained still, one hand pressed against the road beneath him as he looked around and confirmed that the endless shelves, balconies, staircases, and unbearable silence of the Library were gone.
Kaelthorn: This is…
He slowly stood.
He was in the middle of a highway.
Green mountains stretched across the distance on either side, covered in dense vegetation that moved beneath a gentle wind. Above him was a clear blue sky scattered with white clouds, and several seagulls circled lazily through the air as though nothing unusual had happened.
Everything looked painfully normal.
Kaelthorn turned around.
A roadside sign stood behind him.
CITY OF YOMIYAMA
PLEASE COME AGAIN
His gaze then shifted toward the road ahead. It was the same route connected to Yomiyama City, the same road he had been traveling before he suddenly found himself inside that impossible Library.
For a moment, he said nothing.
Then he sensed something in his left hand.
Kaelthorn lowered his gaze.
He was holding a book.
It resembled an ancient tome, though its material was unlike anything he immediately recognized. The cover appeared to be made from black leather, but the texture beneath his glove told him otherwise. It was not animal hide, synthetic material, or anything that belonged to an ordinary world.
There was no title.
No author.
No symbol.
No marking of any kind.
Kaelthorn opened it.
Inside was only a single blank page.
Resting neatly within the gutter was a quill.
For perhaps the first time in a very long while, Kaelthorn's eyes widened slightly behind the visor.
Kaelthorn: So… that is how it is.
A familiar voice answered inside his mind.
{???: Yes. And it is the main reason you almost died again.}
Kaelthorn froze for the briefest moment.
'Kaelthorn: That voice… Io.'
{Io: Mm. I am so glad to see you awake, Kael.}
Her voice was soft and gentle, carrying so much worry, affection, longing, and relief that even Kaelthorn's normally unmoving heart seemed to settle beneath it.
He had heard countless voices across countless worlds.
None of them affected him the way hers did.
{Io: Kael, I know you want to talk. I know you have many questions. But unfortunately, we do not have that luxury right now.}
Kaelthorn's expression sharpened.
Now that the initial relief in Io's voice had begun to fade, he noticed something underneath it.
Weariness.
Her voice was weaker than usual.
And it was continuing to weaken.
{Io: You already understand what that book is, do you not?}
Kaelthorn: There is no possibility that I could forget these materials. I also understand now why I entered that Library… and why I almost died there.
His gaze lowered toward the black tome.
The answer had been with him long before the Library.
.
.
.
Back in the Interstice.
During the countless ages he had spent there, Kaelthorn had stayed inside that strange room where ordinary reality never seemed fully certain of itself. Within it, he had found three kinds of objects that proved useful to him.
An ink bottle.
A quill.
And several sheets of paper.
At the time, Kaelthorn could not safely remove ordinary objects from Null Archive: Anchored Continuity. Anything brought into the Interstice risked being corrupted by the place, and carrying that corruption outside later would have created consequences far beyond the loss of a few possessions.
So he had used what the room itself provided.
The paper, quill, and ink became his temporary method of recording important information, observations, calculations, and research that he could not risk forgetting during his time there.
But Kaelthorn never took those objects with him when he left.
He had refused to.
All three had been born within the Interstice and were saturated with the same incomprehensible contamination that formed that place. Carrying them into an ordinary world would have been reckless.
So he abandoned them.
Or at least—
he believed he had.
Kaelthorn looked at the book again.
The black material covering it was the ink.
The single blank page had been formed from the sheets.
And the quill remained exactly where it had always belonged.
Those separate objects had somehow been fused together.
They had become "THE BOOK."
The power of the Interstice had not disappeared either. Kaelthorn could still sense it buried deep within the tome. It had simply been sealed so completely that not even the smallest trace leaked outward.
That distinction mattered.
If the contamination had truly been removed, the objects themselves would likely have ceased to exist. They were products of the Interstice. Their nature and the power within them could not be separated so easily.
Someone had not purified them.
Someone had contained them.
And Kaelthorn already knew who.
The thing that had emerged from the mirror.
The thing that looked exactly like him.
The thing that had chased him through the Interstice and screamed when he escaped.
That THING.
Kaelthorn had seen it for only a short time before leaving, but there was little doubt in his mind now.
It had used THE BOOK to kill him.
Or at least, it had tried.
The more important question was why it had resorted to something so indirect.
If the THING hated him enough to pursue him, why had it not simply followed?
Kaelthorn had already reached a likely answer.
It could not.
There had to be some rule within the Interstice preventing it from leaving freely. Perhaps the false Kaelthorn could only exist there while the real one remained outside. Perhaps its existence depended upon the original in some way. Perhaps one could not occupy the same reality as the other.
The exact rule remained unknown.
But the result was obvious.
The THING had been unable to leave the Interstice and hunt Kaelthorn directly.
So it had sent something else.
THE BOOK.
Kaelthorn's fingers tightened slightly around the cover.
Now that he was holding it directly, he could sense something beyond the sealed Interstice contamination.
Another power.
One he had encountered before.
STORY.
And with that realization, the events inside the Library finally began fitting together.
During his time in the Interstice, Kaelthorn had spent an enormous amount of effort researching the blue heart he carried. That heart possessed the power of STORY, something Kaelthorn did not truly understand at the time but had nevertheless studied again and again.
Whenever he discovered something important, he wrote it down.
He used the Interstice's ink.
The Interstice's paper.
The Interstice's quill.
And he used those things to record knowledge about an object that carried STORY.
Over countless years, that repeated contact changed them.
Only slightly.
Barely enough to be noticed.
But a fraction of STORY began taking root within the writing materials.
And not only within them.
Some of it had also begun forming within Kaelthorn himself.
Dormant.
Silent.
Too weak to matter.
At least at first.
Then the THING found the abandoned materials.
It fused them together.
The ink became the cover.
The sheets became the page.
The quill remained within.
And those fragments of STORY were brought together into one object.
THE BOOK.
Because Kaelthorn carried a matching trace of STORY within himself, a connection existed between them.
That connection was how THE BOOK found him.
And THE BOOK was how he found the Library.
Or more accurately—
how the Library found him.
Now that Kaelthorn held the tome, fragments of understanding about that place had become available to him.
And what he learned was far more disturbing than he had expected.
The Library did not exist inside ordinary space.
Nor outside it in any conventional sense.
It existed beyond the structures that ordinary worlds depended upon—beyond space, beyond time, beyond matter, beyond common reality, and even beyond the ordinary framework of creation itself.
A normal being could not simply stumble into it.
There was a requirement.
One had to possess the power of STORY.
Or something beyond it.
That was why Kaelthorn had been brought there.
THE BOOK possessed STORY.
Kaelthorn possessed a dormant trace of the same power.
Together, they had satisfied whatever condition the Library required.
But the books inside that place were not books in the ordinary sense.
That was the greatest revelation.
Every volume on those endless shelves was a STORY.
A real one.
A world.
A verse.
Not merely a written description of one.
Each book contained the complete existence represented by its story: its worlds, timelines, parallel branches, possibilities, histories, alternate outcomes, and everything that could emerge from them.
The Library did not store fiction.
It stored realities in the form of books.
And those realities could be entered.
That also explained why Kaelthorn had forgotten everything he read.
He had believed the Library was erasing his memory.
In truth, the problem had been him.
He did not properly possess STORY.
He could look at one.
He could temporarily understand one while it remained open before him.
But once he closed the book and separated himself from it, he could no longer retain what he had perceived.
It was like asking an ordinary human mind to remember an entire living universe after seeing it for a moment.
The mind was not built to hold such a thing.
Neither, at that stage, was Kaelthorn.
The same rule explained why he had been unable to leave.
Only those who possessed STORY—or a power beyond it—could properly enter and leave the Library.
Kaelthorn had entered through THE BOOK's connection.
But entering was not the same as having the authority to leave.
So he had become trapped.
Not because the Library wanted him there.
Not because it had imprisoned him.
He simply lacked what was required to walk out.
And so Kaelthorn did the only thing available to him.
He read.
One book.
Then another.
Then another.
For countless years.
Even though he forgot every one of them.
Even though he could retain nothing.
Even though there was no proof that what he was doing would ever lead anywhere.
Somewhere beneath conscious understanding, however, something inside him had continued responding.
The tiny dormant trace of STORY.
Every time Kaelthorn opened one of those books, that dormant power was exposed to another true STORY.
Again.
And again.
And again.
Until eventually—
it awakened.
That was when Kaelthorn began to die.
The power of STORY was not something his current existence could safely wield.
It was far too high.
Far too complete.
Far beyond what his damaged Ascended state could currently contain.
The moment the dormant power fully awakened, it began overwhelming everything beneath it.
His body.
His mind.
His soul.
His existence.
Kaelthorn had interpreted the process as erasure because that was effectively what it was. His existence could not support the power awakening within it, and so he was being destroyed from the inside out.
It was the price of touching something that did not yet belong in his hands.
And nothing he possessed could stop it.
Not Revenant power.
Not his damaged Ascended foundation.
Not telekinesis.
Not crystallokinesis.
Not even his countless years of experience.
He had been seconds away from true death.
Then THE BOOK found him.
Somewhere within the endless Library, it sensed the same power awakening within Kaelthorn that existed inside itself.
STORY recognized STORY.
THE BOOK reached him before his existence disappeared completely.
And it absorbed the awakened power from him.
The pressure vanished.
The process stopped.
Kaelthorn survived.
His gaze remained on the ancient black tome resting in his hand.
The same object that had dragged him into the Library and placed him on the path toward death—
had ultimately become the thing that prevented that death from finishing.
That was the whole truth.
.
.
.
{Io: That is mostly correct… but there is something else.}
Kaelthorn's gaze remained lowered toward THE BOOK in his hand.
For several seconds, he said nothing.
Then his attention shifted away from the ancient black tome and turned inward.
{Kaelthorn: …Is this related to your current condition?}
There was no hesitation behind the question.
Kaelthorn had already begun putting the pieces together.
Ever since he had entered the Dark Multiverse, there had only ever been one place where he could properly meet Io.
The Hollow Core.
Whenever he wished to see her, speak with her, remain beside her, or simply spend time in her presence, he had needed to enter the Hollow Core first. No matter how deeply the two of them were connected, that had always remained an absolute limitation.
Kaelthorn had attempted to bypass it before.
More than once.
He had tried reaching toward Io directly through their connection. He had attempted to communicate through his mind, soul, existence, and even the deeper bond joining them together.
Nothing had ever worked.
Outside the Hollow Core, there had always been silence.
Until now.
Yet here Io was.
Her voice was reaching him directly while he stood beneath the blue sky on an ordinary highway outside Yomiyama City.
More importantly, Kaelthorn could feel her.
Not merely hear her.
Feel her.
And with every passing second, her presence was becoming weaker.
Fainter.
As though something that should have remained permanent was slowly slipping through his fingers.
A bad premonition had already begun forming inside him.
Io remained silent for a brief moment before answering.
{Io: Yes. Even though THE BOOK eventually took the power of STORY out of you, it did not reach you immediately.}
Her voice had lost some of its earlier warmth.
Not because her feelings had changed.
Because speaking itself was becoming more difficult.
{Io: By the time it found you, the power had already begun erasing too much of your existence. Even after THE BOOK started absorbing it, the process was not instantaneous. It still required time.}
Kaelthorn's eyes narrowed slightly behind the visor.
{Io: And you did not have that time, Kael.}
Silence.
{Io: If nothing else had happened… you would have disappeared before THE BOOK finished removing the power of STORY from you.}
Kaelthorn remained still for several seconds.
Then he released a slow breath.
{Kaelthorn: So THAT thing accounted for even that.}
{Io: Yes.}
Her answer came quietly.
{Io: It did not merely send THE BOOK and hope that you would die. It seems to have calculated the process far enough to ensure that even if the BOOK reacted to the STORY inside you, it would arrive too late to save you completely.}
The implications were obvious.
The THING had not simply prepared a trap.
It had prepared for the possibility that the trap itself might develop a way out.
It had accounted for THE BOOK.
It had accounted for the dormant STORY within Kaelthorn.
It had accounted for the Library.
Perhaps even the awakening itself.
And it had still arranged things so that Kaelthorn's survival would remain almost impossible.
{Io: Your chance of surviving was almost zero. Unless something happened that should never have happened… unless some miracle occurred.}
{Kaelthorn: Miracles do not exist here.}
His answer came without emotion.
Io gave a faint acknowledgment.
{Io: Indeed.}
Then she became quiet.
Long enough that Kaelthorn already knew the next words would not be pleasant.
{Io: So…}
A pause.
{Io: Kael.}
Her voice became even softer.
{Io: The Hollow Core… is no more.}
For the first time since awakening, Kaelthorn's body became completely still.
The words struck him harder than the revelation of his near death.
His eyes narrowed sharply beneath the visor, and his consciousness immediately plunged inward.
He searched.
Reached.
Called toward the place that had accompanied him for longer than almost anything else inside the Dark Multiverse.
Nothing answered.
Kaelthorn searched deeper.
Still nothing.
No boundary.
No entrance.
No hidden space.
No familiar presence waiting beneath his existence.
Nothing.
Two possibilities immediately entered his mind.
The Hollow Core had been destroyed.
Or—
it had been erased.
The distinction was enormous.
If it had merely been damaged or destroyed, some remnant should have remained. A broken foundation. Residual power. Fragments of its structure. Even a collapsed domain still possessed something from which reconstruction could theoretically begin.
Kaelthorn could repair something broken.
He could rebuild something shattered.
Even if the process required absurd amounts of time, power, or knowledge, destruction still left a starting point.
But erasure was different.
If something had been reduced to true nothingness, there was no structure to restore.
No residue to collect.
No damaged foundation to repair.
One could not rebuild from ruins when even the ruins no longer existed.
And as Kaelthorn searched through himself, what he felt was not destruction.
It was absence.
An empty place where something fundamental had once existed.
The Hollow Core had not broken.
It had ceased.
Kaelthorn slowly lowered his gaze toward THE BOOK in his hand.
{Kaelthorn: So… that is how it is.}
{Io: Yes.}
Her response carried sorrow, but no regret.
{Io: Before you completely faded away, the Hollow Core took your place.}
Kaelthorn said nothing.
{Io: It used itself to delay your end. The erasure that should have continued through you was redirected into it. Not completely, not perfectly… but enough.}
The image became clear inside his mind.
Kaelthorn's existence had been collapsing under the awakening of STORY.
THE BOOK was approaching.
But not quickly enough.
So the Hollow Core had intervened.
It had placed itself between Kaelthorn and the approaching end.
{Io: That is why you survived long enough for THE BOOK to reach you.}
A brief silence.
{Io: But the Hollow Core did not survive with you.}
Kaelthorn slowly exhaled.
A deep, quiet sigh escaped beneath his visor.
Ever since arriving in the Dark Multiverse, death had followed him with almost absurd persistence.
World after world.
Enemy after enemy.
Phenomenon after phenomenon.
Each time he survived, another threat appeared that operated at a scale beyond the previous one.
And through almost all of it, the Hollow Core had remained with him.
It had not merely been another ability.
It had been fundamental to what Kaelthorn had become.
The Hollow Core had played an indispensable role in keeping him alive, advancing his power, housing Io, supporting his Revenant nature, and giving him one place in the Dark Multiverse that he could genuinely call safe.
Now it was gone.
Kaelthorn examined himself again.
The next realization followed immediately.
His Revenant lineage was gone as well.
The Hollow Core had been inseparably tied to it.
Without the Core, there was nothing sustaining that side of his existence anymore.
Kaelthorn was no longer a Revenant.
The powers that had accompanied that lineage were gone with it.
The Ichor.
The haze.
His blood manipulation.
The abilities already awakened.
The powers that had still been waiting for him to unlock in the future.
All of them—
gone.
Not sealed.
Not weakened.
Gone.
There would be no gradual recovery of his Revenant abilities because there was no longer a Revenant foundation to recover.
And the loss did not stop there.
The Hollow Core had also been his sanctuary.
The one environment throughout the Dark Multiverse where Kaelthorn had once been able to lower his guard without calculating every possible route by which existence itself might betray him.
A controlled place.
His place.
The place where, among everything else, he could rest in Io's arms.
That was gone too.
More importantly—
so was his only way of reaching her.
Kaelthorn's hands remained still at his sides.
His expression did not change.
But something inside his chest tightened.
The Hollow Core had been his gateway to Io.
And Io had been his emotional anchor throughout an existence that offered very little worth anchoring himself to.
Now even that had been taken from him.
Kaelthorn turned his attention toward another part of himself.
His expression grew colder.
The contents of his Null Vault were gone.
Almost all of them.
The countless things he had accumulated through the Dark Multiverse and the worlds he had crossed—the weapons, objects, resources, records, specimens, equipment, materials, and everything else he had gathered—had vanished.
Everything accumulated across entire journeys.
Everything preserved for future use.
Everything he had taken with him because it might one day matter.
Gone.
Only one presence remained.
Nymira.
Kaelthorn could still sense her.
Nothing else.
The Null Vault itself had not been a direct extension of the Hollow Core, but it was still anchored to Kaelthorn's existence. When his existence had approached complete erasure, anything depending upon him had approached erasure as well.
In that respect, the loss was inevitable.
The fact that anything remained at all was remarkable.
Nymira had survived.
Possibly because Kaelthorn had placed her far away from everything else inside the Vault, isolated from the other stored contents. Perhaps that separation had placed her outside the worst of the collapse.
Whatever the exact reason, she remained.
The others did not.
The seven people Kaelthorn had once taken from the Kabane world—
Yomogawa Ayame.
Mumei.
Kajika.
Ikoma.
Takumi.
Suzuki.
Album.
All gone.
The Hollow Fortress and everything associated with the world he had once left behind were gone as well.
And then there was the eighth person he had stored only recently.
Yukari Sakuragi.
Gone.
Kaelthorn remained motionless in the center of the highway.
For a long moment, there was only the wind moving across the mountains.
He had intervened in their deaths.
He had taken them away from doomed circumstances.
He had removed them from their worlds, carried them elsewhere, preserved them, and created the possibility that they might eventually wake beneath a different sky.
Yet in the end—
they had still reached their conclusion.
Perhaps later than they should have.
Perhaps through a completely different cause.
But the result remained the same.
Their end had found them.
Kaelthorn had attempted to move them beyond it.
This time, he had failed.
By now, almost everything Kaelthorn had accumulated since entering the Dark Multiverse had been stripped away.
His Revenant nature.
His Hollow Core.
His stored resources.
His fortress.
The people he had preserved.
His sanctuary.
And soon—
possibly Io.
Kaelthorn closed his left hand slowly.
{Kaelthorn: The reason you are still here…}
His voice was quieter than before.
{Kaelthorn: Is it because of our connection?}
{Io: Yes.}
Even through the growing weakness in her voice, her answer came immediately.
{Io: I was connected to the Hollow Core, but the Hollow Core was never the deepest reason I remained.}
A faint warmth accompanied her words.
{Io: I am primarily connected to you, Kael.}
Kaelthorn's fist tightened.
{Io: So even though the Hollow Core is gone… I am not.}
A pause.
{Io: At least, not yet.}
A sharp pain passed through Kaelthorn's chest.
Not physical.
Something far more unfamiliar to him.
He already understood what those last words meant.
His voice came slowly.
{Kaelthorn: How long…?}
Io did not answer the number.
Instead—
{Io: Do not worry.}
Kaelthorn's eyes narrowed.
{Io: You can still seal me inside the deepest part of the Vault.}
There was barely anything left inside it now, but the structure itself remained.
{Io: If you place me there and seal me completely, the dissipation will stop.}
Her voice softened.
{Io: But you already know what that means.}
Kaelthorn remained silent.
Of course he did.
Sealing Io would preserve her.
But preservation was not the same as being awake.
Not the same as speaking.
Not the same as seeing her.
Once sealed, Io would effectively disappear from his life until Kaelthorn became capable of restoring her properly.
He did not know how long that would take.
Years.
Centuries.
Ages.
Perhaps longer.
The Dark Multiverse had already taught him how meaningless such measures could become.
{Kaelthorn: …}
Io seemed to understand every thought behind his silence.
Her voice became gentle again.
{Io: It is fine.}
Kaelthorn said nothing.
{Io: Because you will bring me back one day.}
There was no doubt in her words.
None.
Not hope.
Certainty.
{Io: You always do what you decide to do.}
Kaelthorn's answer came immediately.
{Kaelthorn: Of course.}
No hesitation.
No qualification.
No possibility of failure included in the statement.
He would bring her back.
Whether it required years or eternities did not matter.
Whatever he needed to learn, he would learn.
Whatever power he needed to reach, he would reach.
Whatever had to be crossed, broken, understood, or surpassed would be dealt with when the time came.
Somewhere through their connection, Kaelthorn could feel Io smile.
It was the same gentle smile he knew so well.
{Io: There are two more things before I go.}
Kaelthorn remained silent, listening.
{Io: First… before the Hollow Core completely disappeared, it left something behind for you.}
{Kaelthorn: Something?}
{Io: A gift.}
Kaelthorn's eyes narrowed slightly.
{Kaelthorn: A gift?}
{Io: Mm. Look at yourself, Kael.}
He did.
At first glance, there was nothing unusual.
Kaelthorn remained dressed in his Doctor attire from head to toe. The dark coat covered most of his body, the high collar and full visor concealed his face, and his gloves hid his hands.
But Kaelthorn did not need to remove anything.
His perception turned inward.
He looked through the clothing.
Through his skin.
Through flesh.
Through everything beneath.
Then—
his eyes widened.
Only slightly.
Yet for Kaelthorn, even that was significant.
He examined himself again.
More carefully this time.
Then he clenched one hand.
For the first time in what felt like an impossibly long span of time, a genuine smile appeared on his face beneath the visor.
{Kaelthorn: It really is the best gift it could have left me.}
The terminal lines had changed.
Not merely receded.
They had been reduced.
Entire sections of the dark violet markings that had covered his damaged existence were simply gone.
Not shorter.
Not faded.
Gone.
Kaelthorn immediately understood what had happened.
The terminal lines had always resembled some form of corruption spreading through him, but that description had never been entirely accurate.
They were not an infection.
There was no foreign organism to kill.
No poison to purge.
No disease to cure.
The damage was closer to overwriting.
Something of a higher nature had imposed itself upon Kaelthorn's existence, altering parts of him in a manner his current state could not simply reverse.
Medicine could do nothing.
Ordinary healing could do nothing.
Even most supernatural restoration would be meaningless.
Unless Kaelthorn obtained power of the same order—or something even higher—the only reliable solution had been time.
An absurd amount of time.
Enough for the overwritten portions to gradually lose their hold and allow his existence to restore itself.
That was why even the countless ages inside the Interstice had only reduced the terminal lines by an almost insulting amount.
But the Hollow Core had been directly connected to Kaelthorn.
And because of that connection, it had possessed one final option.
Transfer.
It could take portions of those terminal lines from Kaelthorn and place them upon itself.
Normally, that would have been suicide.
The Hollow Core was part of his Revenant foundation.
The terminal lines came from damage inflicted upon his far higher Ascended existence.
The difference between those two states was not merely one of quantity.
It was order.
A Revenant structure attempting to contain even a tiny fragment of that higher-level overwrite would be destroyed almost instantly.
That was why the Hollow Core had never attempted it before.
Taking even a single meaningful fragment of those lines would have doomed it.
But in the Library—
it had already been doomed.
There was no future left for the Hollow Core to protect.
So before it disappeared, it did everything it could.
While taking Kaelthorn's place against the erasure caused by STORY, it drew as much of the terminal damage away from him as it possibly could.
Line after line.
Fragment after fragment.
Every portion it could carry before its own existence finally collapsed into nothing.
It had taken Kaelthorn's damage with it.
The price was absolute.
But the result—
Kaelthorn looked deeper into himself again.
His Revenant foundation was gone.
Yet something greater had returned.
Ascended.
Not restored completely.
Not even remotely close to his former peak.
But accessible.
Real.
His existence had crossed back over the minimum point necessary to function once again as an Ascended being.
Only a fraction of his former strength had returned.
Approximately one percent.
To almost anyone else, that might have sounded insignificant.
To Kaelthorn, it was enormous.
One percent of Ascended Kaelthorn was not comparable to one percent of Revenant Kaelthorn.
The gap between those two states was not a simple matter of power.
It was the difference between orders of existence.
He had lost the Revenant.
But the foundation above it had awakened again.
Kaelthorn looked toward his clenched hand.
One percent.
More than he could have asked for.
{Io: Indeed.}
Io sounded pleased.
Weak—
but pleased.
{Io: The Hollow Core knew what mattered most to you.}
Kaelthorn remained silent.
{Io: And there is one more thing.}
{Kaelthorn: What?}
There was a faint pause.
{Io: You will not be alone, even without me.}
Kaelthorn's gaze shifted slightly.
Confusion appeared for the first time.
{Kaelthorn: What do you mean?}
He felt Io's attention move.
Not physically.
There was no body beside him to turn.
Yet through their connection, Kaelthorn could sense exactly where she was looking.
His gaze followed hers.
Toward the road behind him.
Toward Yomiyama.
The same city he had already left.
{Io: Do not continue to your next destination yet.}
Kaelthorn remained still.
{Io: Go back to Yomiyama City.}
His eyes narrowed.
{Kaelthorn: Why?}
For several seconds, Io said nothing.
Then her fading voice returned, carrying something Kaelthorn could not immediately identify.
Fondness.
Perhaps even amusement.
{Io: Because just like me… someone else has been waiting to finally meet you again.}
Kaelthorn's attention sharpened immediately.
Again.
That single word mattered.
Io did not say someone wanted to meet him.
She said someone had been waiting to meet him again.
{Io: For far too long.}
Kaelthorn's eyes remained fixed on the road leading toward Yomiyama.
{Io: They even came all the way into this ABYSS for you.}
Abyss.
Kaelthorn understood what Io meant by that word.
The Dark Multiverse.
A place where lower existence survived only through ignorance, luck, adaptation, or overwhelming strength.
A place filled with beings and principles that rendered entire worlds insignificant.
Someone had deliberately entered it.
For him.
{Io: So…}
Her voice weakened again.
{Io: Do not make Her wait any longer, Kael.}
Kaelthorn said nothing.
Before he could ask anything else, Io's presence suddenly flickered.
He felt it.
Her consciousness was reaching its limit.
{Io: I think… that is all the time I have.}
Her voice had become little more than a gentle whisper inside his mind.
{Io: I will wait for the day you wake me again.}
Kaelthorn remained silent for a moment.
Then—
{Kaelthorn: …Mm.}
Nothing more was needed.
He felt Io smile.
Lovingly.
Warmly.
The same way she always had.
Then her consciousness began to fade.
Not violently.
Not painfully.
More like someone slowly allowing herself to fall asleep after remaining awake far beyond what her body could endure.
And then—
SHINE!!
A brilliant glow erupted somewhere deep within Kaelthorn's now nearly empty Null Vault.
CLINK!
CLANK!
The sound of chains echoed through that hidden space.
Kaelthorn immediately turned his perception inward.
There—
at the deepest point of the Vault—
Io remained.
Her body was curled gently into a fetal position within a sphere of pale light, her eyes closed as though sleeping. Around the sphere, chains had formed—not ordinary metal chains, but structures woven from countless markings, sigils, patterns, symbols, and layers of sealing principles.
They wrapped around the sphere again and again.
Tighter.
Deeper.
Until Io's presence stopped fading.
The seal closed completely.
Silence followed.
Kaelthorn watched her.
For a long time.
The expression beneath his visor remained unseen, but the cold indifference normally present in his eyes had softened.
A rare gentleness appeared there.
Io looked peaceful.
Kaelthorn allowed himself several more moments simply to look at her.
Then a thought formed.
'Kaelthorn: You have already done more than enough for someone like me, Io.'
The mountains remained quiet around him.
'Kaelthorn: When I first arrived in the Dark Multiverse, I was completely lost.'
He remembered.
Not physically lost.
Something deeper.
The Dark Multiverse had been too vast, too hostile, too incomprehensible, and too indifferent for any ordinary understanding of existence to remain useful.
And throughout it—
Io had remained.
'Kaelthorn: I will handle things from here.'
His gaze lingered on her sleeping form.
'Kaelthorn: So rest now.'
Kaelthorn withdrew his perception from the Vault.
The sphere of light disappeared from his sight.
The highway returned.
The blue sky.
The white clouds.
The distant mountains.
The wind.
He slid both hands into the pockets of his long dark coat and stood in the middle of the road without moving.
For quite some time, Kaelthorn simply stared toward the horizon.
He had lost almost everything.
The Hollow Core.
His Revenant lineage.
His accumulated abilities.
Most of his stored possessions.
The people he had once saved.
His fortress.
His sanctuary.
And, for the foreseeable future—
Io.
Yet his expression did not collapse.
His thoughts did not scatter.
There would be time to account for the losses later.
For now, several facts mattered.
He was alive.
THE BOOK remained with him.
Nymira remained.
Io still existed, sealed safely within him.
And most importantly—
Kaelthorn was Ascended once again.
Only one percent.
But one percent was enough to change the nature of everything that came next.
His gaze slowly shifted.
Back toward the road leading to Yomiyama City.
The softness that had remained in his eyes while looking at Io disappeared.
What replaced it was familiar.
Calm.
Cold.
Collected.
Calculating.
Kaelthorn stood there for another several seconds.
Then, beneath the visor, his eyes narrowed faintly.
Kaelthorn: Her… huh.
.
.
.
Night eventually came.
Kaelthorn did not immediately return to Yomiyama City.
After leaving the highway where he had awakened, he spent the remainder of the day observing the world around him and gathering information about what had happened during his absence. He checked dates, communications, public records, recent events, and anything else that could establish how much time had actually passed outside the Library.
The answer was almost absurd.
One month.
That was all.
From the perspective of this world, only a single month had passed since Kaelthorn left Yomiyama City.
Inside the Library, however, he had walked through those endless corridors for countless years. He had read book after book until even the time he had endured within the Interstice seemed short by comparison. Entire stretches of existence had passed for him beneath those infinite shelves, while here, beneath the ordinary sky of this world, barely any time had moved at all.
In other words, those countless years inside the Library had amounted to little more than the period Kaelthorn had originally allowed himself before returning to Yomiyama.
The difference in temporal scale was enormous.
Yet Kaelthorn showed no surprise.
Places outside ordinary reality rarely cared about maintaining a sensible relationship with the time of the worlds connected to them.
By nightfall, Kaelthorn was no longer standing in the middle of the highway. He had moved to its side, where the road overlooked the dark silhouettes of distant mountains.
THE BOOK rested open in his left hand.
The quill was held between the fingers of his right.
Kaelthorn lowered its tip toward the single blank page.
He began writing.
The black markings formed normally beneath the quill, line after line appearing across the otherwise empty surface. Kaelthorn watched carefully as he completed the final character.
Then he lifted the quill.
The writing vanished.
Immediately.
There was no fading.
No absorption into the page.
No burning or distortion.
One instant, the words existed.
The next, the page was perfectly blank again.
Kaelthorn stared at it.
Several seconds passed.
Then he returned the quill to the gutter running through the center of THE BOOK and closed the cover.
'Kaelthorn: Still no use.'
He had been experimenting with THE BOOK since morning.
Once the connection between them had stabilized, Kaelthorn had discovered another detail that answered one of the questions left behind by the destruction of his Null Vault.
The blue heart was not gone.
The same strange blue heart he had acquired in the Kabane world—the one he had spent countless years researching inside the Interstice, the object through which he had first seriously encountered the power of STORY—had not vanished alongside everything else when his existence nearly collapsed.
THE BOOK had absorbed it.
That realization explained even more about the tome's current nature.
The Interstice paper.
The ink.
The quill.
The fragment of STORY that had developed inside them.
And now the blue heart itself.
All of them had become part of the same object.
THE BOOK had grown into something far beyond the three simple materials from which it had originally been constructed.
Unfortunately, knowing that did not mean Kaelthorn knew how to use it.
He had tried writing.
Nothing remained.
He had tried directing his will into it.
No reaction.
He had tested different kinds of energy, different patterns of thought, different intentions, and several forms of interaction that normally produced some response from supernatural artifacts.
Nothing.
THE BOOK remained closed to him.
Whatever abilities it possessed, whatever purpose the blank page served, whatever role the quill was meant to fulfill, and whatever had become of the blue heart inside it—all of those answers remained hidden.
For now.
Kaelthorn looked at its black cover for another moment.
'Kaelthorn: I suppose I will have to take my time and uncover its secrets slowly.'
There was no frustration in the thought.
Time had rarely been something Kaelthorn lacked patience for.
If THE BOOK required experimentation, he would experiment.
If understanding it required years, he would spend years.
If it required something he did not yet possess, then he would eventually obtain that as well.
He closed his hand around the tome.
THE BOOK disappeared into his Null Vault.
Despite everything that had been lost, the Vault itself still remained as part of his existence, empty now except for Nymira, the sealed Io, and the newly stored tome.
Kaelthorn looked toward Yomiyama.
It was finally time to return.
But before taking the first step, he stopped.
One hand emerged from his coat pocket.
He willed something into existence.
Invisible particles began gathering above his palm.
They came from the surrounding environment, drawn together under precise control before rearranging themselves piece by piece. Matter formed where there had previously been nothing recognizable, structure following intention until, within moments, a modern smartphone rested in Kaelthorn's hand.
His return to Ascended existence had changed many things.
He had lost almost everything previously stored inside his Vault.
But now—
that mattered considerably less.
Resources could be recreated.
Tools could be reconstructed.
Objects that would once have required preparation, storage, or external acquisition could now be produced through the capabilities returning with his Ascended state.
Only one percent.
Yet even one percent changed the way he interacted with the world.
Kaelthorn tapped the phone screen several times.
A familiar interface appeared.
Dark background.
A blue rectangular field.
A text box.
And beneath it—
SEND.
The same anonymous system he had used before.
Kaelthorn looked at the empty text field for a moment.
Then typed.
"Names are for those who wish to be found."
He pressed SEND.
The message disappeared into whatever destination awaited it.
Kaelthorn lowered the phone.
A moment later, the device began breaking apart in his hand.
Its surface fragmented into countless microscopic particles, the structure losing cohesion until the entire phone silently disintegrated and scattered into nothing visible.
No evidence remained that it had ever existed.
Kaelthorn placed both hands back into the pockets of his dark coat.
Then he started walking.
Back toward Yomiyama City.
.
.
.
The moment Kaelthorn crossed into Yomiyama, he stopped.
Everything had changed.
Not through destruction.
Not in any conventional sense.
There were no collapsed buildings.
No craters.
No streets reduced to rubble.
No signs that an army had marched through the city or that some enormous explosion had torn it apart.
The structures were still there.
The roads were still there.
The houses.
The shops.
The streetlights.
The school in the distance.
Everything remained approximately where it had once been.
And yet—
Yomiyama City no longer looked like Yomiyama City.
It was covered in crystal.
Completely.
Black, semi-transparent crystal coated the roads from one side to the other. It climbed walls, swallowed rooftops, wrapped itself around streetlamps, filled alleys, and erupted from the ground in jagged formations several meters tall. Smaller crystalline clusters spread over signs and windows like frozen growths, while immense spikes protruded from buildings as though the city itself had begun transforming into some alien mineral formation.
Even the asphalt beneath Kaelthorn's feet had disappeared beneath a dark crystalline layer.
He looked farther into the city.
More crystal.
Everywhere.
Had the road sign outside not identified the place, calling it Yomiyama City would almost have seemed incorrect now.
Crystal City would have been considerably more appropriate.
Kaelthorn walked toward the nearest building.
His gaze settled upon the crystal coating its outer wall.
Then his steps slowed.
Black.
Semi-transparent.
Within its depths moved faint traces of crimson energy.
Kaelthorn reached out and examined it more closely.
His eyes narrowed.
He knew this crystal.
Not merely something similar.
He knew its structure.
Its appearance.
The way energy moved through it.
It was almost indistinguishable from the crystals produced by his own Crystallokinesis.
Had Kaelthorn awakened here without knowing what had happened during his absence, even he might have assumed that he had been responsible for transforming the city.
But he had not.
Someone else had done this.
Using crystals that resembled his own closely enough to immediately seize his attention.
Kaelthorn withdrew his hand.
Then continued deeper into Yomiyama.
Silence followed him.
There were no engines.
No distant conversations.
No television sounds escaping from houses.
No dogs barking behind fences.
No insects.
No movement.
Nothing living.
Kaelthorn expanded his perception.
The result confirmed what his eyes already suggested.
No life.
The people of Yomiyama were gone.
So were the animals.
The city contained structures, objects, crystal—
but no active living presence.
Then Kaelthorn noticed something even more significant.
The bizarre power was gone.
He stopped walking.
The curse.
The calamity.
That unnatural force that had once spread from Class 3 into the school, then outward into the city itself—the phenomenon he had deliberately provoked, strengthened, and forced to evolve—
was no longer present.
Not weakened.
Not dormant.
Not hiding.
Gone.
Kaelthorn looked again at the crystals surrounding him.
No.
That was not entirely correct.
The bizarre power had not simply disappeared.
It had been absorbed.
The crystals contained it.
The calamity that had plagued Yomiyama for decades, rewritten memories, inserted the dead among the living, altered records, manipulated coincidence, and eventually begun expanding its reach beyond Class 3—
had been consumed by this crystalline city.
Kaelthorn continued walking.
Then something happened ahead of him.
A cluster of black crystals blocking part of the street moved.
Kaelthorn stopped.
The crystals shifted sideways.
Not shattered.
Not melted.
Moved.
They withdrew from the road as though recognizing his approach.
Another formation farther ahead followed.
Then another.
One by one, the crystals rearranged themselves before him, clearing a path through the transformed city.
Kaelthorn watched silently.
He did not command them.
He had issued no crystallokinetic order.
Yet they moved for him.
As if welcoming him.
Or perhaps—
guiding him.
Kaelthorn followed the path.
The deeper he went, the more pronounced the reaction became. Jagged formations folded aside. Crystalline branches retracted from streets. Walls of black glass separated before he reached them and closed again only after he passed.
The city itself appeared to be opening a road for him.
Eventually, Kaelthorn reached its center.
Then he stopped.
There was nothing there.
Unlike the rest of the city, this area had been left completely empty.
A wide circular space stood surrounded by black crystal formations on every side, almost like a clearing deliberately preserved in the middle of an endless crystalline forest.
Kaelthorn entered it.
His footsteps echoed faintly across the hard surface.
Then stopped.
Silence returned.
Absolute silence.
Kaelthorn stood at the center of the empty space with both hands inside his coat pockets.
Waiting.
Nothing happened.
One second.
Two.
Three.
Then—
the crystals heard him.
Or recognized him.
All at once, the formations surrounding the clearing began to move.
KRRRRRRR!!!
A deep crystalline sound rolled through the city.
Kaelthorn remained motionless.
The black crystals started expanding at an impossible speed.
Structures that had remained frozen moments earlier suddenly grew upward, outward, and inward at once. Jagged branches intersected, merged, separated, and reformed according to a pattern far too deliberate to be natural.
Directly in front of Kaelthorn, the largest formation began emerging.
Crystal surged upward from the ground.
Ten meters.
Twenty.
Fifty.
Higher.
More structures joined it, growing around the central formation and merging seamlessly into a single gigantic construct.
Kaelthorn raised his head.
It continued climbing.
As its countless surfaces formed, something became visible within them.
A figure.
White.
Faint.
Kaelthorn's gaze sharpened.
Every facet reflected the same pale silhouette.
Not his reflection.
Someone else.
Hundreds of crystalline surfaces.
Hundreds of faint white figures.
All occupying slightly different angles.
All belonging to the same person.
Above Yomiyama, the clouds began moving.
Then they parted.
Not blown away by wind.
They separated directly above the rising formation, opening a vast circular space in the night sky as though even the atmosphere had recognized that something was about to arrive.
The crystal continued upward.
Higher.
Higher still.
Until the structure became so enormous that its peak appeared to touch the opened sky.
Only then did the growth stop.
Silence.
Kaelthorn watched.
A white light appeared behind the crystal structure.
Dim at first.
Then brighter.
It poured through the black semi-transparent material, turning the countless facets into enormous windows of light.
And at the center of the formation—
something began appearing.
Four points.
Perfectly balanced.
Lines connecting them.
A shape formed.
A rhombus.
Kaelthorn's gaze immediately hardened.
He remembered it.
The Golden Sea.
That endless ocean of liquid information beyond conventional space and time.
The impossible realm that had welcomed him like someone returning home.
And above that golden expanse—
the enormous rhombus-shaped eye that had watched him.
The rhombus before him was identical.
White light intensified behind it.
Then the illumination began moving.
It gathered toward the center.
Streams of light flowed inward from every direction, converging directly before the enormous rhombus until the radiance became too concentrated to distinguish individual shapes within it.
Then—
the light began descending.
Slowly.
Gracefully.
A silhouette formed inside it.
First the outline of a body.
Then long dark hair.
A white coat.
Hands.
Legs.
A face.
The glow weakened as the figure descended toward the crystalline ground.
Kaelthorn remained completely still.
The woman finally emerged from the light.
Long, glossy black hair flowed behind her, untouched by any visible wind. Her features were delicate and composed, carrying the same gentle beauty he had seen only in fragments until now. A pristine white researcher's coat covered her slender frame, its clean clinical appearance sharply contrasting against the black crystalline city surrounding them.
And within her eyes—
the rhombus remained.
Clear now.
Not hidden within a reflection.
Not glimpsed for an instant.
Not belonging to some distant eye above an impossible sea.
There.
In front of him.
She descended until her feet gently touched the crystalline ground.
The enormous formation behind her continued glowing.
For several seconds, neither moved.
She looked at Kaelthorn.
At the dark coat.
At the visor hiding his face.
At the man she had apparently crossed an abyss to find.
And slowly—
her expression changed.
A bright smile appeared on her face.
Not the detached smile of a researcher observing something interesting.
Not the faint, mysterious smile Reiko had seen in the broken reflection.
This one was different.
Warm.
Open.
Genuine.
The smile of someone who had finally found the person she had been searching for.
She stepped toward him.
Then spoke.
???: Long time no see.
Her voice reached him clearly.
Not through the Golden Sea.
Not through a reflection.
Not from somewhere beyond reality.
Here.
Standing before him.
Kaelthorn stared at her.
Something moved inside his mind.
A name surfaced.
Not invented.
Not guessed.
Recognized.
As though it had always existed somewhere within him and had simply been waiting for the correct face to appear before returning.
Kaelthorn's eyes narrowed slightly behind the visor.
Then he spoke.
Kaelthorn: Priestess.
.
.
Pic: Priestess
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*To be continued…
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