In the Yakumo household, the air shimmered as a boundary rippled open without a sound. Yukari slipped back into the room. Ran was waiting, her posture tight, while Chen peered from behind her legs, eyes wide with curiosity.
"Milady?" Ran spoke. "Is the situation contained?"
Yukari did not answer immediately. She walked to her usual seat, her movements slow and sat with a quiet grace. Her fan remained closed in her hand.
"Contained?" she repeated. "Not in the way we imagined."
Ran's ears twitched. "What happened?"
Yukari was silent for a long moment. Then, softly, she said, "He is calling a council."
Ran blinked. "A council? He?"
"Yes." Yukari's voice was quiet, but clear. "Tomorrow at noon. At the Scarlet Devil Mansion. He will announce his decision there, on his own terms."
Ran's brows furrowed. "He is taking control of the narrative. That is... unexpected."
"It is more than unexpected." Yukari opened her fan slowly, holding it before her. "It is a sign of life. He has chosen to act, not simply to endure." She paused. "That, in itself, is significant."
Chen tilted her head. "So he's not going to leave?"
"No, Chen." Yukari's voice softened. "He is not leaving. Not yet. Perhaps not at all."
Chen brightened. "Then can I still help, Lady Yukari?"
Yukari's gaze softened further. "Yes, Chen. I have a mission for you." She shifted to meet the nekomata's eyes. "Find Reimu and Marisa. Tell them that a certain stubborn outsider is ready to talk. The venue is the Scarlet Devil Mansion, noon tomorrow. And Chen..." She paused. "Be kind, when you tell them. They have been worried. Reassure them that he is... better. Not fixed. But better."
Chen nodded. "I'll tell them, Lady Yukari! I'll be nice!"
She turned and vanished through a small rift, leaving Yukari and Ran alone.
Ran stepped closer, her tails still. "Milady, you seem... unsettled. There is something more, isn't there?"
Yukari was quiet for a long moment. Then, softly, she said, "He told me the truth."
Ran's voice was low. "...And that reason?"
Yukari lowered her fan. Her gaze was distant. "The truth of his existence. The reason he was in that desert. The reason he gave us three days." She paused. "The reason he has been so difficult to reach."
Ran's brows furrowed. "What truth?"
Yukari's voice was steady, but heavy. "He is dying, Ran. Not from injury. Not from any enemy. From the terms of a deal he made long ago. He traded his future, every possible branch of his timeline, and to make offsprings of his own, for the power to fight off what I couldn't even imagine what they are. And the result of what remains of him is... finite. A year, perhaps less. And when he dies, he will be erased. From memory. From story. From everything."
Ran's face went pale. "Erased... completely?"
"Completely," Yukari confirmed. "Neither heaven nor hell will take him. He will simply... cease to have ever been." She closed her fan. "That is why he was going to kill himself in that desert. He saw no point in continuing. He had already lost everything that could make survival meaningful."
"It is more than sad." Yukari's voice was still quiet. "It is a wound that cannot be healed by anything we could offer. Not power. Not position. Not even the promise of a future. Because he has none."
Ran's brows furrowed deeply. "Then why call the council? Why choose to act at all?"
Yukari's expression shifted, something like wonder crossing her face. "Because someone reached him. Not through strategy. Not through force. Through something far more simple." She paused. "Sakuya Izayoi."
Ran blinked. "The Chief Maid?"
"Yes." Yukari's smile was faint, but real. "She did what none of us could. She refused to let him die. She fought him, not with power, but with presence. And it worked." She paused. "He's not healed. He's not saved. But he's... beginning to consider the possibility that he might be allowed to try."
Ran absorbed this for a long moment. "So the council... is his way of choosing to engage?"
"Exactly." Yukari leaned back, her gaze thoughtful. "He is no longer waiting to die. He is choosing to act. The council is his declaration, not to us, but to himself, that he has not given up."
Ran was quiet for a moment. Then, carefully, she asked, "What does this mean for our plans? If he is dying in a year, if he will be erased... how do we proceed?"
Yukari opened her fan fully now, the motion slow. "We proceed as we always have. We protect what remains. Not his future, because he has none. Not his past, because it is already gone. But the present. The moments he has left. The connections he is forming." She paused. "We cannot save him from the terms of his deal. But we can ensure that the time he has left is not wasted."
She snapped the fan shut with a soft click.
"That is the project now, Ran. Not to secure an asset. Not to win a war, though that is a must. To kindle whatever hope we can, for however long we can." Her gaze met Ran's. "And we will do it not because it is strategic, but because he is worth it."
Ran's tails relaxed slightly. "And the council?"
Yukari let out a small, genuine smile. "The council is his first step. And we will support it." She paused. "And we will do so without letting him know that we know the full scope of his condition. He trusts us enough to have spoken the truth. We will honor that trust by not using it against him."
"Then Chen is delivering a note with only half the truth," Ran said quietly. "You didn't tell her everything."
"No." Yukari's voice was soft. "They are still full of what happened in the incursion earlier. Telling the full weight of it will feel like a salt in a gouge wound. Let them believe he is simply better. The truth would only hurt them further."
Ran nodded slowly. "And the rest of Gensokyo? The other factions?"
Yukari's expression hardened slightly. "They will learn in time. For now, what matters is that Nowa Beckitzer has chosen to act. The rest can wait."
She stood and moved toward the window, looking out at the night sky.
"A year," she murmured. "One year is all our timeframe. And after that, he will be gone." A pause. "We must make it matter."
Ran stood behind her, silent. After a moment, she said, "We will, Milady."
Yukari did not turn. "Yes," she said quietly. "I believe we will."
Meanwhile, Nowa lay alone in the SDM's Goldleaf Suite, his own temporary room, but for the first time, the silence felt different. It was no longer an empty void, but a contemplative space. He lay on his back, one hand idly tracing his rune pouch, an artifact of his own making, a testament to the craftsman he had chosen to be.
He felt the 50ms Author slumbering within him, that mutilating "gift" from an absent god. Then, he raised his right hand. A single, tiny ember of Voidflame, his true, innate curse, sparked to life at the tip of his finger, eating the light it surrounded. Then slowly looked past the manuscript—AT YOU.
"Heya… You've been here for a while now…" A pause. "I know you already get the idea… but yeah… I hated these powers," he whispered.
The Voidflame flickered out as he let his hand fall back to the bedsheet. "But these are what built me. What I became."
His eyes now traced the patterns on the ceiling. "I have everything I did not have, back when I still kept on caring for others… The 50ms Author can rewrite reality... I could have revived Amy when I was fourteen. I could have revived Bion and Lancer when I was twenty-five. I could have reversed Fenlia's curse when I was twenty-seven… But this power came when I was thirty..." His voice was low and filled with old, bitter grief.
"The Framework Runes, a craft I have only recently perfected after ten years of trying since I started, That started fifteen years ago… I could have cured Fenila's curse with it, if I had known this was the answer… And the Voidflame..." He paused. "The Voidflame is about removing a thing from the story… Entirely… A true curse of existence."
He shifted onto his side, curling slightly. "I've faced countless powers, preserved countless stories, faced countless horrors, false deities and heaven and hell itself… I protected the helpless… Because no one ever came to help me… I did what I could… And the universe... it just kept taking… It took everything I cared about, back when I was still foolish enough to be hopeful…" He let out a shuddering breath.
"Thus, pushing myself further to increase my power… That's when I used the balance of Framework Runes to its extreme limits. And I found out… There are no limits at all. If it exists, there's a rune for it… So long as you have the schematic and understanding for it." A pause. "I know… it's so absurd. But… Instead of becoming omnipotent with it… I… I choose not to… I chose a rune that never alters my human nature…"
He closed his eyes. A bitter chuckle escaped him. "I still don't know why… Maybe I was still hoping someone could to kill me… or was it Amy's influence… I… I can't… You can read my mind… I don't have a spoken words for it…"
'I've then committed thousands of sins… I started erasing equilibrium gods when Bion and Lancer were killed by them... I started to become a selfish bastard, enforcing my ideation to reality… and I succeeded by twenty-eight… I am an irredeemable cosmo's existential monster, the Gateway to true oblivion, The end of story. A… A Theocide Maniac… That is what I was about to say to Sakuya.'
Then the image that surfaced behind his eyelids was a blonde-haired boundary woman of what she said, "'We are a monster of our making', 'the future and your past's consequences are irrelevant to what remains,'" and a silver-haired maid sitting beside him under a starry sky, then her counterargument, and then the slap…
He opened his eyes. "I was moved by a maid, huh?" A soft, disbelieving exhale escaped him.
"I know this is another of those selfishness…" His gaze lifted back to the ceiling. "But… can I still protect theirs?" he asked. "Can I still be human, like a true human at all? To have... a want that isn't just the absence of pain, the momentum of atonement, or the part of enforcing will onto reality… but a want for something... for myself?"
The silence offered no answer. But for the first time in a long, long time, the silence felt like it might eventually hold one.
"Maybe," he mumbled a word he had long since given up on.
"For decade, no one was able to change my worldview, not even Fenlia… Now, just two days in this realm… One did…"
He let out a short, sharp exhale. "Change is the easiest and hardest thing to do, huh?" he paused. "Maybe I'll try this time… I have every tool to preserve it."
He stood up to his feet. He looked at his palm for a moment. Then his palm now went to his chest, feeling the bandage within.
"I'll try… readers… I'll try. I'll be selfish for this specific want. I don't have to pass the controller yet." His hand now lowered. His eyes gaze at the night sky by the window. "I'll find a way to live… past the deal of my death. I will find a way to break it no matter what the consequences are, while I protect this world."
A pause. Then a small smirk formed his lips. "I write the rules, after all."
He then turned to his bed, then his sweater. "First though, I need to wear my pajamas. A world can accept a pajama wearer man,"
He dryly glanced at the Manuscript.
"Right?"