Silence came first.
Not rest—just the absolute absence of breath, a pause so deep that even echoes forgot how to return.
The battlefield where the Reaver had died stood frozen. The shards of stone and time hung in the air, motionless, caught in mid-collapse like insects in amber.
Yuu stood among them.
Steam rose faintly from his shoulders. The glow of Nocturne Reverse flickered once before fading into nothing, swallowed back into the arsenal of his will.
He turned slowly.
Nothing moved.
Even the wind had been erased.
Above him the cracked sky shimmered. Thin fractures of light spread outward—wounds in heaven's glass, each glinting with too many suns.
The pressure on his skin was wrong, as if existence had thickened.
Time bled, he thought.
And the world noticed.
Something rose in the distance.
At first a shape, then a tower—spiralling upward from the ruins, building itself backward. Debris climbed instead of falling, stones clicking into place in reverse rhythm.
Ivory mixed with black metal. Gears turned in silence.
At the top, a clock face spun both ways, its hands chasing and retreating at once.
Yuu watched, eyes narrowing.
"What is that?"
No answer.
He turned—
The Goddess was gone.
He walked.
Each step left a shimmer, as if reality doubted it had been taken. The ground pulsed beneath his feet, reluctant to remember where he'd been.
The tower grew taller with every blink, until it blotted out the broken sun.
At its base waited a door—black stone, silver veins, a slow heartbeat humming beneath the surface.
No handle. No lock. Only invitation.
Yuu lifted his hand.
The door opened before he touched it.
Inside was absence shaped like a room.
Gears floated through the dark, vast as city gates, teeth grinding soundlessly. Chains of light wound around them, holding them still.
At the center stood a throne.
Upon it—a woman.
For a moment he thought it was her, the Goddess he knew. The same silver hair, the same eyes.
Then he saw the chains—ribbons of sealwork glowing black-red, binding her arms and throat.
Her presence pressed against him like heat from a dying star.
When she spoke, time slowed by instinct alone.
"So you're the one she picked."
He said nothing.
"You've come far. Most mortals don't survive their own echoes."
"I'm not most mortals."
Her smile deepened. "No. You used Nocturne Reverse. That means time has spilled. She's weakening."
Yuu's gaze sharpened. "Who are you?"
"The same Goddess," she answered, voice low, ancient. "Just the one she locked away."
"For what?"
"For remembering what came before this place."
He stepped closer. The air thickened, resisting his movement.
"Before the Dimension?"
She nodded once. "Before it was called that. Before your little 'training ground' existed. This world is a prison for a forgotten war."
His jaw tightened. "And you?"
"I was the first to lose."
Her eyes glimmered gold behind the seals.
"The Goddess of Origin. She split herself to bury what couldn't be erased."
"You're the half she buried," he said.
"The half that still remembers."
The tower shuddered, gears grinding once, sparks of light bleeding from the walls.
"She's trying to suppress me," the chained Goddess murmured. "You shouldn't have been able to find this place."
"Then why let me in?"
"You broke her rule. That backward slash of yours tore open a sealed layer of time. It made a door."
"What happens now?"
"Now you choose what kind of weapon you'll become."
"I'm not here to be a weapon."
"Then you're already beyond her expectation."
She leaned forward as far as the chains allowed. "Come back when you're ready to unseal the truth. This tower holds her sins—and the reason you were summoned."
"What's the cost?" he asked.
Her smile was small, almost kind.
"You'll stop being mortal. And start becoming something else."
Yuu turned.
The door opened of its own accord.
When he stepped through, the tower collapsed into dust—erased from the record of the world.
He looked up. The cracks in the sky glowed brighter, like veins of a heart too tired to beat.
The Goddess—the one who still lingered—was watching somewhere unseen.
Hiding behind silence.
And Yuu had just found where her truth was buried.
The air did not move when the tower vanished.
The world remained hushed, yet something inside Yuu had shifted.
He walked through the eastern ruins where the Reaver's last strike had broken the dimension open.
Cracks spread like veins across the sky, and through them new corridors appeared—places that should not exist.
A faint pulse drew him onward.
One rune glowed ahead, identical to the mark carved into Nocturne Reverse but brighter, bleeding light instead of shadow.
The ground opened into a spiral library built from white stone and black glyphs.
Shelves circled downward forever; thousands of books floated weightless in mid-air, turning slowly in the dark.
No breath of magic stirred them.
Time itself refused to pass here.
Yuu stepped through the archway.
His boots disturbed dust older than memory.
He ran a hand along a marble table.
It felt cold—not with temperature, but with the stillness of grief.
At the centre of the library waited a thin, cracked pillar.
On it lay a single scroll, unrolled as if waiting.
Its title burned faint red:
Arsenal 0 — The Blade That Was Erased.
Yuu's pulse faltered.
He reached out.
Before his fingers touched the parchment, the scroll unfurled itself.
Wind roared through the library.
The frozen books shattered into light.
Runes burst from the floor and whirled around him, carving new symbols across the walls.
Then the scroll spoke—not in sound, but through memory.
He saw a battlefield.
A sky of fire.
Gods falling like meteors.
Mortals erased faster than names could be spoken.
At the centre stood a woman—silver-haired, barefoot, surrounded by broken blades.
The First Origin.
The original Goddess.
Her eyes were hollow, her skin streaked with divine blood that shimmered between gold and black.
In her hand she held a sword darker than death, every pulse of it another sin.
Each beat shook the heavens.
Each gleam whispered regret.
She raised the weapon—and cut herself in two.
Light split. Time screamed. The world was divided into memory and denial.
Then darkness.
The vision ended.
The scroll sealed itself and branded one glowing rune into Yuu's chest.
He staggered, breath sharp, the mark burning through his skin.
Behind him, a voice.
"What did you just read?"
He turned.
The Goddess stood at the threshold of the library.
Her face was calm, but her hands trembled slightly at her sides.
"You weren't supposed to find that."
"You lied to me," he said.
"No," she whispered. "I withheld."
"Same thing."
She took a step forward. "That scroll was erased from existence. You should be dead."
"Then why am I not?"
"Because something else is choosing you."
He brushed past her shoulder, the heat from the rune searing even through the air.
"It's not choosing me."
He looked down at the mark.
"I chose it."
The words from the scroll echoed inside him:
> There was a blade before all others. It had no element, no edge, no title.
It was forged from the sin of remembrance.
Too powerful—it cut gods into regret.
So it was sealed and forgotten.
But memory is a blade.
If one man remembers, the Arsenal awakens fully.
The Goddess stood silent, eyes fixed on the rune still burning through his skin.
"You understand what you're doing," she said quietly. "If you bring that back—"
"I won't just train anymore," Yuu finished.
He looked at her, not angry, not cold—simply resolute.
"I'm going to finish what you started."
The brand on Yuu's chest had burned for three days.
Each breath hissed like steam from cracked metal; each heartbeat felt heavier than stone.
The Dimension itself no longer welcomed him — its air thickened, its ground trembled under his steps.
He was not a guest here anymore.
He was an infection.
When the sky finally split open again, he followed the light.
It led him to a valley that hadn't existed before — carved by the fracture left when time reversed.
Lightning coiled above it in spirals, feeding a storm that circled a single point.
The Forge.
A floating anvil of divine stone, bleeding silver fire from every rune etched across its sides.
Beneath it, a sword without shape hung suspended — a blurred outline of metal that refused to be remembered.
Each pulse from it shook the valley.
DOOM. DOOM. DOOM.
A heartbeat not his own.
Yuu stepped forward.
The ground beneath him cracked like glass; heat shimmered, pressing against his bones.
He reached the base of the Forge.
The air folded.
Pressure slammed him down.
He fell to one knee, hands braced against burning earth.
His mana flared once, then scattered like shards of broken glass.
Every part of him screamed, but he kept moving.
Elbow. Palm. Elbow. Palm.
Crawling through light that tried to erase him.
Somewhere above the thunder, the Goddess's voice broke through — no longer playful, no longer certain.
"You're breaking apart!"
He didn't answer.
He dragged himself closer.
The heat stripped sound from the world until only his heartbeat remained.
When he reached the anvil, his blood met the stone and sizzled.
The blade hanging above the Forge shuddered, turning slowly to face him.
A voice, vast and mechanical, echoed through the valley.
"WHAT DO YOU OFFER?"
Yuu lifted his head.
His eyes were hollow and steady.
"Everything," he said.
Light collapsed inward.
The Forge blazed white, then black, then red.
The unfinished sword split apart; its fragments swirled around him like dying stars.
Each spark struck him — not as steel, but as memory.
He felt the weight of every failure, every name he had buried, every heartbeat he had lost.
Pain bent the air; sound cracked under it.
Still he stood.
When the storm cleared, the fragments hung above the anvil, spinning faster and faster until they screamed.
The Goddess fell to her knees at the edge of the valley, whispering into the wind,
"He's really doing it…"
The fragments fused.
One shape.
One color beyond black.
Then they fell.
KRRAAANG — the anvil rang like the first sound after creation.
Shockwaves raced through the Dimension; light twisted in place before freezing.
Yuu reached upward, fingers trembling, vision blurred by heat and blood.
He closed his hand around the hilt.
Silence.
For a long moment, nothing moved.
Then the Forge dimmed, its fire sinking into the new blade.
The weapon's edge caught the last of the lightning and held it.
Its surface was bone-white, its spine traced with faint gold lines that pulsed like veins.
When he looked closer, five names glowed along its flat side — tiny inscriptions of light.
He didn't smile.
He didn't weep.
He simply lifted it.
The world paused.
Above the valley, time hesitated.
The cracks in the sky froze mid-flare; even the wind refused to continue its path.
The Goddess stood at the cliff's edge, eyes wide, breath silent.
For one heartbeat, she looked almost human — afraid and awed at once.
Yuu lowered the blade.
Its aura faded to nothing, and the pause of the world ended.
He turned toward the horizon.
The forge was gone.
Only the quiet remained, thick and endless.
He whispered, almost to himself,
"Time stopped because it had nothing left to say."
Then he walked on.