The world had gone quiet again.
Not the fragile stillness of peace — this was a silence that pressed against the ribs, heavy and suffocating, like the weight of invisible chains wrapping around the soul. The air within the citadel was thick with ash, curling upward in slow spirals as if the walls themselves were exhaling the remnants of what had been burned away.
Reiji and Kaede stood within the storm's eye. The two halves of the broken crown hovered between them, pulsing faintly with opposing heartbeats — his beating slower, hers erratic, uneven.
"Do you feel it?" Reiji asked quietly.
Kaede nodded, her hand trembling as the crimson light seeped into her palm. "It's… alive."
He turned toward her. "It's not alive. It remembers."
---
The ground rumbled faintly beneath their feet — the same heartbeat she had heard beneath the ashes, now growing louder. The walls began to hum, responding to the presence of the crown's divided power.
Kaede's voice broke through the echo. "What does it want?"
Reiji's eyes lingered on the crown, then on her. "It wants what every oath demands."
"Which is?"
"Loyalty."
He stepped forward, slowly, until the crimson light from their halves merged between them — swirling into a single orbiting sphere. Kaede could see her reflection in his eyes — distorted, fractured, as though a thousand versions of her stood behind him, each one whispering the same words in silence.
"You knew this would happen," she said.
"Yes."
"And you didn't tell me."
He didn't answer. The silence between them said enough.
---
A faint crack split the air — not sound, but something breaking inside her.
Kaede lowered her gaze, jaw tense. "You used me."
Reiji looked at her then, expression unreadable. "No. I needed you."
Her blade flashed.
Steel whispered through the air, stopping inches from his throat. The crown's light reflected across both of their faces, painting their expressions in shades of red and shadow.
"Then tell me," she said through clenched teeth. "When did the truth stop mattering to you?"
Reiji's eyes softened, but the answer was as hollow as the silence surrounding them. "When silence became the only thing left to believe in."
Her grip tightened — and for a brief moment, Reiji almost welcomed the strike. But Kaede stopped herself, her arm trembling, the blade quivering between hesitation and conviction.
---
The floor beneath them cracked open. The chamber shuddered violently, the walls peeling back to reveal the abyss below — a pit of writhing shadows, screaming without sound.
The crimson light between them fell — descending into the darkness.
Instantly, the whispers began again. Not faint this time. Loud. Accusing.
> "Traitor."
"He broke the pact."
"He bound the silence to himself."
Reiji staggered back as the shadows began to crawl up the sides of the pit, reaching for him like hands desperate to drag him down. Kaede lunged forward, grabbing his arm. "Reiji!"
He tried to pull free. "Let me go—"
"No!"
Her grip tightened, but the ground beneath them gave way. They fell together into the abyss.
---
There was no sound, no sense of falling — only motion, the endless rush of black air and fleeting crimson light. When Kaede opened her eyes, she wasn't falling anymore. She was standing on something solid, though the world around her was wrong.
The citadel was gone.
Instead, she stood in an endless plain of ash, beneath a sky split by veins of red lightning. The air shimmered, heavy with the scent of burnt steel and something older — betrayal turned to dust.
Reiji stood a few paces ahead, his silhouette barely visible through the haze.
She called out to him, but her voice came out muted — swallowed before it could reach him. Still, he turned, as if hearing her through the silence itself.
"You shouldn't have followed me," he said again.
"You keep saying that," she replied, stepping closer. "And I keep ignoring it."
---
The ground beneath them shifted. Chains burst from the ash, coiling upward like serpents — black, glinting faintly red, alive. They wrapped around Reiji's arms and torso, dragging him to his knees.
Kaede ran forward, slashing one apart, but as soon as it broke, another replaced it.
Reiji didn't resist. "They aren't mine," he said.
"Then whose?"
His gaze rose to meet hers — eyes dark, pained. "Ours."
The realization struck her too late. The chains around him split into two, half of them lashing out toward her. They coiled around her arms, her neck, digging into her skin. She gasped, blade slipping from her grip as the pressure built.
The air filled with whispers again.
> "Every oath has its price…"
"…and every loyalty its chain."
Kaede fell to her knees beside him. The ash rose around them, forming shapes — faces, fragments of their memories — people long gone, all staring.
Reiji looked at her, his voice raw. "I told you the silence feeds. Now it feeds on us."
She struggled to speak through the tightening grip. "Then… break it."
He smiled faintly, though his lips were stained with blood. "I can't. But I can bear it."
---
He closed his eyes. The chains reacted instantly — pulling tighter, wrapping fully around his body until only faint traces of light seeped through. Kaede reached out, screaming soundlessly as the last glimpse of his eyes vanished beneath the metal.
The world cracked open again — the ash collapsing, the sky fracturing into streaks of red lightning.
And then — silence.
When Kaede opened her eyes, she was back in the citadel.
The floor was cold beneath her, her hands empty. The crown lay before her, now whole again, its surface gleaming faintly.
But there was no trace of Reiji.
She stared at the crown for a long time, breathing slowly, each inhale like swallowing glass. Then she whispered,
"Chains of betrayal... or chains of faith?"
No one answered.
The crown pulsed once, faintly.
And in its reflection — for a brief, impossible instant — she saw Reiji's eyes, watching her from beneath the weight of the silence.