The sky above the ruined citadel bled red.
Ash drifted like dying snow, each flake carrying whispers of names long erased. The world had gone quiet again — the kind of quiet that didn't come from peace, but from exhaustion.
Kaede stood amid the wreckage, her breath uneven, her skin marked by shallow cuts that refused to close. The battle was over, but silence had not been kind to her. Every sound that tried to return — the faint hum of wind, the distant echo of stone falling — only reminded her how empty the air felt now that Reiji was gone again.
Gone… or worse.
She turned slowly. The crown that had once pulsed with light now lay shattered at the heart of the chamber, its fragments glowing faintly like embers fading in the dark. The man with the cracked mask had vanished without trace, leaving only the weight of his words behind.
> "He didn't fall. He descended."
Kaede clenched her fists. The echoes of that phrase refused to leave her mind.
Descended into what?
---
Her boots scraped against the marble floor as she stepped closer to the fragments. The moment her fingers brushed one, a whisper tore through her thoughts — too sudden, too real.
> "Kaede."
She froze. The voice was his.
Reiji's.
Her vision blurred; her heart stumbled. "Reiji?" she breathed, scanning the empty chamber.
Then she saw it — faint, like the reflection of a dream — his shadow, cast not by any light, but by the memory of one. He was standing beside the crown's remnants, expression unreadable, body half-formed from darkness.
"Why?" she whispered. "Why are you still here?"
The shadow didn't answer. It simply turned its head, and she saw something in its eyes — not malice, not pain, but regret woven so deeply it almost looked like serenity.
> "Because silence doesn't end when you die."
The words came like wind — soft, hollow, and heavy.
---
Kaede took a step forward, tears breaking through the dust on her cheeks.
"You promised," she said, voice trembling. "You said you'd end this cycle."
Reiji's shadow tilted its head. "I did. But the world keeps writing the same song, Kaede. And someone must sing its final verse."
A faint hum began to fill the air — low, haunting, almost melodic. It wasn't a sound from the world outside; it came from within the walls, from the sigils that had once bound the Shadow Order. Each rune began to flicker in rhythm, like instruments tuning themselves for a requiem.
The Silent Dirge had begun.
---
Kaede fell to her knees as the vibrations coursed through the floor. Her ears rang, and for a heartbeat she saw flashes — memories, not hers but his:
Reiji, kneeling before a throne of obsidian, surrounded by nameless silhouettes.
Kaede's voice calling his name through smoke.
The man with the cracked mask raising a blade forged from chains.
Each vision tore through her like shards of glass.
Then, silence.
The shadow of Reiji knelt before her, hand hovering just above her shoulder. "When the song ends," he said quietly, "someone must remember the silence. Otherwise it all returns."
She looked up, desperate. "Then let me bear it."
He shook his head slowly. "You already are."
---
The dirge deepened. The citadel began to sink — stone dissolving into dust, banners collapsing into nothing. Outside, the crimson sky fractured, revealing beneath it a hollow void where the horizon used to be.
Kaede reached for him, but her hand passed through his form like smoke. His edges began to unravel, darkness fraying away.
"Reiji—!"
"Don't grieve the shadow," he whispered. "Grieve the world that made one."
The words broke something inside her. She tried to speak, but no sound came — only the silent sob that escaped when breath itself betrayed her.
Reiji's form flickered one last time.
The dirge reached its crescendo — a soundless crash that shook the bones of reality — and then everything stopped.
The air hung still.
The chamber was gone.
Only Kaede remained, kneeling in the middle of an endless plain of ash.
---
Wind returned, slow and cold.
Far above her, what remained of the sky began to mend — the red giving way to muted gray. The world had not healed; it had only gone quiet again, waiting.
Kaede looked down at her hands. In her palm rested a single shard of the shattered crown. The faintest glow pulsed within it — blue this time, not red. A remnant of the bond they'd once shared.
She closed her fingers around it and stood.
There was no music now, no whisper of guidance, no promise of salvation. Only the dirge fading into the distance, like the memory of a heartbeat.
Her eyes lifted toward the horizon. "I'll remember," she said softly. "Even if the world forgets."
For a moment, she thought she heard Reiji's voice again — not as a whisper, but as a breath carried by the wind:
> "Then the silence has meaning."
The ashes stirred, scattering into the gray air like fragments of a song unfinished.
And as Kaede began walking toward the dim line of light that marked the world's edge, the last note of the Silent Dirge faded — leaving behind only the faint echo of what once was.