He stepped forward because there was no other path. Not for him. Not anymore.
The pressure had not vanished. It had only changed. It no longer pressed against his skin or weighed on his chest. It did not crush, nor scream. It simply lingered in the air like something ancient, watching, expecting, waiting to be answered.
Kazumi crossed the threshold barefoot. The stone beneath him was colder than before. Polished smooth by time, or perhaps not by time at all. The cold did not bite his flesh. It passed through it. It moved deeper.
He still carried his brother's body in his arms. Kazuma's weight no longer felt human. It was memory, grief, silence given form. The silence here devoured every sound his bare feet made. No echo. No warmth. No welcome.
There was nothing in the hall ahead of him. No flame. No shrine. No altar. Just vastness. A void of perfect symmetry. The kind of emptiness that suggested something once stood here long ago but had been removed, as if unworthy to remain.
He walked deeper.
There was no wind. No shift in light. The walls, if they existed at all, had blurred into shadow. There was no end. No center. Only stillness.
Then a voice came.
It did not shout. It did not whisper. It did not rise or fall.
It was simply there.
Welcome, Kazumi
It did not echo. The words slid into his thoughts like they had been spoken a thousand times before. It was not sound. It was memory. A voice so flawlessly shaped that it felt like silk folded around glass.
Kazumi turned.
She stood behind him.
She had not appeared. She had always been there.
She was tall. Her presence impossible to ignore. Straight-backed, unmoving, sovereign by nature. She wore a white robe that did not touch her skin. The fabric hovered near her body, following its perfect lines, obeying a law beyond gravity.
Her feet were bare. Yet the floor did not seem to notice them.
Her skin glowed faintly with the soft shimmer of frost under moonlight. Not pale. Not white. Not human. Her face carried no blemish. No emotion. Nothing to soften it.
It was not beautiful. It was beyond beauty.
It was balance. Precision. Silence.
And her eyes
Twin spheres of pure gold. Deep, still, endless. They did not reflect the world. They refused it.
She did not look at him. She looked through him. Through his grief. Through his weakness. Through everything he believed made him real.
His breath stopped in his throat.
He did not feel his body. He did not feel Kazuma's corpse in his arms. He did not feel anything.
There was only her.
Her platinum hair fell down her back like liquid metal, too smooth to be shaped by mortal hands. Not a single strand moved. The air itself bowed in her presence.
Kazumi could not move. He could not think. His thoughts had no place beside her.
She had not spoken again.
She had not touched him.
And still, she was all that existed.
****
The silence did not shift.
It did not care for grief.It did not flinch at suffering.It simply endured, vast and immeasurable, ancient in its stillness.
Kazumi stood.And then, he could not.
His knees gave way, slowly, as if the act of collapsing had been decided long before.He sank onto the cold stone floor, still holding Kazuma's lifeless body against his chest. He didn't feel the cold anymore. Or the blood. Or the broken rhythm of his breath.
His mouth opened, but nothing came.
Then, finally, his voice cracked into the world.
"I… beg you."
The words were thin.Too small for this temple.Too human.
"I can't… I can't lose him."
Tears spilled from his eyes, trailing through dirt, through blood. They struck the stone without sound. He didn't wipe them away.
"He's all I had left."
His arms tightened around the boy in his embrace.
"I know I'm nothing. I'm not chosen. I have no strength, no path, no name that matters."
He choked back a breath, shallow and ragged.
"But I came here. I climbed. I bled. I believed."
His eyes rose, trembling.
"My mother once told me this place is hidden from the eyes of the world. That miracles can happen here, if one dares to ask."
His voice fell to a whisper.
"So I ask you."
He bowed lower.
"Take me."
He didn't know what he was offering. It didn't matter.
"Take my life. My breath. My blood. My name. My soul. Take everything. But give him back."
He gasped again, voice shattering into broken air.
"I don't care what it costs."
Silence.
Not rejection.Not acceptance.Only the weight of divinity remaining untouched.
He lowered his forehead to the floor. His body curled forward, not in reverence but in defeat.
"Please…"
It was a child's voice now.Empty. Cracked. Fraying.
"Please."
Another breath.
"Please."
The temple swallowed every sound.
And yet, he kept whispering, even as his strength vanished.
"I don't want revenge… I just want him to wake up. Just once. Just one more breath."
He stayed there. Unmoving.Tears falling.
"I have nothing left."
Then something changed.
He felt it, though it made no sound.Like a stillness inside stillness.As though the very air paused to witness.
Kazumi opened his eyes.
She had moved.
She was kneeling.
Not above him.
Before him.
Her posture unchanged. Her gaze unbroken.
But now, they were on the same level.
Her golden eyes were still endless, but no longer unreachable.They saw him.
Her hand rose.
Slowly.Precisely.Like a motion untouched by time.
She reached toward him.
Fingers pale as moonlight.Impossibly steady.
And then, she touched his face.
Right where the skin was split open. Where tears had fallen. Where the blood had not yet dried.
The touch held no warmth.No comfort.
But it was real.
Kazumi stopped breathing.
In that one gesture, there was no judgment.No mercy.No salvation.
Only this truth:
He had been heard.
****
The hand withdrew from his cheek.
And then, at last, she spoke again.
Her voice did not pierce the silence.It replaced it.Soft, perfect, absolute.
"You have been seen."
Each word struck the air with divine clarity.She did not speak as mortals do.She declared.
"You have been heard."
Kazumi raised his head slowly, as if rising from a fevered dream.Her gaze still held him.Those golden eyes had not dimmed.But now, there was something else.Not warmth.Not mercy.Something deeper.
"You called out," she said. "And I have answered."
His lips parted. No words came.He knelt there, broken, the corpse of his brother still in his arms.Half-believing.Half-dreaming.
"I can act," she said. "But not freely."
Her voice carried no cruelty. No threat.Only law.
"What you have lost," she continued, "was taken by shadows that feed between worlds. Creatures not born of flesh, but of spiritual rot. Beings who exist in the spaces behind thought and faith."
Her eyes narrowed slightly.
"They are not demons in the way your kind imagines. They are older. More patient. Spirits twisted by will and want. What you saw… was a fragment. A consequence. Your brother, your village, were casualties in a game far larger than you understand."
Kazumi's jaw clenched.
"Why us?" he asked, voice shaking.
"Because you lived," she replied. "And living things call the hunger."
She took a slow step forward. Her gaze dropped to the boy in his arms.
"I cannot restore this life."
Kazumi bowed his head.
Pain erupted again, freshly drawn.
"But," she continued, "I can give him another."
The air shifted.
Kazumi's eyes lifted, cautious.
"What do you mean?"
"A new life," she said. "Far from this land. A life of warmth. Of comfort. A name, a family, a future untouched by this night. He will be safe. He will grow."
"Without me…" Kazumi whispered.
"Yes."
She studied him carefully.
"Perhaps, if fate permits, your paths may cross again. But not as brothers. Not as you were."
His voice was hollow now.
"What do you want in return?"
The answer came at once.
"You."
The silence deepened.
"Your name. Your body. Your time. Your will. You will belong to me."
He stared.
"A slave?" he asked.
"A Servant," she corrected. "Bound. Changed. You will walk where others fall. See what others break to glimpse. You will carry my will, and in doing so, lose yourself."
He looked down at Kazuma.
"And he… will live?"
"He will laugh," she said. "He will sleep without fear. He will never remember what was taken from him."
"But I will."
"Yes," she answered.
He closed his eyes.Breathing.Hurting.
Her voice softened.
"You may never find him again. He may grow old, far from here. He may live and die, never knowing your name."
She knelt once more.Close.Still.
"But he will live. That is what you asked."
Kazumi trembled.Inside, something broke.
A final breath escaped his lips.
"Yes."
She extended her hand.
"Give me your name."
A pause.
A heartbeat stretched.
He swallowed.
Then answered.
"Kazumi."
The sound was no louder than a whisper.But it rang through the temple like a vow.
Her eyes closed.
And she smiled.
Not warmly.Not kindly.
But with the weight of something old, and vast, and final.
"Then, Kazumi," she said softly,"you are no more."