This time, the scene did not open on the capital of Lugunica as it usually did… but on a place well known to every dedicated reader.
The Flügel Tree.
That vegetal titan. That centuries-old tree that pierced the clouds and whose top could not be seen — even on the clearest nights, its summit disappeared somewhere between the stars and the darkness, as if it had decided one day that the sky belonged to it as much as the earth.
But at this precise moment, the place was anything but calm. The wind blew its light breezes through the branches, yes — but near the tree, something was happening.
Not just anything.
A battle. Or rather — depending on the point of view — a pure and simple humiliation.
Two beings capable of bringing terror to this world faced each other.
The White Whale, that calamity of more than four hundred years that brought death and pure erasure wherever it passed, stood there, cornered. Ordinarily, a creature of this magnitude had no opponent to match it, let alone in single combat.
It was that confidence that had made it arrogant — facing something since the beginning of this night, using all its strength, all its resistance, all its mist power in the hope of reducing to nothing the poor soul that had dared to challenge it.
It had believed it possible. At first.
That was the damage.
Because what it — yes, it — had dared to confront this night was not just anyone. It was not a Sword Saint, not a hero, not a demigod of this world. It was something else entirely.
A man residing in the body of Regulus Corneas, and containing the Authority of Greed — and unlike its original owner, this man was not a complete idiot incapable of exploiting even half of its potential.
Kozuwa Kurisu knew the rules. And someone who knows the rules and has the right tool can perform miracles that even theorists would not have anticipated. He was there to vent his nerves, to have fun, to test the extent of the possible, and above all, to offer a spectacle.
Of course — and that was the genius of Author-san, that dear writer who held this story in his hands at this very moment — the Whale had been made capable of regenerating at a dizzying speed so that the spectacle would last a little longer. So that it would be fun. Kurisu knew it. He had smiled when he realized it.
And so the battle had begun.
The Whale had charged. Naturally. Because that is what arrogant creatures that have not lost in four centuries do — they charge, they roar their mist, they put all their weight into it and wait for the world to bend.
It charged with all its strength, pouring its mist like a tide, engulfing everything in white. It thought it would engulf him. It thought it would triumph.
And yet, in that white…
A gust.
A single one. Clean. Absolute.
The air exploded outward from a central point, sweeping away the entire mist in a fraction of a second, blowing the last shreds of fog to the edges of the surrounding plains and revealing the night sky in all its clarity — the stars, the moon, and the pure air that smelled of cold grass and clean night.
Kurisu: « Ahhh… it's a beautiful night outside... Wind is blowing, stars are shining… »
He was standing there, untouched, hands in his pockets, looking at the Whale with the slightly disappointed expression of someone whose opponent had just missed something obvious.
Kurisu: « On nights like these… beasts like you… »
He paused. Tilted his head.
Kurisu: « …should be burning in hell. »
He grasped the air in his right hand — literally, his fingers closed on nothing and the nothing condensed, compressed, solidified into something that had no name in the normal laws of physics. He extended his palm toward the Whale.
Kurisu : « Cero! »
The beam was born slowly at first — a white and compressed light that formed at dizzying speed in the hollow of his palm — then shot forward.
The beam pierced the Whale from head to tail fin in less than a second, cleanly, methodically, leaving a gaping hole from one end to the other through which one could see the moon.
As if it had been pierced by something that had not deigned to notice its resistance.
A moment of silence.
The Whale collapsed.
Kurisu watched it fall with the look of a man waiting for the machine to finish its cycle.
Then the regeneration began. Fast — with a speed that would have made any known healing ability pale. The edges of the wound closed, the flesh regrew, and in a few seconds the Whale stood up again, whole, intact, its yellow eye once again fixed on Kurisu.
Kurisu : « Keke… not bad, not bad… »
He smiled. But not entirely with satisfaction — more with curiosity. The same way a child looks at a toy he has just discovered.
Kurisu : « Let's try something else. »
No sooner had he spoken these words than the Whale did the unthinkable.
It pivoted on itself and... fled.
Yes — it tried to flee.
And honestly? … who could blame it? It had just died and come back. It had felt something it had not felt in four hundred years of existence:
Fear.
Not the fighting instinct, not the frustration of prey that resists — true fear, the kind that tells every living organism that it is facing something incomprehensibly superior and that the only sensible response is to leave as quickly as possible.
Kurisu : « Ohh, poor thing… you want to flee? ... »
It was accelerating. Its white mass moved toward the open plains, trying to disappear into the residual mist.
Kurisu : « No way. »
He readied both hands. His fingers aligned in the shape of a pistol — left, right, both simultaneously, index finger raised, thumb up — with an absurd naturalness for someone about to shoot at a millennial calamity.
Kurisu : « Bang. »
The compressed air bullets left. Not wild bursts — precise, rhythmic shots, each impact freezing time around the impacted area for a fraction of a second before exploding inside the flesh.
Pan! Pan! Pan!
The Whale roared, its flanks holed, reforming, holed again as he continued to fire.
Kurisu : « Kekekeke… »
Pan. Pan. Pan. Pan pan pan pan —
The Whale looked like a very bad quality cheese. It collapsed again. Regenerated again. Found itself facing him again, but this time something in its gaze had changed.
Its eyes turned blood red.
Its pores released mist — not its usual fog but something different, denser, a thick mist that wrapped around it with a different energy. Its body began to divide.
Kurisu observed this with sincere attention.
Kurisu : « Hmmm… interesting. »
The division continued.
Two. Three. Four.
Kurisu : « Five?! »
He blinked. Really. He had not expected that — in his memories of this world and this character, he had not seen that. The Whale was dividing into five copies rather than three.
He briefly turned his gaze toward a point in the air — toward that invisible place where something watched back from a different altitude.
Kurisu : « …Ah. I see. Kekeke. Very well, Author-san, very well… »
Four copies charged immediately. The real one — he knew how to recognize the real one, it stayed back with that survival instinct that even a cornered beast retains — positioned itself at a distance.
And there, Kurisu took a second to stop.
He looked at the four copies rushing toward him.
He smiled for the first time since the beginning of the battle — not the calculated smile, not the one of condescension. The real smile. The one of a child who has just been given a bigger playground than expected.
Kurisu : « KEKEKEKE — COME! »
What followed would defy any reasonable description.
He charged into the fray bare-handed at first — because he could, and because it was fun.
His fists went through the copies in explosions of flesh and mist, each impact leaving a crater in the white mass before it reformed.
He jumped, pivoted, changed targets with the lightness of someone who had decided that gravity was a suggestion rather than a rule.
But that was not enough. Not for the spectacle he wanted to offer.
So he created weapons.
Of air, first. Blades — not metaphorically, but really: he froze the air into thin and sharp layers, shaping them with his fingers into swords that floated around him like satellites.
Then invisible axes.
Then spears with tips of compressed light. Then clubs of solidified air dense enough to leave imprints in the ground with each impact.
He extended his fingers in all directions, frozen air threads leaving from each of them like the strings of a puppeteer, and the weapons moved. Cut. Shredded.
He orchestrated all of it from the center, turning on himself with an almost insulting slowness while the arsenal surrounding him did the work.
The copies fell. Reformed. Fell again.
Author-san summoned new ones — true to himself, always pushing a little further, adding variables Kurisu had not asked for and which he welcomed with sincere enthusiasm.
Kurisu : « Again?! Ha! Alright, alright… »
The area around the Flügel Tree, after a certain time, resembled more an ocean that nature had decided to fill with something else than a field. The plains were unrecognizable.
The grass had disappeared under something no one would have wanted to describe too closely. The weapons still floated, stained but intact, waiting for him to give them direction again.
And finally — after a time that had not had the courtesy to measure itself normally — the copies stopped reforming.
Silence.
Kurisu exhaled — not from exhaustion, just that sigh of contentment one makes after something satisfying.
Kurisu : « Whew… that was fun. But I let my deranged side speak a little too much, keke… »
He still held the fin of a copy in one hand — distractedly, like someone keeping a pen after finishing writing.
His white suit was intact. Not a drop, not a splash, not a misplaced wrinkle. Having a body beyond concept definitely had its advantages.
He turned around.
The real Whale was still there.
Of course it was still there — he had blocked it from the beginning with frozen air threads attached to the Flügel Tree itself, an invisible and absolute cage that it could not break because the concept of breaking had no entry in the rules that governed what held the threads in place.
It was struggling, had surely looked for an exit several hundred times while he dealt with the copies.
It had found only the threads.
Kurisu : « Hmm... What am I going to do with you now? »
He thought about it. Really. Not performatively — he looked at the Whale with the sincere expression of someone evaluating his options and suddenly having far too many.
Then a smile appeared.
Not the calculated smile. Not the one of condescension. The other smile — the one people wear when they are seven years old and have just seen something in a manga they absolutely want to try in real life.
He turned his head toward the point in the air where the readers were watching.
Kurisu : « Watch closely, dear readers… I'm going to do something very special. »
He threw the fin.
He took a breath.
And he raised his hand.
The arm rose slowly, fingers extended toward the sky, palm turned inward as if searching for something to grasp in the air.
And something began to form — particles at first, almost imperceptible, that floated around his arm with the deliberate slowness of important things that do not rush.
Mana.
But not the ordinary mana that circulated in currents in this world — something different, frozen, crystallized, as if the mana itself had agreed to remain still for him.
His arm shone.
A light that recalled the sun — not its warmth, but its intensity, that luminosity that forces one to look away — stretched from his shoulder to the tips of his fingers. But that was not all.
The space around this light began to deform slightly, the edges of immediate reality wrinkling like paper too exposed to heat.
Time dilated — not metaphorically, but really, the seconds stretching around the arm as if they refused to pass normally in its presence.
He was freezing time and space around his own blade.
Yes — it was paradoxical. Yes — it made no physical sense. But in this kind of story, those considerations had long since decided to take their leave.
The Whale saw it.
And for the first time in four hundred years of existence — for the first time since it had learned that the entire world was afraid of it and not the other way around — it truly understood that it was going to die.
Not die as it had died several times that night, briefly, with regeneration at the end. Die differently. In a way from which there would be no return.
It struggled with an energy that would have broken any normal bond. The air threads held.
Kurisu : « Dimension… »
The blade shone until it erased the contours of his entire arm.
Kurisu : « …Slash. »
He swung his hand.
What followed resembled nothing known.
The blade fell — and falling implied that it passed through. Everything. It passed through the Whale, the Flügel Tree, the ground of the plains, the subsoil, the crust of this world and what was beneath it.
It passed through the continents in their entirety — Lugunica first, then Kararagi, then Gusteko, then Vollachia — a fine, perfect, millimeter-precise line that did not bend and did not stop, that crossed the present time and brushed the past and the future on that same straight line, and continued, and continued still, until the end of this flat world — until the place where the world had decided not to continue — and disappeared into the void with the discretion of a thing that had accomplished what it had come to do.
Everything exploded in white light.
Not a sonic explosion — an explosion of whiteness, total, absolute, that erased everything the eyes could see for several seconds. A flash that had no measurable duration because time itself was still deciding what to do with what had just happened.
Then the light went out.
And when darkness returned, there remained, on a fine and absolutely perfect line, only a cut.
The Whale — divided into two symmetrical and exact halves, the edges of the cut as smooth as polished glass.
The Flügel Tree — sliced vertically from top to roots with a precision that made the thing almost abstract, the two halves remaining standing by pure inertia for a few seconds before slowly moving apart.
And beyond — along the entire line the blade had traced across the whole world — something had closed. Quickly. Cleanly. Like someone repairing a torn page by folding it back.
Author-san, as always, limited the damage.
The world closed.
The glows of dawn finally appeared on the plains.
Kurisu looked at the tree. The two halves. The Whale cut with that perfect symmetry that could only exist in something that had sliced reality itself.
Kurisu : « Wow... Impressive. »
He laughed.
Softly. Heartily. Not a mocking laugh, not a malicious laugh — a simple and direct sound, the laugh of a child who has just done something delightfully absurd and knows it.
Kurisu : « …That was fun. »
He said it to himself. No more, no less.
Then his gaze moved toward the horizon — toward the sun rising, toward that morning light that meant one precise thing in the unfolding of what was happening elsewhere in this world.
Kurisu : « Oh shit… »
He straightened up.
Kurisu : « I think it's soon. I wouldn't want to miss the rest… Go! »
And he disappeared into the blowing wind, leaving behind the quiet plains, the legendary tree in two perfect halves, and the particular silence of places where something immense has just happened and leaves no reasonable trace.
.....
Because yes — if morning was there, Subaru was there too.
He had run until his lungs nearly broke.
All night. Without turning back, without stopping, without ever really knowing if the Whale was still behind him or not — until the moment when the sound of something immense had fallen silent behind him and the mist had begun to dissipate.
He had continued anyway. Because stopping required energy he did not have and because something in his legs had decided to continue without asking his permission.
His body was in a state that had no good name.
The bones that had cracked in the fall from the carriage had not had time to heal. His ankles carried each step like a conscious and painful decision rather than a reflex.
Blood had dried on his face, his arm, his palms scraped by falls in the grass — he had first tried to worry about it, then stopped, because the pain had become so systemic that it had lost its geography and had simply become the constant background noise of this moment.
He was not sure when he had started crying. He was not sure he had stopped.
Otto.
The thought returned intermittently, without invitation.
Rem.
Always the two. In that order or the other — it did not matter, they returned, settled for a stride or two, and he let them without really knowing what to do with them.
The forest appeared on the horizon in the cold light of early morning — the first trees, the first long shadows that the low sun drew on the grass. He slowed down without really deciding to slow down, his legs finally taking the measure of what his body had been through that night.
The village of Arlam revealed itself a few minutes later.
And it was intact.
Truly intact — not half ruins, not traces of a repelled attack.
The houses were standing.
Smoke from the first morning chimneys rose in the quiet air.
A dog was barking somewhere.
The ordinary life of an ordinary village that had not yet had reason to think that this morning would be different from the others.
Subaru stopped at the entrance to the village.
Something in his chest loosened slightly — not relief, not exactly, but something that resembled what one feels when a tension one has maintained for too long finally agrees to release a fraction of its grip. The village was there. The people were there.
He resumed walking. Slowly. Very slowly.
The first inhabitants who saw him stopped. Their gaze went from his face — the bruises, the dried mud, the blood that had flowed from his temple and traced a dark line down to his jaw — to his gait, to his hands, to the way he carried his own weight like someone who no longer exactly knew what kept him standing.
The children came first.
They loved him, always — they had not yet learned to be wary of people who looked like they had been through something terrible, they did not yet know that Subaru's state this morning was precisely the kind of thing before which adults instinctively stepped back.
They came, stopped two meters away, and looked at him with the mixture of worry and fascination typical of children facing something they did not quite understand.
Child : « Subaru? You're all dirty… »
Child : « What happened to you?... You have a weird face. »
Child : « You stink! »
The parents arrived quickly, placed their hands on their children's shoulders with that silent authority of adults who have seen enough things to recognize when someone was not okay.
Parent : « Lord Subaru! Are you alright? You're hurt?... »
Subaru looked at them. Something in his brain searched for the appropriate words — the sentence that would explain, that would alert, that would say they had to evacuate, that the Cult was coming, that time was pressing.
But his brain was mush. Thoughts formed halfway and erased themselves before finishing. The image of Rem falling into the mist. Otto smiling. The mist closing over everything.
Subaru : « …Yes. I'm fine. I just need… to go to the manor. »
He said it with a voice that did not quite sound like his own — too flat, too mechanical, the voice of a system that still functions but in minimal mode.
The parent observed him a few more seconds with that eye that weighed without knowing what to decide. Then nodded slowly.
Parent : « Take care of yourself. »
Subaru resumed walking.
« You should have told them… You should have. »
The thought returned. He let it pass. His brain no longer had the bandwidth for preventive guilt — it already had too many other things to carry.
The path to the manor had that particular length of distances one travels when one does not want to arrive. Not because the journey was long — it was not.
But because each step that brought him closer to the manor was one more step toward a conversation he had absolutely no idea how to have.
Ram.
How to talk to her. How to look Ram in the eyes and tell her that her sister was dead. On the road. In the mist. For him.
« Rem died for me. Again. »
How could he tell her that? How? In what way?
He had no answer. His feet continued anyway.
And then, without him really noticing the moment when the park trees had replaced the open path, he found himself in front of the manor gate.
He had been there for a while, perhaps.
He stopped. Looked at the gate. Behind him, the morning light touched the stones of the alley with that indifference of the sun that does not distinguish days of catastrophe from ordinary days.
A silhouette moved in the gate's frame.
Ram : « Ah!... So Barusu has finally deigned to return?... »
Her voice carried her usual tone — that mixture of slightly affectionate condescension that was Ram's way of showing she had noticed your existence without granting you more importance than necessary.
She advanced in the alley, stopped a few meters from him, and her gaze traveled over Subaru from head to toe with that clinical eye of a woman evaluating the damage before deciding what to do with it.
Ram : « Tell me, Barusu… did you fall into a gutter before coming here?... »
Her tone was still light. But her voice carried something she would never have admitted — a tiny touch of worry, wrapped in the usual acerbity, almost imperceptible except to someone who knew how to listen.
Subaru looked at her.
Ram. Alive. Standing. Eyes resting on him with that characteristic expression that was uniquely hers.
Something in his throat tightened.
Subaru : « Ram… »
He began to speak and found nothing after. His mouth formed the name and stopped there, on that word, as if his tongue had decided that it was enough for now.
He fell to his knees.
Not dramatically — just his legs that gave out, simply, because they had carried too many things for too many hours and the ground was there and that was reason enough. He knelt in the alley, gaze lowered toward the stones, and he did not move.
Ram : « …What is happening, Barusu?... »
Her voice had changed slightly. Still her tone, but something inside it had adjusted — the curiosity of a person seeing something she does not recognize.
Subaru : « Forgive me… »
Ram : « Forgive you for what?... »
Subaru : « On the way back… the Whale… Rem… Rem sacrificed herself. To save me. »
He stopped. Caught his breath.
Subaru : « Rem is dead. Because of me. I'm sorry... I'm useless. »
The tears came without him calling them. He did not hold them back.
The silence that followed lasted several seconds.
Subaru slowly raised his head to look at Ram.
She was not crying. She was not screaming. She was looking at him with a… empty gaze. Not the emptiness of shock — something calmer, more disconcerting. The look of someone listening and not understanding the meaning of what they are being told.
Ram : « Barusu… »
Subaru : « … »
He waited for the fury, the cutting magic, the insults. But…
Ram : « Who are you talking about?... »
The ground beneath Subaru's knees suddenly felt very cold.
Subaru : « …What?... »
Ram : « I'm asking who you are talking about. »
Her voice was composed. Neither hard nor soft — simply composed, with that precision she put into her questions when she wanted a precise answer.
Subaru : « What? What do you mean... who? Is this a joke? I'm talking about Rem! Your sister. Your twin sister — »
Ram remained impassive.
Ram : « I have no sister. »
Simple words.
Subaru did not move.
Ram : « I have never had a sister. Did you hit your head, Barusu? You're talking nonsense. »
Her tone was her tone — acerbic, direct, without particular cruelty because cruelty would have implied an intention she did not have. She was simply saying what she believed to be true.
« She… believes what she says. »
The thought crossed Subaru with the slowness of something too heavy to move fast.
It was not a punishment. It was not a joke. It was not a cruel game on her part. Ram… she really did not know.
« She doesn't remember Rem. »
His face went white. He felt it — that sensation of blood withdrawing from the face when something fundamental has just been displaced in your understanding of the world.
Subaru : « Ram — I'm talking about Rem. Your twin sister. Blue hair, blue eyes, flail — she was with me tonight, she was on the road, she — »
Ram : « Barusu. »
Her voice cut short, clean.
Ram : « I don't know who you're talking about. I have never had a sister. »
She looked at him with her pink eyes resting on him, and in those eyes one could read not cruelty, not a game — just the absolute and terrifying sincerity of a person saying the truth as she knows it.
Subaru opened his mouth.
Closed it.
Something — a voice, a step — moved behind him.
Subaru : « … »
Emilia : « Subaru? »
Her voice arrived from the alley, soft and slightly worried, with that particular tone she used when she saw something that did not seem normal to her.
She must have heard him, or simply spotted him from a place further in the park — she was approaching now, her gaze going from his general state to his face with frank and direct worry.
Emilia : « What happened to you?... You're in a state… »
Subaru looked at her.
Emilia. Alive. Whole. Her violet eyes resting on him with that sincere worry she did not know how to hide even when she tried.
Something in his chest searched for a surface to cling to.
Her. Emilia. She must remember. She knew Rem, she had seen her, she had spoken with her — she must remember, she must —
Subaru : « Emilia… »
He stared at her with puppy eyes, praying with all his soul.
Emilia : « Yes? What is it?... »
Subaru : « Tell me you remember Rem. »
He said it quickly — the words coming out before his brain had finished deciding if he really wanted to ask the question.
Subaru : « Please. Tell me you haven't forgotten her. Mercy… »
Emilia looked at him. Her eyes traveled over his face — the tension in his features, the desperate hope in his eyes that completely contradicted the physical state of the rest of his body. She could clearly see that what she was going to say mattered. She could clearly see that this hope was real.
But it was Emilia. She did not know how to lie. She could not say anything other than what she knew.
Emilia : « Subaru… »
She tilted her head gently, eyebrows furrowed by sincere confusion.
Subaru : « Emilia… »
Emilia : « …Who is Rem? I don't know anyone by that name. »
That was it.
Not an explosion. Not a scream. Just that sentence, said softly and sincerely, that arrived in Subaru's chest like something that had been driven in there and left.
His fists struck the ground. Softly. Without force. Just the gesture of someone who no longer knows what to do with his hands.
Emilia : « Subaru?... »
She approached. He no longer really heard her.
« She has been erased. »
The thought formed on its own, without him constructing it.
Yes. Rem had been erased from memories. The Whale. The Whale had done that. The sacrifice of the girl who loved him no longer even existed in the minds of her loved ones. If even her sister Ram, if even Emilia… no longer remembered… Then Rem no longer existed. For no one. Except…
« Except me… »
Silence settled over the alley. The wind moved a few leaves on the stones. Emilia was there, kneeling near him now, her hand approaching his shoulder with that hesitation of a person who is not sure she is welcome but cannot not try.
Something assembled in his mind — a decision, or rather the form of a decision, still incomplete.
« If everyone forgets her. If everyone has to forget her. Then this world… »
He raised his head. If he was the only one who remembered, then this world no longer made sense. He had to redo it. He had to use the Taboo, even if it killed him, to start everything over.
Subaru : « I… I can… »
His mouth formed the first words.
I can Return by Death.
The full sentence, the one he was not supposed to pronounce, the one whose taboo he had known from the beginning —
BOOM.
A fireball the size of a carriage rushed toward the group from the blind angle of the alley without the slightest warning.
Emilia : « WATCH OUT! »
She was on her feet in a fraction of a second, an ice barrier erected in front of them in the same movement — a thick and dense wall that took the impact head-on. The explosion shattered the ice into shards, the shockwave hitting them all from several directions simultaneously, throwing them to different places in the alley.
Subaru hit the ground on his right side, rolled, stopped face down on the stones coughing.
« What — who — what the — »
Then he heard the voice.
It came from somewhere in the still thick shadows of the tree-lined alley — a voice that rose and fell in registers that normal voices did not use, that simultaneously carried the softness of a philosophical discussion and something entirely disconnected from the reality of others.
Petelgeuse : « Ohhhh~… my brain trembles! »
Subaru froze.
He knew that voice.
He knew it in his bones, in something deeper than ordinary memory — he had known it since a night in a forest, since the cracking of his own joints, since the look of Rem falling, since the way the pain had no logic and came from everywhere without ever stopping.
Petelgeuse : « What… magnificent love… »
He came out of the shadows.
Petelgeuse Romanée-Conti moved with that way of occupying space that was unique to him — not a walk, something more jerky, the joints that seemed to function slightly outside normal parameters, the head turning at an imperceptibly excessive angle to the side.
He looked like someone whose body was a dwelling that the inner occupant only used in an approximate way.
He was looking at Subaru.
And something in his gaunt face, in his eyes where a light without warmth burned, carried an expression one would have called sincere — a genuine and disturbing wonder, like a man who has just seen something that exactly matches a theory he had never been able to prove.
Petelgeuse : « I felt… something… when approaching… A love so dense, so abundant… »
He tilted his head.
Petelgeuse : « Aren't you… Pride? ... »
Subaru : « PETELGEUSE — ! »
The name came out without Subaru having decided to shout it — a visceral reflex, something between rage and terror that had not waited for the permission of his conscious brain to manifest.
Subaru wanted to leap, strangle him with his bare hands, he tried to get up, his arms pushing against the ground —
And his legs refused.
His broken body reminded him of what it was. The ribs protesting with every movement, the muscles exhausted from the entire night of running, the bones that had already given everything they could give.
Petelgeuse blinked. His head tilted to the other side.
Petelgeuse : « Oh?... You know my name? ... »
Shards of ice shot from the left — Emilia, standing, hands extended. Simultaneously, a blade of wind sliced the air from the right — Ram, who had repositioned herself with her usual speed, her mana at her fingertips.
Petelgeuse dodged. Not with grace — with that specific and disturbing way of a body that twists in unexpected directions, the legs and arms moving according to a logic that normal musculature would not have allowed.
He laughed.
Petelgeuse : « Ahh~… The half-witch! »
His gaze settled on Emilia with that particular interest of a fanatic who has just found the object of his conviction.
Petelgeuse : « I will see if she is ready for the Ordeal~… »
He raised his hand.
Petelgeuse : « Faithful of Love, come! »
They came out of the shadows between the trees — not one or two, a dozen, their dark robes blending into the decor until they decided not to anymore. Daggers, prepared spells, positions taken with the efficiency of people who had done this often.
Subaru counted them automatically. His brain was still functional enough for that.
« There are too many. We are too few… »
Petelgeuse repositioned himself in the back, letting his followers advance.
Emilia took the first wave.
Her ice was precise and fast — flat blades that sliced the air horizontally, forcing the cultists to retreat or bend, a structure that formed and reformed almost as fast as it broke under counterattacks.
She did not panic. She fought with that cold concentration of a person who had not chosen to be there but who knew exactly what she was doing.
A cultist passed on her left. She pivoted, and an ice pillar shot from the ground, throwing him backward.
Two others came from the front. A wall thin as a blade stopped them short, then broke forward, felling them at leg height.
Ram, for her part, used the wind.
Her air blades did not have the mass of certain magical attacks, but they had the precision and speed of a woman who had spent years mastering what she had.
Every cultist who tried to outflank her found an air blade on a trajectory they had not anticipated.
She took down two simultaneously with a movement that seemed almost casual, then pivoted to block an attack from behind.
She held. They both held.
Subaru, on the ground, watched.
« I'm here… I'm here and I'm doing nothing. Again… »
He tried to get up. His arms pushed. His legs searched for a stable position. The pain in his ribs cut his breath at the third of the movement and he fell back on one hand, panting.
Emilia saw him.
Emilia : « Subaru — stay back, I'll handle it! »
A knife thrown from her blind spot made her step back, her concentration broken, a barrier that formed too late and deflected halfway.
Ram held on but she began to tire. Emilia too.
And Subaru… was there. Again. Always there. Always watching. Always the weight that others carry.
Rem. Otto. And now them.
He had not changed. He had thought he had changed. That time with Wilhelm, a Gate repaired by Kurisu, he had thought it meant something. But it meant nothing in the face of this.
It would never mean anything in the face of this.
A movement in his peripheral vision.
Five cultists. Far — in the alley, grouped, their hands rising with that characteristic gesture of people preparing something bigger than their individual attacks.
All directed at Ram.
Subaru struggled with an energy he would not have thought he still had.
Subaru : « RAM — !!!! »
Ram heard him. Turned toward his voice — a reflex, a fraction of a second of distraction — Her eyes met Subaru's. She opened her mouth.
Ram : « Baru— »
Too late.
The fireball struck cleanly, without detour, without ambiguity.
Emilia screamed in terror.
The silence that followed the impact was shorter than expected.
Then the fire went out.
Emilia had projected a torrent of ice toward the point of impact — an instant reaction, her mana poured out in one go to smother the flames. She swept the cultists in her path, rushed toward the spot, knelt in the still-present smoke.
When the smoke dissipated —
Ram was there.
What remained of Ram.
Her body was entirely blackened, charred from feet to shoulders with that pure and absolute horror of burns that had left no skin behind.
She was not screaming. She was not moving. The remnants of her clothes, of what had been her form, slowly dissipated into ashes that rose in the morning wind.
Emilia was kneeling in front of her.
Emilia : « Ram… »
A barely audible murmur. Her hands were trembling.
Emilia : « Ram… »
She cried. Not in a spectacular way — tears that simply flowed, on a face that did not yet fully understand what it was seeing and that cried anyway because the body knew before the head.
Subaru, still held by the two cultists, said nothing.
He watched Ram's ashes disperse in the air.
« Ram… »
There was no other thought. Just that name. In total emptiness.
He was no longer struggling. He was not even crying anymore. His eyes were bulging, dry. Absolute emptiness was taking hold of him.
Petelgeuse approached again. He walked in the middle of the battlefield with that absolute casualness of a presence that had no reason to be wary of anyone in that space.
He looked at the ashes. Brought a finger to his lips, eyes half-closed, an air of meditative satisfaction on his face.
Petelgeuse : « She is gone… with all the love she had for her own. »
He said it with gentleness. Like a truth he was offering.
Petelgeuse : « Everything is only a proof of Love, again and always~… »
Then his gaze moved toward Emilia.
He observed her for several seconds — her tears, her trembling hands, her way of still kneeling in front of Ram's ashes as if leaving would be a betrayal.
He observed her with that particular interest of someone taking notes.
And his expression changed.
The meditative gentleness gave way to something sharper — a conclusion, drawn with the logic proper to a psychology that had little in common with normal psychology.
Petelgeuse : « I have observed. »
He stopped.
Petelgeuse : « You are pathetic! You have failed! »
Emilia raised her head.
Petelgeuse : « You are not worthy of the Ordeal. You do not deserve to be the vessel of our beloved. »
His white eyes settled on her with absolute finality.
Petelgeuse : « The sentence… »
A smile.
Petelgeuse : « Will be… DEATH! » Petelgeuse tensed, his aura becoming black.
Subaru felt something move in the air.
He knew it, that movement. He had known it since a forest, since his own body breaking, since the way the pain had come from the invisible. He knew what it was. He knew exactly what it meant.
Something was going to touch Emilia.
No.
Subaru : « SHAMAK — ! » he shouted.
Darkness exploded from him in a dense and black sheet, faster and wider than he had ever done — the repaired Gate, different, the mana circulating with that fluidity he had not yet fully mastered but which still responded.
The two cultists holding him were engulfed, disoriented, their grips loosening for a fraction of a second.
He broke free.
Got up.
Ran.
« Emilia. I have to reach Emilia. I have to — »
He glimpsed her, a few meters ahead — standing now, hands raised, an ice barrier half formed. He extended his hand.
« Almost. I'm almost there. »
Something struck one of the cultists in the nape from his own extended arm — a clumsy blow, almost accidental in its movement, but sufficient. A cultist fell.
Subaru : « Emilia! I'm here! »
He ran toward her, extending his hand. He thought he could push her, take the invisible blow in her place, do at least one useful thing before dying.
She turned around. She saw him.
Emilia : « Subaru — ! »
And the cultist behind Subaru — the one the Shamak had not reached, the one who had no name and no particular face in anyone's memory, an interchangeable man in a dark robe with a knife in his hand.
An opponent so weak that even Subaru could have beaten him in normal times had just plunged a dagger to the hilt between his ribs.
Deep.
The cold metal passed through warm flesh and Subaru stopped dead.
No scream. Just the stop — like a mechanism being cut. His legs continued to try to advance for one more second by inertia, then they understood, and he fell.
The stone of the alley arrived under his palms.
He held himself on his hands and knees for a second. Two. Felt the blood — warm, far too warm, far too fast — descending in his back, crossing his clothing, beginning to fall on the stones.
Emilia : « SUBARU !!! »
She rushed toward him. A knife attack made her step back — a cultist between them, the blade traced toward her face, forcing her to cover rather than advance.
Subaru extended his hand.
Not yet. It's not over yet. I can still —
Petelgeuse : « This is... LOVE! »
The word fell into the space.
Emilia was lifted.
Not by a visible hand. By something invisible that took her by the neck and pulled her upward with deliberate slowness, leaving her hanging there, her feet searching for the ground and not finding it, her hands that had instinctively gone to her throat against something they could not grasp.
Petelgeuse : « EVERYTHING IS FOR LOVE~… ! »
Subaru saw her feet leave the ground.
Subaru : « Emi… lia… »
He tried to crawl. His palms rested on the stones in front of him, his knees pushed, and he advanced — one centimeter, maybe two. The knife in his back was still there. He ignored the knife.
Petelgeuse was circling the mutilated body in levitation with the slowness of an officiant taking the time a ceremony deserved.
Petelgeuse : « You dared to wear the same face as her~… »
He raised his left hand.
Petelgeuse : « You dared to impersonate our beloved~… »
CRAAAACK.
The sound was wet, dense, too present — the sound of something yielding under a pressure that should not exist, followed by the sickening tearing of muscles.
Emilia's right arm twisted at an angle anatomy had not planned, then separated, torn from her torso in a spray of hot blood, slowly with that precision of an invisible force that knew exactly the speed at which to do things.
Her eyes widened in pure pain, in incomprehension. Emilia tried to scream.
Her throat was tight. What came out was something else — a strangled, muffled gurgle, her eyes wide open on something they had no experience to process. Tears flowed down her cheeks, silent, without her controlling them.
Her arm fell.
Subaru crawled.
« I'm going to save you. I'm going to save you. I'm going to — »
His brain built the sentence on loop while his eyes looked at something his eyes did not fully transmit, something his brain actively filtered, something a part of him had decided not to see yet because seeing it would be the end.
Petelgeuse : « You were a usurper, from the beginning~… »
CRAAAACK.
The second arm.
The same slowness. The same wet and dull sound. Emilia's eyes that still did not understand, that searched for meaning in what was happening and found only pain and emptiness.
Subaru : « …I… am going… to save you… »
Murmur on the stones. His breath had become very short. The blood formed something behind him that he did not look at.
I'm going to save you. I'm going to save you.
Petelgeuse : « You were incapable. »
His voice was still composed. Still that softness of conviction that made each word more unbearable than if he had shouted them.
Petelgeuse : « You tried to fool us with that face! Unworthy! UNWORTHY! »
CRACK. TRSSHCH.
The legs.
Emilia was no longer making any sound. Her throat was tight, her limbs missing one after the other, and something in her eyes had slightly gone out — not consciousness, not yet, but something else, something that resembled the hope of an outcome that would not come.
Her tears still flowed. Silent.
And yet, Subaru still crawled.
« I'm going to save you. »
He saw Emilia — he saw her, her missing arms, her missing legs, the blood descending from the places where things should have been present — and his brain looked at all that and actively decided not to finish processing the information.
He was still building the sentence. He was still advancing. His palms left traces on the stones.
Subaru : « I'm going… to save you... I promise you... I'm here… »
Petelgeuse approached the mutilated body in levitation, his gaze filled with disgust.
Petelgeuse : « …You are lazy. »
A pause.
SPLASH.
The final blow was struck full in the chest.
Emilia's torso imploded in a scarlet fountain, projecting pieces of flesh in all directions.
The spray of blood covered everything within several meters — the stones of the alley, the trunks of the trees lining the path, the clothes of the cultists standing back, and Subaru.
His head was thrown backward by the force of the impact, his torso crashed with a dull and definitive sound, and what remained of the girl he loved lay motionless on the stones of the Mathers manor alley with the absolute finality of things that no longer move.
Subaru continued to advance.
His hand rested on the stones in front of him. The other. One knee pushed. The other.
Subaru : « I'm going… to… »
He did not see the head fall in front of him.
Or rather — he saw it. But his brain, which had worked very hard for several minutes to allow him to continue functioning, did something it could not control:
It stopped.
Not Subaru. Not his legs, not his hands, not his breathing.
His brain.
Something inside took the totality of what it had filtered since the last few minutes — Emilia's arms, her legs, the blood, the sound of what was slowly breaking under an invisible force, her silent tears — and put everything back in place at once.
Everything.
Including what he had forgotten from the previous loop. What his joints had felt when Petelgeuse had twisted them. What his lungs had felt when the invisible hand had closed around his neck. His own bones. His own powerlessness.
Everything came back.
In the silence that followed — the silence of the few seconds between what has just happened and what the brain makes of it — Natsuki Subaru collapsed near Emilia's head.
There were no more tears. There were no more words. There was no more crawling, no more "I'm going to save you", nothing.
Just that silence.
Then —
Eh...
A sound.
Brief at first. A trembling breath. An exhalation that did not know what to be.
Eheh...
Then it became a laugh.
A laugh that came from everywhere and nowhere — from his throat first, then it grew, took on amplitude, settled over the entire alley like something that could no longer be controlled.
A laugh that had nothing joyful, nothing mocking, nothing human in the sense that human laughs usually express something recognizable.
Heheheheh...
« Where is this coming from? »
The thought crossed something in him.
« This laugh. Where is it coming from? »
EHEHEHEHEHEHEHEHEH !
He understood.
It was him.
It was him who was laughing.
At his incompetence. At his weakness.
At the way he had run all night believing it would be enough, that the training would be enough, that the repaired Gate would be enough, that wanting would be enough.
At the way he had arrived too late, too broken, too little of everything. Of Rem in the mist. Of Ram in ashes. Of Emilia in front of him.
He had tried everything, he had suffered martyrdom, all that to end up face down in the mud, stabbed by a stranger, in front of the decapitated head of the woman he was supposed to protect.
« This laugh… » he thought with lucidity in his own madness.
He heard himself laugh.
« …is the laugh of the person I hate the most in the world. »
Something moved in his back.
Srlark.
The knife was withdrawn. Slowly. Cleanly.
The anonymous cultist removed the knife from his back, tearing a new groan from Subaru.
The blood flowed faster.
Footsteps approached — regular, measured. Petelgeuse stopped in front of him.
Looked down at him, with those white eyes where something perpetually lit and perpetually disconnected burned.
An invisible force seized Subaru by the neck.
It lifted him. Slowly. Until his eyes were level with Petelgeuse's.
The Archbishop observed him. A few seconds. With the patience of someone checking a result he already knew.
Petelgeuse : « No… »
He said just that.
Petelgeuse : « You are not Pride. I wasted my time. »
The invisible force released. Subaru crashed heavily next to Emilia's head. He did not try to cushion — his arms no longer had intention.
Petelgeuse turned on his heels, smoothing his bloodstained clothes.
Petelgeuse : « Finish him. »
He moved away.
Subaru was there, on the stones, his eyes looking at the sky without seeing it, the world shrinking at the edges with the slowness of things that no longer have anything holding them.
The morning light was still there — cold, indifferent, the same as on any other morning.
And in his final agony, in that space between the present moment and the next second, he saw something.
Petelgeuse, a few meters away. But not only Petelgeuse.
Around him — shadows. Silhouettes that pulsed from his body with an almost rhythmic regularity, that formed and dissipated, not completely visible, not completely invisible.
Hands.
Shadow hands, numerous, that emerged from him like something that had been kept inside until the inside could no longer contain them.
Subaru : « …What… » he spat, his mouth full of blood.
That was his last articulated word.
Because the cultist was already there. The same one who had stabbed him and withdrawn his blade.
He had no name. No particular face that would remain in anyone's memory. He was simply present — a shadow in a dark robe with a knife in his hand, approaching Subaru with the quiet finality of someone accomplishing something ordinary.
He leaned down, knelt near him. Without a word, without any emotion, the stranger grabbed his hair, pulled his head back.
And he slit Natsuki Subaru's throat in one clean motion, like slaughtering a sick animal.
Thus, in the most pathetic way possible — without having been able to save anyone, without having accomplished anything in this loop, dead at the hands of an anonymous stranger while he was still looking at the shadow hands around Petelgeuse without understanding what they meant —
Choking in his own blood, throat slit by a faceless man, in an incredibly pitiful manner.
Natsuki Subaru died.