"The day I met you and tried to look inside your mind—your memories—I saw nothing but darkness and an intense light, with hundreds of thousands of stories being told all at once."

Mitsuki raised his gaze. Ellegaard no longer looked angry—she looked disappointed in him, as if he had truly done something wrong. Her eyes, once hard as steel, now seemed dull, burdened with a weight she didn’t know how to let go of.

’Why are you looking at me like that? It’s like you’re sad to discover that I’m the greatest enemy of your world...’

"Answer me, Mitsuki Kirishima— that darkness in silence, facing the light... is that all you are? Is what I saw everything you’ve ever been, or is there something else you’re hiding from us?"

A faint smile formed on Mitsuki’s face. It was small, almost imperceptible, but real enough to briefly break the lifeless rigidity of his features.

"There’s more... there’s much more than that, but..."

A sunny day, a Mitsuki tired of the world... a distant memory that encompassed everything Mitsuki Kirishima had been until now.

"I don’t want to talk about it."

Ellegaard frowned again, tightening her grip on the staff as she conjured her magic. Ethereal energy vibrated in the air, producing a faint hum that made the skin crawl, as if tiny invisible needles were sliding through the atmosphere.

"I see... I suppose I have nothing else to ask you."

’She’s... going to kill me, huh... why doesn’t that scare me at all? I used to fear pain and death so much, but now I don’t feel anything.’

Mitsuki closed his eyes, accepting his fate at Ellegaard’s hands.

’There’s something wrong with me. Ever since that moment when I stood up even though I knew I had already died, there’s something I can’t understand.’

He fought like a puppet controlled by a will that wasn’t his own. He kept moving forward even with only 1 HP left. Every movement, every attack, every decision... it all seemed to have happened without his conscious involvement, as if someone else had taken control of his existence.

That wasn’t Mitsuki Kirishima—and yet, who else could it be if not him?

The answer had been lost forever at the end of his life.

"I’ve never hurt anyone," he whispered, stopping Ellegaard in her tracks. "Even though I wanted to hurt people many times, I never did, because I used to think it was better to be hurt than to hurt others."

She moved the staff aside to see Mitsuki’s face. The magic she had been gathering dissipated into the air with a faint crackle, like glass breaking in silence.

He was still smiling bitterly, looking down with those dead eyes. Everything about him screamed decay—just like the ash that corrodes the entire kingdom, spreading across the land with a bleak and somber darkness.

"I never felt like I had the right to hurt others, even when they hurt me so many times," he let out a small, tired laugh. "You have no idea how much I hated the world... and how much I hated the guy in the mirror and his girlish face..."

Now everything is different.

"Now that I have power, it never once crossed my mind to hurt people... even when they humiliated me and treated me like garbage."

Silence...

The wind slipped through the cracks in the room, gently stirring the scattered ash on the floor. A faint creak of wood accompanied the sound, as if the place itself were breathing with difficulty. 𝓯𝙧𝓮𝓮𝒘𝓮𝙗𝙣𝒐𝒗𝒆𝓵.𝓬𝓸𝒎

"Maybe I’m the one who’s wrong for being the way I am. Maybe I’m the one who needs to change."

Ellegaard lowered her staff. Her fingers trembled slightly before relaxing completely.

"It would be so easy for me to think the world is the one that’s wrong, to get angry at everyone and destroy everything—just like the prophecy says—but I’m not like that..."

Once, he...

"That’s why I don’t understand why I’m the Herald of the Unnameable. How do you give the mission of destroying a world to someone who used to cry when he killed an insect?"

He longed to be like everyone else...

"How do you make that kind of person destroy a world if he’s too pathetic to even stand on his own?"

His eyes met Ellegaard’s.

"Can you give me an answer, Ellegaard?"

The elf hesitated. She looked down, questioning her own judgment, and made the staff disappear. The energy faded completely, leaving the atmosphere strangely empty, as if something important had vanished along with that light.

What stood before her was not a world-destroying monster—just a very tired guy who had fought alongside his companions to survive. Survival is not a sin; existing is not a sin. Yet the entire world hated the Herald of the Unnameable simply for existing.

That filled Ellegaard’s mind with doubt—the woman who always knew how to answer people’s foolish questions with sarcasm and irony.

This time, she...

"I don’t know," she replied.

Mitsuki lowered his gaze again. Tired, he said:

"Yeah. I figured. Ever since I came to this world, it’s just been one question after another, and most of them go unanswered. I’m always so lost, trying to solve the puzzle that’s formed in my mind. It feels like the more I move forward, the more I go backward."

He reached his hand toward the bed and, with great difficulty, managed to drag himself toward it. His fingers left a faint trail across the surface, as if he didn’t even have the strength to support his own weight. Carefully, he climbed back onto the bed and sat there, looking at the elf.

"Well, I think that’s everything I had to say. I hope it was enough to satisfy your curiosity."

He lay back on the bed and closed his eyes. The rough fabric brushed against his skin, and for a moment, he felt a distant discomfort—like an echo of what pain used to be.

"Now do what you have to do."

His story in this world had begun with a premature death, and it would end the same way. It wasn’t what he expected, and he didn’t feel satisfied. There were many things he wanted to discover on his own, but that would no longer be possible.

’I wonder if I’ll go to the World of the Ethereals after I die. Maybe I’ll become a specter and wander the world in silence. That wouldn’t be so bad. Getting to know this world even after death sounds nice.’

He waited patiently, but after a few seconds, his inevitable death never came.

He opened his eyes and found Ellegaard still standing there. She was deep in thought—far more than Mitsuki liked to see. Her lips moved slightly, as if she were about to say something, but no words came out.

’Looks like she’s not going to kill me...’

Silence filled the room like a toxic gas. While Ellegaard questioned her decisions, heavy footsteps echoed on the wood beyond the branch-made door she had likely created. Each step vibrated through the floor, stirring small particles of dust.

That same door fell to the ground when Jeanne entered.

"By the Goddess of Light, you still haven’t killed him," the princess said with a sigh of relief. Her voice was tense, as if she had been holding her breath the entire time.

Ellegaard looked at her, sighed, and left the room in silence, leaving Jeanne and Mitsuki alone. Her footsteps faded until they disappeared completely.

"Ellegaard?"

Jeanne tried to call her, but the elf ignored her and left. That disappointed the princess a little, but she was more focused on making sure Mitsuki was okay. She picked up the door from the floor and placed it back in the frame, adjusting it carefully even though it remained slightly crooked.

"Hi, Mitsuki."

"Hi, Jeanne," said the injured boy, raising his only hand to greet her. The movement was clumsy, slow, as if even that small gesture required immense effort.

The princess looked at him closely. Her eyes traced every wound, every mark, every sign of wear on his body. The rain still struck outside, and the constant sound of water seemed to accompany the moment with an inevitable melancholy.

"You’re still here..." she murmured, almost to herself.

Mitsuki didn’t respond. He simply looked at her in silence, with that empty expression that had already become part of him.

And in that heavy, strange silence, something shifted ever so slightly in the atmosphere... though neither of them knew exactly what.