The world didn't stop after the clash.
It didn't matter how deep the wound was, nor how broken the line between yesterday and tomorrow had become. The system continued executing its commands. The trees kept whispering in the purple mist of the Shadowed Forest, and the sky—now tinged more gray than blue—seemed to ignore the echoes of battle.
Ryouhei, still staggering from the effects of corruption, looked at his bloodstained hands. The glove covering his right arm burned with unstable runes, vibrating with an energy that didn't belong to any plane he knew.
"This... doesn't feel like a victory," he murmured, more to himself than to Sera.
She stood beside him, breathing heavily, her staff split in half, her robes stained with the residue of a malformed spell. Despite the chaos, her eyes remained fixed on him, not with reproach, but with a mix of concern and recognition.
"It wasn't," she replied, her voice cracking from exhaustion. "But we survived. That counts for something."
Ryouhei didn't respond immediately. The silence between them grew thick, heavy with everything left unsaid. The anomaly triggered by the Man Without a Shadow had left visible cracks—not just in the ground, but in the layers of reality surrounding them. Fragments of timelines flickered behind them like broken mirrors: in one, Sera fell lifeless; in another, Ryouhei slowly dissolved into corruption.
"It's still happening," he finally said, raising his gaze. "The fissures… they don't disappear. They just hide."
Sera stepped closer, ignoring her own pain, and placed a hand on his chest.
"And you? Are you going to hide too?"
He closed his eyes.
He didn't have an answer.
Because part of him was still trapped in that echo of the past—in the vision of the Man Without a Shadow with a human face, tears that didn't seem his, repeating names that no longer existed in any record. That fragment had felt like looking into a twisted mirror… like seeing his own fate if he took one more wrong step.
"I don't want to become him," he confessed, his voice barely audible.
"Then stay with me," Sera whispered.
The words weren't heroic. They weren't a promise or a demand. Just a silent bridge stretched between two broken souls.
And for now… it was enough.