The days had begun to dissolve into one another—thin, formless, colorless things that passed without shape or sound. Haruto no longer remembered when one day ended and the next began. The world outside his window moved as if through glass, distant and blurred, like a forgotten dream that refused to end.
He woke at dawn, though dawn itself had lost meaning. The light that once pierced through the curtains like a promise now entered as a pale ghost, an imitation of life. He would watch it crawl across the room, stretching over the floorboards, touching the edge of the small desk where dust had begun to gather. Then it would fade into the dull, silvery tone of morning, and he would still be sitting there—motionless, thought adrift.
It had been days since the battle, or perhaps weeks. He couldn't be sure. Time had become a body without pulse, and he was floating somewhere inside it, carried by its slow decay. The wounds had healed—at least, the ones that could be seen. His shoulder no longer ached, though when he pressed his hand against it, he could still feel the echo of pain, as if it had been etched beneath the skin. Every scar was a reminder that he had survived when something inside him hadn't.
He spent most hours in silence. The facility had returned to a strange calm after the chaos, though the air carried that unspoken weight—grief, disbelief, a quiet mourning that no one wanted to acknowledge. The others trained, rebuilt, planned. Haruto remained behind. They said he needed rest, but he knew that wasn't the real reason. They were giving him space. Space to heal, to think, to remember. But he didn't know what to do with that space. It felt like being locked inside his own absence.
He often found himself staring at his reflection in the window. Not at night, but in those grey mornings when the glass caught just enough light to show his outline. The face staring back didn't look like him. The eyes were hollow, not from exhaustion but from something deeper—something hollowed out and never refilled. He used to wonder what purpose his reflection served, whether it mirrored his form or his failure.
Sometimes he would speak to it silently, as if the glass might whisper back.
Was this what you wanted?
But the lips never moved, and he stopped asking.
The memories came uninvited. They always did. Faces, voices, the brief warmth of laughter that felt stolen from another lifetime. The world before Lunaris's return—the fleeting peace, the naive belief that they still had time to understand one another before everything fell apart. He remembered the light that surrounded her in those final moments, the way she had looked at him—not with anger, nor forgiveness, but with an ache that refused to die.
The image replayed over and over. Her hand reaching toward him. The air trembling. The white flash that swallowed the world. Then silence.
He couldn't decide if that silence had ever truly left him.
In the days that followed, sleep had become an unwelcome visitor. When it did come, it came in fragments—visions, half-dreams, voices muffled by distance. Sometimes, he heard her name echoing in the dark, soft and broken, like a memory trying to breathe. Other times, he saw the battlefield again, endless and burning, the smell of ozone and dust. He would wake with the taste of metal in his mouth, gripping the edge of the bed, breath shallow. It wasn't fear. It was absence—the awareness that what once existed now only lingered in the mind.
He had begun to keep a journal. Not out of discipline or duty, but because silence had started to press too heavily on his chest. The first pages were empty. He had written the date, then stopped. The second day, he wrote a single line:
I don't know what remains of me.
On the third, he tried again, filling an entire page with questions that had no answers. By the fifth, he tore the pages out, leaving behind only the imprint of his pen pressed into the paper.
The journal still sat on the table, open to a blank page. Sometimes, he would trace his finger along the lines, imagining words that never came.
Outside, the world continued its slow turning. The horizon had lost its color—the sunsets now dim, the dawns without warmth. The sky, once a symbol of everything beyond reach, now looked closer, heavier, as though it too had grown tired of carrying light. The wind passed through the cracks of the walls, carrying faint sounds from the courtyard below—training shouts, footsteps, laughter. He listened but didn't join. Each sound reminded him that life continued without waiting for anyone to catch up.
He didn't resent that. It was almost comforting, in a strange way. The world moved on, as it always had. He was the one standing still.
Occasionally, he would wander through the corridors of the base at night. The hallways were silent except for the hum of machinery. His footsteps echoed faintly, like the voice of someone lost in a cathedral. The lights flickered every few meters, casting shifting shadows that seemed to move when he wasn't looking. He would stop by the observation deck, where the glass overlooked the valley—where once the battle had scarred the land. It was quiet now. Nature had already begun reclaiming it, small shoots of grass pushing through the ash.
He pressed his hand to the glass, watching his breath cloud against it. For a moment, he imagined the reflection fading, leaving only the landscape beyond.
Maybe that's what he wanted—to disappear into the scenery, to become another silent witness of what had been lost.
In those moments, he tried to recall the promises he'd made. To protect, to fight, to find meaning. But each vow had eroded under the weight of memory. Protection meant nothing when the people you protected vanished into light. Fighting meant nothing when you no longer knew what you were fighting for. Meaning... meaning was a word he no longer trusted.
He thought of Airi. Of Ren. Of the others who still believed in rebuilding. He admired that faith, though he couldn't share it. To rebuild implied that something of the old world could be restored, that the fragments could be reassembled into something whole. But he had seen what was lost. He had felt it.
Sometimes he wondered if Lunaris had felt it too, in those final moments. The pain of existence folding in on itself—the collision of two souls bound by something neither could understand. She had said something before the end. He couldn't remember the words, but he remembered the tone—a sorrow that transcended language. It was not hate. It was not forgiveness. It was recognition.
He whispered her name once, just to hear it aloud again. The sound filled the empty room, thin as air, then vanished. It felt wrong, using it so casually, like invoking a ghost.
The hours dragged on. He didn't eat much. The food tasted of nothing. The body functioned, but the spirit moved slower. Occasionally, he felt the faint throb of the weapon within him—the remnant of whatever had awakened that day. It didn't hurt; it pulsed, like a quiet reminder that his existence was still tied to something beyond comprehension. He tried to ignore it, but there were moments when it seemed to respond to his thoughts, to the fragments of guilt that clung to him.
He wondered if that power had a will of its own, or if it was merely a reflection of him—another mirror, another unanswered question.
On the seventh day—or what he assumed was the seventh—he stepped outside. The air was cold, thinner than he remembered. The horizon was painted in pale light, and for the first time in a long while, he felt something close to peace. The world was quiet, still healing, like a wound that had just begun to close.
He looked down at his hands. They no longer trembled. He thought of the lives saved, of those lost, and realized that he had no words to measure them. Numbers could not define absence. Heroes could not define grief.
He closed his eyes and listened—to the wind, to the faint hum of the earth beneath him. There was a kind of balance there, fragile but real. Maybe that was enough. Maybe that was what survival truly meant—not victory, not redemption, but endurance.
When he opened his eyes, the sky was shifting again, the first light of morning breaking through the clouds. It wasn't the radiant dawn of legends. It was soft, hesitant, uncertain—like a world unsure of whether it deserved another day.
He took a deep breath, and for a moment, it almost felt like the air reached him fully.
The ghosts didn't fade. They never would. But they no longer screamed.
He turned back toward the facility, its structure catching the weak sunlight. There would be new orders soon, new missions, new struggles. The world had not ended, though part of him wished it had. What remained was life—unfinished, imperfect, unrelenting.
As he walked inside, his shadow stretched behind him, long and thin against the ground. The light caught the edge of his hair, the faint color of gold buried beneath exhaustion. For a second, it looked almost like it used to, before everything fell apart.
He stopped at the threshold of his room. The journal still lay open. The pen waited beside it.
This time, he didn't hesitate. He sat down, picked it up, and began to write—not questions, not confessions, but fragments of thought, small truths he didn't want to lose again.
> There was a time I thought the world ended in light.
But maybe it only began there.
I don't know who I am now, but I am still here.
And for now, that's enough.
He paused, staring at the words, then closed the book gently.
Outside, the wind carried the faint scent of rain. Somewhere far away, thunder murmured behind the mountains. He listened until it faded, until silence reclaimed the world.
Then he whispered, not to anyone, but to the quiet itself:
> "I'll keep walking."
The light dimmed. The day continued.
And Haruto, for the first time in many days, felt the smallest movement within—the faint pulse of something alive.
Not hope, not peace.
Just continuation.
A breath against the endless stillness.
-------
The rain began that night.
It came quietly, without thunder or wind, as if the sky itself had decided to weep softly rather than scream. Haruto lay in his bed, awake though his eyes were closed. The rhythm of the droplets against the roof blurred into a steady hum—gentle, endless, unrelenting. It was the first rain since the battle, the first time the air had smelled clean again.
He turned his face toward the window, half-drifting, half-aware. The rain became a sound from somewhere far away, and soon, even that sound began to dissolve. His thoughts scattered like dust in wind, and then—
Nothing.
Then light.
---
He stood on an endless plain of white.
It wasn't snow or fog, but something between—a world where everything had forgotten to hold form. The ground had texture but no shadow; the air shimmered with faint, colorless particles that floated upward, as if gravity had given up.
Haruto blinked, and the horizon expanded outward like a breath, revealing distant shapes: fragments of stone, old structures, pieces of the world that seemed half-dreamed. His feet left no prints when he moved.
Am I dreaming again?
The thought came not as words but as sensation. The air here seemed to echo thought, responding to emotion instead of sound. When he tried to remember where he had been moments ago, the memory resisted—blurring, slipping through his grasp like water.
He took another step, and a faint voice rippled through the air.
It wasn't calling his name exactly. It was… remembering it.
Haruto.
The sound was gentle, familiar. He turned, and there—amid the dissolving white—stood a figure.
At first, she was only an outline, pale and radiant, her edges fluttering like mist. But as he moved closer, her form sharpened—the soft fall of silver hair, the serene gaze, the faint curve of her lips that hovered between sorrow and peace.
"...Lunaris."
The word left his mouth before he could stop it. It hung in the still air like a prayer.
She didn't answer, not at first. Instead, she looked at him in that same way she had in their final moments—calm, distant, almost human. But this time, there was no battle between them. No light swallowing the sky. Just silence, and the feeling of something unfinished.
"You shouldn't be here," he said, though his voice trembled.
Her eyes softened. "Neither should you."
Her tone was not accusation, nor forgiveness. Just truth.
He looked down. His hands trembled slightly. "Is this... death?"
She shook her head. "Not death. Not yet. This place is between breaths—between what was and what still refuses to end."
He tried to understand, but the world around them pulsed faintly, as if reacting to their presence. Every emotion felt magnified—the faint warmth in his chest, the ache in his throat. Even the act of breathing seemed to ripple through the horizon.
"You came here because you cannot let go," she continued. "Because something in you still calls to me. Not out of love or hatred... but guilt."
Her words struck deeper than any blade could.
He opened his mouth to speak, but she raised her hand slightly, and his voice faltered.
"I know," she whispered. "You wanted to save me. To save everyone. You carried light without knowing what it truly was. And when it consumed me, you believed it was your fault."
He clenched his fists. The air trembled. "It was my fault. I unleashed it. I—"
She stepped closer. The ground shimmered under her feet, like ripples spreading across a pond.
"No," she said softly. "It was destiny written long before either of us were born. You were only the vessel chosen to remember it."
Her words left him motionless. For a long moment, there was only the hum of the white void between them.
"I don't want to remember anymore," he said.
"I know," she replied. "But you must. Because remembrance is the price of existence."
He met her eyes. In them, he saw not the goddess of light nor the being of destruction, but the faint image of a person—one who had carried as much sorrow as he did.
"Do you regret it?" he asked.
Her expression changed—so subtle he almost missed it. "Regret is for the living," she said after a pause. "But if I could feel it again... I would."
The world flickered, and suddenly, fragments of memory burst into being around them—images of their past: the battlefield, the flash of light, her collapsing form, the reflection of his tears in the burning horizon. Each scene hovered in the air, dissolving into particles that drifted upward like fading fireflies.
She watched them with quiet melancholy. "These moments are what bind you. Not power. Not destiny. Just memory."
Haruto stepped closer, the distance between them shrinking to an arm's length. "And what happens when memory fades?"
She smiled faintly, her form beginning to waver. "Then you live."
Her hand reached out, fingers brushing against his chest—right where his heart beat beneath the fabric. The touch wasn't physical, but he felt it nonetheless, a warmth spreading through the cold.
"You still carry my light," she whispered. "But it doesn't belong to me anymore. It never did."
He looked down, watching as faint streams of light began to seep from her fingertips into him—not painful, not consuming, but gentle. It filled the hollow spaces he had forgotten, replacing silence with something softer.
"You must let me go," she said, her voice growing fainter. "Not because I am gone, but because you are not."
He tried to speak, but his throat tightened. "Lunaris…"
Her eyes lifted to meet his. "Haruto. Don't seek the end of pain. Seek what begins after it."
And then she smiled—not sorrowfully, not sadly, but with a fragile peace that looked almost human.
Her body dissolved into threads of light. They floated upward, mingling with the white air, spreading until the horizon itself began to glow. The world quivered, reshaping itself. The plain became a field of faint color—soft blues and silvers, the faint echo of dawn returning to a place that had never known it.
Haruto fell to his knees. He reached toward the fading radiance, but his fingers caught only air. The warmth lingered a moment longer, then faded, leaving only silence.
For the first time, that silence didn't hurt.
---
He awoke to the sound of rain.
The window was open slightly, letting in a breeze that smelled of wet earth. Drops of water clung to the frame, catching the faint morning light. He sat up slowly, his breath uneven, his pulse steadying against his ribs.
The dream clung to him—not as weight, but as residue. He could still feel the warmth in his chest, faint and rhythmic, as though her words had taken root there.
He looked at the journal on the desk. The page he had written on earlier still lay open. Without thinking, he picked up the pen and added a single line beneath the others:
> Sometimes, letting go isn't losing. It's remembering differently.
He let the pen rest on the page and looked toward the window. The rain was easing. Beyond it, the horizon began to brighten—not the colorless light he'd grown used to, but something softer, hesitant, real.
He breathed in deeply, then exhaled.
This time, the air reached him fully.
And for the first time since that battle, he didn't feel like a survivor or a sinner. He just felt—present. Alive.
The rain stopped. The light lingered.
Haruto stood, walked to the window, and let the silence speak for them both.
---
To be continued in Chapter 22: "Ashes of Tomorrow."