Her consciousness grew steadily heavier.
Lumine struggled to keep her eyes open. Chains formed from reason pierced her body, and blood seeped from the wounds. Her soul, too, had been bound by reason and now hung on the verge of collapse. Her thoughts blurred as layer upon layer of visions filled her sight.
The principles by which the world endured were spreading through her mind and consuming it.
Where is this...?
She did not recognize it.
This was not Khaenri'ah.
Khaenri'ah was a land of ruins, yet no ruins surrounded her now. Open fields rolled to the edge of sight. Pale-pink sunlight filled the sky, and the cherry trees stood in splendid bloom.
Who was that...?
Who was the young man standing before her?
Pure-white hair fell to his waist. His deep-blue eyes were as clear as the sky after rain. He wore a plain white kimono, with patterns of wine and serpents embroidered along its long collar. The full radiance of dusk poured across his back, dyeing his white robe a warm, hazy gold.
A face she did not know.
A person she had never seen before.
And yet...
He was so familiar.
Someone she could never forget.
Someone she had sought for so long, and awaited for so long.
Who was he?
During her journey, she had tried to forget. She often summoned memories of the road to take the place of longing: daisies by the wayside, morning grass, a passing rain, osmanthus blossoms scattered across wet flagstones, or the clouds at dusk, when the sky beside them burned in deep and brilliant colors.
Yet whenever she tried to remember those sights, she discovered that every one of them was longing for him.
Because he was the end of her journey.
His face had changed. His voice had changed. Even the presence surrounding him had changed.
But the view awaiting her at journey's end had not.
When twilight settled upon the young man and made him shine, Lumine recognized the sight.
She would recognize her destination in the past, the present, or the distant future. No matter how many lives they lived, no matter how many times they met again, she would always know him.
Kiyo Seigan's face was reflected in her eyes. She gazed at him for a long while before moving her lips with great difficulty.
"...I'm going... to fall asleep."
The light in her eyes dimmed, gradually going out. Yet a smile remained upon her lips. Even as sleep claimed her, she looked at Kiyo with a hint of complaint in her voice.
"Why didn't you come sooner?"
"I searched for you... for so long."
Her voice was faint, like a cat asking to be indulged.
"We finally found each other... and now we have to part again."
Kiyo's slender fingers brushed her cheek. He tidied the stray hair across her forehead, then stroked her head gently.
"Have a good sleep."
"Say something to me," she murmured.
"What would you like me to say?"
"Something comforting."
"Then something romantic."
Huh...?
Lumine stared at him blankly. She had not expected him to be so direct. Blood loss had left her face white as paper, but now a faint blush colored it.
"Wh-what did you say?"
Say something romantic to me.
You are my Miss Lumine too—you seemed quite good at it when you thought I was asleep.
Kiyo leaned close to her ear and whispered:
"Sleep well. Five hundred years from now, when you wake, we will meet again. Then you will ask me to say something romantic, and I will tell you, 'You are my Miss Lumine too.' So now I will give you those words five hundred years early."
He drew her gently into his arms.
"You are my Miss Lumine. I have missed you."
Her ears turned crimson as the evening sky. Dizziness swept over her. Her consciousness was being stripped away, steadily scattering. Her eyes moved faintly, and still she smiled.
She knew she was about to die.
"That isn't enough..." she whispered. "Say more..."
"The rest," Kiyo replied earnestly, "I will tell you five hundred years from now."
How unfair...
Lumine watched his face as she fell backward. At the instant her body began to drop, she saw cherry blossoms raining through a world of pure white.
"Then you'll have to keep saying them for a lifetime."
"No." Kiyo shook his head. "For three lifetimes."
The smile remained upon her lips as she fell asleep.
The Human Principles took Lumine's memories, and Musou Isshin sealed her away.
But five hundred years later, they would meet again.
—
[Kiyo Seigan]
[Lv. 99 — Archon]
A long time had passed within the inner world. In reality, it had been only an instant.
Kiyo emerged from Musou Isshin. The pure-white world faded rapidly from his sight, replaced by a leaden sky and the iron-gray earth beneath it.
He had one final task.
He had to plant the Sacred Sakura.
To complete this deception and leave this era behind, he had one final obstacle to overcome:
the Sustainer of Heavenly Principles.
The supreme being known by that name descended upon the sullied world. Her cold, lifeless gaze looked down upon Kiyo.
"Presumption."
To deceive the past was the greatest possible affront to reason.
The Sustainer was not wrong. Her duty was to preserve the proper operation of the Heavenly Principles.
But Kiyo had a duty of his own.
From beginning to end, he was human. What he sustained was not the Heavenly Principles, but the principles by which mortal humanity endured.
In other words, he was the Sustainer of Human Principles.
He would plant the Sacred Sakura.
He would save everyone.
Their paths of conviction were opposed. Nothing remained but battle.
"Then let it be presumption."
The Sustainer's face was reflected in Kiyo's pale-blue eyes. He smiled at her.
"I think... I once said something to you. The memory is faint. I can barely recall it."
"It was when I lived as Kiyono Raimei... Just before I died, I told you, 'We'll meet again next time.'"
"I never imagined that our next meeting would be five hundred years in the past. How interesting."
The instant his words ended, time itself stood still.
Kamigiri remained sheathed, but the thunder and wind engraved upon its scabbard came alive together.
Kiyo vanished.
The leaden sky reeled backward before his eyes. Even time could not keep pace with him.
"Presumption," the Sustainer repeated softly.
She raised one hand. Space twisted around it. Countless cubic planes unfolded, crushing the sky inward before descending together.
[Sustainer of Heavenly Principles]
[Lv. 100]
Before the cubes could touch Kiyo, hairline cracks appeared upon them. Fine slashes spread across their surfaces. He had still not drawn his blade, yet the strikes within his heart could cut through space itself.
Be steadfast as stone.
A shadow appeared around Kiyo, growing clearer and more substantial.
It possessed four arms.
A northern wind tore at his thin clothes, drawing the shredded strips of his military robe into a long silhouette. A dark cloak hung from him like the night. Within his baleful eyes dwelled the spirits of all 439,531 fallen soldiers.
Marshal Vritras, Bosacius.
"While the Millelith stands guard, evil shall never prevail!"
Geo surged backward and folded into range upon range of mountains. Those colossal peaks became spears thrusting straight toward the firmament. Ten thousand summits rose upon ten thousand more; spears ten thousand fathoms long layered one upon another.
The peaks converged.
The mountains raged.
Together, they bore down upon the Heavenly Principles.
The Sustainer frowned slightly. The stone spears struck her cubic barrier. Geo and spatial power collided, extinguishing one another as space trembled without end. The mountain-forged spears carved one scar after another across the fabric of space.
She raised her hand and pressed the entirety of the sky downward.
Ten thousand mountain ranges shattered beneath the weight. Stone collapsed. The earth cracked and shook.
Kiyo came to a halt beneath the pressure.
Blood spilled from the corner of his mouth. His organs ruptured. His bones were ground into fragments, and blood seeped through the fissures between them.
Be weightless as the wind.
Two more shadows appeared within Musou Isshin—two lifetimes and two dreams.
The young wolf named Rostam had died at the bottom of a valley.
The mountain wind named Kiyono Fugin had gone silent beside the sea.
This was Kiyo's inner world. Musou Isshin held not only the dreams of all people, but his own as well:
every unfulfilled dream from every life he had lived.
Anemo rose from his heart, and the thousand winds answered his call.
His broken bones became wind. His heavy body became wind. Even his blood became wind.
The thousand winds broke free of the sky's crushing weight and swept upward. Every current was Kiyo Seigan.
When those thousand winds converged, he stood at last before the Sustainer of Heavenly Principles.
They faced each other in the frozen heights, each reflected in the other's eyes.
Kamigiri remained in its sheath.
Even now, he had not drawn it.
The moment had not yet come.
Kiyo closed his eyes and listened to the thunderous heartbeat within his hollow chest.
He lowered his body and pressed one hand against the sheath. Everything else in the world peeled away from his sight. White mist streamed between his teeth, and the thunder of his heart reached its peak.
Kamigiri still remembered the taste of a god's blood.
It remembered with perfect clarity.
Five hundred years in the future, an old man named Kiyono Raimei had reached this same place and raised his blade against a god.
Compress everything into the ultimate limit.
Compress everything into a single instant.
My heart is still; the Pillar endures a thousand years.
That old man had become three-tenths of a second of lightning. For one brief instant, he had crossed the sky and illuminated the world.
But Kiyo Seigan did not become a fleeting bolt of thunder.
He became a sea of lightning.
Wave upon wave of thunder slashed into space. Every impact plunged the world from light into darkness and back again. Serpents of lightning churned through the heavens until the spatial barrier collapsed completely and shattered into fragments.
Shards of space and time reflected Kiyo's face.
His lightning crossed the Sustainer's body. Pale-golden blood scattered into the air.
For the first time, she experienced a sensation she had never known before. It was strange. Unfamiliar.
Was this... pain?
As the Sustainer contemplated that pain, her nearly translucent hand came to rest upon Kiyo's chest.
Kiyo stopped.
He felt pain as well.
His entire body began to collapse inward. His heart collapsed. His bones collapsed. Even his soul collapsed. Space continued to contract around him until everything reached its limit and annihilated itself.
Kiyono Fugin died.
Kiyono Raimei died.
Rostam died.
Bosacius died...
Older memories and still older dreams were buried with them.
Kiyo clenched his teeth as the color drained from his eyes.
Musou Isshin... was collapsing.
The verdant plain carpeted in grass began to wither. Cherry blossoms vanished into space. The magnificent sunset sank away as darkness descended. Cracks split the sky one after another, and the earth shook without end.
But people still lived within his heart.
The cursed people of Khaenri'ah—their corrupted, wandering souls—still dwelled within Musou Isshin.
Now heavenly punishment descended upon them.
They died. They scattered. They vanished.
Their anguished cries rang through the depths of Kiyo's heart.
He stared into the Sustainer's eyes, but could no longer take another step.
She stood within reach.
Yet he could not reach her.
Kamigiri remained in its sheath. The final slash, accumulated across a thousand years, would never have the chance to be drawn.
Humanity could not defeat the Heavenly Principles after all.
His inner world was not strong enough.
Lumine slept within his heart as well, nestled in its softest corner as she awaited their reunion five hundred years from now.
Everyone was waiting for Kiyo.
Beneath the Sacred Sakura.
Torachiyo, who had promised him another match. Yae Miko, who had promised to see the lantern festival with him. Kunikuzushi and Hanachirusato, who had promised to share a drink. Ei and Makoto, who had promised that they would meet again...
Everyone.
Everyone was waiting for him at the end of time.
Within Musou Isshin, in that inner world now crumbling into decay, Raiden Makoto raised her head. She watched the sky grow dark and the cherry blossoms wither.
Then the gentle god lowered her eyes to the sleeping Lumine.
"What a fortunate girl," Makoto murmured to herself. "He loves you very much. How wonderful."
She was rather envious.
"I love this world too," Makoto continued after a pause, though it was unclear whom she addressed. "And I love your dream. It is much like mine... I do not want it to be destroyed."
The cherry blossoms stopped falling.
As an Archon, Raiden Makoto had never excelled in martial skill.
But this gentle god possessed a mighty authority of her own:
her dream.
Her heart.
She, too, possessed an inner world approaching eternity.
Musou Isshin.
"You allowed me to live within your heart."
Makoto smiled as gently as new snow melting beneath the afternoon sun, a bright sorrow within it.
"Then I will give you my heart as well.
"One day, I will become a puppet. A puppet does not weep, so it has no need of emotion and no need of a heart. I entrust my heart and my dream to you.
"Please leave Khaenri'ah. Return to Inazuma. Plant the Sacred Sakura... and save my people."
The god's heart merged with the dying world.
Cherry blossoms burst into brilliant bloom, and the radiance of dusk spread across the plain.
Two dreams became one.
When the two inner worlds joined—
only then did they become, truly and completely, Musou Isshin.
Kiyo Seigan finally reached the last step.
[Lv. 100 — Sustainer of Human Principles]
Against the crushing weight of space, Kiyo stepped toward the Sustainer of Heavenly Principles—
and drew Kamigiri.