Kael's voice was hollow, a dead thing in the supercharged air.
"You'd do it, wouldn't you?"
It wasn't a question. It was an accusation, a final damning piece of evidence presented to a jury of one.
Aiko met his gaze. The terror in his eyes was a raw, new thing. It wasn't the ancient grief for Yuki.
It was a sharp, present-tense fear, and it was entirely for her. It was terrifying. It was… flattering.
Great. Just fucking great. The celestial being is terrified for my life, and my first thought is that it's kind of nice. Her own brokenness was sometimes a marvel to behold.
"It's the right thing to do," she said, her voice betraying none of the chaos in her head. It sounded steady. Reasonable. Like she wasn't contemplating paying for someone else's salvation with decades of her own life.
"Right?" He laughed, but the sound was sharp and brittle, like breaking ice. "There is nothing 'right' about this, Aiko. You are talking about throwing your life away."
"For what? A ghost? A memory? For my mistake?"
He stepped forward, closing the space between them. The cold from the rift intensified, but Kael's fury was a furnace.
"I forbid it."
Aiko almost laughed for real this time. The sheer, uncut arrogance of it was almost comforting in its familiarity. Almost.
"You forbid it?" she shot back, crossing her arms. A pathetic defense against a being who could probably unmake her with a thought.
"Sorry, did I miss the part where you became my dad? Or my keeper?" "Last I checked, you were the celestial asshole I got stuck with in a cosmic binding ceremony gone wrong."
"I am the Reaper bound to you, which makes your life my responsibility," he countered, his voice low and dangerous. "And I will not stand by and watch you commit suicide by empathy."
"It's not suicide."
"What would you call it? You felt the price. I saw it on your face." "You would be trading years—decades—of your life. You would grow old before you'd even truly lived."
"You would be a flickering candle in a hurricane, and for what?" He gestured violently toward the rift. "For her?"
The violet scar in reality seemed to pulse in response, a silent scream of agreement.
"You'd give up your life for someone you've never met."
There it was again. The hollow accusation.
"She's a soul, Kael," Aiko said, her voice softening, pleading. "Just like the little boy in the park. Just like the old woman in the hospital."
"She's trapped. She's suffering." "It's my job. It's what I do."
It's what I am, a small, broken part of her whispered. A tool to be used up. A life to be spent for others. Because my own isn't worth living for its own sake.
She shoved the thought down, hard.
"Your 'job' is to guide spirits who are lost on Earth," Kael argued, his logic a sharp, desperate weapon. "She is not on Earth. She is outside the system."
"This is a cosmic anomaly, a matter for Heaven Command, not for one fragile human."
"Fragile?" The word sparked her anger, a welcome shield against the fear. "I'm the one still standing after taking a psychic hit from that thing. You're the one who looks like you're about to shatter. Don't call me fragile."
"You are fragile!" he roared, and the rift flared, spitting a shower of violet sparks that sizzled against the concrete floor. "You bleed. You break. You age."
"Your heart beats a finite number of times, and you are trying to spend them all in one go." "I will not let you."
He reached out, his fingers wrapping around her wrist. His touch wasn't cold, like she expected. It was burning hot, a conduit for his desperate, terrified energy.
"Let go of me, Kael."
"No."
"This isn't your choice to make."
"It became my choice the moment my past threatened your future," he said, his voice dropping to an intense whisper. His eyes bored into hers.
"It became my choice the moment I realized I would rather let her rot in that void for another thousand years than lose a single day of you."
The confession hung in the air between them, more shocking than any spectral voice.
Aiko's breath hitched. Her heart did a painful, stuttering thing in her chest.
The ugly, selfish part of her that had wanted the rift to close swelled with a terrible, triumphant warmth.
He didn't want to lose her.
He was choosing her. Over Yuki.
And that, she realized with a sickening lurch, was exactly why she had to do this.
"That's not fair," she whispered, trying to pull her wrist free. His grip was like iron. "You can't say that. You can't put that on me."
"Why not?" he demanded, his face inches from hers. "It's the truth. Is honesty only a virtue when it suits you, Aiko?"
"The truth is that you're feeling guilty," she shot back, falling back on anger because the alternative was too terrifyingly vulnerable. "You're feeling guilty, and you're trying to absolve yourself by sacrificing me instead of her."
"You're just trading one sacrifice for another!"
"This is not about my guilt!"
"Isn't it? You're the one who condemned her to that place." "Now you want to condemn me to a half-life to make yourself feel better? So you can tell yourself you finally protected someone?"
"No. I won't be your redemption, Kael."
The words were cruel. She knew they were cruel the moment they left her lips. She saw the hurt land, a direct hit to his already fractured soul.
His expression crumbled, the anger dissolving into raw, undisguised pain. His grip on her wrist loosened.
"Is that what you think this is?" he asked, his voice broken. "Atonement?"
She didn't answer. She couldn't. Because for a second, she had meant it.
He stepped back, pulling his hand away as if burned. He looked at her, and the distance between them felt wider than the rift in reality.
"You are right," he said, his voice regaining a chilling, formal stillness. It was a wall being rebuilt, brick by painful brick.
"My past is my own. My mistakes are my own." "They have nothing to do with you."
He turned his back on her and faced the rift.
"Therefore, you will not be the one to pay the price."
Aiko's blood ran cold. "Kael, what are you doing?"
"What a Reaper does," he said, his voice devoid of all emotion. "I am an agent of the system. This is an aberration. A loose thread."
"I will correct it."
Golden light began to gather around his hands. Not the brilliant, weaponized light of his blade, but a softer, more fundamental energy. His own essence.
He was going to try and force the rift closed himself. The cost would be catastrophic. It would unmake him.
"Stop it!" Aiko screamed, lunging forward and grabbing his arm again. "You'll destroy yourself! You said it yourself, it's a cosmic wound!"
"My existence is forfeit. It has been for centuries," he said, not looking at her. The light grew brighter. "Yours is not."
"You idiot! You absolute, celestial moron!" She pounded her fist against his back, a useless, frantic gesture.
"You think this is a solution? You die, she stays trapped, and I have to live with it?" "How is that the better option?"
"It is better for you," he said simply.
The sheer, selfless stupidity of it broke through her fear.
"What if it was me?" she cried, the words tearing from her throat. "What if I was the one trapped in there, Kael? A mistake of the system. A ghost in a void."
"Would you leave me there to protect some other girl you just met?" "Would you call it 'not your problem'?"
The golden light around his hands wavered.
He slowly, so slowly, turned to face her. The mask was gone again. All that was left was the man, tormented and torn between two impossible choices.
"You know I wouldn't," he whispered.
"Then don't ask me to," she pleaded, her voice cracking. "Don't ask me to be less than you. Don't ask me to be selfish when you have never been anything but self-sacrificing."
Tears were streaming down her face now. She hated it. Hated feeling this exposed, this raw.
"I can't leave her there, Kael. Not because of you. Not for you." "But because of me. Because I can't."
"I see her, and I feel her, and I can't just… walk away." "I don't know how."
She finally admitted the deepest truth.
"Maybe I'm broken. Maybe my trauma made me this way. But it's who I am." "And if you care about me—if you meant what you said—then you have to let me be who I am."
He stared at her, his expression unreadable. The silence stretched, thick and heavy, broken only by the soft, hungry hum of the rift.
He looked from her tear-streaked face to the violet scar and back again. He was seeing the impossible equation. Her life versus his guilt. His past versus her future.
He finally closed his eyes, a shudder wracking his entire frame. It was the silent, shuddering movement of surrender.
"You will not do it alone," he said, his voice rough with unshed tears. "My mistake. My power. I will shield you as much as I can. I will anchor you."
"Whatever the cost to you, a portion of it will be mine to bear."
It wasn't permission. It was a pact. A new binding.
Aiko's heart swelled with a feeling so fierce and bright it almost hurt. It was a terrifying mix of gratitude, love, and the cold, hard certainty of the sacrifice to come.
"Okay," she whispered, her hand finding his. His fingers laced with hers, a solid, warm anchor in the chaos. "Okay."
She turned to face the rift, Kael a solid presence at her side. She took a deep breath, steeling herself.
She was afraid. More afraid than she had ever been. But she wasn't alone.
She prepared to reach out, to pour her soul into the wound of the world. She met Kael's eyes one last time, a silent promise passing between them.
And then the world ended.
The rift, without warning, convulsed.
It didn't just pulse. It spasmed violently, like a dying heart. The violet light flared to a blinding white, and a sound ripped through the station—not a scream, not a roar, but the sound of reality snapping shut.
CRACK.
The air imploded. A shockwave of displaced space threw them backward.
Aiko slammed into the concrete wall, her head connecting with a sickening thud. Kael shielded her with his body, taking the brunt of the impact.
And as Aiko's vision swam with black spots, the last thing she saw was the space where the rift had been.
There was nothing there.
Just empty, solid, silent air.
The scar was gone. The voice was gone.
Yuki was gone.