03/05/2010, Iwatodai, Day.
The sun hung like a jewel in the cerulean sky, its light spilling over Gekkoukan High's rooftop in golden waves that caught in the leaves of the cherry blossoms adorning the scenery of spring.
Makoto Yuki, field leader of SEES, laid with his head cradled in the lap of his Aeon, Aigis, her metallic frame warmed by the sun, her polymer fingers absently tracing patterns in his ocean blue hair.
Her optics, usually sharp with mission clarity, had softened as she stared at the petals spiraling downward, each one a fleeting brushstroke of pink against the poetic azure of the sky above.
A tremor ran through her alloy joints, subtle as a sigh. She did not understand this ache in her core processor, this hollow whirring where logic should have reigned.
This should have been a day of joy, she thought. The Dark Hour was gone. The world breathed again. Her friends—they would remember. They would reunite. And yet…
She lifted her arm, her hand eclipsing the sun. Cherry blossoms kissed her palm, their fragile weight a paradox against her sturdy steel.
For a moment, she imagined she could feel them with a human hand—the soft edges, the whisper of life clinging to petals already beginning to wilt. When she looked down at Makoto, his eyes closed in unguarded peace, her vocal modulator hitched.
"The wind…" she murmured, her voice carrying the faintest static, like unshed tears. "It feels… nice."
The admission surprised even her. Spring's perfume—sakura trees, fresh grass, distant rain—flooded her sensors. Data streams parsed it into chemical compounds, but something deeper stirred, something that was not mere math.
"I am… finally noticing the beauty of passing things," she said, more to herself than him. Her gaze followed a petal's descent until it landed on Makoto's chest, rising and falling with breaths she did not need. "How transient it is. How every season ends, even this one."
Her hand drifted to her own chest, where gears turned in place of a heartbeat. Memories cascaded and flooded her being—Nyx's towering figure, the gunshot's echo, Makoto's weight in her arms as the world dissolved.
"We fought to stop the end," she whispered. "But now I see… living was not just defiance. It was…" She paused, processors straining to articulate the storm in her core.
Makoto's eyes opened, gray as dawn mist, and in them, she found the words. "It was choosing," she said, conviction steadying her voice.
"Fighting for what you can change." Her fingers brushed his cheek, colder than human warmth but tender nonetheless.
"And…" The breeze stilled, as if the world held its breath.
"Accepting what you can not."
"I always wondered… what it truly meant to live," she murmured, her optics locking onto Makoto's eyes. The sun gilded his face, etching shadows beneath his lashes, and for a moment, she envied the way his breath stirred the cherry blossom caught in his hair.
"Now, I think… it was listening to your heart. Fighting for what you can change." Her voice faltered, a glitch in her synthetic cadence.
A breeze swept the rooftop, carrying the scent of salt—not from the bay of Iwatodai, but from her own trembling lips. "Nothing lasts forever. Every life… even ours… would one day fade." Her hand drifted to her chest, where her Papillon Heart hummed where a human one should have beaten. "But when you accept that…" She closed her eyes, and the world tilted.
Again, memories flooded her processors: Makoto ascending to the core of Nyx, their cries unheard as he drew closer to the Moon. The crushing realization that her strength, her purpose, had not been enough.
"I was tormented," she whispered. "Protecting others was my duty, but… it became more. When I chose to fight the Fall, something changed."
Her optics flickered open, luminous with unshed tears. "And when I thought I might lose you…" Her voice fractured. The confession hung between them, raw and fragile. "That was when I understood."
A smile bloomed on her lips, soft as the petals clinging to Makoto's jacket. "What I wanted… was to protect you. Not out of duty. Not for the world." Her hands gently encased his. "For me. From now… until time itself ends."
A tremor ran through her frame. "I want to stay by your side," she breathed, and the first tear fell. It glinted like liquid silver in the sunlight, tracing a path down her porcelain cheek. Why? Her systems strained to parse the anomaly—a machine, weeping. The tear was warm. She was warm.
"If I liv for you… then nothing will go to waste. My life… will have meaning." Her grip tightened, as if he might dissolve like the blossoms in the wind. "So… thank you."
Makoto said nothing. He didn't need to. His fingers curled around hers, calloused and cold, and in that touch, she felt it—the paradox of her existence. She was gears and code, yet her tears were real. She couldn't die like humans did, yet she mourned the fleeting.
"Hey, hey, hey!" Junpei's voice echoed across the rooftop, buoyant and brash. Aigis turned, her optics catching the sunlight as the rest of SEES emerged—Yukari's laughter mingled with Akihiko's gruff greeting, Fuuka's timid wave, Ken and Koromaru trailing close behind.
"They're here," Aigis murmured, her voice soft with wonder. She gazed down at Makoto, his head still cradled in her lap, his breathing shallow but steady.
"I see it now… I have friends. We support each other." Gently, she squeezed his hand, her synthetic fingers curling around his with deliberate tenderness. "Not everything needs a grand purpose. Sometimes… caring is enough."
Makoto's eyes fluttered open, more gray than usual and weary, but his lips twitched into the faintest smile. Aigis leaned closer, her voice steady despite the storm in her core. "I've found my path," she declared, her words a vow etched into the spring air. "To protect you. With my life."
He didn't speak. He didn't need to. His chest rose once, twice—a slow, fragile rhythm—as sunlight pooled in the hollows of his collarbone. Aigis brushed a strand of blue hair from his forehead, her touch lingering. "You must be tired," she whispered. "Rest now. I'll be here."
Makoto's gaze drifted past her, beyond the laughter and the petals and the vivid blue sky.
A flicker of cerulean danced at the edge of his vision—the butterfly, its wings shimmering like fractured stained glass. The same one that had greeted him that first April night, when the world was still a labyrinth of unknowns.
It hovered, delicate and eternal, before spiraling upward, dissolving into a trail of light that faded like a breath on a mirror.
Aigis' hand tightened around his. Warmth. Even now, her polymer skin radiated it.
The rooftop door burst open. "Yo, Makoto! You're missing the party!" Junpei shouted, grinning as the group surged forward. Yukari rolled her eyes but smiled, Akihiko clapped Mitsuru on the shoulder, and Koromaru barked, tail wagging.
Aigis turned to them, her smile radiant, rehearsed, human. "Welcome back," she said, her voice bright—too bright—as SEES crowded around.
Makoto's eyes settled on their faces, one by one. He memorized the crinkles of Yukari's smile, Akihiko's chiseled chin, the way Mitsuru's red hair caught the light.
Then, slowly, he closed his eyes.
One.
He felt the kiss of the spring—a cherry blossom gently brushed his cheek.
Last.
For a second, before his eyelids finally succumbed to the weight, he could have sworn he saw another butterfly—a darker, more sinister one.
Time.
And darkness encompassed everything.
03/31/2012, Sea of Souls, Undefined Time.
The Great Seal loomed in the void, a monolith of two towering doors forged from molten gold, their surfaces etched with runes exactly as old as human sorrow.
They burned with a cold, unyielding light, casting jagged shadows across the abyss of the Sea of Souls—that liminal, metaphysical realm where time curdled like forgotten milk.
Between them, anchored in the silence, stood a statue: a boy of stone, his face frozen in a serenity that bordered on sorrow.
His hands were outstretched, palms open as if to cradle the world he had saved, though his fingers had long since fused with the doors' gilded veins.
This was no mere effigy. It was Makoto Yuki, the Messiah, his body petrified but his consciousness unbroken—a living lock, a soul chained to the threshold between total annihilation and unyielding hope.
He had stood there since that final spring day on Gekkoukan's rooftop, when cherry blossoms had fallen like tears and his breath had dissolved into starlight.
Now, his existence was a paradox: a vigil without end, a mind adrift in a body of stone. The Seal was not a prison of pain, but of titanic weight—the crushing, ceaseless burden of a thousand lifetimes compressed into a single moment.
To be the Great Seal was to exist in the afterglow of a dream. You woke from a nap at dusk, disoriented, the world smeared at its edges. Hours? Centuries? Just seconds? Time blurred like ink on wet paper. Your thoughts frayed, your memories flickered: faces, voices, laughter, all slipping through fingers you no longer possessed.
And the visions.
They came without warning. Not hallucinations, but shards of reality, piercing the veil of his solitude. The worst feeling of all, however, was the silence. Not the absence of sound, but the absence of end. Here, in the Great Seal, the waves of the Sea of Souls did not crash. The stars did not die. There was only the hum of Nyx's slumber beneath his feet, and the whispers of Erebus—the collective despair of humanity—scraping at the doors like a beast gnawing its cage.
And through it all, Makoto waited.
How much time has passed?
The thought drifted through Makoto's consciousness like a leaf on the still water of a pond, fragile and fleeting. It was a rare moment of clarity, a break in the endless fog that shrouded his mind.
The silence was unnerving. No pounding fists of Erebus, no whispers of despair clawing at the edges of the Seal. Just… stillness.
Had it been hours? Days? He tried to focus, but time here was a river without banks, flowing in all directions at once.
No memories surged forward to drown him, no faces, no voices, no fragments of a life he had once lived. Just the void, stretching endlessly in every direction.
I wonder what they're doing…
The only moments that had felt real were the ones when Erebus came—the collective despair of humanity acting like a monstrous tide crashing against the Seal, shaking him to his core. But Erebus had been silent for… how long? He couldn't tell. The absence was almost worse.
Then, in the darkness, a flicker.
A light.
Small and distant, like a star glimpsed through storm clouds. Makoto turned toward it—or at least, he thought he did.
In this place, movement was strange, less like walking, more like drifting—swimming through a viscous sea. He reached out, or imagined he did, and the light grew brighter.
And then he saw it.
The blue butterfly.
Again? Makoto asked in his mind.
The blue butterfly hovered before him, its wings pulsing with an ethereal light that fractured the oppressive gloom of the void.
It spun once, twice, and in a cascade of sapphire luminescence, its form dissolved, replaced by the silhouette of a man coalescing from stardust.
He stood before him, an enigma draped in elegance. His dark brown hair, streaked with strands of silver like threads of moonlight, flowed into a neat ponytail that rested against the collar of his immaculate black suit.
The mask covering his face was a masterpiece of craftsmanship: ivory-white porcelain, smooth as a frozen lake, yet alive with intricate carvings.
On the left side of the mask, a single wing unfurled in relief—a butterfly's delicate veins rendered in obsidian, shimmering as if wet with midnight dew. His attire was a study in contrast—jet-black fabric tailored to perfection, a crisp white tie knotted with mathematical precision, trousers pale as bone, and shoes polished to a mirror's gleam.
"Greetings, Makoto Yuki," he said, his voice a melody that resonated not in the air, but in the marrow of Makoto's soul. It was both whisper and symphony, tender yet ancient.
"I am Philemon. A dweller in the rift between unconsciousness and consciousness." He tilted his head slightly, the mask's empty eye sockets somehow radiating a gaze that emanated a serene aura.
"Philemon?" Makoto echoed, his voice carrying a faint hint of confusion. "How… and why are you here?"
The figure raised a gloved hand, a gesture both apologetic and regal. "Forgive the intrusion. I seldom intervene directly in mortal affairs, though I observe always from the liminal spaces—the edge of a dream, the breath before a choice." His mask dipped in a shallow bow.
"This meeting is… unconventional. But necessity compels me."
He stepped closer, and the void shivered. Around him, the darkness rippled like water struck by a stone, revealing fleeting glimpses—faces Makoto half-remembered, laughter from a life suspended.
"You are the Universe," Philemon continued, his tone softening yet weighted with cosmic gravity. "A confluence of souls, a bridge between what is and what could be. What I ask… only you can achieve."
"I know what you sacrificed," he began, fingertips brushing the air, where motes of azure light swirled like fireflies. "I have always watched. It was I who bestowed upon you the Wild Card, its potential coiled within your soul like a seed awaiting spring. And it was I who tasked Igor, my most loyal servant, to guide you through the labyrinth of your destiny."
"You… know Igor?" Memories flickered in Makoto's mind—the Velvet Room's ever-lasting walls, the noise of the elevator's engine, that long-nosed grin both unsettling and comforting.
"Know him?" Philemon's chuckle was a soft chime, discordant yet beautiful. "I crafted the Velvet Room. It is a reflection of my will, a chrysalis where souls like yours are honed."
He stepped closer, the void rippling beneath his polished shoes as if walking on water. "And now, I offer you reprieve. This Seal…" He gestured to the golden doors, their runes blazing as he spoke. "…no longer requires your soul as its keystone."
Makoto's consciousness reeled. For the first time in… many days, something like hope fractured the numbness.
"What of Erebus? Nyx?" Makoto asked, his tkne unchanged.
Philemon raised a hand, and the darkness parted. A vision unfolded: Erebus, that writhing mass of shadows, now fractured like glass under an invisible hammer.
"Erebus weakens," he intoned. "Not because mankind has forsaken sorrow, but because the Shadows that feed it wane. Their roots… severed."
"How?" Makoto's question came immediately, but not with urgency.
"Shadows are born of humanity's hidden rot—fear, malice, the poison they bury in their hearts. For eons, they were nurtured by a… counterforce to my own."
His voice dropped, the air thickening with the scent of ozone.
"Nyarlathotep. The Crawling Chaos. He is the shadow of shadows, the collective hunger for annihilation. Where I am mankind's silent prayer for growth, he is its scream for oblivion."
Philemon continued. "We are twin flames, he and I. Creation and corrosion. But now, the scales tip. His influence falters, here. The Shadows starve." He paused, the butterfly on his mask trembling as if alive. "And so, Erebus crumbles… without its architect."
"What does it have to do with me?" Makoto, logically, asked.
"You, Makoto Yuki, are the living embodiment of the Universe Arcana—the convergence of all bonds, the arbiter of beginnings and ends. You did not merely stop Nyx. You severed the thread of a fate millennia in the weaving."
He stepped closer, the void trembling beneath his feet. Golden motes of light swirled around him, coalescing into constellations that mirrored the Arcana's symbols.
"Nyx was the progenitor. The catalyst that birthed Earth's Collective Unconscious, from which all Shadows—and beings like myself and Nyarlathotep—emerged. But you…"
His mask lifted. "You are the exception. The Universe itself anointed you. Not as a pawn of his, but as a singularity."
"Now, Nyarlathotep seeks to replicate Nyx's genesis," Philemon continued, his words measured but urgent.
"In another world, untouched by the Sea of Souls, he labors to forge a new Collective Unconscious. A festering womb where despair will reign eternal." His voice wavered, ever so slightly, on the word eternal.
"Why?" Makoto's voice echoed.
Philemon went still. When he spoke again, his tone was glacial, each syllable sharp enough to draw blood.
"Because suffering is his sacrament. Annihilation, his liturgy. He does not simply want it—he is. For him, pain is a force as inevitable as entropy. As fundamental as gravity."
The butterfly on his mask shuddered. "In this new world, he will not merely spread despair. He will become its god. A Nyx unbound, feeding on fresh anguish, until every star in its sky gutters out."
The faces of SEES flickered like candle flames in Makoto's mind: Yukari's seemingly heartless jokes, Junpei's reckless grin, Fuuka's shy smile, Akihiko's ramblings about training, Mitsuru's authority, Ken's dreams and promises, the memory of Shinjiro, Akihiko's pain when it happened, Aigis' trembling hands cradling his fading warmth, his walks with Koromaru. And Ryoji, his laughter a requiem for a boy who had chosen to bear the weight of eternity.
"A playground…" Makoto murmured, the words ash on his tongue. "But not for joy. For suffering."
"Aptly put," said Philemon, his voice a balm that could not quite mask the sorrow beneath. "But know this, Exception of Humankind, it is a destiny you can reshape. As you once did here."
Makoto's mind raced. Tartarus' shadows, Nyx's true form, the finality of March 5th—they surged through him, not as ghosts, but as kindling.
"Why me?" he asked once more, though he already knew the answer.
The dweller's gloved hand rose, and the void parted. Stars bloomed, each a pinprick of Arcana, the Fool's journey etched in stardust. "The Universe chose you long before you chose it," Philemon intoned. "You are not its vessel, but its will."
"What is the Universe Arcana, then? Igor never explained it to me," Makoto answered logically.
"You will find out," Philemon replied cryptically.
Makoto remembered the last words Aigis had told him: Rest. But he could not rest. Not yet. No, he had never been meant to rest.
"I'll do it," he said, the words a vow carved into the bones of the cosmos.
Philemon's mask softened, or perhaps it was a trick of the light. "Fear not, because you will not walk alone. Your faithful Attendant waits for you."