The hum of the machinery slowly faded from his ears.
Welt's vision sank into a thick, suffocating darkness.
A sense of weightlessness.
A sense of falling.
The feel of a cold wind cutting across his cheeks.
When his feet found solid ground again, the acrid stench of gunpowder smoke and scorched, melted building material flooded his nose.
The sky was a suffocating, dark crimson.
This was Berlin.
Or rather, the ruins of what had once been called Berlin, before it became a graveyard.
Welt saw ash covering the ground — all that remained of three hundred thousand minds and bodies, ground beneath the crushing weight of Honkai.
He saw the very moment the first Herrscher of Reason, Welt Joyce, was born.
Later.
After one battle, that man passed on his Core and his name to a cowardly boy named Joachim.
The scenes shifted, one after another, across the ruins.
A dying struggle on an ice field.
Coughing blood in an Anti-Entropy control room.
And the snowfields of Siberia, ringed in raging fire.
The Second Eruption.
Welt stood at the center of the snowfield, scorched frozen earth beneath his feet.
He looked up at the man ahead of him — golden-haired, green-eyed, dressed in opulent finery.
Otto Apocalypse.
"He may have lost his father, but he still has me."
Otto's voice echoed across the empty snowfield, dripping with a cloying elegance and malice that turned the stomach.
"I could easily serve as his mentor in life, couldn't I?"
Otto walked up to Welt, his leather shoes rasping against the charred earth.
He bent down, those emerald-green eyes fixed on Welt.
"Tell me, Joachim."
The corner of Otto's mouth curled into a mocking arc.
"What right do you have to a second life? Look at yourself — so pathetic, so powerless. What does the great game of defeating Honkai have to do with you? In this game, you're nothing but a pacer for that little Kaslana girl."
Otto straightened, his arm sweeping toward the sky.
The sky, once shrouded in Honkai clouds, suddenly split apart, revealing the glittering sea of stars.
It was the very view Welt had once seen as the Nameless.
"Even if you fled into the sea of stars," Otto's voice turned suddenly cold, "what came of it? Did you save the train that Foehn destroyed? Did you protect those children, those companions who mattered so much to you?"
Otto leaned forward, his face nearly touching the tip of Welt's nose.
"Welt, don't you think your entire life has been nothing but a joke, through and through?"
The wind over the snowfield died.
Welt looked at the man before him — the greatest nightmare of his entire life.
He didn't step back.
"It's true. I've always been far too weak."
Welt spoke.
He didn't look at Otto — instead, he looked down at his own hands.
Hands with no calluses, no strength in them.
"I've done nothing but repeat the same failures, over and over, futilely."
He raised his head and met Otto's gaze.
In those eyes, so long hidden behind glasses, there was no trace of retreat or fear.
"But none of it was meaningless."
Welt's fingers slowly curled into a fist.
"The thoughts of the Herrscher of Reason, the weight carried by the name Welt — I truly, genuinely passed them on, into the hands of a girl named Bronya."
He pressed the words harder.
"And in the end, in her hands, that legacy shone — it became the very power that guided humanity to victory over Honkai."
Welt looked squarely at Otto's face as the smile there slowly faded.
"You're right. Joachim was never a mighty warrior, never some unbreakable hero who charged fearlessly into battle."
Welt straightened his spine.
"But what saves a world was never some lone hero. It was always the collective will of all humanity."
He took a step forward, closing the distance to Otto.
"And I — Welt Yang — am willing to be the one who carries that will forward, to pass the torch into the hands of the next generation."
Welt's voice rang out across the snowfield, scattering the drifting snow around them.
"This. This is all I can do."
"In the world's name — this is my way of protecting the world."
Otto stared at Welt, unmoving.
A few seconds passed.
"Heh."
A low chuckle rose from Otto's throat.
Then the laughter grew, louder and louder, until it broke into unrestrained, roaring laughter.
"Hahahahaha!!!"
He doubled over with laughter, his long golden hair whipping wildly in the wind.
"You're right, Joachim!"
Otto snapped upright, flung his arms wide, and tilted his head back toward the sea of stars.
"Precisely because of that! That's exactly why I believe so fervently in humanity — in the miracles all of you are capable of!"
He lowered his head to look at Welt, his expression twisted with fervor.
"How absurd! Here I am — a fool who's overturned every human bond, who's weighed the entire world as a mere counterweight just to bring back the one I love — and yet I believe so completely in human feeling, in human will!"
Otto drew in a deep breath of the frigid air.
He lowered his arms. The fervor drained from his face in an instant, replaced by that unreadable calm.
"Congratulations, Welt."
He looked at the man before him, no longer a coward.
"You've truly earned the right to fight for this world. Now — go beyond this phantom of the past that I am."
Otto stepped aside, clearing a path.
"And then — keep moving forward."
"You don't need to tell me that."
Welt raised his right hand.
"I intend to do exactly that."
A dark crimson orb of gravity took shape in his palm in an instant, the light around it bending under the extreme distortion of its pull.
In this world built purely of memory, he once again held the authority that belonged to the Herrscher of Reason.
Without the slightest hesitation, his five fingers clenched shut.
The gravity orb shattered in his palm, dark crimson fragments of energy bursting outward with terrifying, tearing force.
Under that irresistible force, Otto's figure was instantly ground down into a sky full of golden motes of light.
The snowfield vanished.
In its place: a sky full of raging fire and the collapsed wreckage of machinery.
This was another battlefield.
Welt looked at the figure standing at the center of the sea of flame.
The figure wore a black trench coat, his face identical to Welt's own — except he'd taken off his glasses, and a pair of blood-red eyes glinted with savagery and fervor in the firelight.
It was a phantom born from some bubble universe.
Another "Welt" — one who had lost every one of his Anti-Entropy comrades, who had ultimately fallen completely to darkness and single-handedly slain the Herrscher of the Void.
If Otto had been the fear and self-loathing buried deep in Welt's heart, then the man before him now was the pride and arrogance suppressed in his subconscious.
"Power! A destiny! An ideal!"
Red-Eyed Welt spread his arms wide, his voice hoarse and violent.
"When I inherited the name [Welt], I gained everything that man had to offer!"
He jabbed a finger at the Welt before him.
"That's right! I'm the one who killed the [Herrscher of the Void]! I'm the one who saved this world in the end! I did what that man couldn't! I've already surpassed him!"
He pounded his own chest.
"This is my own power! My own destiny! My own ideal! This is the real me!"
Welt looked at this warped, near-mad reflection of himself.
He drew in a breath of air thick with burning sparks.
"Saving the world."
Welt's voice stayed calm, unaffected by the other's frenzy.
"It was never some empty, abstract concept. It was always something concrete — a specific person."
He walked forward, into the savage glare of Red-Eyed Welt.
"It's true — I once entertained the fantasy that someday I might surpass Joyce, might completely take the name Welt for my own."
Welt's gaze passed over the other's shoulder, into the depths of the sea of fire, where reflections of the past flickered faintly in and out of sight.
"But eventually I realized — what truly carried me forward was never my own power."
"It was Tesla. It was Einstein. It was every single person in Anti-Entropy — every comrade who ever stepped onto a battlefield to fight Honkai."
The sea of fire around them seemed to dim slightly at his words.
"And in this world," Welt said, drawing his gaze back, "it's Su Yu. It's Kiana. It's every single person at miHoYo Studio."
He stopped, a single step away from his own maddened reflection.
"Precisely because I can't bear the thought of losing them—"
Welt held out his hand, palm up, extending it toward the phantom that wore his own face.
"—precisely because I know that if I lose them again, I'd walk the very same road to self-destruction that you did."
Welt looked into those blood-red eyes.
"So lend me your strength, Welt."
The frenzied phantom froze.
He looked down at the hand extended before him, his pupils trembling violently.
Then he burst into laughter even wilder and more frenzied than before.
"Hahahahahaha!!!"
Red-Eyed Welt laughed so hard his shoulders shook.
"You think you'll be the one laughing, in the end, this time?"
He snapped his head up, glaring hard at Welt.
"You think no one's going to be lost this time? That young man named Su Yu — he's not coming back! He's already gone for good!"
He closed another step, spittle nearly flying into Welt's face.
"Back in reality, you're nothing but a frail, ordinary human being! No Herrscher Core, no power of a Path! What could someone like you possibly do?!"
The sea of fire around them flared up again, blazing fiercer than before.
"All your effort, all your struggling — once that doomsday arrives, it'll only make your death that much more wretched!"
He jabbed a finger practically against Welt's nose.
"Even so — you still intend to struggle to the very end?!"
Welt didn't flinch away.
He looked straight into those blood-red eyes, brimming with despair and mockery.
"Even so."
Welt's hand stayed extended, his tone firm, leaving no room for argument.
"I will still struggle to the very end."
Red-Eyed Welt looked at him.
The violence in those eyes slowly settled, replaced by something mingling admiration and sorrow.
He laughed again, but this time the laughter carried none of its earlier madness.
"Good! Good!"
He didn't take the outstretched hand. Instead, he let his body dissolve directly into the surrounding firelight.
"Welt Yang! Then try to surpass me — surpass this damned world, surpass all of it!"
His voice faded away into the sea of fire.
"I'll be waiting for you at the far end of hell!"
The flames went out.
The world collapsed, and reformed.
No more snowfield. No more sea of fire.
Only a deep, boundless galaxy remained.
At the center of this space, a black hole and a white hole tore at each other.
Terrifying tides of gravity ripped nearby stars apart and swallowed them whole.
Welt stood amid the galaxy.
He felt the pressure — beyond anything he could have imagined.
His bones creaked under the strain of gravity strong enough to bend light itself.
He gritted his teeth, thrust both hands forward, and marshaled every last drop of Imaginary energy in his body to resist the white hole's tearing pull.
At the heart of the white hole, he could faintly make out an enormous silhouette, radiating an aura of pure destruction.
The Lord Ravager — Zephyro.
Just as he strained to hold on, feeling his mental barrier on the verge of total collapse—
several familiar silhouettes surfaced at the edge of the black hole.
A red-haired woman. A mascot wearing a conductor's cap. A young man carrying a long spear. And the pink-haired girl who always had a camera raised.
Everyone from the Astral Express.
Welt, forcing himself to hold on, looked toward them.
"Uncle Yang."
March 7th looked at him, her eyes — normally so full of life — now brimming with disappointment.
"Weren't you supposed to be all-powerful? Weren't you going to protect the world in the world's name?"
She took a step back.
"So why couldn't you even protect us?"
Pom-Pom's long ears drooped.
"Passenger Welt, everyone in the train crew died. Why are you still alive, pom?"
Dan Heng gripped his spear without so much as a glance at him.
Himeko, coffee cup in hand, turned away, leaving him only a cold, indifferent back.
Their words were like countless sharp blades, carving away at Welt's already-shredded nerves, one cut at a time.
The black hole's pull weakened as doubt crept through him, and the white hole's glare grew ever more blinding.
Then he saw her.
The girl who always wore a gray trench coat, who was often quiet and withdrawn on the train, who sometimes wandered off to rummage through trash cans in some corner.
Stelle.
She walked to the front of those cold, indifferent silhouettes.
"Uncle Yang."
Stelle looked at Welt.
Welt's breathing grew ragged and heavy. He almost couldn't bear to hear whatever heartless words might come next.
But Stelle didn't turn cold or accusing like the others.
She tilted her head, looking at Welt — drenched in cold sweat, straining to hold himself together.
"Everyone on the train crew — they'd never say things like that."
She pointed at the figures behind her.
"Pom-Pom, March 7th, Dan Heng, Himeko…"
Stelle lowered her hand.
"They're all fake." She pointed at herself. "I'm fake too."
Welt froze, staring wide-eyed at Stelle.
"Stelle, you—"
Facing Welt Yang, Stelle suddenly broke into a grin — a bit foolish, guileless, almost dopey.
It was the same look she used to have — back when she'd asked Old Yang why he loved mech anime so much, and he'd bombarded her with recommendations for dozens of shows, leaving her with that flustered but tolerant, awkward smile.
"Uncle Yang."
Stelle looked at him, that smile impossibly real even under the blinding glare of the white hole.
"What are you still waiting for?"
That smile. Those words.
They struck like a hammer, shattering the glass dome around him in a single blow.
Welt's eyes snapped open.
At the edge of the black hole, those cold, indifferent silhouettes dissolved in an instant.
In their place came the real voices of his companions.
Voices that crossed the vast sea of stars, crossed through the false memories, and rang out directly from the depths of his soul.
"Passenger Welt, don't forget to come visit us in your dreams," Pom-Pom said, voice thick and nasal.
"Keep moving forward, Uncle Yang," Dan Heng said, calm and steady.
"Heh heh, our train crew is one big loving family — we're staying together forever!" March 7th's voice was as full of life as ever.
"Welt, I'm sorry for leaving you to carry all this alone. But please believe me — even worlds apart, the bond between us will never disappear." Himeko's voice was so gentle it made him want to cry.
And last of all, Stelle.
"Uncle Yang! Arahato is definitely going to be the greatest anime in the world!!"
BOOM!
In that instant—
a force so vast it defied description exploded to life within Welt Yang.
It came from no shattered Herrscher Core, no gift bestowed by the Imaginary Tree.
It was his own — forged from every regret, every pain, every moment of awakening, every Bond of his long, long life, tempered pure by passing through the very depths of despair.
Between his two palms, the black hole — nearly snuffed out under the white hole's suppression—
suddenly expanded.
The black hole's absolute mass — able to swallow even light itself — crushed past the white hole's edge in an instant, dragging both the white hole and the phantom of the Great Lord of Annihilation within it down into an endless singularity.
Familiar black-red Imaginary energy swirled between his hands.
Welt looked down at his own hands.
At some point, without his noticing—
the metal scepter he'd created with his own hands, the one wielding the Gravity Control power of the Divine Key, Star of Eden, now rested in his palm.
Intricate patterns along its handle gleamed cold light against the backdrop of the sea of stars.
"Pom-Pom, Himeko, March 7th, Dan Heng, and Stelle…"
He stood there, in the silent galaxy.
Reflections of his friends kept surfacing around him, then scattering away like stardust.
"Thank you, all of you."
Welt tightened his grip on the scepter.
"I won't forget you."
He lifted his head. There wasn't the faintest trace of confusion left in his eyes.
"I'll carry this strength with me, and keep moving forward."
With his free hand, Welt pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose.
He looked ahead, at the "Lord Ravager" — already torn apart by the black hole, no longer able to hold even its outline together.
The corner of his mouth curled into a cold, mocking smile.
"I've been wanting to say this to you for a very long time now—"
Welt struck the scepter down hard against the void.
"Zephyro—"
"the sole of my shoe is itching."
A resonant hum!
The gravity core at the scepter's tip burst with blinding light.
The entire space, crushed beneath that absolute power, was swallowed whole by darkness in an instant.
Reality.
Anti-Entropy's underground laboratory.
"Beep! Beep! Beep!"
The alarm on the main console shrieked.
Bronie stared hard at the screen, at an energy curve spiking upward in an explosive vertical line, her fingers blurring across the keyboard.
"He's overloaded! Brainwave activity has broken past the upper threshold!"
Fine beads of sweat broke out on Bronie's forehead.
"The system's cutoff protocol has failed! Damn it, we can't rein it in at all!"
Kiana rushed to the side of the hibernation pod, her hand already closing around the emergency forced-open lever at the edge of its door.
"Uncle Yang!"
Just as Kiana was about to wrench the door open—
the alarm cut off abruptly.
The red curve, which had been about to blast through the top of the monitor, miraculously dropped to zero in an instant, settling into a smooth, gentle wave.
"The reading's gone?" Bronie froze.
The next moment—
Bang!
the hibernation pod's door was pushed open from the inside.
White condensation vapor poured out through the gap, spreading across the floor.
A powerful force spread out from within that mist — powerful enough that even Kiana couldn't help taking half a step back.
Welt Yang opened his eyes.
He slowly sat up inside the hibernation pod.
In the air around him, threads of black-red Imaginary energy coiled, visible to the naked eye.
The energy seemed almost alive, drifting around his body with faint crackling sounds.
It was a power both familiar — and yet utterly foreign to this world.
Kiana's eyes went wide.
"Such incredible power… but it doesn't feel like a Herrscher's power. What is this…"
Welt raised his hand and looked at his own palm.
He said nothing. With just a faint thought, the black-red Imaginary energy drifting through the air converged instantly into his hand.
In the end, it compressed and solidified into a form that had, until now, existed only in his memories and in the game's design docs — the scepter of Star of Eden.
Along with it came a faint click — like some kind of shackle being sprung open.
Kiana sensed, with sharp intuition, that something about Welt's body had changed — utterly, fundamentally.
It was the kind of essential leap that marked evolution from a mortal being into something of a higher dimension entirely.
Welt stepped out of the hibernation pod, scepter held in one hand.
He smoothed out his slightly rumpled coat and pushed his glasses back up.
He raised his head to face Kiana and Bronie, both still frozen in shock.
A gentle, reassuring smile touched the corner of his mouth.
"Kiana. Bronie."
Welt said softly.
"I'm back."
[Ding!]
In the boundless dark depths of his consciousness—
one System notification chime after another swept through the still, lifeless void, like beams of searchlight cutting through the deep sea.
[Bond target detected undergoing an essential leap.]
[First-stage Genetic Lock: unlocked autonomously.]
[Tarot Card "The World" — Reversed Awakening triggered! State flipped!]
[Imaginary energy core: generated autonomously, outside the Host's own system.]
[Bound target — Welt Yang.]
The torrent of information, striking hard, surged along that invisible Bond, pouring wildly into the sleeping core of consciousness.
A finger twitched, faintly.
Then, with great effort, heavy eyelids forced themselves open.
Su Yu's dark eyes met the outside light once more.
He didn't move right away.
His mind still felt like it had been churned in a blender all night long.
Every bone in his body felt like it had been disassembled and put back together, and every inch of muscle screamed in protest.
It took several minutes before he managed to reclaim control of his body.
The System's familiar, grating synthetic voice echoed in his head.
Su Yu forced back a wave of nausea and slowly braced himself up on his arms, pushing himself into a sitting position.
He ignored the notifications broadcasting in his head about the "first-stage Genetic Lock" and "Tarot Card Reversal."
He looked up.
His gaze swept across his surroundings.
No sky.
No ruins of a scrap-metal recycling plant.
No dim orange glow of Arc City's night lights.
There was only a stretch of dark red ground, as if painted in blood — or perhaps some kind of crimson desert.
Far, far in the distance stood several black stone pillars, so tall they seemed to pierce heaven and pin down the earth.
The air was thick with a bizarre miasma — a hundred times denser than anything inside a Spatial Rift, the kind that made your lungs sting with a single breath.
Su Yu stared at the scene before him, utterly beyond anything he could make sense of.
From his parched throat, he forced out a weak, sardonic remark:
"What in the hell… kind of place is this?"
He turned to look, and not far off, saw something that pierced heaven and earth, shaped uncannily like a tree — a sight that left him speechless for a long, long time.
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