——Kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill.
Nothing but condensed hatred, nothing but murderous intent, swells in the murky darkness.
——Kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill.
No matter how many times he whispers it, no matter how many times he spits it out, no matter how many times he wrings it dry, the spiral of hatred never runs out.
He had never once hated someone—another person, a human being—to this extent.
Since coming to this world, he had experienced hating that formless thing called fate more times than he could count. The world that had beaten Subaru to rock bottom, that confronted him with merciless reality no matter how many times he clawed his way back, that forced him to pay with his life for every wrong choice—he had hated that world more times than he could count.
But he had never once, in all his life, hated an individual this much.
"Petelgeuse… Romanee-Conti…!"
Every time the name left his lips, every time that figure surfaced behind his eyelids, every time his eardrums replayed that shrill voice, every time his brain acknowledged that presence, the rage raging inside him erupted like fire.
What on earth was that man, that lunatic?
His background was a complete unknown. All Subaru knew was that the man was an abnormal lunatic beyond all reason, a flawed human being with whom no communication was possible, a despicable creature who trampled over others according to his own sense of values without a shred of remorse—and a demonic fiend who had mercilessly wounded
So he would kill him. He had to kill him. With his own hands—no one else could be entrusted with this. Petelgeuse had to die by Subaru's hands.
Otherwise, how could he ever repay Rem's death?
"Kill, kill, I will… I'll kill him…!"
Vocalizing his murderous intent, Subaru twisted his body and rattled his shackles.
He flailed his arms and legs with brute force, trying over and over to break free from his bonds. The shackles had been fastened tight enough to dig into his flesh from the start. His repeated violent movements proved too much for his body to bear—the skin on his arms split open, and the flesh beneath was gouged, bleeding freely.
Searing pain shot through the wounds, boiling his brain. But every time that pain invaded his nerves, he clenched his teeth and thought of the suffering Rem had endured.
If it meant his hands would be torn off, so be it. If it meant breaking free of these shackles, he would stop Petelgeuse's breath whether it cost him a single finger or a single tooth.
He twisted desperately, and with every twist, pain and blood dribbled from the corner of his mouth. Subaru thrashed about, searching for a stage on which to unleash his hatred, searching for the tip of the spear that was his murderous intent.
——Already, more than four hours had passed since Petelgeuse had left Subaru behind and departed the cavern.
The light sources set into various points along the cavern walls—the Ragmite ore—had lost their glow. Now they emitted only a faint, feeble luminescence, barely enough to make their positions known.
They were meant to shine when struck, but having lost that function, all that remained in the cavern was a pale blue dimness stretching on endlessly.
Subaru, in his desperate struggle to free himself from his shackles, was himself trapped in darkness so deep he could barely see his own hands before him. In a sense, it was precisely because he could not clearly see the state of damage to his own arms that he was willing to subject himself to such self-harm.
"Petel… geuse…!"
He spat out the name of the hated man through gritted teeth, clinging fiercely to his own will.
A world of total darkness where he could perceive nothing beyond his own existence. Ragged breathing, the pounding of his heart, the scraping of chains against his shackles, the drip of blood—in a place stripped of every external change, loneliness rapidly eroded the human soul.
For a moment, he imagined stripping away every sound entirely, as a thought experiment.
"—Aaah! I'll kill you, kill you, I'll kill youuu!"
But he could not endure even that fantasy for long, and Subaru screamed out a howl of venomous rage, foam gathering at the corners of his mouth.
In a world severed from all external stimuli, being alone within that world could easily shatter, rot, and destroy the human mind.
In a world where nothing would begin unless he moved himself, Subaru screamed as though trying to shake off the terror of being left behind, as though trying to avert his eyes from that very truth.
As long as he kept screaming his hatred, he could remain sane.
As long as he kept harboring murderous intent like a madman, he could keep from going mad.
To stay sane, Subaru needed that hatred.
※※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ He had no idea how many more hours had passed since then.
"Hhyuu… hhyuu… k-hyuu… s…"
His consciousness drifted vacantly between wakefulness and the unconscious.
Exhaustion, weakening, erosion—Subaru's mind and body were being wrung dry, little by little.
His throat, which had spent itself spitting out every last drop of hatred, had long since gone raw, and the resentment that still would not cease no longer took the shape of human words—only a hoarse rasp of breath emerged.
His body, which had kept challenging the shackles, had been driven past its limits and could no longer obey his brain's commands. The flesh on his wrists was torn open, worn down to the bone. Around his ankles, blackened flesh was exposed nearly to the bone, and every time it dragged across the ground, a searing spasm of pain lashed through him.
Kill. Kill. Kill. Kill. Kill.
And yet—from the wellspring deep in the very bottom of his heart, only murderous intent continued to well up.
His body no longer listened. His mind no longer listened. Only his heart still kept Subaru upright.
Roughly a full day had passed since he was abandoned and cast into this world of solitude. His body and spirit had reached their limit, but Subaru had not allowed himself to lose consciousness.
If this consciousness were to snap away right now, he would never wake again. And if he forgot this hatred, he would no longer be able to recognize reality.
Only hatred, only murderous intent, proved that Subaru was still sane.
If he forgot this, he would once more lock himself inside his own broken world, reduced to nothing more than a wretched thing that wept and laughed like a lunatic.
Sloth. Sloth. Sloth. Sloth. Sloth.
Over and over and over, those three letters echoed through his mind.
Petelgeuse's grating laughter, his frantic gestures, his lunatic behavior—all of it was bound to those three letters.
If he succumbed to weakness and sank into sloth, he would end up exactly as that man had described—an unsightly spectacle. That was the one thing he could never accept.
Sloth—Petelgeuse. The
These were the signature words from the mad ravings Petelgeuse had screamed at the top of his lungs.
Dredging through his deadened mind to find whatever meaning those extracted words might hold, Subaru dug through his memories of Petelgeuse—anything, no matter how small, to keep his fading consciousness from slipping away.
He had to recall that man's face with greater clarity, greater definition, greater precision—as if illuminating it under a brighter light. He had to excavate from memory the voice, the figure, the shadow, the gait, the manner of speaking, the way of thinking, the way of touching—as concretely and vividly as he would think of a beloved, treasured person—brand it onto his soul alongside his hatred, and keep burning it as fuel for awakening.
His strength to break free was spent, his throat was torn from screaming for help, and he poured every last ounce of willpower into the sole purpose of delaying the loss of consciousness that wouldn't even serve as currency.
From an outside perspective, Subaru's mind had already reached the threshold of madness.
Only he himself failed to realize that holding onto consciousness and stoking his hatred were utterly meaningless. And in a world where only he existed, what only he failed to realize was the same as a question being posed that could never be understood.
Would his mind erode and his heart vanish first?
Or would his body fail to keep up with his consciousness's awakening, his physical frame withering away first?
It simply came down to choosing which endpoint of the predetermined end he would arrive at.
Keeping his consciousness tethered—originally, that was all the meaning that should have remained.
What gave that futile, empty struggling any meaning at all was not Subaru's refusal to give up, but— "—?"
Suddenly, within the pitch-black darkness, Subaru sensed a presence that was not his own and held his breath.
He lifted his head—an effort that even that slight movement made him reluctant to undertake—and looked toward the source of the sensation. But the darkness filling the cavern was far too deep to be pierced by simply straining one's eyes. There was no Ragmite ore within reach, and with no means of dispelling the darkness, Subaru could do nothing but suppress his breathing and shrink into himself in response to the presence that had materialized out of nowhere.
He could not determine whether this presence was friendly or hostile.
If it were a well-intentioned third party who had come to help Subaru, they would have called out to him. The fact that someone had appeared without doing so was far too suspicious.
Stopping his breath and consciously quieting even his heartbeat, Subaru killed his own presence.
And yet, the presence that had appeared drew closer—slowly, truly slowly, bit by bit, at a crawling pace, but with absolute certainty—straight toward him.
In complete darkness, with Subaru presumably hidden, the presence closed in as if it knew exactly where he was.
He felt a surge of crisis, of frustration, of terror.
But in the next instant, a sensation that was the complete opposite of all those feelings flashed through his mind.
——But first, where had this presence even come from?
And those sounds were quite close in distance—not coming from far away like the area near the entrance. Above all, it hadn't started from that direction.
This sound had suddenly appeared from somewhere near the center of the cave.
Having followed that thought to its conclusion, Subaru's lips trembled with disbelief, and— "R-Rem...?"
He called out the name of the girl who was, by all likelihood, the most probable source of the sound—of the presence.
His rational mind protested that it couldn't be so.
The last time Subaru had seen Rem, when there was still a light source remaining in the cave, her body had been in a state too wretched to look upon.
Her limbs had been torn off, her ears cut away, and her body had been pierced through countless times by blades.
She had been left like that without any possibility of treatment, placed on the cold ground that ruthlessly sapped body heat, and abandoned for dozens of hours.
She couldn't possibly be alive. It would be natural for her to be dead.
But if that were the case, then what other possibility was there? What was the true identity of this presence crawling toward Subaru from where Rem had collapsed?
"Rem, Rem...?"
"————"
His desperate calls were met with nothing but silence.
Even so, the presence seemed to gain confirmation of its purpose from Subaru's voice—its crawling speed appeared to change, ever so slightly. Though even that was only the faintest of changes.
Slowly, slowly, there came the sound of something being dragged across the cold ground.
She shouldn't have been able to stand or walk. If it was truly her, she must have been desperately moving her two remaining limbs, crawling toward him like an inchworm.
Subaru tried to move himself as well, pulling himself upright and tugging at his hand and leg shackles, the chains clinking with each effort. But the restraints on the wall were sturdy, and no amount of struggling for over ten hours was going to suddenly loosen them. Frustration and helplessness filled him with a burning heat deep in his chest as Subaru waited, nearly in tears, for the crawling presence to reach him.
And then— "R..."
At last, the presence that had been crawling toward him reached Subaru's body.
He caught it, and was about to cry out in joy—but his throat froze.
Because the sensation was far too light, too cold, to belong to a living thing.
"R... Rem...?"
The body of Rem lay face-down at the feet of Subaru, who was kneeling. Her body, trembling in small shudders, had already lost the warmth of blood and was as cold as ice.
Dragging that body, which should have already met its end, Rem still clung to Subaru. There was no sensation in her left hand. Only her right hand climbed his leg, his waist, his chest, and enveloped him from the front, covering him as if to hold him in an embrace.
Without a word, Subaru accepted this embrace of the dead, not understanding what was happening.
He believed without doubt that the figure embracing him right in front of his eyes was Rem. Yet, the flesh he touched in this manner was clearly dead, possessing only the unreality of something driven by the fading embers of a life about to extinguish.
How long did that embrace last?
Suddenly, the cold tryst was ended from Rem's side.
The strength left her body, which had held Subaru with only one arm, and she collapsed onto her knees as if crumbling. Subaru hurriedly reached out to support her, but his hand failed to hold her up. Because— "—Guuh!?"
The hand he extended was grabbed by Rem's body and slammed into the ground.
Pulled forward onto his face, Subaru was stunned by Rem's sudden action and the strength that defied imagination, and was further horrified by her next action.
A deluge of liquid poured down from directly above onto both of Subaru's arms, which were pressed to the ground.
It was a viscous, cold water with the stench of rusted iron—Subaru realized its true nature was the blood vomited by Rem only after the splatter entered his mouth and he tasted it.
The revulsion of being drenched in someone else's blood made Subaru's spine chill, but a change that occurred in rapid succession erased that negative feeling in an instant.
"—Ma"
The whisper ever so slightly vibrated the atmosphere, interfering with the Mana to produce an effect.
"—Dzhah!"
Pain, a sharp agony as if his wrists were being gouged by a keen blade, assaulted Subaru.
The pain, enough to make him throw his head back involuntarily, began at his wrists and spread its influence up his forearms to around his shoulders.
He didn't understand what was happening. Blood was thrown on him, pain suddenly shot through him, and if this continued, both his arms would become useless—just as that terror ran through him, —with a sound, the shackles, unable to withstand the pressure from within, burst apart as if broken.
The light sound of metal shattering and fragments falling echoed across the floor of the cavern.
Subaru exhaled roughly as the pain rapidly subsided, recognizing the sense of liberation that spread throughout his entire arm, along with a burn-like pain covering his skin.
And then, he understood.
"Rem, you..."
Rem had frozen her own vomited blood with magic, then used the pressure of that ice to shatter her shackles.
Naturally, Subaru's arms — caught directly in the blast of that spell — were far from unscathed. Even so, his wrists still turned, and his fingers obeyed his will. If he ignored the pain entirely, he could move them more or less normally through sheer force of will.
In other words, Rem's gambit had succeeded.
Subaru tried to praise her for it, but in that moment a slight body collided with his as he pushed himself upright. Light — far, far too light. Blood had been drained from her, and now even the very last ember of her consciousness was flickering out.
"Rem... wait, Rem. Wait... for me."
Had he meant to say *Don't leave me behind*?
Had he wanted to ask *Do you hate me?* Whichever was the truth, Subaru despaired at how selfish he still was.
Even now, at the bitter end, he wanted to protect this wretched, fragile creature that was himself.
Rem had literally overturned death to save him.
And as her life's flame drew its final breath — truly going out this time — "Mm..."
"Rem?"
Rem's lips — the cold lips of the dying — moved, attempting to form words for the very first time.
A girl who had spared even a single word, who had crawled along the ground with a body that could not move, who had wrung mana from a fading mind to accomplish her goal — in her final moments, she tried to leave something behind.
It was— "Li... ve..."
"————!"
"D... o... n't... fo... r... get..."
She died.
Right now, Rem died.
In Subaru's arms, the light body grew heavy. Heavy, yet still light — a body whose soul had departed entirely — its weight pressing down across all of Subaru's being.
Her very last words, broken and halting, had been: *Live.* ———— wailing echoed through the dark cavern, trailing its mournful tail into the shadows.
※※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ It took another several hours after that before Natsuki Subaru could finally free himself from the shackles.
With his hands liberated, Subaru stretched them out as far as the leg irons would allow and managed to grasp one of the crosses that had fallen from the hand of the black-robed figure he and Rem had killed in battle.
The cross had a broken blade, so it was useless as a cutting tool — but that was exactly how Subaru wanted it. If the blade had been intact, he might have committed the desperate act of severing his own ankle.
"…It's light."
He rotated his ankle, most of the flesh scraped away to the bone, checking its range of motion alongside the searing pain. Ignoring the agony so intense that his vision went white with every step, it seemed there was no real impediment to walking.
Standing up, Subaru cradled Rem's lifeless body in both arms.
Now that his arms were free, the body of the girl who had lost two of her limbs felt unbearably small and light. She was so tiny that he could press her against his chest and completely envelop her — and the fact that he, someone so pathetically helpless, had been saved by someone so small filled him with simultaneous shame and guilt.
The cross with its incomplete blade. Carefully, painstakingly, he hammered its broken edge against the joint of the leg irons, over and over. A contest of attrition — whether the cross would crumble first or the shackles would break — that the cross won by a narrow margin.
He hurled the freed shackles against the wall with all his strength, and the Ragmite ore, struck by the impact, began to emit a faint blue glow that illuminated the cavern.
The cold light revealed the gloomy cave around him. Even this feeble radiance, the first light he had seen in dozens of hours, was blinding enough to seep into Subaru's eyelids.
Feeling tears welling up from deep behind his eyes, Subaru found himself oddly impressed — so there had still been tears left in his body after all.
He had thought he'd already screamed himself hoarse and cried himself empty.
"Let's go, Rem."
While the impacted Ragmite ore still glowed, Subaru set off toward the surface.
One step, then another — pain surged upward from his feet. The pain climbed to his shoulders, and the devastation spread into the arms that held Rem's body.
There was no part of him that didn't hurt. No part of him that wasn't bleeding.
Yet the place where he should have felt the greatest pain felt nothing at all.
Slowly, at a tortoise's pace, Subaru and Rem advanced across the cold ground of the cave. With his shoes lost, the soles of his feet felt the chill of bare stone directly — but the body of Rem in his arms was far colder still. In comparison to that coldness, everything else was insignificant.
After passing through the cave's long, narrow passage, they reached the entrance — blocked by a massive rock.
When he arrived before it, Subaru was struck with despair. The boulder sealing the hole was about as tall as he was and three times his width. In terms of weight, even ten of him wouldn't come close.
Moving it was impossible. He tried to recall how he'd gotten in here in the first place, but the memories from when he had retreated from reality were hazy and blurred — no instruction manual for removing the boulder existed anywhere in his mind.
"It was a straight path, wasn't it…"
He considered the possibility of another exit, but he had no recollection of anything resembling one along the way here. Or perhaps there was a hidden passage cleverly disguised behind this very rock — but if so, how much time and luck would it take to find?
Neither inspiration nor good fortune had ever been on Subaru's side.
"I've come all this way… don't tell me this is a lie… please, just tell me it's a lie…"
Powerless, Subaru weakly protested the cruelty before him with a feeble voice. His body leaned forward, reaching toward the rock in front of him — and in that instant— The rock, which should have had the mass to support Subaru's weight, suddenly ceased to exist.
Subaru, who had been about to lean forward against it, stumbled, barely managing to plant his feet forward to keep from falling, as the world was scorched in the vermilion glow of the cascading sunset.
"—!"
An involuntary groan escaped him as the orange sunlight seared his eyes with its fierce brilliance.
The sunset, sinking beyond the distant forest and over the hills, filled the horizon entirely, and in its final greeting of the day, it dyed the world the same color as flame.
Having spent so long in darkness, Subaru crouched for a moment, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the light. After some time, he rose to his feet, blinked several times, confirmed that the light no longer hurt, and then surveyed his surroundings.
As far as the eye could see, nothing but clusters of trees stretched endlessly — a sight that, needless to say, was completely unfamiliar.
Even looking in every direction as far as he could, there was not the faintest trace of a forest path or a highway, no hint of human activity whatsoever. Considering the nature of those who had been lurking in the cave, this was entirely expected — it seemed to be a place of confinement completely cut off from any settlement.
"But… I can walk…"
He had no idea where his destination was. There was no way to determine which direction to go.
And yet, as if propelled by the light weight cradled in his arms, Subaru set off into the forest. Stepping over leaves, climbing over roots, and crossing patches of earth, he pressed forward through the gradually darkening night.
He was certain of one thing: he had reached the vicinity of the Mathers domain — near Roswaal's manor.
He dug through his memories. When his consciousness had been on the brink of fading, Rem must have been heading toward the manor with him. She had been riding in the dragon carriage, and he had found peace resting on her knee — that was how it had been.
There had been an accident where the dragon carriage overturned. It was the work of those people — the Witch Cult — and through their hands, Subaru had been taken. Rem had burned away her life trying to save him, and now here Subaru was.
What was meant to be a simple mental inventory of the situation instead drew together fragments of memory that summoned hatred along with them, and Subaru's insides were scorched by a bottomless flame.
Thinking of Rem, his heart ached as though squeezed tight by gratitude and guilt.
Thinking of Petelgeuse, his body groaned as though it might burst apart from loathing and resentment.
Anger. Grief. Hatred. Affection. These were what supported Subaru, what drove him forward.
His path was undecided, and there was nothing to guide him.
And yet Subaru's feet did not stop. His consciousness did not falter — it continued to resist.
Perhaps, that in itself was a miracle that had occurred to him.
There had been no landmark to follow, nothing and no one to rely on. He had refused only to stop walking, and beyond that, what he sought — the place he had wanted to reach — was there.
A miracle is defined as a wondrous phenomenon beyond the power of humankind.
If so, then without borrowing anyone's hand, having crossed the shortest possible distance to arrive at his destination, the miracle that had visited Subaru was without question the genuine article.
Since arriving in this world, for the first time, the world had bestowed a miracle upon Subaru.
If there was a god who governed fate, then for the first time, it had smiled upon Subaru.
And that smile — that miracle — "—had"
—only ever rained down that single time.
※※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ The exact same hell he had once witnessed was ravaging the village once more.
Burned-out houses, villagers soaked in blood. The bodies of those who had fought back in vain and lost their lives were carelessly piled together in the center of the village, forming a mountain of corpses.
They had been slashed, pierced, incinerated by magic, crushed — there was no hope of finding survivors.
If there was anything different from before, it was that the villagers' bodies had been destroyed even more thoroughly, and— "Petra. Mild. Luka. Meina. Cadean, Daine…"
Even the children's mangled remains had been incorporated into that vile display.
With Rem still cradled in his arms, the strength drained from Subaru's knees.
He collapsed on the spot, clutching the cold body in his arms ever tighter, and a choked sob escaped him.
What had he been doing?
Why, knowing this would happen, had he let it slip by?
From the moment he had emerged from the forest trail and spotted the black smoke rising from the direction of the village, Subaru had completely banished this sight from his mind — this soul-shattering tableau of hell.
No — he had looked away. He had pretended that Rem's death had shattered his heart, using his unending hatred of Petelgeuse as an excuse.
Trying to flee from what had happened, Subaru had once again chosen self-pity.
And the result was the scene before his eyes.
The children had died here because Rem, who should have protected them last time, had been unable to reach the village. In exchange for Subaru surviving, the children had been killed in the grip of agony.
The repugnant truth gnawed away at Subaru's heart.
Now he understood. He understood everything.
It was Petelgeuse.
He had killed the villagers, killed the children, killed Rem.
Not once, but twice over, he had done what could not be forgiven.
The plan was settled. He knew what had to be done.
Petelgeuse had to be killed. Killed, killed, and killed again until every last cell of him was scorched to nothing, until his very existence was erased from the world.
Only then could death be repaid.
His thoughts were dyed entirely in loathing.
His vision turned scarlet, and most of the blood he was lacking surged upward into his head. He could feel it overflowing from his nose, trickling down.
He wiped the blood dripping from his nostrils roughly, then repositioned his hold on Rem so as not to defile her, and rose to his feet. His knees trembled, his ankles rattled, and it was nothing short of miraculous that he could stand at all, let alone walk.
"Kill, kill, kill, kill— I'll kill you..."
But if he could walk, if he could advance, then he would bite through that pale throat and rip it to shreds.
Dragging a consciousness slathered in killing intent, Subaru headed toward the manor. He had witnessed the hell of the village. Next was the manor. What had been waiting at the manor? Just before dying— just before it all reset— there had been something, but his memories were rough and splintered, impossible to make out clearly.
When he reached the manor, he had seen some decisive something, and his heart had shattered beyond repair. He scorched his nerves trying to remember what that something was, and then he remembered.
He had found Rem dead.
And as for that experience, he had already lived through it this time around. Rem died, and the shock that her death and devotion had brought him was beyond all measure.
"Aha."
A laugh escaped him naturally, spilling out unbidden.
Really, truly— hadn't absolutely nothing changed at all?
Only the order was jumbled. The events that occurred had not changed in the slightest. Had he ever once wasted this much time on meaningless repeats before?
No matter how things unfolded, by dying Subaru was supposed to have gained something.
But what value did he have now, his spirit utterly destroyed, unable to salvage a single thing, having stumbled into hell once more?
Before he knew it, the killing intent began to lose its target— he could no longer tell who it was directed at.
Petelgeuse. That name alone had been holding Subaru up. That should have been enough. The one he wanted dead was that man. If he killed that man— killed him, then killed him again— After killing him, then— he could die too, couldn't he.
Noise began to bleed into his thoughts, and Subaru's consciousness flickered on and off.
Standing once more on the knife's edge between sanity and madness, Subaru looked ahead with bloodshot eyes.
No matter what awaited him, going to the manor had to come first— and so, as always, he chose to push aside the crisis before his eyes and defer it for later.
And then— "————————————————————!!"
The instant he crested the hill, Subaru witnessed
※※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ The roof collapsed, the terrace disintegrated.
Windowpanes shattered in unison, scattering glittering shards, while the cracked white walls were torn apart as though being ripped to shreds.
Having already reached the front gate, Subaru stared up at the overwhelming destruction in stunned silence.
Like some demolition project using explosives, the manor lost its silhouette in an instant.
The familiar building lost its shape, scattering debris across the meticulously maintained garden, completely erasing every trace that a manor had once stood there.
He searched his memories, desperately seeking any experience of witnessing such a scene. But there was none. Or perhaps the shock was simply too great, and he couldn't remember the moment of his own death.
"Wh-what is..."
As confusion left his lips, what surfaced in his mind was the mockery of that gaunt man.
If the village massacre had been his doing, then he must have turned the blade of his atrocities toward the manor as well.
That method may have led to this—the collapse of the manor. Even so...
"What in the world did he do to cause something like this..."
Clutching his head at a sight beyond comprehension, Subaru exhaled white breath as his eyes wavered.
Desperate for comfort, he clutched tighter to the body in his arms, only for an even deeper cold to seep through his palms, sending sorrow flooding into his chest.
And then, far too late, Subaru realized.
—That his own ragged breath was turning white before his eyes.
Once he noticed, a stabbing pain had enveloped his entire body.
His exhaled breath was white, transforming into icy droplets the instant it scattered into the air. And the oxygen he inhaled was bone-cold, freezing his lungs from within and torturing Subaru from the inside out.
He didn't understand—what—was happening.
His body heat was being drained away, making even standing impossible as he collapsed.
He sank to the ground, pitched forward, and fell sideways still cradling Rem's body, unable to move any further.
This wasn't about lacking blood, or running out of stamina—it wasn't on that level.
Chapter 477. Fists Give Birth to Truth Subaru knew this sensation—the feeling of his will failing to reach his extremities, of consciousness beginning to sever from the body. He had experienced it several times already, and the loneliness and helplessness that came with it were things he could never grow accustomed to.
The end was bearing down on him. To resist it even a fraction, Subaru searched within his immobilized body for places where his will still held sway, sending neural commands from his brain to every limb. But the only part that listened—even barely—were the pupils within his eye sockets, and even those could do nothing but gaze up at the ruined mansion.
"—Ah."
And within that fixed field of vision, now truly unable to move, Subaru saw it.
Standing atop the remains of the collapsed mansion was a single beast.
A creature covered in grey fur from head to tail, with eyes that gleamed gold.
It stood on all four limbs, its long, impossibly long tail swaying with an air of composure. The sight of it was too majestic, too mystical.
And above all, the beast possessed a frame so colossal it could be mistaken for the mansion itself.
Seeing it from afar, Subaru understood the cause of the mansion's collapse.
That beast had appeared suddenly from within. When a body of that magnitude burst out from the inside, the mansion never stood a chance against the pressure.
The massive feline beast shook its body and surveyed its surroundings. From its maw spilled gleaming fangs and a breath white as a blizzard, painting the world in pure white—a living hell that froze everything it touched.
What is that? Subaru thought, his vision finally clouding to white. It took him a moment to realize his throat had already been sealed shut.
The cold he had felt so acutely moments ago was gone. In its place, there was warmth—even comfort.
The temptation to surrender everything to that warmth flickered within him, and he forgot the hatred that burned through him, the grief that tore his soul apart—forgot all of it.
Forget it, forget it. His consciousness drifted toward oblivion, toward the other side of a warmth as chilling as ice.
《Sleep now—together with my daughter.》 Just before he fell into slumber, he thought he heard someone's voice.
Into the ecstasy of everything, absolutely everything becoming utterly meaningless, Natsuki Subaru melted away.
Melting, melting, melting—and then, gone.