—Hearing the dry crunch of his own footsteps against his eardrums, Subaru felt an unsettling wrongness cling to his skin.
The cool breeze flowing into the tomb carried an unpleasant stickiness with it. His running feet felt as though they were glued to the ground, and each step sapped a little more of his willpower.
The sharp sensation on his exposed skin beat against his entire body as though the air itself had sprouted protrusions. All in all, it was the kind of feeling that made him hesitate to move forward.
—Subaru already knew a sensation very much like this one.
Driven forward by a nagging premonition, Subaru's body brushed off the clinging discomfort through sheer force of will as he headed for the tomb's entrance.
He burst through the moonlit passage, through the ivy-choked doorway, in a blur—and stepped out of the tomb with the illusion of piercing through a membrane of air.
And then he saw it.
"…No way. You're kidding me."
He slammed on the brakes, his feet gouging through the dirt to a halt.
Nearly stumbling forward in his clumsiness, Subaru raised his eyes to look ahead—and there浮かんでいた in his gaze was a kind of detached acceptance.
That was how far beyond common sense the scene before him had strayed.
"Shadows… it's all shadows."
That single murmur slipped from Subaru's lips—and in it, the whole situation was captured in one word.
Shadows—indeed, there was no other way to describe the panorama before him.
The entrance to the tomb should have offered a view of the "
More to the point, even though a full moon hung in the sky and its pale glow poured down on the earth, the world ahead was far too dark. As though it had fallen into an abyss.
"——"
Subaru held his breath, steeled himself, and stepped out of the tomb's entrance into the pitch-black "Sanctuary." The soles of his feet passed over stone flooring and reached earth and grass. Or at least—they should have.
The sensation underfoot was that of treading on lawn, but the ground beneath him was swallowed by a dense, impenetrable darkness he couldn't make out. The sticky sensation on his skin remained unchanged.
"
In the face of a world that felt like it could crumble at any moment, Subaru couldn't help but call out the name that had sprung unbidden to his lips. Having called out the name of the girl he held so clearly in his memory, the thoughts began to turn, and face after face crossed his mind, each with a name.
"
If this was right after he'd undergone the "Trial," then Ram and the others should have been waiting in front of the tomb for Emilia's results. The pattern so far had been Subaru breaking free of their restraint, charging in, and then facing the "Trial" himself as collateral.
After that, when he'd brought Emilia back out, the same group had always been there to welcome the two of them. This time should have been no different.
"They're not… that's not even the half of it. What the hell is this gloom? This makes a dark country rice-paddy path look like a candlelit evening."
On a night down a country path without streetlights, on days when you couldn't rely on starlight, true darkness fell.
But the current state of the "Sanctuary" was different from that instantaneous kind of dark. The moon shone overhead, and its light was certainly reaching Subaru—at least down to his body.
And yet, that light dissipated before it could touch the ground, producing a vague, unstable night. As though a spotlight was shining on him and him alone.
In the dark, the only thing visible was his own figure. When he glanced over his shoulder, even the entrance to the tomb he'd just exited had been swallowed by the darkness, invisible.
The memory of walking through the night fog born from the
Losing sight of anyone he could rely on, thrown from the dragon carriage, with no idea when the White Whale's jaws might close on him from behind—direction and purpose alike had gone hazy, and he had simply kept walking.
Back then, in the end, he'd broken through the fog by sheer persistence and been picked up by Garfiel's beloved earth dragon,
So this time, too—would he be saved if he simply kept wandering aimlessly?
"Am I an idiot…? No, I'm definitely an idiot. Since when did I go all pessimistic, thinking like a loser? Not knowing what's happened doesn't mean you don't know what *might* happen. I don't even know what happened to everyone else, and I'm worried about my own hide? What an idiot."
Hadn't he just steeled his resolve in the tomb, over tea with
No matter what came at him, no matter what hardships assailed him—as long as the price he had to pay was only his own life, that was actually a bargain.
Compared to a future where someone precious was hurt beyond repair, a present where he could pay with his life and start over was an unimaginable blessing.
That was why Subaru didn't need to cower before the incomprehensible situation, flail around without even grasping what was going on, and die a pathetic death.
He needed to charge boldly into the unknown, and even if he didn't reach the right answer, to seize a foothold that would get him there—so that his next death would be a meaningful one that struck back, even if just once.
"Anyway, what I need to confirm right now is…"
Where Emilia, Ram, and the others had gone.
When he couldn't find Emilia inside the tomb, Subaru had briefly wondered whether she'd broken through the "Trial" on her own and awakened, then left under her own power. But that thought was quickly dismissed. Even if Emilia had succeeded in clearing the "Trial" by herself, there was no reason for her not to wake him up.
He knew from his own experience of reaching out to Emilia that being touched or called to during the "Trial" could cause it to be interrupted.
Strictly speaking, his consciousness at that point had been in the tea party with Echidna rather than the "Trial" itself, so there was a possibility that didn't apply—but still.
"Even so, leaving me behind and walking out isn't like Emilia."
She would have woken him up and carried him outside, or at the very least propped him up against a wall. Some kind of consideration on her part—that much was certain. Without any of that, it was hard to imagine her simply leaving.
And while it was a conclusion that felt somewhat insufficient—Subaru didn't think Emilia could have broken through the "Trial" on her first attempt.
He knew how she'd struggled with the same "Trial" repeatedly, starting from the very first day. That alone made him skeptical of the theory that she'd cleared it of her own accord and left the tomb.
In Subaru's estimation, the most likely explanation was that Emilia's disappearance from the tomb had not been her own choice. She'd been taken away by someone—or perhaps…
"Could she have come back from the 'Trial' in a daze, so distressed that she didn't even notice me, and wandered out of the tomb…? That's not entirely impossible."
But even that didn't explain the bizarre state of the world outside—the darkness that had engulfed everything.
He could force himself to accept a reason for Emilia vanishing from the tomb based on what he'd just said. But the analysis stalled when it came to the cause and implications of this landscape.
At the very least, in Subaru's experience, the "Sanctuary" had never once been thrown into such an abnormal state during the "Trial."
What truly set his nerves on edge was the thought of the White
The Great Rabbit's attack, according to his calculations, was supposed to happen on the sixth night in the "Sanctuary"—that is, five days from now. Even if it came early, he wanted to believe it wouldn't jump all the way forward to the first night of the "Trial."
—He deliberately averted his eyes from the mystery of how the number of days until Elsa's attack on the mansion had been shifted.
That, too, was one of the unsolved puzzles for Subaru. But if the Great Rabbit's attack, like Elsa's, had its timing randomly altered, that would mean a situation beyond anyone's control.
All Subaru could do was cling to the belief that there were no unfavorable environments so dire that even "Return by Death" couldn't circumvent them.
"What I can do right now is… call out as I search for Emilia and the others, and head toward the Great Temple to confirm that the people from
He strained his eyes into the darkness ahead, then grimaced at how impractical what he'd just said actually was. He had a rough map of the "Sanctuary" in his head, but it wasn't refined enough for him to navigate it blindfolded.
And that was exactly the level of recall he needed to patrol this area right now.
Even reaching a destination safely was a tall order for Subaru in his current state. At the same time, calling out while searching for people wasn't something he could adopt unconditionally.
"If this situation—this total darkness—is someone's doing… then there's a high probability it's not a friendly party."
Burning with frustration, Subaru agonized over the best course of action.
If he wanted to hurry to a rendezvous, he should raise his voice. If he was worried about Emilia and the others, that was the best approach. But he'd been burned enough times by the foolishness of acting blindly. How many times had he lost his life in this world because of exactly that?
"…Damn it. At the very least, I need to figure out what's going on. Even if I end up in a tight spot, I'd rather not go in blind."
After going back and forth in anguish, Subaru settled on the cautious approach.
He muffled his voice, held his breath, and peered through the darkness, navigating by whatever map he could recall toward the area where the residents should have been concentrated.
The firmness of the ground beneath his feet and the certainty that the tomb still existed behind him were his only anchors in this darkness-soaked world. Even plunged into the dark, the "Sanctuary" was still supposed to be right here— "—Ugh?"
Subaru was stepping carefully, testing each patch of grass one footfall at a time. But after only a handful of steps, he stopped.
The reason was the wind.
"—?"
He raised his face. Even knowing it was likely futile in the impenetrable dark, Subaru swept his gaze around and followed the direction of the wind that had just carried that strange sensation toward him.
He had felt it. The breeze that had just swept past him—carrying with it a very particular quality.
It wasn't the cool wind of a grassland, or the dusty gust that blew into the tomb, or the wind that drifted through a sorrow-drenched field of blood. It was the distinct, living freshness that only came from brushing against something alive.
"What—"
Not knowing where the wind had blown from, Subaru turned around to seek the answer.
Behind him, straight ahead, the tomb should have been—but after just a few steps, even its outline was beyond the reach of his vision.
—No. The tomb was invisible for a different reason than the darkness.
"—Ah?"
"——"
Someone was standing there. Close enough that their breath could have reached him. Right at the edge of this pitch-black world.
It was because this figure was blocking his line of sight that he'd been unable to make out the tomb's entrance.
And the fact that someone had been this close without Subaru noticing—and the fact that this person, despite being so near, hadn't called out to him—sent a storm of questions tearing through his mind in an instant.
But that tempest of confusion was dispelled just as quickly by an unmistakable answer.
In the clearest possible terms.
"—I love you."
The shadow said this to Subaru, who stood before it, saturated with a devotion so intense it seemed ready to melt away.
※※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ It was a muffled voice.
So indistinct that it was impossible to tell whether it belonged to a man or a woman.
Not the sound of a voice passed through a voice changer, nor one shouted through a thick cloth—there was some more opaque, invisible force at work, a deliberate vagueness that acted on his perception.
And yet, Subaru understood instinctively—who the shadow standing before him was—the moment those words of love reached his ears. And he was overcome with dread.
Come to think of it, he'd been faintly aware of that presence ever since just before leaving the tomb.
A dense, skin-pricking miasma. The "Sanctuary" shrouded in shadow. A suffocating pressure saturating his surroundings, and a world utterly drained of vitality.
All of it was a perfect recreation of the situation that greeted him whenever he invoked that taboo and met the "
In other words, the one standing before him was— "How… why!?"
"——"
There was no answer. But the presence was undeniably, definitely still there.
Moving his fingers, confirming his own breathing, Subaru verified that time had not stopped. The world was still ticking forward. And yet, the "Witch" was standing right in front of him.
The shock of facing this threat he hadn't anticipated turned Subaru's mind completely blank.
Everything he'd sworn to just moments ago—to seize every detail of whatever might happen, to waste not a single second—was swept away.
That was how unexpected this contact with the "Witch" was to Subaru, at this stage.
His mouth went dry at alarming speed. He forgot to even breathe as his body stiffened. An overwhelming pressure coiled around every limb, and Subaru froze like a frog pinned by a serpent's gaze.
He knew, without a doubt, that not moving would only make things worse. And yet his limbs showed not the slightest inclination to obey that danger signal.
It was a problem on an entirely different plane from his heart and his thoughts.
His heart refused to submit, his mind was heating up, insisting something had to be done—while his body and some deeper part of it surveyed the situation with cold detachment.
In other words—whether he moved or didn't, nothing would change.
"——"
No hostility radiated from the shadow before him. No malice.
But that didn't mean it was indifferent to Subaru.
Quite the opposite.
"——"
From the being before him poured an interest so intense it sent chills down his spine.
Blindly, obsessively, with a possessiveness that made one wonder what could drive a person to this—an overwhelming passion that clamped down on Subaru with absolute certainty of escape.
—The shadow held no interest in anything other than Subaru.
Only Subaru existed within the shadow. Only Subaru. Only Subaru only Subaru only Subaru only Subaru only Subaru only Subaru only Subaru only Subaru only Subaru only Subaru only Subaru only Subaru Subaru Subaru Subaru Subaru Subaru—.
"—I love you I love you I love you."
The voice churned round and round inside his head.
His thoughts became a wreck. He couldn't recognize what was before him. Was he standing? Sitting? Could he breathe? Was he conscious? Was he alive? Was he dead? He didn't know. He didn't know anymore.
Fingertips reached toward him.
Shadows from all around rose and spread, aiming to envelop his body from every direction.
He had no will to resist. No reason to resist. Resistance, nonresistance, swallowed up—what would happen then? Even thinking about it felt like too much, and— "I love you I love you I love—"
"You think this is a damn joke—?!!"
—In the next instant, a devastating force came crashing down between Subaru and the shadow before him.
Right in front, at the very forefront, the impact collided with the shadow, shattered the invisible earth, swirled the darkness, and the shockwave sent Subaru hurtling backward.
"Whoa—?!"
He tumbled, slamming against hard surfaces over and over, soaking his entire body in shadow before he finally managed to arrest his momentum. He shook his head, releasing the paralysis that had seized both body and thought simultaneously.
His thoughts, which had been nothing but static, cleared somewhat. There was still a sand-heavy weight in his skull, but compared to the sluggishness of moments ago, it was a marked improvement.
Spitting dirt from his mouth, Subaru raised his head and looked toward where he'd come from—and his eyes went wide with shock.
"This situation is the worst. You gonna move or what, bastard?"
There, with his back to Subaru and the shadow facing each other, was a figure crouching low.
Short for a male. Short blond hair, and a brusque, rough-spoken manner. He held his body low in a combat stance, one foot drawn back where it had cratered the ground, baring his fangs with wary ferocity.
"Why… you? Why are you—Garfiel—?!"
"Huh? This ain't the time for jokes. Can't you see what's going on?"
Garfiel responded with an irritated scowl to Subaru's trembling voice of disbelief. Keeping his guard fixed on the shadow ahead, he gradually slid one foot back toward Subaru.
"I'm grabbing you by the scruff and jumping. Might break your neck, but tough it out with guts."
"Guts don't increase your neck's durability, you know—?!"
Mid-rebuttal, Garfiel's body shot backward at high speed, and in the process he snatched Subaru's body up—literally. True to his word, Garfiel seized the back of his collar and hauled him upward. Subaru let out a strangled "Guh!" but before he could even complain— "——!"
—the ground bulged upward and the shadows detonated.
The exploding blackness generated a wave, and it surged toward them with a ferocity that threatened to crush the two of them mid-leap. In an instant, the surrounding darkness merged with the shadow wave. Garfiel clicked his tongue as he dug in to push back, but his toes were already beginning to sink into the shadow covering the ground.
"Ah, damn it all! With the ground like this, I can't use the Blessing of Earth Spirits—!"
"Garfiel, my feet are sinking too!"
"The whole damn area is like that! 'If you do something bad, the Witch will come out,' they said—well, isn't that exactly what's happening?!!"
Subaru's limbs, too, where they made contact with the ground, were being swallowed by the shadows. It wasn't like sinking into water, nor like mud or swamp—it was an alien sensation altogether.
The shadow was warm, wrapping around him with the soft, smooth texture of fine fabric. In a peaceful setting, one might even find the sensation pleasant enough to surrender to.
But in the face of this bone-chilling situation, that kind of judgment was the last thing he wanted.
"Don't—bite your tongue, you idiot!!"
Garfiel snarled through flared nostrils and swept his gaze around. He bent his knees, then launched his half-sunken body into a short leap. The distance cleared was only a few meters, hampered as his feet were by the shadows, but from where he landed he extended his legs again and leaped, leaped, leaped— "And—there—we—go—!"
In a world rendered invisible by night, Garfiel nonetheless reached a building with pinpoint accuracy. He drove his toes into the wall—literally—used it as a foothold to vault upward, landed on the roof, and tossed Subaru onto it before pausing to catch his breath.
Subaru grabbed the nearest protrusion to keep from sliding off, then glared at the profile of the panting Garfiel—a face half-lost in the darkness.
"Th-thanks for saving me…!"
"What? You don't exactly look like someone saying thanks. Got a complaint? Out with it, then."
"I just can't wrap my head around it. …I honestly never thought you, of all people, would come to my rescue."
"Well, ain't that some cold-blooded gratitude. If it bothers you so damn much that I'm the one saving you, feel free to jump back into those shadows right now."
Subaru answered Garfiel's unyielding mouth with a terse "I'll pass" and sighed.
From behind Garfiel, who refused to look his way, Subaru watched him with complicated feelings. Beyond the sheer incomprehensibility of the situation, the fact that he'd been saved by Garfiel was the biggest reason. Up until the very moment they'd come face to face like this, Garfiel had been—for Subaru—the greatest obstacle in the "Sanctuary" and a figure of rage rivaling Roswaal himself.
He knew the circumstances were different now, which was why their interactions had changed—but being treated with such a dramatically contrasting attitude left Subaru uncertain how to respond.
Oblivious to Subaru's inner turmoil, Garfiel glared downward with a grim expression. He gnashed his sharp canines, muttered a quiet "This is bad…," and continued.
"They've got zero intention of letting us go, that's for sure."
Subaru slid to Garfiel's side and peered cautiously over the edge.
The sight that greeted them drew an involuntary groan. The "Sanctuary," now a sea of shadows, had been largely consumed by pitch blackness. Depth and elevation were impossible to gauge.
But even within that, an even denser blackness squirmed, churning the surrounding shadows into a vortex as it crept toward them at a crawling speed.
That was the very thing that had tried to devour Subaru and Garfiel in shadows moments ago—the one that had flooded the "Sanctuary" with its dark sea. And its true identity was— "Garfiel. Do you know what that thing is?"
"Well, the obvious conclusion from what I'm seeing, and the possibility I'm desperately hoping isn't true, and the optimistic hope that it's none of the above—which one you want me to go with?"
"Every damn one of them is probably close to the right answer. You seem surprisingly calm considering you're facing *that*—"
Subaru stopped mid-sentence as he caught sight of Garfiel's profile.
Honestly, Subaru had been wrestling with mixed feelings about being saved by Garfiel, even as he was beginning to piece together the situation with a cool head.
In that framework, the fact that Garfiel—who had shown such visceral distaste toward the Witch's scent—who would turn hostile at the mere whiff of her lingering presence on Subaru's body—was not losing his composure before the very source of that scent struck Subaru as remarkable.
That was why the words had come out—but one look at Garfiel's profile wiped that notion clean.
"Did you just say something?"
Bloodshot eyes fixed on the scene below, fangs that seemed to have grown longer—Garfiel's glare radiated fury. Rage. Wrath. Seething passion. In those narrowed pupils swirled a vortex of crimson emotion.
To call *that* calm would take some nerve.
And at the same time, Subaru remembered there was something he had to ask.
"—Garfiel. The others… Ram and the rest. What happened to them?"
"…………"
"When I came out of the tomb, the 'Sanctuary' was already buried in shadow. You're up here looking fine, but what about the others?"
"…In the shadow."
Subaru had pressed for reassurance, but what he got instead was a merciless answer.
He swallowed hard. Garfiel clicked his tongue bitterly.
"By the time I noticed something was off, the ground had already turned into a sea of shadow. If Ram hadn't blown me away with wind, I'd have been swallowed right then and there."
"…So Ram was swallowed? Lye? Otto?"
"Yeah. The old woman and the loudmouth, too—all at once."
Looking down at the writhing shadow below, Subaru felt his thoughts spiral toward despair at the word "swallowed." What were the chances any of them had survived?
If the shadows had sealed their captives in some kind of pocket dimension, there might be hope. But based on the sensation he'd felt when he'd actually been touched— that possibility was far too optimistic.
"What *is* that thing, seriously…?! Where did it suddenly come from?!"
Elsa. The Great Rabbit. Garfiel.
Subaru had steeled himself to confront the threats that menaced the "Sanctuary" and the mansion. He'd resolved to take on every obstacle without flinching, to spare no effort in seizing the right answer.
And now that hard-won resolve was being washed away by something he couldn't even begin to understand.
Why—why had this emerged so abruptly?
"Garfiel… what about Emilia?"
"——"
"She wasn't in the tomb. …Was she swallowed too?"
"——"
Emilia—who would have woken, noticed the anomaly, and charged out of the tomb.
She was Emilia. Upon seeing the "Sanctuary" engulfed in shadow, she would never have stood by idly. She would have thrown herself in without a second thought to save someone—and then— "In the shadow… then she—!"
"After Ram and the others got swallowed, it came rampaging through the 'Sanctuary,' drinking everything up. I chased it and kept hammering it with attacks, but the damn thing wouldn't even flinch. Then it suddenly turned around and started heading back, so I followed—and that's when I ran into the scene you just saw."
Garfiel had stumbled upon the exact moment Subaru had emerged from the tomb.
So the shadow had indeed been sweeping through the "Sanctuary"—but the instant it sensed Subaru leaving the tomb, it had doubled back. Its target was Subaru all along.
A shadow that devoured everything. Words of love whispered. And this overwhelming power.
Its identity required no further speculation. But— "Why are you here… Witch of Envy?!"
"Ain't the time to be standing around monologuing!"
Spitting the words through clenched teeth, Subaru found Garfiel baring a war-ready grin as he stood atop the roof. Subaru stood beside him, watching his footing, and gazed down at the same sight, gritting his teeth.
A colossal mass of swirling shadows had surrounded the building they were using as a foothold.
The vortex engulfed the structure within its range, tore it from the earth, and forced it into its spinning orbit.
"Wh—whoa—!"
It was like being caught in a tsunami or a massive flood, building and all.
The alien sensation of being swept away by something that shouldn't have any mass at all—Subaru experienced it in full as he fought to keep from being thrown from the swaying roof.
He fought to hold on, but that was no fundamental solution.
"Damn it—we're jumping again. Hold on!"
"——!"
Subaru clung to Garfiel's hunched form, and matching the timing of his leap, they escaped the sliding roof. Launched like a pair of bullets at an angle, they plunged into a cluster of trees, snapping branch after branch before slamming headfirst into a thick trunk.
"Guuah—!"
Garfiel's arms drove into the trunk, the violent deceleration saving them from falling into the shadow below. Subaru, clinging to Garfiel's body, managed to extend an arm, catch a branch, and shift his weight onto it to maintain his position.
Behind them, the sound of splintering and shattering wood echoed thunderously.
When they looked back in a panic, the building they'd been standing on moments ago was being dragged into the vortex's center—ground into finer and finer pieces before their eyes.
Crushing and dismantling the building's original form, the shadow vortex funneled what remained into its own mass—the writhing core of the darkness—growing ever larger.
"——"
The destruction and devastation left Subaru and Garfiel speechless.
And in the brief silence that followed, the shadow's outline blurred— and in the next instant, Subaru felt certain that its eyes, vague as the whole silhouette was, had met his own.
"—I love you."
"Wh—ah…"
"I love you I love you I love you I love you I love you"
"——"
"I love you I love you I love you I