"I cannot retrieve the wine we made in the past. Would you be willing to taste wine made by the person I am now?"
"Then it's a promise."
"Everyone will be there."
As Kiyo slept deeply within Tenshukaku, his consciousness drifted free of his heavy body. Drawn onward by some unseen guidance, he continued to fall.
A sea of clouds unfolded before him.
Somber cloudbanks stretched across a lonely sky, painted in the warm, smoky hues of dusk. Far below, the desolate earth remained an endless expanse of cold color. Where the setting sun touched the land, warmth and cold bled into one another.
Kiyo stood atop the amber clouds.
The realm was absurd and magnificent. Time held no meaning within a realm of consciousness. Past, present, and future existed here at once.
Kiyo stared into the distance. At the furthest edge of the sunset, he noticed a seed.
A sakura seed.
It was pristine and translucent, more jewel than seed, and gave off a faint radiance—as though it were the purest thing in all the world.
Tentatively, Kiyo touched it with the tip of one finger.
It was cool to the touch.
[Destination reached: Musou Isshin.]
[Covenant fulfilled.]
[Acquired: Seed of the Sacred Sakura.]
The voice of the Human Principles System sounded beside his ear. Kiyo's pupils widened as he stared at the seed in disbelief.
The Sacred Sakura...?
Of course Kiyo knew what it was. The Sacred Sakura was one of the pillars that had allowed Inazuma to survive to the present day. In the age when corruption spread across the nation, it was the Sacred Sakura that cleansed the filth from the land and sheltered Inazuma through those years of darkness.
No one knew when it had first appeared. It was as though the tree had stood there since the beginning of time.
Why, then, would its seed exist within this realm of consciousness?
The Great Tengu had said this realm did not belong to Raiden Makoto. Who was its true master?
Kiyo put the seed away. Then he heard the faint ringing of a blade.
Following the sound, he discovered another realm of consciousness adjoining this one.
It too was a barren, desolate land.
A swordswoman stood within it.
Plain white wooden clogs rested beneath her feet. Her violet hair, adorned with hydrangea, fell naturally to her waist. The long lapels of her kimono trailed across the ground, leaving her smooth, pale wrists exposed as she held a slender naginata in a reverse grip.
Her expression was calm and cold—or perhaps simply lonely. Her pale-violet eyes held nothing but the weapon before her. Each rise and fall of the naginata brought a muted metallic ring that stripped another trace of noise from the world.
The swordswoman looked exactly like the Raiden Shogun.
Was this Raiden Ei, then—the true ruler of Inazuma?
She was also the old friend Kiyo had come to invite.
Still AFK in here, grinding sword drills... So this was what AFK governance looked like. No wonder the Fatui had run wild.
Yet as Kiyo watched Ei—watched Her Excellency Narukami—he felt an inexplicable sorrow.
He could sense her immense strength. Strangely, however, this god of overwhelming power seemed to need help.
She appeared to be trapped.
Alone within infinite time and space, she swung her blade again and again across the barren world. Red maples fell through the dying sunlight, and she seemed on the verge of dissolving into the furthest edge of sunset.
Kiyo tried to approach her, but an invisible barrier stopped him outside the Plane of Euthymia. He could not advance another step.
He knocked against the unseen wall and waved to Ei, trying to catch her attention.
"Knock."
The two realms of consciousness were so close together. And yet, no matter how hard he tried, Kiyo could not open the door to Ei's heart.
"Knock."
"Knock."
—
Knock.
Beneath an overcast sky, thunder murmured in the distance.
Ei heard it again.
Knock.
This time, it was so close.
As though it were right outside the door.
The low thunder dropped through a break in the clouds and struck the barren earth, leaving only the faintest echo behind.
Ei listened to that reverberation above the clouds. For reasons she could not explain, her heart stirred.
She raised her eyes toward the leaden sky, but saw only oppressive twilight. Dense banks of haze had amassed overhead like a great spread of raven feathers.
The thunder fell from somewhere beyond those feathers. Ei could hear it knocking against the vault of heaven, but she could not see the lightning—not even its brief and transient flash.
There were too many clouds within the Plane of Euthymia, and they were far too thick. An entire world stood between her and the thunder.
What she could not see naturally did not exist.
She could not leave.
Nor would she ever leave again.
Eschew the Ephemeral World. Abide in Unchanging Eternity.
True, unchanging eternity could be found only in the stillness that remained once all noise had been stripped away.
But was that thunder merely noise?
It was an eternal disturbance. Yet did all disturbance truly have to be cut away?
Ei lowered her eyes, refusing to listen to the thunder above, and continued to swing her blade. But no matter what she did, the sound fell through the clouds and echoed anew within her heart.
After an unknowable length of time, the thunder gradually weakened.
Kiyo leaned against the barrier between their consciousnesses. His form was fading as his mind began to leave this realm and return to wakefulness. His blows grew feebler until, at last, he stopped knocking.
As the final moments slipped away, Kiyo raised his eyes and looked earnestly at Ei. After a brief hesitation, he drew a food box from inside his kimono and opened it.
Within lay pieces of snow-white Dango Milk.
This was a realm of consciousness, so the Dango Milk was not a physical object. It was merely a memory.
"Would you open the door, Your Excellency Beelzebul?" Kiyo asked. "I brought you something. Miko told me Dango Milk is your favorite."
There was no answer from the other side.
"I'll leave it here."
Kiyo gently set down the food box.
"I'm still not much of a cook, so it isn't very good... But there's going to be a gathering. Kitsune Saiguu, Sasayuri, Mikoshi Chiyo, Miko—everyone will be there. I want to invite you too. By then, I'll be able to make you something better."
"Your Excellency Beelzebul." Kiyo paused, then continued in complete earnestness, "We have to meet again next time."
"I'll come looking for you."
He awoke and left the realm. The food box fell with the rain.
The thunder finally stopped.
Ei raised her eyes toward the silent sky. She stared blankly, thinking she had heard someone speaking.
Rain began to fall within the Plane of Euthymia.
It was strange. This was an eternally unchanging world. Its weather, too, should have remained unchanged forever.
In all the centuries she had spent here, not a single drop of rain had fallen. Ei frowned as pale strands of water passed through the dim sky and swept before the ruined shrine.
The rain touched her as well, soaking her kimono and moistening the cool planes of her face.
Then she realized something.
She caught a drop upon her fingertip and touched it to her lips.
The rain was sweet.
Its flavor was familiar and strange at once.
Dango Milk.
After that fleeting sweetness came an aftertaste both faintly bitter and faintly salty. The Plane of Euthymia was the physical manifestation of her consciousness. It did not know rain.
But it had known tears.
As Ei tasted that rain, her shoulders began to tremble. An emotion she could not name stirred within her empty, lonely heart. She looked up at the sky again, but the thunder had already gone. Only the slightly bitter rain remained, falling across the vacant earth.
I have to leave.
I should leave.
That noise rose within her once more—the very noise that should have been cut away.
Ei had to get out.
—
When Kiyo fully awoke, Lumine lay asleep beside his bed with her head resting near him.
Through the window, he saw the enormous pine in the courtyard. They had returned to the Pillar General's mansion.
Only then did he realize that someone was holding his hand. Though Lumine was asleep, her fingers remained tightly clasped around his.
"Idiot," she murmured. "Idiot..."
In her dreams, she seemed to be back inside Tenshukaku, fighting La Signora.
"He isn't... your Rostam..."
Kiyo instinctively felt inside his shirt. The seed was still there, cool beneath his fingers.
Everything that had just happened was real. It had not been a hallucination born of unconsciousness.
Beelzebul truly was trapped within her own realm of consciousness.
Kiyo slowly freed his hand, crept from the tatami, and gently lifted Lumine. He laid her down in his place and covered her with a blanket.
Lumine looked so innocent in her sleep. Her lashes quivered gently, making her resemble a well-behaved little golden cat. Kiyo smoothed the cat's tousled fur, carefully pulling free the hair trapped beneath her body.
"He is..." Lumine murmured, "my Kiyo Seigan."
Still talking in her sleep?
How sappy.
Kiyo watched the sleeping Lumine for a long while. At last, he smiled softly.
"You've really been through a lot."
"And you are my Miss Lumine." Kiyo lowered his eyes, their pale blue reflecting her sleeping face. He spoke with complete seriousness. "You are my Lumine too."
"Actually, I was only pretending to be asleep."
The docile little cat abruptly opened her eyes. A triumphant smile curled at her lips as she blinked, tilted her head, and regarded Kiyo playfully, as though he were a particularly foolish human.
"What did you just say was yours?" Lumine grinned. "Say it again. Come on, say it again. What did someone just call me? I didn't hear you."
Kiyo's face went blank.
The tips of his ears reddened visibly.
This woman...!
—
Autumn had seeped into the trees of the Pillar General's mansion, yellowing some leaves and sending others drifting to the ground. Cool moonlight shone upon the rainwater gathered in the courtyard, its pale reflection clear and still.
Tomorrow would bring the final Duel Before the Throne.
Kunikuzushi stood before Kiyono Raimei's cenotaph. Something flickered within his eyes.
"Old man," he said at last, speaking with shocking irreverence, "I'm digging up your grave."
Truly, outrageously irreverent.
The puppet sank his fingers into the rain-softened earth and slowly began removing the soil. He worked with complete seriousness, letting dirt pack beneath his nails.
Even Kiyo would never dare dig up the Pillar General's grave.
Or rather, he might want to, but he would never have the nerve.
Despite what he had said, Kunikuzushi did not actually disturb the cenotaph. He was merely searching for something mentioned in the note Kiyono Raimei had left behind.
[I buried a barrel of hundred-year-old beer under the big pine tree in the courtyard of the Pillar General's mansion. Remember to retrieve it.]
The old man had written the instruction himself. Since these were his final wishes, digging up the ground counted as officially sanctioned grave robbing.
Besides, the puppet had never believed this was the Pillar General's grave. He had never accepted that this narrow patch of earth—filled with a jumble of old clothes and rusted weapons—could be called the old man's final resting place. It was nothing more than a consolation the people of Inazuma had made for themselves.
The old man was not buried beneath the earth.
He was buried in the sky, within the sea of clouds.
That was why this tiny grave seemed so repulsive to Kunikuzushi: it resembled a damp, lightless cage.
At last, his fingers touched something. He drew it from the ground.
The centuries-old malt ale carried the weight of all the years through which it had lain sealed. Looking at the jar, Kunikuzushi remembered the days he had once spent drinking with the old man.
"There is no one left to drink with me."
"...They're all gone."
Kunikuzushi hated alcohol. Even so, he opened the jar and filled two bowls. He flung the first bowlful into the open air, then drained the second in a single swallow.
The heavy warmth of the ale passed through him, carrying the fragrance of wheat fields.
"You old bastard." A puppet could not become drunk, yet Kunikuzushi swayed slightly. He poured himself another bowl and said softly, "I'll drink with you."
I'll drink with you.
Kiyo had invited him to the gathering beneath the Sacred Sakura. Kunikuzushi had refused, declaring that he had no interest whatsoever.
But he would go.
No matter how many times he had refused Kiyono Raimei, that man had always managed to force several brimming flasks of sake upon him in the end. Kunikuzushi had never been able to do anything about him.
But the gathering would have to wait until everything was settled.
He was almost tipsy now.
The heart rested in his hand, clear and beautiful, giving off a soft light.
As he looked into its translucent depths, something stirred within the hollow cavity of the puppet's chest.
"From this day forward..."
"His thunder will forever beat within your chest."
Kunikuzushi placed the heart inside himself.
Thunder sounded beside his ears. Roaring wind entwined with Kiyono's thunder, echoing again and again within his chest.
This was the great serpent's heart.
It was Kiyono's heart.
It was the heart of a god.
He saw a colossal serpent rising toward the heavens. He saw countless soldiers charge against it and fall one after another. He saw Kiyono Raimei, and he saw the old man unleash his final slash.
He witnessed that pure-white world.
At last, Kunikuzushi crossed the boundary and entered it. He beheld that world, and from that moment onward, he inherited it.
When the heart began to beat, he finally understood what had always been missing from him. He finally knew the name of the pain that had clung to his empty chest.
It was regret.
The puppet born without a heart finally understood a human emotion.
Kunikuzushi looked toward the distant pavilion at the far edge of his sight.
"Beelzebul," he said softly.
In tomorrow's Duel Before the Throne, La Signora would not be his only opponent.
Not his only one.
"I have ascended."
He would say it to her face—not through a machine called the Shogun.