"I can't slice logic." — Evalia
The moment the two Pillars connected, the entire staging area of the Mugenkyou screamed.
It wasn't a sound of air or force, but the high-frequency shriek of conceptual mathematics tearing apart. The air became liquid light. The Sapphire Pillar on Kabe's chest glowed with a cold, unforgiving blue, demanding truth. The White Pillar, driven into the ground beside Ken, pulsed with a fierce, warm glow of impossible, absolute intent.
The two lights did not mix gradually; they collided, forming a chaotic, crystalline lattice around Kabe's body.
Ken cried out as the circuit completed. He was the conductor. The Pillar of Dreams was channeling his raw will—his stubborn, illogical belief in the 12.6% chance of victory—directly into the heart of Kabe's fractured conceptual structure. The force of it felt like his own skeleton was trying to shed its skin.
Kabe convulsed violently, the flickering of his body accelerating into an unbearable strobe effect. He was caught between two absolute realities: the peaceful, fabricated life the Chronographer had engineered, and the raw, unedited horror of the Rift that had killed him.
"Hold!" Evalia yelled, planting her feet wide. The Archival Scripts, previously content to simply shriek, now began to coalesce. Shards of obsidian and white code spun toward the light-cocoon surrounding Kabe.
Evalia moved with brutal, practiced efficiency. Her blades became sapphire arcs, intercepting every hostile fragment before it could disrupt the Pillars' circuit. Shing! Crunch! She was battling the Mugenkyou's immune system, which was attempting to excise the foreign, unstable synthesis.
Meanwhile, Ken was forced inward. The collision of Pillars had thrown him into Kabe's mind, which was no longer a fractured landscape but a singular point of pure, agonizing psychic feedback.
The memory is too much. The pain is too much, Kabe's thoughts echoed, not in words, but in overwhelming sensation. It's drowning me! I can't—I can't hold the shape!
Ken saw the memory of the Rift—the screaming wind, the impossible speed of the entity, the final, searing pain of conceptual dissolution. But superimposed over it were the peaceful, sun-drenched images from the buffer: a perfect day of training, a shared meal, a future that never was. The clash was tearing Kabe's self-identity apart.
This is the 87.4% failing, Ken realized, his own vision blurring with conceptual tears. I tore down the buffer, but I didn't replace it with anything strong enough to hold the memory of the truth. He needs an anchor outside the Pillars.
Desperate, Ken ignored the burning, draining feeling in his hands and focused entirely on the truth he had spoken just moments ago.
The first lesson, he thought, channeling it like a physical wire. You taught me how to find the unshakeable point of truth.
Ken slammed his entire being—every memory of their shared life, every joke, every fight, every late-night mission—into the circuit, focusing on a single, crystalline moment.
The memory was simple: they were ten and eight, sitting on the roof of their home in Harama, watching a meteor shower. Kabe, already the serious older brother, had been lecturing Ken about the importance of being ready for the Academy, but Ken was distracted by the sheer beauty of the cosmos.
"Ken, listen to me. Discipline is the only thing that holds you steady when everything is fire. Find your anchor," Kabe's youthful voice echoed.
Ken projected the feeling of that cold Harama roof and the warm presence of his brother next to him—the feeling of absolute safety and unbreakable familial bond—into the core of the circuit. He wasn't projecting hope; he was projecting the absolute, factual history of their relationship, independent of the Trails or the Pillars.
The resulting surge was catastrophic.
The lattice of light exploded outward, hitting Evalia and sending her stumbling back against the wall, though she managed to keep her blades positioned defensively. The Mugenkyou floor around Ken and Kabe cracked and fissured, yielding to the raw power of synthesized concept.
For a terrifying, drawn-out second, Kabe went silent. The violent strobing stopped. The lights of the Pillars dimmed, their energy spent, leaving only a gentle, steady, unified white glow.
Then, Kabe inhaled.
It was a deep, ragged, human breath, the kind that anchors a soul to a body. His conceptual outline hardened, solidifying instantly. He was no longer flickering. He was completely, irrevocably present.
He opened his eyes. They were still blue, but they held the weight of a thousand years. He looked at Ken, then at the Sapphire Pillar on his chest, and finally at his own hand, flexing his fingers with a look of profound, agonizing understanding.
The truth had landed. He remembered everything: the peaceful illusion, the Rift, his death, and the monstrous price of his return.
"Ken," Kabe whispered, his voice steady now, but hollowed out by the memory. "You… you went back. You chose this." He looked at the Pillars, a profound sorrow on his face. "You broke the Chronographer. You ripped out the anchor of the Archive itself."
Ken collapsed, his strength utterly spent, falling against his brother's now-solid shoulder. "I bet on the 12.6, Kabe," he murmured, the exhaustion overwhelming. "I bet on us."
Evalia rushed back to them, her face pale but determined.
"That's enough sentimentality, we have to move!" she snapped, the urgency back in her voice. She pointed a bloodied blade toward the main chamber. "The Archive knows. The Mugenkyou just registered the Pillars in a synthesized state. We're not stable, Ken. We're an anomaly. We're going to be purged."
Above them, the exit portal that led back to Kurogane began to shrink, its familiar geometry warping under immense pressure, threatening to close forever.
"Can you move, Kabe?" Ken asked, pushing himself up.
Kabe didn't answer right away. He simply reached out and took the Pillar of Memory off his chest, his fingers wrapping around the cold sapphire. The sheer weight of the truth he now held was evident in his posture, the knowledge settling deep into his bones.
"I can move," Kabe said, his voice quiet but final. He looked down the empty length of the ascending scripts, the place where the Chronographer once reigned. "But we're not just leaving. I saw the truth Ken forced me to remember. The Chronographer's calculation wasn't just about me."
He slowly rose, using the Pillars as conceptual crutches. He was alive, whole, and anchored by memory—but he was also carrying the heaviest burden of truth the Mugenkyou had to offer.
"They are trying to excise the concept of us. The Chronographer was trying to solve a problem with the entire Mugenkyou, not just my body," Kabe finished, looking toward the exit portal, which was now flickering dangerously on the verge of collapse. "We need to leave, but we need to take a piece of their solution with us. We have to shatter the core script before we go."