[FIVE DAYS EARLIER]
The creature staggered across the ruined battlefield, its transparent wings hanging in tatters behind it. Jagged and oozing purple blood streamed down to the ground. Yet its lack of flight didn't make it any less troublesome.
Suddenly, three tentacles burst from its back without warning.
"Watch out!"
The warning came too late.
One smashed through a nearby soldier, crushing him into a pulp. Another swept across the battlefield, cleaving through units before they could react. Screams tore through the slaughter. Just as the third lashed wildly toward Shiro, he spun off the ground, dodging it. Before his boots made contact with the ground, he seized it.
His fingers locked around the writhing appendage. Using the creature's own momentum, he launched himself forward like a slingshot past its guard. He raised his free hand. Flames gathered and compressed into the center of his palm.
BOOM!
The explosion tore right through its flower-shaped head, shattering flesh and blood. For a brief moment, there was no movement.
Then a rumbling came from the ground. The headless body convulsed violently as a dozen tentacles erupted from every direction through the thick, rising smoke.
Shiro's eyes widened.
They were too many. Too fast. He narrowly avoided several strikes, but one slipped through. He was a moment too slow. One of the tentacles struck him in the shoulder.
"Ugh!"
Gritting his teeth, he grabbed the appendage with his right hand. Heat surged across his arm, burning through the appendage as he yanked it out of his shoulder.
Without hesitation, he slammed his hand against the gaping wound. Thin trails of smoke rose from the sizzling skin as the bleeding finally slowed to a stop.
Through the haze, more tentacles shot toward him with lethal speed. He was completely open. No time to counter. Just as he thought he would succumb to death.
A flash of cyan-blue light tore through the wave of tentacles in brilliant arcs. The blade moved too fast for the eye to track, severing the oncoming tentacles in a single, fluid strike. The ground was soon littered with fading remains of the appendages.
Before Shiro could even process the blast of wind from the swing, Lloyd swooped into the frame, his blade still humming with residual cyan energy. It transformed into a spear. With a sharp twist of his body, he hurled it straight toward the creature's exposed core.
The cyan spear punched through the core and tore through the other side.
Without the core, the creature's body swelled grotesquely before exploding in every direction. Flesh, blood, and shattered fragments rained across the battlefield.
Lloyd landed beside him, his teeth gritted in sheer frustration.
"Are you insane, Shiro?!" Lloyd hissed, his voice raw and furious.
Shiro slumped against a pile of rubble and let out a strained breath. Despite the white-hot agony of the wound on his shoulder, a crooked grin found its way onto his face.
"Don't worry. I'm fine."
Lloyd's voice hardened as he took a step forward.
"That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about how you almost got yourself killed."
Shiro's grin faded slightly.
"Did you forget why we're doing this? We stand between humanity and extinction. We fight creatures that never seem to end. Creatures that nobody even knows about."
He gestured toward the destruction surrounding them.
"We're here because many before us sacrificed their lives for us to reach this point. We can't just throw in the towel like that. We must continue pushing forward until we decipher these rifts."
Lloyd looked directly at him.
"Did you forget the promise you made?"
Shiro froze. His jaw tightened. His eyes dropped to the ground.
He did not answer.
After a long moment, he slowly lifted his gaze and looked up at the sky.
Lloyd stared down at him for a few seconds, the silence stretching heavily between them over the ruined battlefield. Finally, the tension in his shoulders dropped, and he extended his right hand toward Shiro.
"Then don't die before you fulfill it."
Shiro exhaled slowly, then reached out and took the hand as Lloyd pulled him up.
****
[Present]
Shiro's eyes snapped open.
He didn't see the bruised purple clouds or the swirling lightning vortex from before. Instead, he stared up at a sky that had turned into an endless red.
Darkness crept along the edges of his vision, threatening to drag him under. Gritting his teeth against the white-hot agony from his missing left arm, Shiro forced his battered body to move.
With a low, ragged groan, he dragged himself upward from the rubble using his only remaining arm. He wasn't going to die here. Not now.
All around him, the battlefield stretched empty and scorched. Everything within five hundred meters was covered in flames and smoke. The air was thick with heat and ash.
"After everything we've been through... the rift still remains," he muttered, his gaze sweeping across the empty crimson sky as a bloody grin tugged at the corner of his mouth.
'There's no grand victory waiting here. I'm not a savior nor a hero. I'm just a soldier with a job left to finish. Because the only reason I'm still breathing is to protect humanity at all costs.'
He threw himself forward, sprinting directly toward the haze where the mangled silhouette was rapidly taking shape.
"So I must keep moving forward."
The Calamity who was barely holding itself up with all four arms. The cracks on its body narrowed and closed as its chest rose and fell in uneven, jagged breaths.
Then it lifted its head, sensing Shiro approaching. Without a wasted second, it fired a beam.
Shiro met the attack head-on. His fist slammed into the beam, forcing his way through it.
Without warning, the ground beneath the Calamity erupted. Molten liquid seeped through the fractured earth as the creature staggered backward.
The Calamity, which had been smiling complacently just moments ago, could no longer stand its ground.
Crack.
Its entire right side, from shoulder to lower abdomen, fractured and fell to the ground with a dull thud.
The Calamity did not know the meaning of death. It did not know the instinct of a human. It did not know what it meant to flee in the face of death. It only knew to consume. To adapt. To endure.
That was what made it dangerous.
But that was also what made it blind.
The Calamity used the last of its energy reserves to make a final desperate beam. Purple light gathered deep in its throat, humming with familiar hunger.
GRRR...
But before it could release it.
Shiro lunged from the spiraling dust and debris. He reappeared at its side.
His only hand extended. Energy gathered from the flames of the burning crater around him to the center of his palm.
Time seemed to hitch as the Calamity shifted its head to the side, holding on to Shiro's red-glowing pupils. With a strained roar, a massive beam erupted from his hand, tearing across the short distance between them.
The two red and blue beams collided.
BOOM!
The explosion tore across the crater, swallowing both Shiro and the Calamity in a blinding white light.
Then, a moment later.
The blinding white shattered into darkness.
Shiro's eyes snapped open.
The roar of the colliding beams was gone. In its place stood a vast, infinitely stretching lightless horizon.
"Where am I?"
His voice vanished into the darkness.
'Did the dimensional rift collapse?..
... No.'
Something felt wrong.
This place was different. Far different from a normal dimensional rift.
["To think a mere human could endure this far."]
A voice echoed through the void. Distorted. Multi-layered. As though countless beings were speaking at once.
Shiro froze.
'A voice?'
Slowly, he turned toward the source. His pupils contracted.
"...?!"
Far beyond him floated an enormous black hole. Its surface twisted endlessly, devouring any hope of illumination. Yet that was not what shocked him.
Four colossal arms emerged from within it. Each arm gripped the edge of the black hole from the inside.
The sight alone made his instincts scream.
'Is this...' His throat tightened. 'The Calamity's true form?'
["I do not understand why you mortals indulge yourselves in wars that were never assigned to your existence."]
'This place... I have to get out of here.'
["Look at yourself. Half a leg. One arm. And yet you still believe you can escape...?"]
The voice sounded amused.
["How long do you think you can keep resisting the inevitable? Every step you take brings you closer to your end."]
["So tell me, human..."]
"Ghk!"
In an instant, the air vanished from Shiro's lungs, as if the concept of oxygen had been deleted from existence.
["Ahh. You cannot breathe."]
'W-what the?'
He attempted to claw at his throat, but his remaining arm failed to respond. Instead, thin purple fracture lines spidered across his body.
["You believe your choices are your own,"] the Calamity said, its voice echoing with chilling indifference. ["Every battle you fought was a step on a path you did not choose."]
With those words, the purple cracks split wide. Shiro's entire body began to fracture like porcelain. Agonizing pain tore through every inch of him.
"GYAAAAAAAH!"
His final scream tore through the emptiness as the remaining pieces of him were swallowed by the black hole. Then, slowly, the terrifying dark of the void began to blur, the edges softening into a fading, featureless light.
["You're just pawns arranged by the Outer Beings who do not acknowledge your existence as relevant."]
****
Shiro's eyes fluttered open.
Sunlight streamed through a small window of a wooden cabin. He was lying on a simple bed. The smell of ash and blood was gone, replaced by the scent of wood and earth.
A gentle, unfamiliar voice spoke from nearby.
"Ohhh, you're awake."