Crimson maples. A warped window lattice. Everything was as it used to be—
except the moon: a sick, blood-red eye that stained the clouds an eerie hue.
Scaramouche—the Kunikuzushi—stared toward the distant Shakkei Pavilion, the place he'd once called home.
"Didn't you say you'd never come back here?"
The voice snapped him from his confusion. He whirled.
A small, frail child stood before him.
"You—!" His face blanched.
This was the sickly, abandoned boy he had once called a kindred spirit. He'd even brought the child to the Shakkei Pavilion—this very place—to "show him home."
"This is impossible. You're dead… No—just now I was with Dottore. What is this!?"
Panic fanned through him as he scanned the warped, scarlet world.
"Damn it! When did I fall into a phantasm?"
"Yes. It's an illusion," the child said, smiling with that same fragile brightness. "But it feels very real, doesn't it?"
"Tell me what's going on!" the Balladeer roared. "Was this the Lady? When did she—"
"You're afraid, Kunikuzushi," the boy said softly. "Does seeing me stir… unpleasant memories?"
Yes. He loathed "betrayers."
"I hate those who betray," he snarled. "You were one of them."
Lightning crackled between his fingers. He raised his hand—
—and the world flicked. A wind-leaking seaside hovel took shape.
"Tch. So the Lady's tricks have improved—"
He froze.
By the lightning's reflection in the window, the child lay curled in a corner—breathless.
"If there was a betrayer, Kunikuzushi…" the voice whispered from behind him, "…it was you—who left me."
Cold soaked him. He rounded, teeth bared, but the words followed:
"I was your friend—your family. We traded our names and vowed to live together in that broken hut.
But the night I was dying, you weren't there.
Dying alone is terrifying.
Lonely. Cold. Painful. Afraid.
I curled up and waited for morning.
Morning never came."
The world warped. His hands shook.
"Can't face me, Kunikuzushi? Your friend. Your family. Your 'same kind'?"
"Shut up! I didn't betray you!" he howled. "I spent the whole night finding food! I told you before I left—"
The child only watched him, eyes wrong in a way that made the puppet retreat two steps.
This is fake. Illusion. The truth is—
"So you think I chose to die—cold and alone?"
—!!
CLANG. Hammer on anvil.
He flinched. A man raised a hand in greeting. Niwa Hisahide, head of Tatarasuna's forge—teacher of small human things: eating, resting, living.
"Lost in thought, Kunikuzushi?"
Recognition tightened the Balladeer's face—then he laughed, harsh and wild.
"Hah! The Lady thinks old faces will shake me? Idiot. These traitors only make me angrier. I'll break this farce and then I'll kill her."
He lunged, blade screaming violet.
The strike passed straight through Niwa.
A phantom.
Niwa's gentle smile made bile rise in the Balladeer's throat. After the Smelter failed, those cowards had "fled in guilt," leaving him alone—leaving only a foul heart to mock his lack of one. Traitors. All their kindness had been a lie.
"Traitors?" Niwa's voice cut through his rage. "In all these years, did you ever find a single trace of Tatarasuna's smiths? Any of us?"
"What are you implying?"
"We were dead before you came back."
—!
"Remember the Fontainian engineer, Escher?"
"His real name is Dottore."
The Balladeer's stomach dropped. He knew the Doctor. He also knew what the Doctor was.
Niwa's chest opened like a door. He pointed to the hollow within.
"Look. Empty.
Just like you. No heart."
Cold hammered the puppet's limbs.
"Dottore killed us. All of us," Niwa said, voice hard at last. "He cut out my heart. You took it into the furnace. It drank the filth and saved you—staining itself beyond saving.
The heart that protected you… was mine."
"No… you're lying—You're—"
But another truth gnawed: after Tatarasuna, he had never found a single craftsman's trail. In Inazuma—among the Gokaden—among the people—nothing. As if they'd never existed.
"We never betrayed you, Kunikuzushi. You befriended our murderer."
A surf of voices rose, crashing—Traitor. Betrayer. Traitor. Betrayer.
Faces gathered around him—Tatarasuna's smiths, crowding closer.
"We were never your 'same kind,'" said the child, staring up at him. "My parents weren't cowards who ran. They were smiths at Tatarasuna. They never came home."
If they had fled, why not flee with their child? Obvious answer: no chance to flee. They died with the rest.
"I'm not— I didn't—" His body trembled. Pride shriveled. Accusations became knives—piercing, relentless.
Two new voices threaded the storm:
"He's trouble. We should end him now."
"No. I made him. I'll keep him—for now."
"You're soft, Ei. If he causes disaster later, don't say I didn't warn you."
Pink and purple phantoms—Yae Miko and Raiden Ei—etched against the dark.
"Her…" His breath hitched. The one who "abandoned" him… had argued to spare him.
He laughed, too loud, too empty. "Fake. All of it—fake!"
"I'm not the traitor! I'm— I'm—"
The sky ripped. Thunder rolled like judgement.
"I didn't heed the Guuji. Leaving you has birthed too many calamities," a solemn voice intoned.
"Today, I will end you myself—and soothe those Inazumans slain without justice."
Space splintered. A blade of violet—Muso no Hitotachi—fell like fate.
Light erased him—
—and he woke gasping, soaked in cold fear.
"A nightmare…?"
No. An illusion. The slash couldn't kill him here.
"Didn't you say you'd never come back here?"
He turned. The child again. Maple leaves again. Red moon again.
The loop closed.
…
The feed cut.
No one believed it was "over." Tsukuyomi had wound his mind into a loop. He would meet the same accusations again and again—until his spirit snapped.
Furina's skin pebbled; even her bravado fled. The red moon. The wrong angles. Niwa's hollow chest… it all clawed at the spine.
"I regret watching that," she whispered, rubbing her arms for warmth. "It felt like reading a ghost story alone in the dark."
"No wonder 'Thunder Cannon' went rabid," someone breathed. "Stay there long enough—anyone breaks."
Yashiori, Delusion Factory ruins.
A few Hellfire Butterflies circled Rosalyne as dull booms rolled from deeper within, punctuated by howls, laughter—
and a single word hurled over and over:
Die. Die. Die.
"…He really has gone mad," Rosalyne murmured, swallowing.
Had she not seen it, she wouldn't believe it. The blink of a real-world eye; inside, countless cycles. Even a will tempered by missions in the Abyss couldn't withstand this.
"So this is Su Xuan's illusion art…" she exhaled. "Even he couldn't endure it."
And the Balladeer raved on in the dark.
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