SFX: wuuuuhhh— wuuuuhhh—
The Dream Realm had no sun.
Yet something rose.
A wound-colored light bled over the horizon—bruised violet fading into fever-gold, the slow bloom of a world remembering it once had mornings.
It touched Aria's skin before it touched her eyes. And it hurt.
Ninety-nine days.
She had counted them in the rhythm of a heart that refused to stop, in scars that glowed every time her body remembered it should've died.
Ninety-nine days walking through a realm that swallowed cities whole, digested hope, and exhaled only regret.
Ninety-nine days with Seong-jun's shadow curled under her ribs like a second skeleton—its feathers cold as broken promises.
She wasn't tired.
There were words for tired.
She had moved past language, past exhaustion, into a quiet where even despair felt too heavy to lift.
But she kept walking.
Because stopping meant letting the silence finish what the fire began.
The land breathed around her.
Televisions sprouted like wilted flowers from the dead earth, screens flickering:
SFX: bzzt—crackle—
THE MOON IS GONE
THE MOON IS GONE
THE MOON IS—
Rivers ran backward, carrying sorrow upstream—wedding rings melted to silver tears, small shoes spinning slowly like drifting planets.
Forests of bone-white trees bore fruit shaped like human hearts. When the hearts ripened, they fell upward, pulsing as they vanished into the endless bruise of sky.
And everywhere, the dead waited.
They rose from ash with halos of barbed wire and television static. Their fingers ended in rosaries and bullet casings. They knelt in her path.
Their merged voice was a broken cathedral's choir:
"Mother of Mercy…
End us gently.
End us beautifully."
She had no gentleness left.
Only white fire in her scars.
Only the black wings stirring inside her bones.
On the ninety-ninth night, she reached the edge of the world.
A mirror waited.
Not of glass.
Not of water.
Something older.
Taller than mountains.
Wider than oceans.
Perfectly smooth—perfectly wrong.
In it:
the real sky. Blue. Empty. Indifferent.
In it:
every version of Aria who had believed love required bleeding.
They smiled at her from the other side.
Something vast shifted behind those reflections—an eclipse wearing the outline of a man who had long since stopped pretending to be one.
Grigori.
His voice slid from the mirror like hands emerging through silk.
You burned my cathedral.
You murdered your Father.
You scattered the only man who ever chose you over the world.
And still you walk.
Aria pressed her palm to the mirror.
The reflection did not copy her.
Instead, all the dead Arias pressed back, palms meeting hers from within the glass.
Their lips moved:
Welcome home, sister.
Behind them, the missing day began to breathe.
The Hundredth Day.
The day that was never meant to exist.
The day that would seal the Veil, trap the Dream Realm as the only surviving world.
Grigori's tone softened, sickeningly sweet:
There is no escape, beloved.
There is only acceptance.
Come quietly.
Let the children sleep inside you forever.
White fire spidered along her scars.
Seong-jun's wings unfurled so violently against her ribs that she gasped.
Aria smiled.
Sharp as broken mercy.
"No."
She pressed harder.
SFX: KRRRRAAAAAAACK—!!!
The mirror fractured from horizon to horizon.
Starlight bled out. Old blood followed.
And through the rupture spilled—
the missing day.
Time folded like burning paper.
Ninety-nine days imploded into one heartbeat.
Dawn → noon → dusk → midnight → dawn
all in the breath it took for her to blink.
And then—
SFX: RRRHHHHH—SKREEEEE—!!!
The Veil tore open.
The real world fell through.
Not ruined.
Whole.
Tokyo blinking in morning traffic.
Los Angeles smog rising like incense.
Paris still pretending to be eternal.
Continents drifted down like feathers.
The Dream Realm caught them gently, almost tenderly—teeth made of shadow and regret closing around their edges.
Aria stepped through the wound.
She entered a city that had never known her name.
Blue sky.
Piercing.
Obscene.
A salaryman spilling coffee froze mid-step.
A boy chasing a red balloon slowed, then paused.
An old woman feeding pigeons stopped mid-smile.
Thousands stared at her—
the barefoot girl made of ash and white fire.
A boy broke from his mother's grip.
Offered her a dandelion.
"For you."
Aria knelt.
The flower trembled between her fingers.
The boy.
His mother.
The city.
Millions of lives suspended around her, unaware that their final morning had begun.
Grigori's voice dripped from the sky.
Watch, daughter.
Watch how beautifully they will worship the silence you give them.
White fire surged.
It did not burn.
It stilled.
Coffee droplets hung midair—amber jewels.
The red balloon froze against the blue.
The pigeons became porcelain mid-wingbeat.
And the little boy—
porcelain too.
Perfect.
Painless.
His mother's outstretched scream froze inches from his cheek.
Aria stood in a world turned to salt and stillness.
Only the dandelion moved.
Its seeds lifted upward, drifting toward a sky that no longer understood gravity.
Seong-jun's last crow fluttered onto her shoulder, wings trembling.
"We failed," it rasped.
Aria looked at the boy.
The mother.
The city.
"No," she whispered.
She closed her fist.
SFX: FSSHHHHHH—
The dandelion ignited into white flame.
"We succeeded."
The crow dissolved into her skin—its final wingbeat soft as a child letting go.
Above, the tear between worlds began to close.
Grigori's laughter was cathedral bells drowning in floodwater.
Welcome to the hundredth day, my perfect daughter.
It will never end.
And you will never be alone again.
Aria spread her arms.
White wings tore from her back—vast, radiant, merciless.
They beat once.
SFX: WHUMMMMM—
She rose into the flawless blue.
Below, humanity's last moment stretched into an eternity without pain.
She hovered long enough to tell the world one last truth:
"I'm sorry," she whispered to the porcelain child.
"And thank you."
Then the Ashen Saint turned toward the closing wound—
and flew into the only future left:
A future with no children born to bleed.
No saints forced to choose.
Only perfect, painless, endless morning.
Behind her, the Hundredth Day began.
Quiet.
Final.
Forever.