Where is this...?
It's dark. I can't see anything.
This is... darkness?
No. This is...
When I turned around, a blue moonlight was staring back at me.
Her once-bright smile had sharpened into something cold, and her venomous eyes condemned me.
"Why couldn't you save me?"
The knife called words sank deep into me.
The old wound I had thought had healed was, in truth, not healed at all. It still carried the danger of splitting open again at any moment.
Her smile, my memories with her, every moment I had spent with her—they all became a burden of sin, crushing me beneath their weight.
"..."
"I believed in you."
"I thought the time I spent with you was happiness."
"And you stabbed me without a second thought."
"To think I mistook someone like you for my Orion."
A merciless condemnation poured down on me.
With every word she spoke, she hurt herself more, and that sight was more painful than anything else.
This was my sin. My burden.
It was a brand on the soul that could never be washed away.
"...A dream, huh..."
I muttered that at the sight from long ago.
Even after seeing such a dreadful nightmare, the first thing I felt was, absurdly enough, not pain or anguish, but longing.
Part of me was glad that I could see her even in a nightmare like this, and then, following that feeling, a bitterness far greater than that joy came crashing in.
The nightmare that had once nearly crushed me had been escaped through a salvation called hope.
But that did not mean I had overcome it.
This would remain with me forever, like a warped burn scar I could neither forget nor hide.
In the past, and in the future, always—
"..."
I lifted my head and looked up at the sky. There was no moon or stars, only a pitch-black night spread out above me.
That dark sky felt as if it were showing me my own state right now. It stretched on endlessly, yet held nothing within it.
I wanted to sink into that darkness and disappear.
Wouldn't that be fine? I'd suffered enough, too.
Wouldn't it be all right to go see everyone now?
Just as I was about to be swallowed by that dark sky—
spark
A small light flickered in the darkness above.
It was a fragment of moonlight left behind after something had shattered, a fragment of hope pulling at me.
The dim moonlight pointed the way forward like a signpost. It seeped into me, shining alone and brilliantly in the dark night sky.
"I have to go..."
Without realizing it, I murmured while staring at the moonlight.
I wanted to entrust myself a little longer to that painful, nostalgic sight, but now was not the time to sleep here.
This was clearly the past, and I could not remain here.
Because I had bitterly realized that I could not keep living while sunk in the past.
I left that longing behind and kindled sacred flame.
The false world was wrapped in the sacred flame and began to disappear.
"This time, I'll save you."
In the vanishing world, I left behind the words I could not bring myself to say.
Did they reach her? In a world wavering as it burned in sacred flame, I could no longer even make out her face, so the truth would remain unknown forever.
Still, was it just a coincidence? I had the strange feeling that the corner of her wavering lips had briefly curved into a smile.
Ah, honestly.
What a cruel nightmare this was.
With that thought, my consciousness began to rise rapidly back to the surface.
"...Kuh?!"
When I came to, I was still in darkness.
Not ordinary darkness. Darkness so deep I couldn't see a thing in front of me.
My sharpened senses caught nothing. I couldn't see anything, hear anything, or feel anything.
It felt as if I were still inside a dream. I was sure I had woken up, but had I not actually awakened yet?
'No, that's not it...'
This was definitely reality. I had awakened from the dream.
But where I had awakened was still a dream.
What that meant was...
'Is the world... becoming a dream?'
It was ridiculous. But given the situation, I couldn't say for certain that it was impossible.
Because the one causing all this was...
"Arcanum..."
In the truest sense of the word, the power of a god.
Not some crude trick that could be used in the Lower World, but the genuine majesty of divinity.
There was only one case in which such an impossible phenomenon could manifest in the Lower World.
Divine predation. Only in that one case.
The phenomenon that had occurred only once in the future was happening again here, now.
"Ggh..."
My head hurt. It felt like the inside of my body was being scraped away.
Was it because of the divine power? My condition was terrible.
"Ahh..."
"No... no... nooooooo!"
"I believed in you... I believed in youuuuu!!!"
"No... I'm not a monster..."
The others were not doing well either. They still hadn't awakened from their dreams, and each of them was muttering something under their breath, groaning as though trapped in nightmares.
'Well, even if it's divine power, the one wielding it is still a monster.'
There was no way a monster would show humans pleasant dreams.
It was almost a relief. If they had been happy dreams, some of them might not have wanted to wake up. If I had dreamed of those days, I wasn't even sure I could have gotten up myself.
"...No."
"Arphia-san?"
As I was thinking that, I heard someone's voice.
Unlike the others' mumbling, it was clear and desperate.
Had Arphia-san awakened on her own too? I thought that for a moment, but I quickly realized that wasn't the case.
She was crying.
With a desperate expression, like someone who had lost everything.
"Don't go..."
"..."
"Don't leave me behind... Materia."
She clung to me. She wrapped her arms around my body as if she would never let go.
Arphia had dreamed too.
But her spirit was too strong for even a god to do anything about. She, too, would soon come to her senses like the rabbit... or so I had thought.
That is, if not for the scene before her eyes.
I saw a white light gone cold.
This was a nightmare. Nothing more than that.
But... it was a sight she had always feared.
It was also the inevitable moment that would one day come.
The worst possible future, thrust before her in an instant, was enough to create a crack in her heart.
And divine power slipped into that crack far too easily.
It might not have been enough to put her fully to sleep, but it was more than enough to shatter her heart.
Through the blurred edge of my vision, I saw white light.
The light she had tried so hard to protect, the small light that would one day disappear.
The image of that extinguished white light from my dream flashed through my mind again.
The heart torn to shreds by the vanished illusion reached out, trying to seize the light somehow.
And it touched it.
Arphia clutched it. She held on with all her strength, hoping that the white light would never disappear again.
"I'm not Materia."
"No... no... no..."
The rabbit's voice did not reach the witch. The witch had awakened, but she was still trapped in the dream.
She had awakened from the dream, but she had not escaped it.
"..."
For someone of her caliber to end up like this... what kind of dream was she having?
But it probably wasn't a good one.
A dream that makes a woman cry would never be called a good dream, not by my standards.
Unfortunately, I didn't know how to enter a nightmare and fight inside it.
But I did know how to drive a nightmare away. Thankfully, that was one of my specialties.
The rabbit kindled sacred flame as he was. The flame born from his own body spread not only to the rabbit, but to the witch as well, flaring up fiercely.
"Materia... ah..."
"Are you feeling a little more clear-headed now?"
The flame that had once risen to resist a goddess's charm had, over time, taken on the nature of the virgin goddess's sacred flame.
It became a sacred flame that purified corruption, carrying not only the blessing of the virgin goddess, but also the compassion of the goddess of the hearth.
The flame clinging to the witch's body began driving out the wicked things within her. The light she held in her arms slowly began to change shape.
The long hair that had reached her waist was now a bob cut that stopped at her shoulders. The blue eyes that had seemed to hold the sea were now ruby-red, burning like flame.
And yet, they were so similar that one could still say they resembled each other.
'Ah...'
In that moment, the witch realized it. The rabbit and her younger sister were very alike.
She had hated the rabbit while only looking at the parts she disliked, but in truth, there were far more things they shared than things that set them apart.
She could finally face, for the first time, the fact she had forced herself to look away from because she did not want to admit it.
"I..."
"Have you calmed down?"
"Ah..."
Arphia, finally coming to her senses, let go of the hand she had been holding.
Thud. The hand that fell limply seemed to speak for her mood.
"...This is the worst."
"It is. Playing with someone's feelings like that. It's the worst."
"No, what's worse is that I showed you such an ugly side of myself."
"...Huh?"
"At this point, I may have no choice but to kill you and bury the evidence..."
"Huh?!"
"I'm joking."
Seeing Arphia smile faintly, Vesta made a dumbfounded face.
"Um, excuse me, but are you still talking in your sleep?"
"That's rude."
"No, absolutely not."
"More importantly, the problem is that monster. Explain quickly what's going on."
"Ah, right, so..."
Vesta's eyes turned toward the monster.
A monster that had eaten a god. In other words, that thing was...
"A monster that uses divine power... I think."
"I expected as much. I dislike vulgar expressions, but... this is nothing short of a damned situation."
That was an expression I could wholeheartedly agree with. It really was nothing but a damned situation.
Still, what could we do? Life was damned by nature.
Come to think of it, there had been more times in my life when the word damned did come up than times when it didn't. If I thought about it that way, maybe this situation was no different from any other.
"You've survived this long with such a carefree way of thinking?"
"Haha, I guess I've just been lucky."
"Fine. So what now?"
"Should we wake the others first and think about it?"
As he said that, Vesta lifted one foot.
At the same time, he concentrated Mind into the raised foot. If efficiency were all that mattered, waking them one by one would be the rational choice, but there was no time to take it slow now.
Tap— as the foot came down, flames spread outward from the stomp.
The sacred flame that spread out soon stopped short of a certain range, partially recreating the sanctuary of the virgin goddess.
"Ggh..."
"Where is this...?"
"What in the..."
The blazing flames drove away the darkness.
In the pitch-black space, this place alone held the only light.
And Arphia felt a question rise within her.
'Come to think of it, this is...?'
The other side's power was divine power. So how was this guy resisting it?
No matter how much of a counter skill it was against a specific ability, there were clear limits. Especially when it came to something like mental interference.
And yet the rabbit was casually repelling it. Was something like this really possible?
No, leaving that aside...
'My body...?'
Her body felt light. Lighter than she had ever felt before.
The virgin goddess's sacred flame had even driven away the hateful disease that had taken root inside her from the moment of her birth.
Of course, once the sacred flame went out, the curse would begin to stir again, but even this was something worthy of being called a miracle.
Her curse had never been something that could be improved by any means.
The best she had ever managed was to delay it with the leaves of the World Tree, but that had been exactly that—delay, not treatment.
And yet this, so easily...?
"...What are you going to do now?"
The question rose to her throat, but she held it back with superhuman patience.
Now was not the time to ask that.
Right now, all that mattered was dealing with that monster. Questions could come after.
There would be plenty of time to talk. Once this was over, sitting down for a proper conversation wouldn't be so bad.
Even with that monster right in front of her, Arphia did not spare even a thought for the possibility of death.
She still had not realized that, unconsciously, she had already come to believe they would survive.