Reality affords no one a break.
The fissure above the academy hums like a heart that refuses to stop beating. The barrier is holding on by a thread and is already showing irreparable cracks, not from lack of power, but because the people sustaining it are disappearing.
Mio stood at the center of the sealing array.
The forcibly reactivated Second Sealing Ritual lay beneath her feet. Layer upon layer of runes formed a complex array, hardly suited for a "human" ritual. The spiritual pressure in the air was suffocatingly heavy, yet Mio remained unnaturally calm.
Too calm.
Grey watched her, finally sensing something was amiss.
"Stop," he said. "This ritual wasn't meant for you."
Mio did not turn. She merely lowered her head to check the final rune circuit. Her fingertips glowed as if gradually being drained of warmth.
"I know," she replied softly.
Grey's pupils contracted.
"You'll—"
"I know what will happen," Mio cut him off, her tone gentle yet unquestionable. "If I don't do this, the barrier won't withstand the next wave."
The surrounding Student Council members fell silent.
It wasn't that they didn't understand.
Precisely because they understood, they were speechless.
This seal didn't consume spiritual energy.
It bound souls.
Once activated, the "anchor points" sustaining the barrier would no longer be formations, but people.
In a lowered voice tinged with suppressed fury, Grey said, "You were not permitted to sacrifice yourself."
Mio finally turned to face him.
That glance was fleeting yet felt like a farewell.
"This is not a sacrifice," she said. "It is a choice."
She lifted her gaze toward the fissure where nothing could be seen, yet she seemed certain that Rei was not present.
"He is not here, so he cannot bear the cost."
"But someone must shoulder the seal."
She smiled faintly.
"That person happens to be me."
The runes glowed.
The barrier began to restructure and the tremors of the fissure were forcibly suppressed. The academy's structure gradually stabilized, and space ceased to tear apart. The world seemed held in place by an invisible hand.
The cost began to manifest.
Mio's form showed signs of distortion.
Her outline blurred, as if the signal were poor. Light passed through her body, casting no shadow. Someone gasped, but a single glance from Hui stifled the sound.
Hui approached her step by step.
"The recording system will deem you an anomalous existence," he stated. "If this continues, your name will be erased from the academy, from the world..."
Mio nodded.
"I know."
"You won't even be remembered," Grey said hoarsely. "Not even by him."
This time, Mio remained silent for several seconds.
Then, she murmured,
"That's all right."
She closed her eyes and embedded the final fragment of her soul into the core of the seal.
"As long as he can keep moving forward."
Whether anyone remembers me doesn't matter."
The seal was complete.
The fissure was suppressed, the alarm was lifted, and the world returned to "normal."
Mio stood where she was, yet she already seemed to stand outside the world.
Grey reached out, seeking to grasp something, yet touched nothing.
Her existence was slowly being drawn away.
Before vanishing completely, she left one final sentence addressed to no one yet as if to someone absent:
"You owe me nothing."
This is my own decision."
The wind blew, extinguishing the runes.
The seal remained active.
From that moment on, one person began to be forgotten by the world.
Li knew nothing of it.
He was not present.
Nor could he have prevented it.
That was the cruelest part.
The fissure did not widen.
Nor did it narrow.
It simply remained there, like an eye that was being watched for the first time, no longer actively gazing down upon the world.
Li approached it.
He was not pulled or summoned; he took that step of his own accord. As his foot fell, the space emitted a low rumble, as if confirming that an authority had been activated.
Nishira's presence unfolded before him.
Formless and boundless, it was merely an ever-shifting "possibility." It was the endpoint, the fault line, and the shortcut the world took when it could go no further.
It was also that which no one had ever dared to judge.
"You've finally come," Nishira's voice was no longer cold, yet it remained hollow. "Return to where you belong."
Li halted.
This time, those words did not affect him.
"I didn't come to ask that," he said.
The Eye of Judgment slowly opened.
There was no rampage or tearing sensation, only an unprecedented steadiness. It was as if it had finally focused on the correct target.
For the first time, Nixira hesitated.
"What do you wish to judge?"
"You." Li answered curtly.
The light within the fissure trembled faintly.
It wasn't anger.
It was bewilderment.
"You have always been regarded as 'inevitable,'" Li continued in a low yet terrifyingly clear voice. "The seal failed because the world was not strong enough. The fissure appeared because humanity erred. You took everything yet never took responsibility."
He lifted his head and stared directly into the bottomless void.
"But have you ever considered—"
"That you, too, are fleeing."
Nishira fell silent.
The Eye of Judgment began its work.
Not to unleash power, but to reveal.
Images from the Fissure's depths were forcibly dragged to the surface—those severed timelines, those choices deemed "necessary sacrifices," and those futures that could have been saved but were skipped entirely.
The Fissure hadn't failed to see.
It had chosen not to look.
"I am the End."
"I am not permitted to choose."
"Wrong," Li interrupted.
For the first time in their exchange, his voice overpowered the Fissure itself.
"You are capable of choosing."
"You fear that once you choose, you must bear the consequences."
His tone was cool, verging on cruel.
"So you simply strip away meaning.
Making all worlds 'doomed to decay' so you'd always be right."
The Fissure's structure began to destabilize.
Not a collapse, but a conceptual shift. It was like an unquestioned premise that was suddenly marked with a question mark.
Li stepped forward.
The defining moment arrived.
"You stripped the world of meaning because you dared not possess it."
In that instant, the fissure made a sound like breathing.
Not a roar.
Not a counterattack.
But a tremor.
A cracklike void appeared in Nisila's existence—a state it had never experienced before. For the first time, it realized that it was not pure inevitability but an entity that shunned choice.
"What if I admit it?"
"Admit I am guilty?"
Li did not reply immediately.
He closed his eyes and then opened them again.
"Then you shall no longer be merely a fissure.
But an error that must be remembered."
The Eye of Judgment slowly contracted.
Not to seal nor annihilate.
But to remain.
The fissure did not vanish.
Yet it lowered its gaze.
For the first time, the world's terminator—in judgment—retreated half a step.
In the distance, the tremors of the seal stabilized.
Li stood before the fissure, his shoulders slightly slumped.
He knew this trial had not ended everything.
From this moment on, however, the rules had been rewritten.
He was no longer the world's judge.
But—
Even necessity must answer "why."