Will was like a branding iron, scorching through his fragility.
"Ah—!"
A tuneless roar burst from Shu's throat, his expression twisted hideously by agony and extreme coercion.
Broken bones made tooth-aching grinding sounds inside his body.
The remaining Honkai energy, which should have been used to preserve his last shred of life, was diverted from his heart vessels and squeezed madly, attempting to ignite it once more.
Finally, under such burning, Shu raised a hand and dug it fiercely into the rough black soil beneath him.
Veins bulged on the back of that hand, mixing with ice shards and blood foam, trying to prop up this tattered body.
He had to stand up!
He must stand up!
To fight! To stop it!
To—
Crack.
A crisp, light sound brought despair.
The forearm Shu used for support... snapped under the burden the instant it was about to lift his upper body.
Losing support, his body crashed heavily back onto the ice surface, splashing up a patch of bloody ice mixed with glass shards.
"Hah... hah..." He panted futilely, his vision blacking out in waves due to the intense pain and weakness.
He had to...
...
He couldn't do it...
The current him could do nothing...
...
"No... perhaps..."
"'Shu' can indeed still do something."
Just ahead of Shu, the vitrification had spread to his chest. [Shu], looking as if he would shatter at a touch, moved.
[Shu] slowly, yet incredibly steadily, raised that right hand already covered in cracks.
He kept his head lowered, watching his other self trembling on the ground in anger and powerlessness, and the corners of his mouth actually curved upward.
"The one in the mirror is fake after all... yet the one to break the afterimage is the unrealistic dream inside the mirror..."
He muttered to himself in a low voice, almost inaudible amidst the gradually raging gravitational turbulence.
"So, I am 'fake,' an 'afterimage' destined to disappear... Heh."
[Shu] let out another long sigh, shedding some shimmering dust from his body.
Then, he no longer looked at his feet but raised his head to look at the sky.
"But in the end, I won this battle."
He spoke softly, the five fingers of his raised right hand closing slightly, as if grasping something non-existent.
In the next moment—
HUMMM——————!!!
A resonance transcending physical distance bloomed in front of [Shu].
A stream of light, brilliant to the extreme, erupted thunderously within ARC City, tearing through the atmosphere, ignoring geographical barriers, and piercing the long sky at a speed surpassing common sense.
That was the radiance of countless possibilities, countless "dreams" intertwined, emitting a light belonging to humanity.
Silvery white, crimson purple, azure blue, profound dark, pale pink...
And the warm goose-yellow of countless people's ordinary wishes...
Countless colors rushed and converged, finally condensing into a dazzling conceptual rainbow bridge spanning half the planet!
And at the end of the rainbow bridge was that raised hand on the Antarctic ice sheet.
Dreams would transform into a supreme scepter, draping the chosen one in crown and radiance.
Crowning him!
Herrscher of Dreams—"Shu."
This time, there was no contention or interference from the other Shu.
The scepter was quietly placed by [Shu]'s side. The flowing light on the staff moved docilely, subtly echoing the dispersing glassy spots of light on its new holder.
It was as if even the scepter were mourning his shattering.
The moment he grasped the scepter, the vitrification on [Shu]'s body did not stop, nor did it slow down in the slightest.
The shattering continued, the peeling continued.
But he didn't care.
He looked back at Shu on the ground, who had finally stopped struggling and was just staring at him intently. The playful smile on his face widened a bit.
"Look," he said. "'Shu' won."
Before his voice faded.
On the ice plain, [Shu]'s figure vanished.
Replacing it was a "Road Sign of Light."
At first, it wasn't blinding or violent. It simply rose quietly from where he stood—that messy ice surface reflecting two broken reflections.
Like a wisp of ember blown away from a bonfire by the evening breeze, trailing a warm tail, drifting persistently toward the pitch-black night sky.
This light climbed faster and faster, its trail lengthening and diffusing.
After entering the high altitude, it began to absorb and refract all "light" and "color" along the way.
The eerie green ribbons of the aurora australis were gently drawn in, becoming its flowing gauze garment.
The last molten gold of the setting sun at the edge of the clouds was quietly absorbed, tinting its core.
The civilized galaxy of lights from the cities below seemed to receive a summons, casting a faint halo toward it.
It was a "return."
A return of color and light, quietly heading toward deep, cold space.
Above the ground, within the cities, not everyone could sense the crisis.
But a late returner happening to look up might catch a glimpse of this unusual "meteor."
It wasn't silvery white and swift like ordinary meteors, rushing with the haste of falling.
It was full, soothing, and incredibly brilliant.
Like a little painter who had never experienced the constraints of rules, calmly painting a living rainbow on the dark blue canvas of the sky with a brush dipped in all gentle pigments.
So those who witnessed it felt no panic in their hearts, only having their breath gently taken away in that instant by this unexpected, magnificent beauty.
And at the tip of this brilliant path of light, at its core, "Shu" was "melting."
His form had already begun to blur. The dreamlike radiance emitted by the scepter and the glassy spots of light from his own disintegration had thoroughly merged.
The physical cold of space was deadly, but he could no longer feel it.
His "perception" seemed to have spread to this path of light he created itself; every flow of color was a ripple of his thoughts.
The initial straight ascent was the ember of reason, the trajectory of "must do," clear and firm.
Subsequently, the path of light swayed slightly, like a candle flame in the wind.
In that moment, more delicate colors quietly surfaced.
It was the warm yellow light from the window of the HOMU shop, the joyous melodies when people gathered, a hint of hidden crimson jumping at the tips of a white-haired girl's hair when she laughed...
These colors did not dim the path or make it hesitate; they were like watercolors blending, making it appear somewhat swaying.
This sway was a look back, an attachment, the gentle gravity exerted by fragments of countless "daily lives" at the final moment.
But this attachment did not condense into heavy unwillingness.
Just as it was about to settle, a wonderful change occurred in the path of light itself.
It began to turn "translucent."
Those decisive, attached... gentle... shining...
Everything suddenly permeated each other, merged, and achieved a harmony.
It seemed as if it were a naturally beautiful "existence" in this starry sky, flowing quietly on this trajectory since ancient times, only happening to be seen by eyes on Earth tonight.
Within the path of light, that last bit of core consciousness belonging to [Shu] felt a complete lightness in this incredibly translucent, incredibly harmonious glow.
Reason had long dissipated, duty was fulfilled, and even reluctance had become part of the light.
Only the purest, final wisp of thought remained, flickering quietly like the smallest and most eternal star at the end of the light path:
To become such a light... is truly good.
To burn like this once before disappearing, to have illuminated this night sky... is truly good.
The brilliant... gentle road sign of light flowed unhurriedly toward that dark deep space swallowing starlight, named "Abzu."
Go home...
...
Here is home.