That night, they took shelter in the shell of a once-tall building. Its upper floors had long since collapsed, and moss now crept up its weathered pillars like nature trying to heal a wound no one remembered receiving. The roof had partially caved in, leaving just enough space for them to lie beneath the stars, as if the sky itself insisted on watching them.
The others slept, curled in their makeshift bedding, breaths soft, bodies still. But Shiro remained awake.
He stood alone on a jagged outcropping of concrete just outside the broken wall, gazing into the heavens. The stars shimmered like forgotten memories—bright, cold, and impossibly distant. The moon hung high and full, its silver light bathing his skin in a pale glow, painting a contrast against the deep shadows around him. His hoodie fluttered gently in the night wind, the yellow accents catching glints of moonlight like streaks of fire dancing across the void.
His gaze drifted beyond the skyline, where the silhouette of the Tower of Fate pierced the heavens like a sword left behind by a god. Its presence was both haunting and awe-inspiring—monolithic, ancient, unyielding.
Shiro exhaled slowly, his breath curling in the cold. Two more years.
That's all he had left.
He'd always thought twenty years would feel longer. That somewhere between childhood and adulthood, time would slow down, let him catch his breath, give him space to figure things out.
But it hadn't.
It had just rushed, like a current pulling him forward whether he wanted to move or not. Takashi was already gone. Others, too. Good people. Bright souls. Some had disappeared without a trace. Others had simply stopped... existing.
Now it was his turn, inching closer to that same vanishing point.
"Can't sleep?"
The voice behind him was soft, barely more than a breath, but it pulled him back from the edge of his thoughts. He turned.
Kiyomi stood there, arms wrapped around herself, black hair flowing freely in the wind, eyes like glowing amethysts in the dark. She looked fragile in that moment—not weak, never that—but mortal, like the truth of their lives had finally seeped into her bones.
"Yeah," he said. His voice came out hoarse, like it didn't belong to him.
"Same," she replied, walking closer.
She stood beside him in silence for a moment. Together, they looked up at the sky.
"Just a few more months," she whispered.
"And then..." he began.
"Yeah," she finished, swallowing hard.
They both knew what it meant.
Her twentieth year was nearly up. Soon, she would begin the process of Ascension—the mysterious and inevitable moment when a person would simply... vanish. Where they went, no one truly knew. The old faiths spoke of a promised land, a paradise waiting beyond the veil. The philosophers called it transition, a passage to a higher plane. The skeptics said it was just death, dressed in nicer words.
No one had ever come back to say for sure.
"I reach my Ascension," she said. "I'll be taken to the promised land." Her voice cracked, just barely.
Shiro looked at her. "It's gonna be hard without you."
She gave him a faint smile, one filled with too many emotions to name. "Yeah... but you'll manage. You're strong, Shiro. You always have been."
He looked away. "Not as strong as you think."
They stood in silence again.
"Maybe... we'll see each other again one day," she said quietly, her voice trembling. "Somewhere. Beyond this. Maybe that's what the Tower really is. A door."
"You really believe that?"
"I have to," she said, eyes glistening. "Because if it's not... then what was the point of any of this?"
He clenched his fists at his sides. "You only have a few months left..."
"And you only have two years," she said, looking at him.
He nodded slowly, not saying anything for a long while. Then, softly, almost like a child asking something they'd been afraid to voice:
"Why do you think we only live twenty years?"
Kiyomi's expression darkened, her smile fading. She didn't answer immediately. Instead, she sat down on a nearby piece of broken wall, her eyes returning to the stars above.
"I've asked myself that since I was ten," she said. "The adults never had answers. They just said, 'It's the way things are.' But that's not an answer. That's surrender."
Shiro sat down beside her, his legs dangling over the edge.
She continued. "Maybe it's a punishment. For some ancient sin. Maybe humanity once tried to play god, and this is the price we pay. Or maybe it's a design. Some perfect system that keeps the balance, like... like we're puzzle pieces that aren't meant to stay too long."
He listened intently.
"Or maybe," she said, voice quieter now, "we only get twenty years because that's all we can handle. Because any longer, and we'd break."
"That's bleak," Shiro said.
She laughed, a soft, bitter sound. "Maybe. Or maybe it's just true."
Shiro looked at the stars again. "I think... the worst part isn't that we die. It's that we don't know why. That we're born into this world with no map, no meaning. We spend our whole lives searching for answers we were never meant to find."
"And yet," she whispered, "we keep searching anyway."
He nodded slowly.
"Maybe that's what makes us human."
They sat there, shoulders brushing, the night stretching endlessly around them. The fire behind them had begun to die, casting flickering shadows on the cracked concrete walls.
"I don't want to forget you," Shiro said suddenly.
"You won't."
"But I will. That's the thing, Kiyomi. Time doesn't care about our promises. Memories fade. Pain dulls. Faces blur."
She turned to him, took his hand, held it tight. "Then carve me into your heart. Etch me into your soul. Climb that Tower, and when you reach the top... scream my name into the wind."
His throat tightened. "You sound like Takashi."
She smiled softly. "Maybe he left a little of himself in all of us."
Shiro squeezed her hand, his eyes burning. "I don't want you to go."
"I know."
The wind howled gently through the ruins, like the earth itself was mourning them.
But the stars kept shining. The Tower stood tall.
And the two of them sat together beneath it all—two fading flames burning against the dark.
"Hey," Kiyomi said softly, brushing her hair out of her face as the wind whispered through the ruins around them. The stars above blinked like ancient eyes, watching. Judging. Remembering. "Do you have your flute on you?"
Shiro turned to look at her, slightly surprised. His expression didn't change much, but his eyes softened. "Yeah... why?"
She shrugged gently. "We should play. Like we used to."
A silence stretched between them before Shiro gave the faintest nod. "Yeah... I think that's a great idea."
He reached into the pouch strapped to his thigh and slowly pulled out the small, well-worn instrument—its surface a polished blackwood, etched faintly with carvings only visible when the moonlight caught it just right. It had survived countless storms, fights, even the fall of cities. A relic of his past, and hers.
He brought it to his lips, inhaled deeply, and began to play.
The sound drifted out like smoke—low, aching, beautiful. A note that didn't belong to this world anymore. It weaved through the cracks in the concrete, spilled into the night, and blanketed the broken skyline in melody.
Kiyomi closed her eyes and began to hum with him, her voice soft but steady, carrying the tune like a second heartbeat.
Above them, the moon gleamed brighter, suspended in the void like a lantern held by gods who no longer spoke.
Far below, nature paused to listen.
A bird—small, fragile, alone—lowered a worm into the mouths of its nestlings high in a shattered tower. A deer and its fawn lay curled beneath the ribs of a collapsed overpass, sleeping in quiet comfort. Even a lone wolf, fur streaked with age and battle, nestled close to its pups in the ruins of an ancient gas station, gently gnawing on scavenged meat, undisturbed by the song echoing across the wasteland.
Everything... stopped.
The broken world, so full of decay and violence and time-worn scars, held its breath.
And for a few precious minutes, there was nothing but peace.
No fear.
No questions.
No fate.
Just two souls sitting beneath the sky, playing as if they were the only ones left who remembered what beauty was.
The melody slowly faded, the final note lingering like a memory caught between worlds.
Kiyomi opened her eyes, blinking away something she wouldn't call tears. "Everything's gonna be all right," she whispered, voice shaking. "You won't forget me. I know you won't."
Shiro lowered the flute, staring down at it like it had just spoken to him. He didn't answer right away. He couldn't.
"And I know you'll climb that Tower," she said, her voice stronger now, more certain. "And I know you'll really see what lies beyond it."
He turned his gaze toward the Tower in the distance—still and unmoving, shrouded in clouds like a god too ashamed to meet their eyes.
"...Do you really think there's something up there?" he asked.
Kiyomi tilted her head, thoughtful. "I think there has to be. Because if there's nothing, if this is it, then why were we given hearts that dream of more?"
Shiro stared at the horizon. "And what if what's waiting up there isn't salvation? What if it's just a mirror? A truth too awful to accept?"
"Then you look anyway," she said firmly. "Because not knowing is worse. Because living blind is worse."
Shiro's throat tightened. "You know... some nights, I wonder if there ever was a god. If there ever was a reason for any of this. Or if we're just the afterthought of a universe that created itself by accident."
Kiyomi gave a small, broken laugh. "Even if that's true... we made meaning. We built it from the ruins. From songs. From stories. From pain."
He looked down at his hands, remembering the way they had held Takashi's body. The way they had carried Izumi when she broke her leg on the cliffs. The way they had killed.
"How many people do you think climbed that Tower and never came back?" he asked.
"Too many," she said quietly.
"And what if they did reach the top?" he continued. "What if they stood at the edge of the world, screamed into the void, and the void just... stayed silent?"
Kiyomi met his gaze. "Then they carried all of us with them anyway."
That silenced him.
For a moment, all he could hear was the beating of his own heart, the whisper of the stars, the last lingering echo of the flute between them.
"Do you think you'll be able to look down from wherever you go?" he asked. "Do you think you'll be able to watch me?"
She smiled through the grief in her eyes. "I don't know. But if I can, I'll be waiting for you at the top."
Shiro turned to her, and for the first time in a long while, there was something in his eyes that hadn't been there since Takashi's death. Something raw. Something human.
"I'll climb it," he said. "No matter what it costs me. Even if I have to crawl through hell, even if I have to fight fate itself... I'll make it to the top."
"And when you do?"
"I'll look for you."
Kiyomi leaned against his shoulder, silent for a long time. The world around them was quiet again. The moon high. The stars indifferent.
"You know," she whispered, "maybe it's not about what's at the top."
He looked down at her. "What do you mean?"
"Maybe the point isn't the Tower. Maybe it's the climb. The act of reaching. Of questioning. Of refusing to stop."
"Even when you're afraid?"
"Especially when you're afraid."
Shiro closed his eyes and let the weight of the world settle into his chest.
The journey ahead would be brutal. He knew that. The Tower didn't forgive. It didn't welcome.
But it waited.
And so would he. Until the time came.
Two years left.
Two years to climb, to remember, to survive.
Two years to carry the names of the dead and the dreams of the living.
And then... the top.
Whatever that meant.
Whatever waited.
They sat there together under the broken sky, their backs against the silence, their hearts against eternity.