The grass did not stain. Shin rubbed his palm against the vibrant green blades, expecting the familiar smear of chlorophyll or the dampness of soil. There was none. The surface felt like velvet stretched over a cooling corpse—yielding, soft, yet fundamentally lifeless. It was an aesthetic perfection that felt like a personal insult to everyone who had died in the dust of the Trench.
Reiji Takumi was the first to fully succumb to the seduction. He was kneeling by a stream that ran with water so clear it looked like liquid glass. He didn't cup his hands; he plunged his entire face into the water, drinking with a desperate, rhythmic intensity. When he pulled back, his skin wasn't just wet—it was luminous. The deep, jagged scar that had run from his temple to his jaw, a souvenir from a collapse in the mines three years ago, was gone. Not faded. Not healed. Erased.
"It's real," Reiji whispered, his voice trembling with a terrifying kind of piety. He touched his smooth cheek, his fingers shaking. "The pain… the constant ringing in my ears… it's stopped."
"That isn't healing, Reiji. That's an edit."
Hiroshi Kanzaki remained standing, his arms crossed tightly over his chest as if trying to hold his own atoms together. He was staring at a cluster of white lilies near the water's edge. He hadn't touched anything. His medical mind was screaming, a silent siren in the back of his skull.
"Biology requires a tax," Hiroshi continued, his voice cold and clinical. "Growth requires decay. Repair requires energy. You drank that water, and a three-year-old fibrous tissue disappeared in seconds. Where did the mass go? What did the world take in exchange for your vanity?"
Reiji stood up, his eyes flashing with a sudden, sharp defensive anger. "Vanity? I can breathe without agony for the first time in a thousand days, and you call it vanity? Look around you, Doctor. The Trench is gone. The shadows are gone. If this is a lie, it's a better one than the truth we were born into."
Shin watched them, but he didn't intervene. He was focused on the hollowness. Since the moment they had crossed the threshold, the sensation in his chest—the 'Effect'—had settled into a dull, throbbing ache. It felt like a phantom limb, a part of him that didn't exist until the world changed. He looked at his shadow again. It was darker than the shadows of the trees, a concentrated blot of ink on the pristine lawn.
Ayame Shindo walked past them toward a tree laden with heavy, violet fruit. She didn't ask for permission. She plucked one, the stem snapping with a sound like a clean bone fracture. She took a bite.
She chewed slowly, her expression unreadable. Then, she spat the mouthful onto the grass.
"It tastes like nothing," she said, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. "It's sweet, then it's salty, then it's whatever you're thinking about. It has no character. It's a mirror, not a meal."
"But are you full?" Shin asked.
Ayame paused, her eyes narrowing. She looked down at her stomach. "Yes. I feel like I've eaten a banquet. But I don't remember the flavor. It's efficient. It's efficient in the way a cage is efficient."
She walked toward Shin, her obsidian shard held loosely at her side. She looked at his shadow, then back at his eyes. "You feel it too, don't you? The pressure. This place is trying to fill the gaps in us, Shin. But some gaps aren't meant to be filled."
A sudden, sharp cry erupted from the distance. It wasn't a human voice. It was a high-pitched, melodic chime that carried a hidden edge of distress.
Shin didn't wait for Reiji's command or Hiroshi's analysis. He ran toward the sound, his new linen clothes fluttering in the wind. He crested a small, rolling hill and stopped.
Below him, in a clearing filled with statuesque, silver-barked trees, was one of the others from the Trench—a young man named Kaito. He had been a quiet boy, barely twenty, who spent his days in the mines humming songs no one recognized.
Kaito was standing in the center of the clearing, his arms outstretched. He was weeping, but his tears were the color of liquid gold. Around his feet, the grass was turning into white marble. The transformation was crawling up his legs, turning skin and cloth into cold, unyielding stone.
"Kaito! Don't move!" Shin yelled, sprinting down the slope.
"I'm not moving," Kaito said, his voice sounding hollow, as if he were speaking into a deep well. He looked at Shin with eyes that were already losing their pigment. "I just wanted it to stay like this. I just wanted to be still. I didn't want to go back to the digging. I wished for… for forever."
The Paradise was granting his wish. It was taking his desire for peace and literalizing it into an eternal monument.
"Break it!" Shin reached Kaito and grabbed his shoulders. The stone was freezing, a cold that bit through Shin's palms. He tried to pull Kaito, but the boy was anchored. He was already part of the landscape.
"Hiroshi! Help him!" Shin screamed.
The doctor arrived, breathless, followed by Reiji and Ayame. Hiroshi knelt, examining the marble transition. He reached into his pocket for a scalpel he had carried since the old world, but when he drew it, the metal was rusted through, crumbling into dust the moment the air of Paradise touched it.
"I can't," Hiroshi whispered, his voice cracking. "My tools… they don't belong here. Kaito, listen to me. You have to want to leave. You have to want the pain back. Struggle!"
"Why?" Kaito smiled. It was a terrifyingly serene expression. The marble reached his chest. "It doesn't hurt. It's the first thing that hasn't hurt."
"He's being consumed," Ayame said, her voice hard. She stepped forward, the obsidian shard in her hand pulsing with a faint, sickly purple light. "The world is eating him because he stopped resisting. This is what the Nectar does. It satisfies you until you disappear."
Shin felt a surge of cold fury. This wasn't a heaven. It was a digestive system. He looked at Kaito's face, now partially stone. He felt the 'Effect' in his chest flare up—not as an ache, but as a jagged, violent necessity.
He didn't think. He acted on an instinct that felt older than his own life. He reached into the air, his fingers clawing at the emptiness in front of him.
The air didn't resist; it tore.
A sound like grinding metal filled the clearing. From the vacuum of his own shadow, a weapon manifested. It wasn't a sword or a spear. It was a heavy, blackened chain, its links jagged and uneven, dripping with a smoke that smelled of the Trench—of sweat, blood, and iron.
The 'Ather' had taken shape.
Shin swung the chain. It didn't strike the marble with physical force; it struck it with the weight of his own refusal. The chain lashed against Kaito's stone legs, and the marble shattered—not into pebbles, but into grey dust that smelled of the mines.
Kaito collapsed, his legs fleshy and bruised once more. He screamed in pain as the sensation returned to his limbs. It was a horrible, guttural sound, and to Shin, it was the most beautiful thing he had heard since entering this place. It was the sound of something real.
The chain in Shin's hand vibrated, a low hum that traveled up his arm and settled in his teeth. It felt heavy—absurdly heavy. Every second he held it, he felt his own vitality being siphoned away, his vision blurring at the edges.
He let go. The chain didn't fall to the grass; it dissolved into his shadow, leaving his palms burnt and trembling.
The silence returned to the clearing, but it was no longer peaceful. It was expectant. The birds had stopped singing. The breeze had died.
Reiji was staring at Shin as if he were a monster. "What was that? That… filth. You brought that here? Into this place?"
"I saved him," Shin panted, clutching his chest.
"You brought the Trench with you," Reiji spat, his hand gripping the hilt of his restored sword. "Look at what you did to the grass. Look at the smoke."
Indeed, where the chain had touched the ground, the emerald grass had turned into grey ash. The Paradise was already trying to repair it, the green blades creeping back over the wound like a slow-motion wave.
"It's not a gift, Reiji," Hiroshi said, his eyes fixed on Shin's trembling hands. He looked at Kaito, who was sobbing in the dirt, clutching his bruised legs. "The boy is right. The weapon isn't a gift. It's a manifestation of what we cannot leave behind. Shin didn't call for a weapon. He called for his own burden."
Ayame walked over to Kaito and helped him up. She didn't look at the sky or the trees. She looked at the horizon, where the golden gate sat like a gilded cage.
"The voice said our desires are the law here," Ayame murmured. "Kaito desired peace, and it almost killed him. Shin desired to break the peace, and he birthed a nightmare."
She turned to Shin, her gaze sharp enough to draw blood. "We aren't guests here, Shin. We are the grit in the eye of a god. And I don't think this world is going to stop trying to blink us away."
In the distance, the Luun appeared again. This time, there were dozens of them, hovering at the edge of the silver trees. They didn't approach. They simply watched, their mercury surfaces reflecting the group—not as the pristine figures they appeared to be, but as a cluster of dark, jagged stains on a perfect canvas.
Shin looked at his hands. The burns were already fading, the skin knitting back together with unnatural speed.
"We have to move," Shin said, his voice hard. "We have to find the end of this place before we forget who we are."
"And if there is no end?" Reiji asked, his voice small.
Shin didn't answer. He started walking toward the golden gate, his shadow trailing behind him, long and persistent, refusing to be lightened by the sun of a lying paradise.