Souta Tamadate's Void was exactly like his personality — a natural door-opener, something that could break down any sealed barrier in any person's heart. Point its lens at an obstacle and that obstacle would simply cease to exist, erased from the world entirely. It was a monstrous ability, sharing that same essential logic as Okuyasu Nijimura's Stand, The Hand — the power to erase space.
But the owner was clearly not much smarter than Okuyasu. A man sitting on an ability this strong and the only thing he'd ever used it for was opening cans. Even setting aside the fact that it apparently didn't work on living things, it was still a top-tier Void by any measure. Shu Ouma in the original clearly wasn't very bright either — judging Voids purely by raw numerical strength, the same way you'd rate a Stand on stats alone. It was a lazy and ruinous way of thinking.
Voids and Stands had a great deal in common: combat weapons were only one category. The truly interesting ones were the intelligence-gathering Voids and the high-level mechanism Voids — the ones that disappeared off the rankings entirely if you only looked at damage output.
Souta was irritating as a person, but he hadn't committed any actual crimes in this world, so Inori had left him alive for now. Killing him outright would also eliminate his Void, which made it a losing trade either way.
Click.
Inori walked at the front of the group and fired a shot with the camera. The massive gate blocking their path blinked out of existence, deleted from the world. That same efficient method carried them through the base's defenses one by one — straight to the interior, without resistance.
The infiltration team was lean: Inori, "Diavolo," and Gai Tsutsugami. Which was to say, in practice, two people.
Argo and Ayase had both wanted to come along, but Gai had shut that down, citing the need to keep the forward team small, and stationed them in the outer perimeter for backup.
There were no regular GHQ troops garrisoned here — just a handful of ceremonial patrol guards — but even so, three people charging through the base with this kind of open contempt for subtlety inevitably drew attention.
"I-intruders!"
One of the soldiers spotted them. His first instinct wasn't to shoot — it was to trigger the base alarm. But he was too slow.
Gai moved to draw his weapon, but "Diavolo" had already beaten him to it. A throwing knife left his hand with perfect precision and zero wasted motion. The blade buried itself in the soldier's throat; blood welled up immediately. He clutched his neck but couldn't produce a sound, only crumpled to the floor in agony, left there to die.
"That was incredible, Diavolo-san!"
Inori lit up like a devoted fan.
Beneath the mask, King Crimson's expression brightened with undisguised joy — this was the first time the real Inori had complimented it directly. Even at the Oula satellite, not a word. This was technically performance for an audience, but even so… a Stand's happiness was exactly this simple.
"Move faster."
And then, the moment it received Inori's internal message, King Crimson delivered those words in a voice completely stripped of feeling.
"Relax," Gai said, a confident smile on his face. "There's minimal security in this base."
"After all, with security mechanisms that not even God could break, GHQ probably never imagined that something like a 'Void' could exist."
...
...
Shu Ouma was restless.
He couldn't say exactly why. He'd tried telling himself it was just the sight of someone he cared about standing close to another man — but that reasoning fell apart almost immediately. It wasn't that at all. Something about this entire operation felt wrong.
He'd been with Funeral Parlor long enough to no longer be the rookie. He'd moved from logistical work into more active roles, and over that time he'd quietly looked into every prior operation Funeral Parlor had mounted. This one felt different. Gai seemed — unusually relaxed.
It wasn't in his nature. Even for operations that looked simple on paper, Gai had always positioned at least two reserve teams to cover extraction. Daun and those like him — the high-value individual combatants — had always been placed at the nearest ready position.
But tonight: the main force was in Roppongi, Daun and Argo were at the far outer perimeter, and Ayase — well, mecha were impractical in a place like this, too easy to spot, so that was understandable. But sending everyone outside and going in himself with only Inori and that Diavolo person…
It looked, to Shu, like Gai didn't want anyone else to see what happened inside.
— Why?
The rest of Funeral Parlor trusted Gai unconditionally. But Shu was different. The person he genuinely wanted to help was Inori.
"Hey! Shu — where are you going?"
Argo caught him moving and called out sharply.
"Stomachache. Heh." Shu scratched the back of his head with a sheepish grin.
"Unbelievable. Go, hurry back!"
In everyone else's eyes, Shu Ouma was just a good-natured, slightly hapless kid. Ayase, who had trained him, might have noticed that he was sometimes unexpectedly delicate, almost like a girl — but no one else gave him that much credit.
Shu looped a wide arc through the undergrowth, stayed low, and doubled back onto the main path, working his way quietly toward the base.
...
...
A few minutes later.
Inori stared at what lay before her, and for a moment, words completely failed her.
It looked like a scene from a science fiction film — some higher-dimensional rendering of space. The entire room was lined with rectangular prisms: ceiling, floor, all four walls, every surface covered with them. This was the world's most sophisticated lock. Each prism was an independent mechanism, each requiring its own unique code to deactivate. Brute force was not an option.
But that was exactly why she had gone to the trouble of tricking Souta Tamadate into coming here in the first place. Without waiting for Gai's prompt, Inori raised the camera and aimed it at the room — the shutter clicked — and a pale light swept through the space.
Every prism responded at once.
Red warning lights blazed across all of them. The room began to shake like an earthquake. Then, slowly, the prisms retracted into the walls — pulling back to reveal the storage space they had sealed for ten years—
"What?"
Inori's voice came out sharp with disbelief.
She had been overconfident. She hadn't bothered using Epitaph.
The cylindrical pedestal behind the now-open wall was bare. The Origin Stone that should have been resting there was gone.
— Of course.
The room was dim. Then a strand of hair fell from above and drifted across her eyes. She didn't brush it away. Through the curtain of pink, she glimpsed a flash of future — and understood everything, all at once.
Bang.
Gai's gun came up. One bullet passed through "Diavolo's" body.
"..."
King Crimson pressed a hand to its chest. It staggered back two steps, staring at the pistol in Gai's hand, smoke still curling from the barrel — then fell, and didn't rise.
"Diavolo-SAN!"
Inori screamed.
"I'm sorry, Inori. But I had no other choice."
Gai bowed his head. His golden hair fell across half his face.
——
The confirmation shots came without hesitation.
Gai leveled the gun at the fallen figure and pulled the trigger again, and again, until the magazine was completely empty. Only then did he stop.
"...No. No, no—"
Gai turned back to Inori. He put aside the hollow resignation and made his voice as gentle as he could manage.
"Inori. You're free now."
"..."
"You don't have to suffer under him anymore. I know he saved your life — but to him you were only a tool." He moved closer, crouching down toward her. "Come to my side. I'll protect you. Everyone in Funeral Parlor — they're your family."
"...Family?"
Something shifted in Inori's expression — a flicker of something distant, wondering.
She had been crying, face flushed and wrecked with tears — but in this moment, something refocused in her eyes. Her lips moved softly around the word Gai had just used.
Gai felt a wave of relief. He had genuinely been afraid that once he acted, Inori might lose control. But this — the man clearly hadn't held the place in her life that Inori had claimed. It made sense, really. Who could grow attached to someone who used violence against them?
"That's right. From this moment, you're truly free."
He thought it was over.
Then the unexpected happened.
Inori was still crouched there, still pulling herself together — when the space behind her warped. A purple fissure split open, and a fair-haired boy with thick brows, dressed in white, stepped through.
The silver-white light of the Void began to blaze. He moved without a word, driving his hand straight toward Inori's chest. As the distance closed, a hollow began to open in her chest — a silver-white warmth glowing at its center. Gai lurched to his feet — but in the fraction of a second he blinked, Inori had vanished from the spot.
Gone. Exactly like deleting a layer in an editing program. No movement, no reaction from her side. She simply wasn't there anymore.
The boy who had torn open the space was equally at a loss — he could only stare at his still-glowing hand. Even he, who was something more than human, had no explanation for what had just happened. According to the script he'd arranged: he reaches in, Inori gasps and loses consciousness as her Void is removed, and then he takes her to Shuichiro Keido — who uses her to court Eve, triggering the Second Lost Christmas.
"What happened to that woman?"
You — Da'ath's Gravekeeper. Yu.
"That's what I'd like to know!" Gai rose from the floor and leveled his gun at the newcomer. "This wasn't part of our agreement. My target was Diavolo alone. Why touch Inori?"
"You're naive."
Yu shook his head with a faint smile, thick eyebrows lifting.
"Do you think Keido would ever allow what you planned? And our original agreement — was always for Inori Yuzuriha to lose the King's Power, because she is Eve's vessel. She cannot become Adam."
Yes — reproduction requires two sexes. For the Apocalypse Virus to complete its work of unmaking the world, it needed both Eve and Adam.
"You told me that was the method to free Inori and Mana!" Gai's composure finally cracked. "That's the only reason I went through with this!"
"Words are cheap now." Yu showed no sympathy for the man he'd deceived. He turned, scanning the room. "Where did that woman go? There's no point hiding it anymore, Tsutsugami. I'm taking her back."
"...I don't know."
Gai's voice came out hollow. Powerless.
The guilt he'd shown Inori before they set out — that had been real. He had already reached his agreement with Keido by then: he would hand over the Origin Stone, and in exchange, they would cooperate with him in eliminating Diavolo and liberating Inori.
But it had been wishful thinking from the start. Because Inori was Mana — which meant Gai's true intention had been to receive the King's Power himself once it was removed from Inori. Just as he had always resolved: he would obtain that strength, take Mana back into his arms, and free her from the Virus's grip.
But Diavolo's personal appearance on-site had thrown everything off. He'd adjusted the plan with Keido at the last moment: he would assassinate Diavolo himself, then extract Inori's King's Power himself. But this Gravekeeper's actions just now — he had clearly been moving to seize Inori's powerful Void. If Inori was taken away, Gai would never get another chance at the power he needed.
Now what?
And Diavolo was dead — wasn't he? Gai turned his head.
The body that should have been lying there was gone.
Step. Step. Step.
From the corner of the room, clear and precisely rhythmic — the sound of footsteps.
"This is a trial."
A girl's voice.
Gai and the Gravekeeper both turned.
She had moved, by some means, to the far side of the room during those fractured seconds — standing now near a stack of the retracted prisms, walking slowly toward them, her face swallowed entirely by the room's dim shadows.
And behind her — the man who should have been dead. Gai had emptied a full magazine into that body. There was no physical reason for him to be standing. Except—
Why isn't he bleeding?
"I believe this is a trial — one placed before me so that I can overcome my past."
Inori kept walking. Her hands moved to the zipper of her jacket.
"Inori — what are you saying?"
As she emerged from behind the row of retracted prisms, her jacket was gone, leaving only the white midriff bandeau beneath. And behind her, "Diavolo" — for the first time in front of others — finally let its true form show.
Void-light moved across its surface and fell away. Crimson skin. Silver metallic joints. A face of silver and steel. It moved in perfect synchrony with Inori, every gesture mirrored exactly. This was King Crimson's first physical manifestation in this world — the first time even ordinary people without Stand ability could see it.
"A person can only grow by overcoming the naivety of their past."
Inori spoke again — but the voice that emerged was deep, resonant, unmistakably masculine.
"Isn't that right?"
"Gai~Tsu~tsu~ga~mi~?"
She finished in Diavolo's register, then cut back to her own voice in the same breath, calling out Gai's name. The seamless, instantaneous shift between two distinct voices made her identity impossible to deny any longer.
And now, in the returning light, she was fully visible.
She had shed the Funeral Parlor jacket. The light fell on bare shoulders, pale as fresh snow, that seemed almost to absorb and re-emit it as a thin luminous film.
Inori tilted her head up. Her gaze moved across the two men — calm, clear, without a trace of warmth.
For the first time, Gai felt a stranger looking back at him. And that voice — impossibly familiar, ringing still in his ears.
It was Diavolo's voice.
The understanding hit him all at once.
Diavolo had been shot. But there was no blood. Which meant — Diavolo wasn't a person at all.
He was a Stand.
Inori's Stand.
The man who didn't exist. Everything about him — every interaction, every word, every presence — had been a solo performance. Entirely Inori's creation, from beginning to end.