A vast, boundless world of pale light.
There was no wind here, no sound. Only pure, solitary white.
This was the deepest layer of thought, an infinite domain where souls, fragile as newborns, intertwined.
The souls that had cast off their shells and won their freedom were reborn within this cradle. Here, bodiless beings of pure thought danced, struggled, and slew one another. The defeated had fragments of their souls torn away and devoured by the victors, enduring a pain more brutal than any wound of flesh.
Thought was intangible. Information could be passed on. And the fixed flow of time was the most irreversible wheel of all.
Yet even a single ancient sheet of paper, if preserved well enough, could carry a final message a thousand years into the future.
Then how much more could be carried by a soul that had wandered alone for five hundred years through a world poised between mortals and gods?
In that empty daylight, across a world that seemed to stretch on forever, the farther one went, the deeper the color became. First dull, then heavy, and at last utterly black.
At the first line where white turned to black, at the boundary between the human and the divine, a transparent shadow stood in silence.
His features had faded until they were nearly impossible to make out, like a fragile projection cast from some distant age. Long since freed from any human body, this soul had grown unbearably old. Looking at him now, only the dark golden light flickering in his hollow eye sockets remained. As long as that flame still burned, he could go on waiting.
That faint figure, so fragile that even the slightest touch seemed enough to shatter him, waited there.
Leaning on a long sword, he waited.
The sword continued to draw in his soul, and the dark golden glimmer in his eye sockets dimmed in a way that could never be reversed.
Even so, he did not waver.
Only after five hundred years had he barely earned the slightest qualification to be acknowledged by this demon blade.
This was a contract.
The man, faint as an afterimage, had traded the last of his life for the blade's gift.
So he no longer cared about gain or loss, nor did he spare any thought for the fate awaiting him.
"Is it enough?" the man asked.
"From the beginning of all things to their end, only three have ever held me. Now I belong to only one. Even if you offered up your entire soul, it still would not be enough, much less this false remnant of yours. It is weaker than a grain of sand, hardly worth noticing."
An elegant, feminine voice lingered by his ear, carrying a sigh meant for him alone.
"That you could wield me twice is already a miracle. Your spirit and resolve deserve praise, but that is all, counterfeit."
"You are far too weak. Your five hundred years of struggle amount to little more than a joke. In the end, you will become nothing more than a trace of dust in this cradle of souls. If you still have even a shred of strength left, then use it for yourself."
Her words carried both the mercy of a holy mother and the mockery of a demon.
The man only smiled faintly.
"But all this time, you never once abandoned me. Even if, to you, I am little more than a snack."
This time, the woman let out a light laugh.
"Because we made a pact. As long as you remain this foolish, I cannot leave."
"I see..." The man lowered his gaze. "One slash is enough. I only need one slash."
"Impossible."
The woman answered with absolute certainty.
The dark golden shadow in the man's eye sockets flared fiercely, kindling with ghostly blue sparks. This was his final strength, and his already transparent figure became even harder to grasp.
"Still not enough," the woman said without emotion.
The man kept wringing himself dry, burning away his own existence until his entire form hovered on the verge of vanishing.
Then black lines wound around his dissipating body, crossing, joining, and building upon one another. Pitch-black armor preserved his fading life, like a hand shielding the last flicker of a dying flame.
"Now it is enough," the woman whispered.
"Thank... you."
The man knew this was the first time she had chosen to help him of her own will.
"Thank your despair and resolve. Though you will never compare to him, the conviction you carry before death is the same." She gave a faint, dismissive hum. "To hold me while bearing that armor... you truly are fortunate. As another foolish martyr, you are far luckier than the boy from long ago, who was granted only the chance to draw me."
"Did he die?"
"He merely reached his end."
"I'm also... about to reach mine."
"Protected by the Mirage Demon's black armor, and granted a single chance to draw me, you can now cut down anything."
"Wow..." The man let out a low chuckle. "Is it really that overpowered?"
In those final moments, he had recovered a trace of the person he used to be, though he had long since parted ways with that self and drifted far away from it.
The sharp-tongued woman paid him no further mind.
His eyes had once been muddy yellow, then sudden gold, then pale gold.
Now, as he opened those eyes remade into a hollow sanctum, he began a new wait.
On the border where white and black gradually bled into each other, a lone soul clad in black armor stood in silence.
This was his final resting place.
The story that had begun with that down-and-out player had reached this point.
And the first person to reach the end smiled.