The sun of Lugunica had no memory.
It rose every morning with the same absolute indifference, the same white and opinionless light that stretched over the roofs of the capital, over the country roads, over the forests and the plains, never distinguishing ordinary days from the days that would change everything.
That morning appeared identical to all the others — clear sky, fresh air carrying the scent of wet earth, birds somewhere in the distance.
And above all that, perched at the top of the Flügel tree with the nonchalance of a man who does not need gravity to exist, Kozuwa Kurisu was sipping his tea.
Sitting in the void, legs crossed, a steaming cup carefully placed on his immaculately white knee, he watched the horizon with the tranquil expression of someone waiting for the show to begin. The tree beneath him was immense, ancient, laden with that particular presence that old trees accumulate when enough stories have unfolded beneath their branches.
Kurisu paid it no mind. He had seen too many important things to be impressed by a tree, no matter how legendary.
He turned his head toward an invisible point in the air before him — toward something only he could see — and smiled.
Kurisu: « Hello everyone, dear readers. Your national Kurisu here, settled in the front row for what is about to be one of the most difficult arcs for our dear little Subaru. Kekeke. »
He paused, letting the silence of the distant forest settle in.
Kurisu: « Arc 3 truly begins now. And I have to confess something to you. »
He finished his cup, stood up with supernatural fluidity, and walked to the extreme tip of the main branch as if it were a balcony.
Kurisu: « Even I... no longer know exactly how events will unfold. »
It wasn't said with worry. Nor with performative excitement. It was said with the slightly strange serenity of someone who has just realized that the map they are holding no longer quite matches the territory they are treading — and who finds that, against all odds, deliciously interesting.
Kurisu: « The butterfly effect has started to work. My interventions, Subaru's gate, everything that happened in the capital... it changed something in the weave. Something that even I cannot completely calculate. »
He raised his arms for a moment.
Kurisu: « And that's even better. »
He turned around, pointing his finger toward a spot on the road below, where a carriage pulled by a ground dragon was progressing through the morning light.
Kurisu: « And speaking of the devil... Look who I see passing in the distance. »
With those mysterious words, he vanished in a simple breath of wind, leaving behind only a leaf swirling in the void.
On the road, the carriage advanced at a steady pace, the dull thud of the wheels on the dirt path rhythmically punctuating a silence that was not comfortable.
Natsuki Subaru's face was set.
It wasn't the tension of the nervous beginner he had been at the start of all this. It was something more solid and darker — the tension of someone who knows that what awaits him will not be simple, and who has chosen to go anyway. His eyes fixed on the road ahead with cold concentration, and his hands, resting on his knees, did not shake.
Rem was driving, the reins held with that calm assurance that was natural to her. She occasionally glanced toward him, and there was something in that look she didn't put into words — a worry she kept carefully under control because it wasn't the time to let it out.
Subaru: « Rem. Are we arriving soon? »
Rem: « Yes, Subaru-kun. We are approaching the forest of Arlam village. »
Subaru exhaled slowly through his nose.
« I hope nothing is wrong. I really hope so. »
But something deep in his chest told him that hope was a currency that no longer held much value in the places where he was going.
....
The forest gradually swallowed them, the trees closing in on either side of the path until the morning light was nothing more than a filter between the branches. And that was when Subaru felt it.
Not a clear thought, not a reasoning — just something in his gut that constricted, a primitive signal his body had learned to recognize after too many deaths.
The silence was not natural.
No birds. No rustling of animals in the undergrowth. Even the wind seemed to have held its breath.
« It's strange. I have a bad feeling. »
That was the last complete thought he had before the world exploded.
A knife sliced through the air from the trees on the left. Then another. Then five at once, crossing trajectories, an ambush calculation — someone who had done this before and knew where to strike. The ground dragon didn't even have time to react: the first blade slit its throat cleanly, and the animal collapsed with a dull thud that shook the entire carriage.
Rem: « Subaru-kun, watch out! »
She was faster than the danger. With a single pull, she wrenched him from the seat, interposing herself between him and the volley of knives that arrived a quarter of a second later. They hit the wood of the empty seat with a series of sharp clacks.
Subaru landed heavily on his shoulder, rolled, and stood up coughing.
Then he saw.
They were surrounded.
About twenty men in black hoods had materialized from the forest with that particular fluidity of people who know how to wait in the shadows. Daggers in hand, faces covered, they slowly tightened the circle. No rush. The kind of confidence one has when certain of the outcome.
Subaru: « Shit... we're surrounded. »
He turned his head toward Rem. And what he saw in her gaze stopped him.
He had seen her angry. He had seen her hurt, exhausted, determined. But this was different. What burned in her blue eyes wasn't ordinary anger — it was something animalistic, visceral, a hatred so deep and so ancient it seemed to come to her from long before this day. Her hands trembled slightly, but not from fear.
Rem: « Subaru-kun, stay behind me. »
She had positioned herself in front of him, shoulders low, center of gravity dropped.
Rem: « These are followers of the Witch Cult. »
The word fell like a stone in cold water.
Subaru: « What... ? »
The word "Witch" echoed in his skull, but he had no time to process the information. The cultists lunged at them like a pack of rabid wolves.
Rem: « No matter what happens, I will protect Subaru-kun! »
Rem was the first to respond, and she did so with the precision of a woman who had waited her whole life for the chance to do exactly this. Her morning star traced a wide arc, the chain whistling in the warm air, and the first cultist who approached her was sent flying against a trunk with a force that split the wood.
Another raised his dagger — she seized him by the wrist before the gesture was finished, forced him to pivot, and sent him into a second cultist in a movement as natural as breathing.
She was in a rage.
A cold, precise, terrifying rage.
Subaru stood for two seconds watching her. Just two seconds — long enough for his fists to clench and for a thought to cross his mind with the clarity of a knife stroke.
« Again... She's fighting. And I'm just standing here watching. »
No.
« I am not that Subaru anymore. »
There was no conscious decision. Just the sudden and irrefutable certainty that he had things to do and that standing around waiting for it to happen was not one of them. He slid to the left, letting Rem hold the center, and looked for something to do with his hands.
A cultist detached from the group upon seeing him move — smaller than the others, lighter, the dagger held awkwardly. An amateur or at least, less experienced. Subaru analyzed this in less than a second without even knowing he was analyzing.
« Don't strike from the front. Wait for the right angle. »
Kurisu's voice in his head. Two weeks of humiliation in the gardens of the Karsten estate, transformed into reflex.
The cultist feinted left. Subaru stepped back half a pace, letting the dagger pass, pivoted on his supporting foot, and drove his right elbow into the man's ribs before he had finished his movement.
The cultist doubled over. Subaru seized his armed wrist, forced the twist outward until the fingers released the weapon, and shoved him to the ground with a push to the back.
It wasn't pretty. It wasn't spectacular. But it was functional.
« I did it. I actually— »
An impact in his left flank cut the thought in two.
He hadn't seen the other one coming. Much taller, much more solid — the man's shoulder slammed into him like a moving wall, and Subaru flew two meters before meeting the ground with his hip. Pain radiated from his ribs in steady waves, the breath knocked out of his lungs.
The cultist was already above him, dagger raised.
Subaru rolled.
Not well, not gracefully — a messy shoulder roll that training had made instinctive, and the blade stabbed into the earth where his neck had been a tenth of a second earlier. He got back to his feet, breathing hard, hands up.
The cultist turned around. Subaru didn't wait. He charged, not to strike — but to unbalance. His shoulder slammed into the man's sternum, both fell together, and in the ensuing scramble, Subaru did the only thing he knew how to do in that situation:
He held on, he refused to let go, he searched for a position on the opponent's arm, and finally pinned him down with all his weight until the man stopped struggling, out of breath.
He stood up. His arms were shaking slightly. His ribs were screaming.
« Two. I neutralized two of them. »
In the rest of the clearing, Rem had already eliminated ten.
But they kept coming.
The next waves were harder.
Subaru took a gash on his left forearm — nothing deep, but enough for warm blood to run down his fingers and make his grip less secure. A blow from a hilt to his shoulder made him stumble.
Another cultist almost caught him by surprise from behind, and it was only because he had learned never to turn his back completely that he found himself dodging with a side step rather than receiving the dagger in his kidneys.
Each exchange cost him something. Energy. Breath. A bit of blood here or there.
He didn't have time to be proud. There was always someone in front of him.
That was when Rem didn't see the one sliding into her blind spot.
The cultist had circled around in silence while she dealt with two opponents simultaneously. His dagger was raised, aiming for the side of the girl's neck.
Rem felt the movement a fraction of a second too late — her body began to pivot, but her morning star was still in extension, and there wasn't enough time.
Subaru: « Don't touch Rem, you bastard! »
He hadn't thought. He had run.
His fist slammed into the cultist's face with all the strength he had in his right arm, at the exact moment the dagger was about to touch. The man flew back, his feet leaving the ground, and went crashing against a tree trunk four meters away.
There was no second movement. Just a body slowly sliding down the wood and staying on the ground.
Rem turned around.
Rem: « Subaru-kun! »
Subaru: « It's okay, it's okay. I'm here. »
He was breathing hard. His fist hurt — not a light pain, a real pain that traveled up to his elbow. He looked at the unconscious cultist and stopped for a second.
« I had... that much strength? »
He didn't know exactly what to do with that information. But that second of inattention nearly cost him dearly. A blade grazed his side, tearing his jacket and slicing his skin.
The burn of the wound brought him brutally back to reality. He wasn't invincible. He jumped back, panting, while Rem pulverized his attacker.
Rem: « Stay focused, Subaru-kun! »
Subaru: « Yes, sorry! I've got your back! »
He moved back into position.
....
The fight lasted. Longer than Subaru hoped, with highs and lows, moments where he held his own correctly and moments where he was an inch away from being swept away.
Rem handled the majority of the danger — she was exponentially more powerful than him, and they both knew it.
But Subaru was no longer a burden. He covered her blind spots, neutralized secondary opponents trying to flank her, used his legs and holds rather than brute force.
Once, he used a cultist's body as an improvised shield against a dagger thrown from the trees.
Another time, he tripped over a root and narrowly avoided a knife by collapsing to the ground — which looked like luck but was actually his body having learned to choose the ground over stubbornness.
His lungs burned. His left thigh ached from a blow he had taken without really noticing. The gash on his forearm had stopped bleeding, but the wound remained open, sensitive to every impact.
« Damn... they never end. »
Rem: « Get back, Subaru-kun! »
He didn't need her to tell him twice. There was something in her voice — not fear, but a resolution that had reached another level. He took a step back, then two, eyes on the cultists who continued to emerge from the trees.
Rem deployed her horn.
The light was blue, intense, almost blinding in the dimness of the forest. The atmospheric pressure changed — Subaru felt it in his ears like when one changes altitude too fast.
The horn radiated from Rem's forehead, and the girl was no longer quite the same: her movements were wider, faster, her strength tenfold, and in her eyes burned something primitive and absolute.
Rem: « I will... end this. »
What she did next had little to do with technique. It was power deployed without restraint, leaps of several meters, the flail tracing arcs in the air and carrying away everything it crossed. Cultists fell in groups. Trees cracked under the impacts.
The air smelled of hot metal and something electric, almost stormy.
But some had planned for this.
Four cultists detached from the main group while Rem handled the rest — they took positions between the trunks. Glowing red spheres of fire began to crackle between their fingers, aiming at Rem who was busy repelling half a dozen blades.
Subaru saw them. Understood in a fraction of a second.
Subaru: « Shit — SHAMAK! »
The spell exploded from him differently than before. Unlike the pathetic little cloud of the past, a true tide of thick, suffocating darkness erupted.
There, with the new gate, it was different — the black smoke deployed faster, denser, covering a wider radius, and Subaru felt in his chest not the usual exhaustion but something closer to a great sustained effort, like running for a long time rather than sprinting once.
He could hold it longer. He could do more.
« Kurisu... this gift... it's real. Thank you. »
He moved through the smoke using the memory of their positions and found the first one before the cultist heard him coming. A knee to the stomach, a shove, and the man stopped concentrating his spell.
The second received an arm lock that twisted his wrist until his fingers let go. The last two, disoriented by the smoke, tried to flee and ran straight into Rem, who was finishing the last combatants on her side.
The clearing went silent.
Gradually. Like when a background noise you hadn't really noticed finally disappears.
The Shamak smoke stretched in lazy curls in the still air of the forest. Rem stood at the center of the chaos — body smeared with blood, horn slowly receding into her forehead, breath still short but stabilizing.
She faltered slightly, and Subaru was there before she tried to compensate.
Subaru: « Rem... Easy. »
He caught her by the shoulders, and they sat together in the damaged grass.
Rem: « It's over, Subaru-kun... We succeeded. »
Subaru: « Yeah. »
He was breathing hard. His arm hurt. His thigh pulsed. His lungs had been demanding air for several minutes and he hadn't really had time to give it to them. But he was standing. He had held on.
« I didn't watch from the sidelines this time. I was there. »
It wasn't exactly pride. It was calmer than that. More grounded.
They stayed for a moment without speaking, the silence of the forest gradually returning — first the insects, then the light wind in the leaves. Something almost normal.
Subaru: « I hope the others are okay. We shouldn't be long. »
Rem nodded, gradually catching her breath.
Rem: « Understood. We should... »
Her voice stopped.
Not like when one finishes a thought. Like when something inside freezes solid.
Her nostrils flared slightly. Her shoulders straightened suddenly, muscles transitioning from post-combat fatigue to total alert in a fraction of a second. Her eyes scanned the forest in all directions without finding a target.
It wasn't a physical smell.
It was a presence. A hostility that had no form or locatable source — something that permeated the air like humidity, as if the atmosphere itself were charged with murderous intent.
Not the stench of the Witch she knew, the one that clung to Subaru and put her on alert. No. This was much worse. An abominable stench. It was a primordial, slimy presence that directly assaulted the soul. A hostility of terrifying purity.
Rem: « Subaru-kun! »
She didn't wait. She threw herself on him and pushed him with all her might toward the left.
Subaru left the ground, projected three meters away, arms extended in front of him by reflex. He landed in the dead leaves and rolled twice before stopping, breathless, palms scraped against the stones.
Subaru: « Rem?! What are— »
A sound.
Wet. Deep. Obscene in its physical intimacy.
Shlurp.
Something lukewarm splashed onto Subaru's back. On the nape of his neck. On the side of his face.
He didn't understand immediately. His brain refused to understand. He stood up, pivoting around, eyes searching for the source of the danger, searching for the enemy, searching—
Rem was still standing.
But something was wrong.
Her body was trembling. Not like when one is exhausted, not like when suffering from a normal wound — but like something trying to stay upright when the inside no longer holds. Her legs no longer completely belonged to her. Her mouth was open for no apparent reason.
And in the center of her chest — through her blue uniform, through her flesh, from one side to the other — there was a hole.
As big as a fist. Black inside a red so vivid it was almost unreal. Blood flowed in a sheet over the fabric, ran down her stomach, dripped onto the grass.
Subaru: « ...Rem? »
There was no weapon. No arrow. No blade. No trace of anything. Just this impossible hole in the chest of the girl standing before him, and he didn't understand, he didn't understand at all—
A second sound echoed.
Like wet flesh being slowly torn from other flesh. Something invisible withdrew from Rem's chest with a slowness that had no reason to exist, that seemed designed to last, to be felt, to leave a mark.
Rem spat blood. A lot. Her knees buckled.
Subaru: « REM!!! »
Forgetting the pain, the fatigue, everything, he lunged forward, sliding on his knees to catch the girl's broken body before it hit the ground. He frantically pressed his trembling hands against the horrible wound, as if his simple fingers could hold back the escaping life.
His palm was soaked immediately. The blood was warm and it wouldn't stop.
Subaru: « Rem, stay with me! Rem! What happened, who did this, why is there a hole, Rem answer me, REM— »
Rem's eyes settled on him.
They were already clouded. Not completely — she was still there, still present, but something was gradually withdrawing from the inside, like a light that dims rather than going out all at once.
A pool of tears and blood mixed on the boy's cheeks.
She raised a bloody hand. Slowly. Trembling. She found his cheek and rested there with a gentleness so disarming that Subaru felt his throat close.
Rem: « Subaru... kun... »
Her voice was barely audible. Like something said from very far away.
Rem: « Run... protect... live... »
A spasm went through her body from her neck to her feet. A long tremble that took away the last tensions of her muscles, and her hand fell away from Subaru's cheek.
She was motionless. Her gaze froze for eternity.
Subaru: « No. »
The word came out alone, barely whispered, not yet a scream.
Subaru: « No no no no— Rem! REM! Stay with me, don't leave, stay here, REM— »
He held her with all his strength as if his arms could compensate for what his hands could not close. Blood soaked his clothes, his knees, his wrists.
His face pressed against the girl's blue hair and he cried without realizing it, or perhaps he knew and it didn't matter because there was nothing else to do. He was helpless. Again.
There was no one. No visible enemy. No understandable attack.
Just death, come from nowhere, which had taken Rem with the absolute indifference of a natural law.
A laugh echoed between the trees.
He was slow. Theatrical. Descending from the branches like cold water on the nape of the neck.
Petelgeuse: « Ohhhhhh ~... »
A pause. Almost melancholy.
Petelgeuse: « What magnificent love. »
Then the tone shifted.
Petelgeuse: « What touching fidelity ~! »
Then he exploded.
Petelgeuse: « So it is YOU! You who dare to defy true love?! Who dare to defile this sacred place with your impure presence?! »
The branches creaked. A silhouette emerged from the shadows between two trunks with the slowness of someone who knows they have no reason to hurry — someone who knows the outcome is already decided and that the only remaining question is one of rhythm.
He was emaciated. His skin was a color between green and corpse-gray, dotted with dark spots like bruises caused by nothing. His dark clothes were filthy, his green hair cut into a bowl.
His smile was too wide for his face, too precise to be natural, and his eyes — his eyes were white pits where something burned from the inside without heat, just a senseless light.
He stopped a few meters away. He tilted his head with sincere curiosity.
Petelgeuse: « Ohh... but tell me. »
His voice had become almost soft again. Almost normal. It was worse.
Petelgeuse: « Are you not, you too, a beloved child? With such love upon you... »
He brought a finger to his lips.
Petelgeuse: « ...could you be Pride? »
Subaru raised his head.
His eyes were bloodshot. No tears now — just that thing that burns when pain and rage occupy all available space and nothing else can enter. His hands trembled around Rem's motionless body, but it wasn't out of fear. It didn't look like fear at all.
Subaru: « ...You. »
A whisper. Just one.
Then his jaws tightened.
Subaru: « YOU... I'M GOING TO KILL YOU!!! »
The boy lunged, fist forward, ready to slaughter this monster with his own hands. But he didn't even have time to cross two meters.
Two steps, three — and something invisible seized him. Not gradually, not with a surge of resistance. All at once, as if the air had solidified around his limbs and decided to lift him.
He left the ground.
Subaru: « Argh—! »
His feet searched for a surface beneath them and found nothing. His arms were pinned in the positions they were in when he was grabbed. He squirmed, pulled, tried to force any movement in any direction.
Nothing.
Petelgeuse looked at him from below, head still tilted, that expression of sincere curiosity still on his face as if someone had just asked a question he didn't yet know how to answer.
Petelgeuse: « Hmm? Why are you so angry when I am simply trying to converse in a civilized manner? »
Subaru: « YOU BASTARD I'M GOING TO KILL YOU LET ME GO LET ME— GO! »
Petelgeuse: « Hmm. »
A beat.
Petelgeuse: « Ah yes, I almost forgot. »
He straightened up slightly, adopting a formal posture that would have been comical in any other context.
Petelgeuse: « I am Petelgeuse Romanée-Conti. »
The smile widened to the limits of what a human face could do.
Petelgeuse: « Sin Archbishop of the Witch Cult, representing Sloth. DESU! »
His voice exploded on the last word with a joy so pure and so deranged it resembled no normal emotion. His eyes almost disappeared into their sockets, they were so wide open, his pupils contracted into tiny dots against the white background.
Then he calmed down. In a fraction of a second.
Petelgeuse: « Answer me. Answer me carefully. »
He approached, stopping two meters from Rem's body without granting her a single glance.
Petelgeuse: « Why does a love so dense weigh so abundantly upon your person? »
Subaru did not answer. He looked at Rem over Petelgeuse's shoulder, and there was nothing left in his eyes that resembled a possible conversation.
Petelgeuse: « You have no Gospel? »
He pulled a black book from under his robe and held it toward Subaru with the concern of a teacher presenting a textbook.
Petelgeuse: « Are you truly not Pride? »
Silence from Subaru.
The archbishop sighed — a sigh of slight disappointment, like someone whose plans had just hit a minor setback.
Petelgeuse: « You are quite impolite... You will look into my eyes! »
He reached out his green, emaciated hand to grab Subaru's hair and force him to look.
But as his fingers brushed the boy's forehead, Subaru bit.
Not a calculated move. Not a technique. Something much more primitive and much more immediate — Subaru acted with the flash of a cornered beast, his teeth snapping shut on Petelgeuse's hand with all the strength he had in his jaw, all his remaining rage and helplessness transformed into pure pressure.
Petelgeuse: « AAAAIIIEEE! My finger! My flesh! »
An invisible hand struck Subaru in the jaw with the force of a sledgehammer blow. His head snapped violently to the side, his teeth loosened — but not before a sharp, disgusting crack confirmed he had torn something away.
Two fingers. And the skin of the palm over several centimeters.
Subaru spat out blood and what he had just torn away, his expression twisted by the pain in his jaw and something that looked almost like satisfaction.
Subaru: « IS THAT ALL YOU'VE GOT, YOU BASTARD?! I'M GOING TO GUT YOU! » he screamed, mouth bloody, jaw hanging.
Petelgeuse looked at his mutilated hand. A second of shock.
Then he laughed. Nervously, almost in spite of himself.
Petelgeuse: « Oh... well. What a waste. »
His healthy hand rose.
Subaru rose higher.
Petelgeuse: « That should calm you down a little. »
He simply raised a finger.
What Subaru felt next had no precedent in everything he had experienced until now. It was a pressure — not on his skin, not on his muscles, but on something deeper.
As if something were tightening around each of his bones separately, as if hands that had no physical reason to exist had decided to compress every joint in his body simultaneously.
Subaru: « What is— AGH— »
Petelgeuse slowly lowered his finger.
The pain reached the elbows first. A slow, progressive twist that forced his forearms in a direction anatomy had not intended. His body didn't want to. His body resisted. And that resistance changed absolutely nothing.
He felt his cartilage give way before he heard the sound.
A dull, sharp, double crack — both elbows at once. Not snapped clean, nothing so neat. Something much worse: a twist that deformed without fully breaking, an impossible angle held by a force that did not back down.
Subaru: « AAAAAARGHHH!!! DAMN IT! IT HURTS!! »
Subaru screamed.
There was no longer rage in that scream. It was pure, physical pain, surpassing everything his nervous system had processed until then. His eyes rolled back for a fraction of a second and he forced his eyelids to stay open because closing them was losing.
Petelgeuse: « Pain is a proof of love, is it not? »
The pressure descended to the shoulders.
« No — no no no— »
He felt his tendons stretch to the breaking point, then a bit beyond. Something snapped — not the bone, but something around it, something that held the shoulder in place, and the joint slid out of position with a wet sound that would have been inaudible if not for the absolute silence of the forest.
Subaru made a sound he couldn't have described. Not a scream — his lungs no longer had the air for that. Just something strangled, short, shameful in what it revealed.
The legs.
The knees first — the pressure setting in, that impossible inward twist, the ligaments giving way in layers. Then the shins, which were not meant to bend and bent anyway, and the pain climbed up his body in waves that left no pause between them.
His skin tore somewhere on his left forearm, where the twist had been most extreme. Not deeply. But it tore.
He could no longer scream. He had no more air.
And Petelgeuse, below, watched him with an expression of bored patience. Like someone waiting for the machine to finish its cycle.
The pressure ceased.
Subaru fell.
There was no restraint, no slowing down. The invisible hand vanished and gravity reclaimed what belonged to it. He crashed face-first onto the ground and didn't even try to cushion the fall because his arms no longer responded and his legs no longer really existed as functional appendages.
A dull thud. Dirt against his cheek. The taste of blood and mud.
He could no longer move. Every attempt at movement sent a discharge from the deformed joints to the center of his brain, a pain so total and so geographically precise that it was almost information.
« I am broken.... My arms.... My legs. I am... I can't... anymore... »
Petelgeuse approached. His steps were light, almost silent. He knelt at eye level, head tilted, the neutral and curious expression of a researcher before an interesting phenomenon.
Petelgeuse: « So. I hope you will now be more inclined to listen to me and answer my questions. »
Subaru gestured.
It wasn't movement. It was just his body refusing to accept itself as totally still, an uncontrollable trembling running through his remaining functional muscles.
Petelgeuse: « Hmm? Did you say something? »
He leaned in a bit more, straining his ear with absurd concern.
Subaru raised his head.
It cost him. Everything he had left to spend for the next minute, probably. His neck muscles trembled under the effort, and his field of vision narrowed slightly before returning.
He gathered what he had left in his throat.
And spat in Petelgeuse's face.
Subaru: « Go to hell... you filthy monster. »
A whisper. Rasping, cut in half by exhaustion.
But said with a smile.
Petelgeuse did not move. The saliva mixed with blood slid down his cheek and he did not look away, he watched Subaru with total stillness.
One second.
Two.
Something changed in his expression. Not anger — something slower, colder. The calm disappointment of a man who realizes he has wasted his time.
Petelgeuse: « I was trying to be courteous and remain polite... »
The invisible hand wrapped around Subaru's neck and lifted him.
Subaru: « Ugh— »
The sound died in his throat. No scream possible. The pressure compressed the larynx, the arteries, everything that allowed a voice to exist or a brain to receive oxygen. He tried to claw at something with hands that could not fully close.
Petelgeuse: « It seems I was mistaken. »
He straightened up, leaving Subaru dangling at eye level, legs kicking feebly in the air.
Petelgeuse: « Since you do not seem to be one of us... there is no reason to keep you alive. »
A beat. He looked at Subaru with something that almost resembled sadness.
Petelgeuse: « Although it is distressing to lose such a beloved person... all of this is only for the glory of Love! »
His voice rose, suddenly catching fire.
Petelgeuse: « EVERYTHING IS FOR OUR BELOVED! »
Subaru no longer really heard him. Air had been lacking for several seconds now. Blood flowed from something somewhere in his neck. His vision was narrowing at the edges, a brightness gradually withdrawing toward the center.
He thought of Rem.
He thought of her smile, her way of pronouncing his name, the warmth of her hands in his hair on the garden grass that morning.
« I wanted... I wanted to save you. This time again I... »
Petelgeuse: « Goodbye then... DESU! »
With a simple flick of the wrist, the invisible hand crushed Subaru's trachea and cervical vertebrae. The sound was dull. The connection between the brain and the rest of the body was instantly severed. Subaru didn't even feel the impact on the ground. Darkness swallowed him.
And the world snapped off. Natsuki Subaru had just died.
....
Above the forest, so high that the smoke of the dead cultists no longer reached him, Kurisu watched.
He hadn't moved since the beginning. Leaning against nothing, sitting in the air with his arms crossed, he had watched the fight against the cultists with the attentive interest of a spectator looking for details. He had watched Rem die with something that tightened in his expression without truly coming out. And he had watched the aftermath with that particular silence he rarely displayed.
Now, the forest was calm again. Petelgeuse was moving away between the trees, and below Kurisu, there was no one left.
Kurisu: « ...Wow. That was brutal. »
He said just that, at first. Not the usual laugh. Just that word.
He slowly turned his head toward the sky, toward something visible only to him — something looking back from a different altitude.
Kurisu: « Do you see how a single change leads to consequences one cannot anticipate? »
He paused.
Kurisu: « Training allowed him to survive the underlings, but it drew the Boss's attention much too early. A simple change in confidence, and fatality strikes him in a different way. Fascinating. »
He looked down for a second.
Kurisu: « What should I do for the next loop? Interfere directly? Or let him sink a bit further into the abyss of his helplessness? ... We shall see. »
His fingers tapped the void beside him — that gesture he made when he was truly thinking, without pretending it was already calculated.
Kurisu: « The next loop will be different. And I... »
A smile returned. Small. Less triumphant than usual.
Kurisu: « I think I have work to do. »
He clapped his hands. The sound echoed like a silent thunderclap.
The universe froze. The wind stopped blowing, Subaru's blood stopped flowing, the leaves remained suspended in mid-air. For a microsecond, the whole of reality fractured into billions of glass shards, before recomposing at a frantic speed, rewinding the course of time.
....
Darkness.
Not the black of sleep. The black of nothing — of the total absence, of the space between seconds where reality hasn't yet decided what it's going to be.
Then fragments.
Market noises. A light too bright. The smell of the capital, of the crowd, of street food.
Subaru's eyes opened.
He was sitting. In front of him, an Appa salesman observed him with the exasperation of someone whose customer had just mentally disconnected in the middle of a transaction.
Appa Salesman: « Hey! Are you listening to me, kid?! »
Subaru did not answer. His body was covered in sweat. His hands searched for his arms, his elbows, his legs — intact, functional, pain absent. He was in one piece. His throat was not compressed. His shoulders were where they should be.
Salesman: « What's wrong with you? You suddenly zoned out. »
Subaru: « Oh... »
Salesman: « Oh? Is that all you've got to say? »
Rem: « Subaru-kun? »
That voice.
His eyes widened before he even understood why. He turned around.
Rem was there.
Standing two meters from him, blue uniform impeccable, face intact, eyes alive — alive — looking at him with a slight and natural concern.
Rem: « Subaru-kun? What is it? You look like you've seen a ghost. »
Subaru: « Rem.... » he whispered, voice broken, the echo of the "Shlurp" still ringing in his skull.
He couldn't finish. He watched her and his eyes didn't leave her because if his eyes left her, maybe she would cease to be there, maybe it was a version of reality that would vanish at the first moment of inattention.
Rem: « Subaru-kun? Are you not feeling well? »
Subaru: « Rem.... »
Everything collapsed at once.
No scream. No tears. Just an absolute fatigue, that of someone whose nervous system had just reached its limit and had nothing left to spend to stay upright.
Subaru fainted.
He collapsed heavily onto the cobblestones of the capital and there was no one to catch him — just the cold stone of the street against his shoulder, and the black, again. Sinking into a merciful unconsciousness, as the girl's panic-stricken cry faded into the darkness.
And Natsuki Subaru had just returned by death.