Even now, she tried to deeply recall those times. The spectacle of a singular light. The form of a flickering candle, a crackling torch, a creaking lantern. A burning gaze into the dark expanse. With her very eyes, she saw first-hand those bright colors of the world. She wanted to tear down that barrier of darkness to touch that light, and see all that there is under those skies.

The girl moved her fingers, her arm, and herself. With the embrace of his hand, she took the decisive step forward, and pleaded to the world.

・・・・・

“C’mon, let’s get outta here!”

A certain spark lit within her when she heard the voice. As the winds of the blizzard ceased, so did any doubts lingering in their mind. The white-haired girl was pulled out of the cage and onto her feet, stumbling a bit before regaining control over her balance. Then she turned to the one who spoke those words. A young man, battered and bruised yet still gazed at her with wonder in his eyes, his hand still clasped onto hers, perhaps blushing a bit. That was when she knew through those eyes why he had reached out to her: to escape along with their lives.

After the deafening winds of the blizzard, the only audible sound was the Kusa no Tsurugi’s clang on the monolithic floor of the equatorial room followed by their heavy breaths. Breathing the air in that room could not have been any more difficult. Despite just recovering from the cold seeping into their lungs, he and the girl transitioned into running without a second delay.

And yet.

Compared to him, the girl shivered head to toe significantly moreso. He looked over his shoulder, her orbs the color of the sky looked distant through her disarrayed locks. She clenched her cloak as if it were the only source of warmth in the room.

They ran and ran and ran, their footsteps echoing throughout the corridor of the observatory, their shallow breaths becoming deeper, their grip on each other’s hand tightening. Even though his right hand was all but numb after being submerged in negative temperatures, his Aoi’s light managed to reignite feeling in it and thus, allowing him to feel the coldness of hers. It was as if holding onto ice itself.

The girl in turn, felt the warmth of his hand and marveled.

“Who are you?” she asked.

He gave it a thought. But no matter what kind of story he could muster up, his identity had been stripped away leaving nothing to describe what he was. His only response was the one thing he had been rummaging over since he found himself powerlessly watching her.

“—Riki. Just somebody that wants to rediscover who they are.”

Those words were to linger in her mind.

・

As the two reached the end of the corridor, its light poured across the walls, painting them in a wave of blue. The observation terrace overlooking the entirety of the Sozuraka region came into view.

“See that balcony? If we can jump off that then we’ll be in the clear!” Riki shouted as he picked up his pace, causing the girl to do the same.

“J-Jump off?!” She flinched at the thought. From what she had pieced together from their surroundings, they were running across the top of the Sozuraka mountain. No less they were thousands of meters above the ground—jumping off would mean certain death. Yet somehow she believed in his word and casted the thought aside, gripping her cloak in the process.

The moment the two passed the walls of the observatory, up above a sea of stars greeted their eyes. The weather had cleared in the span of time the blizzard ceased, revealing the multitude of lights that had hid behind the clouds.

The girl looked up with eyes widened. “Wow… pretty…” Despite the pain in her head, the view allowed the fogginess to cease for a single moment of amazement. Yet, it was a sight that also allowed a sense of nostalgia to seep in her—a nostalgia that gnawed when she saw the distant star that shined brighter in the starry heaven.

The balcony itself spanned across much of their view, almost touching the horizon line. However it spanned completely empty besides the sparse marble pillars that supported nothing, as whoever operated the observatory in its final days of operation must’ve taken everything with them. Running across felt like crossing an endless sea.

That was, until Riki and the girl jumped at the sound of music emanating behind them, its sound reminiscent of a wind instrument. It held a certain coldness when they listened, like that of a mourning ensemble. That coldness, however, was offset by the ripples of air and the beads of sweat that formed on their foreheads. The air sweltered.

Shades of blue casted over the balcony signaling the unbelievably hot temperatures. All at once, several koi surrounded the perimeter of the balcony as if caging them within its boundaries.

“My dear guests, why the sudden departure? Surely you must’ve been enjoying the show, no~? Has the performance not been to your liking?”

—Someone had indeed played the tune. The tone of her voice combined with the improper time for music in their current location made for only one possibility who she was. As Riki and the girl turned around, they confirmed their suspicion. Mary, her appearance ill-fit for combat yet was the main reason for the mess they found themselves in. When the two laid eyes on the pipa behind her back and the xiao in her hands, they equally held their breaths.

“Surely… it couldn’t have been so atrocious that you’d feel the need to interrupt the main event.”

Riki felt those words piercing himself, his smirk failing to patch the mental wound. “You’re not gonna let us leave, huh?”

“Teehee~! Surely you must know by now she’s an asset to us. After everything that happened thus far, why would I let you two lovebirds complete your date?”

The girl said nothing. Mary’s playful remarks destroyed that momentous freedom she had briefly experienced in a single instant.

“Kinda figured.” Riki wiped the bead of sweat crawling down his face. “And we’re not lovebirds.” He glanced over his shoulder down the mountain for any signs of distortions in the landscape, anything that looked out of place. But no such luck. Their only means of escape lacked a signal.

Dammit Oluka. Of course now at a time like this, your air bubbles aren’t trying to suffocate me.

Seeing both their despair, Mary allowed a cold, cruel, empty smile play over her lips. “I was indeed surprised to see the storm along with our mademoiselle disappear off like that. How did it feel to cool off after bathing in flames?”

“It was… a bit too cold.” the girl responded. “But I needed it after running for so long.”

“Now if only I could cool off… What a tragedy it is for people to be robbed of their tranquility.”

Riki opened his mouth to speak about the hypocrisy of her actions, but Mary’s sudden gaze made him swallow whatever thought that might’ve been ignored anyways.

“I have a question to ask you, good sir? Have you seen the villages of Alkai?” Her sudden question was followed by a long nostalgic sigh. “In the countryside whose bright orange fields span across the eyes can see… Horses gallop, boxed hauling wagons, the glittering waters of the ponds… There are many alluring things that transpire in Alkai. The air is not too hot, not too cold, but perfect for simple musical performances. All I need is music. I allow my instruments to do all my talking. With them, I can shine wherever I go.”

Riki understood little from Mary’s descriptions, far distracted to be listening to her story. It was strange to him that Mary even had time to discuss her upbringing and not be rushed to re-retrieve the white-haired girl. Would a certain pair not be bursting up the stairway as they spoke? The greater question remained—where was this certain pair right now? Mary’s mere presence was already signaling red flags in itself. If she was able to casually walk up on them and chit chat, then… what had exactly transpired on the floor below them?

“...What happened to them?” Riki willed himself to ask, “Katou and Tamaki?”

Mary raised an eyebrow, “Hm? Ah… Those two?”

Riki expected a certain reaction from her. Perhaps some answer tainted by struggle, any sign signaling frustration in order to reach the top floor. But there was none of that in the slightest. There was nothing more than pure satisfaction on her face.

“I killed them.”

The words from the grinning instrumentalist tinged with a sense of overtness, that the two did not comprehend them right away.

“Ki…”

“That Tamaki mademoiselle gave me a lot of trouble swinging that blade that Katou monsieur tossed her. It rubbed me the wrong way. So I did it. You should’ve SEEN the amount of blood that they’ve coughed up! Bones breaking, screams of agony, the sounds of terror echoing far and wide… Their last cries for help!”

“Killed…?”

“Let it be that Tamaki’s decision to let you live and not see their cries…” Her tone so deceptively innocent despite the sheer horror of the meaning in her words.

The white-haired girl took a step back. Tension in her cheeks. A distant pain in her eyes. “Why?! Wasn’t your goal just to take me!? Why did you… take the lives of more people if all you needed was my Aoi? Weren’t you... just talking about robbing people of their tranquility?”

“—To ensure our chances of victory are as high as possible. I couldn’t have possibly let something slip out of my mind and have it bite me a few hours later.” Just then, Mary’s eyes lit up as she reached from her back. “Oh! And speaking of things you might’ve forgotten, a little Artifact seemed to slip out of your hands~.”

As if to pour salt on their wounds, Mary pulled out a gleaming blade that caused Riki and the girl to freeze. The sight of its steel against the moon’s light caused distant memories to resurface.

Watching her playfully twirl around the blade like some stick she found in a forest, Riki brought a hand to his head. ...I completely forgot. The Sword. If… If she uses that sword like she did to escape Katou’s strike, then we’re not gonna make it…

“The Kusa no Tsurugi.” The girl allowed that name to pass her lips. Even though she wasn’t sure why the name had surfaced in her mind, the name brought a slight pain to her. It was a pain she couldn’t afford to let it trouble her. Not wanting to bear it any longer she pushed it out of her mind, but...

Thoughts of their death consumed Riki.

The concept itself had no such significance since the time he found himself standing in Fallway’s streets. The optimistic visage he wore was a means to distract himself from his inability to save her, and the byproduct of lacking familiarity with death’s consequences. To have these two realities bombard him at once… suffocated him.

I… I let them die. Tamaki. Katou. They’re gone. They gave me a chance to reach her, all for me to just stand here about to be killed too.

I let them down.

Nothing has changed.

I’m still the same as before.

Why... did I throw everything away just for me to do it again?

I… I…!

“—Hey.”

Riki felt the tug of his sleeve. He raised his head back at the girl who still had her eyes on the enemy.

“At the very least, we can fight for ourselves.”

“...Huh?”

“Those two, Katou... Tamaki. Letting her get away with all the crimes she committed probably isn’t something they wanted. And all that effort you did, it’ll be wasted if we don’t fight back. They probably wouldn’t forgive us if we give up when we’re so close to escaping.”

“I know… I know but…” He remembered. Back then, he came so close to reaching her hand. It all ended with a single arc of a sword. “Her Aoi is already hard enough to deal with but add in that sword, there is no way around this...”

She brought a hand out to rub her arm through the cloak. “I don’t know why but every part of my body is screaming to fight… Even though I know it’s impossible, even though that voice in the back of my mind says to run, even though all that I really accomplished was running, I feel now is the time to fight.”

Her words implied that running has been her whole life—the thought of which made Riki think back to when he had first seen her attacked by the same flames. He remained clueless as to who Takeshi and Mary are, how the girl encountered them, and how it brought about their need for her Aoi, but he felt as if running was her own form of fighting. Perhaps all that running caused every known emotion to build up. Her resolved expression told him all of that pent up emotion was now finally being released.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“Her flames counter my ice but it also works in reverse. Though, I don’t need to be playing music at the same time.”

“...I-I don’t want you to force yourself after enduring blizzard levels of cold.”

His reply, while well-intentioned, made the girl sigh. But she was glad it seemed he wasn’t in the depths of despair anymore.

“Thank you. I appreciate it, but I might’ve lived through blizzards like that everyday.”

“—Having a chat are we?” Mary brought her xiao to her lips. “Then allow me to supplement the mood with music~”. The blinding light released from her side lit a blue glimmer across the entire half of the balcony. The several koi glowed brighter, swimming and dancing in the air.

The girl tucked white hair behind her ear to shoot a glance at Riki. “If we don’t do this, then we die. But if we do, then we can live.”

Riki blinked in surprise at that calm, collected voice. “I never knew you could be so optimistic.”

“Me?” She gave a weak smile in return. “You showed me… that there was a way out of this cage.”

Then the koi struck. There was no choice but to dodge the speeding projectile. A single koi incinerated inches of nearby pillars and the floor they stood upon as a bright-red edge coalesced around a ring, revealing the hallway beneath.

“...No way.”

Where a building is erected and what purpose it serves should be reflected in its construction. Thus the material used in the observatory should be expected to withstand temperatures below the world’s surface at best. Material that couldn’t be melted so easily. If Mary’s flames were able to erase it in a single shot, then not coming into contact with her koi was a must in order to stay alive.

It’s kinda funny. Riki thought as they darted in erratic directions. They have experienced both extremities of what temperature had to offer, and on that balcony was where these two sides collided. Fire and ice. The continuous melting of ice and the dousing of flames sent vapor into their faces, limiting their vision. Yeah, it’s funny... When trying to clear the vapor from his sight, that was when he saw a light flash against the xiao’s frame.

A piece of metal. It stuck out like a sore thumb. It was unlikely that this was a design oversight else Mary wouldn’t be flaunting it any chance she could. No, it protruded far too much to be a feature of the instrument.

A bullet.

When Riki focused, he saw that the piece of metal stuck was the .22 long rifle bullet Kaori had fired back then. He couldn’t have forgotten that impressive shot she did. Still, she couldn’t possibly manipulate it to let it hang on something else, not to mention the bullet was perfectly intact without a scrape on its surface. Who else could manipulate metal other than… Cavall.

The akita dog must’ve had a fondness for getting its paws on anything they can find, and her bullet was no exception. At some point, Cavall must’ve scavenged it when everyone wasn’t looking, and now it was attached to the enemy’s weapon. The oddity puzzled Riki. They had gone into two teams to engage different opponents with Keijin stealing the dog from Katou. If Cavall had the chance to stick the bullet against Mary’s xiao before Katou had used his Aoi to clean it up then...

Tamaki and Katou are still alive…!

That line of confidence allowed Riki to visualize the bullet as the prime target for his light. Cavall had given him his golden ticket, which in turn he passed to the girl. The icicle shot at Mary, which drew her attention for the decisive blow. When the koi blazed in to block its path, it was already too late.

An orb of light in his palm. Riki cracked his arm like a whip to send the light flying. The attack crossed with the xiao’s bamboo frame, sending it out of her hands and over the railing behind. In return, the pipa by her back had crystallized in ice by the time she had noticed. After cringing and shrieking at the sudden coldness for a solid minute, Mary shook free from the pieces of ice stuck behind, then stood in silence. As she watched her koi fade into nothing one by one, the realization came to her. She could no longer play her grandma’s gifts.

“...We did it!” Seeing Mary in utter silence, Riki allowed the feeling of victory to let loose. He relaxed his shoulders for the first time in what seemed to be forever, and drew in a deep breath. The possibility of escape in their sights. But he stopped just before shouting to the girl to head back in the observatory, when they both saw Mary’s distraught fade as fast as her koi.

She chuckled, the cold smile returning. “I see. So you managed to take my instruments away from me. But do you think I cannot play music without one?” Slowly raising her hands together, she cupped them into a ball and brought her hands to lips. And then Mary blew. A soft, steady stone emanated into the air as her body began to glow a slight, vibrant indigo.

“Are you kidding me…”

A fire spirit. Compared to the endless spirits from before, only one manifested by Mary’s side, but its power alone completely outmatched whatever the girl could output with her ice.

There’s no way out of this… Riki thought as he watched the air rippled around the flame. He looked back at the girl, who was preparing to launch an icicle spear. No. I’ll do the same thing back in Kirk’s carriage. With a faint sound, the ray of light from Riki’s palm surged out again. The balcony becoming ever so luminous by the second, the white-haired girl had little choice but to shade her eyes.

“Not letting you charge that Aoi~!”

The spirit rushed Riki with the change in pitch. Not even the girl could have formed ice fast enough to guard him and connecting his attack seemed impossible let alone surviving. But rather than hesitation, Riki allowed his body to be overwhelmed, his hand continuing to glide forward into the flames itself. The two rays of light collided, and he emerged the victor—The spirit was blown back.

With expectations subverted, Mary could only watch as her own flames hurtling towards her. She quickly released her Aoi, only to find the light that remained in his palm aimed straight at her.

Huh?! He’s gonna—!

Riki drew back his arm, and cried out.

[https://i.ibb.co/JtL07ps/chapter-45.png]

Riki slammed the light into Mary’s torso. A blinding light emerged between them as they were catapulted in opposite directions. Fragments of marble launched out. The observatory’s windows shattered. The balcony itself shook with an intensity akin to a lighting strike, and it ended as fast.

Silence passed.

As the dust settled, Riki and the girl saw Mary laid motionless, lying on her side alongside the Kusa no Tsurugi.

“Gufh…” A choked voice escaped from the depths from her throat and bits of red covered the floor where she coughed. After tossing and turning, she struck her hand against the handle of the sword. “That hurt you know… That seriously hurt…” Her unstable voice tainted in blood combined with her unnatural movements made watching her comparable to watching all sanity being sucked away from a living being. “I had… enough… No more… I’ll just have to find another white-haired Scandian and forfeit their Aoi. You two... can burn.”

Heat. That was the only describable feeling in that moment. The air around Mary’s body increasingly warped and shifted until at that moment, it was as if staring at the sun itself. The sphere of blue plasma surrounded the Tsurugi’s blade pulsated. It poured out its brilliant blues and whites onto the balcony until the observatory itself became an undying star.

“I don’t think I can douse… that.” The girl attempted to gulp, but found her throat to be completely dry.

Riki got to his feet and peered over the mountain again. No signs of air bubbles. No opportunity for escape.

“I’ll just have to do it again.”

“—You can’t!” The girl’s sudden shout caused him to look back. Her look of desperation was magnified. “You can’t…”

“You said it yourself. If we don’t do this, we die. But if we do, then we can live.”

For some reason, when Riki repeated those words that she spoke, a dull pain surfaced in her.

She placed her hand on her head and leaned back on the railing. “Why did I say that again…?”

As the heat continued to rise, Riki thought back to the time when Mary had used it on the road between Fallway and Chordia. From his point of view, they disappeared instantly the moment she had swung the sword. Will the same thing happen again? Forming another orb of light in the palm of his hand, he gritted his teeth. No, this is different. He watched the blue undulating flames surrounding the blade. Those flames were meant to kill him. “In the end there’s no way around this.” The light grew brighter, but his vision grew darker. “Not when I’m so close… please universe, just give me this one chance…”

The girl glanced back down the mountain. She saw Riki turning his head twice now and she wondered what the reason that was. Was he looking for a way out down the mountain? But there was no other way around the fact that jumping down would mean certain death, and yet... he did mention when they crossed the observatory that if they jumped, they’d be in the clear. No other way around…?

“Do you want to escape?” she asked, the idea illuminating in her mind.

“Of course—”

“Then put your faith in me.”

—Feeling the tug on his arm, the observatory suddenly receded away from Riki.

Huh…?

The girl grabbed Riki by the arm and jumped. One second he was praying death by fire wouldn’t be so painful, and the next he found himself in frigid air. All Riki saw was the blurring wall of the mountain as the sound of blood pounding in his ears deafened his hearing. Despite the adrenaline rushing through his veins, his mind allowed him to ponder whether or not he was going to feel the pain on the way down.

If I die, at least my final moments in life were attempts to save people’s lives.

That was when Riki felt the coldness enter his entire body. Not from fear, but from utter awe. He was no longer falling, but rather, sliding on his back down an ice slide the girl continuously formed on the side of the mountain—pale blue ice below their feet materialized as they skidded, crystals dotting their vision against the light of the moon. Their path down couldn’t have felt any smoother, like water flowing down the stream of a river.

In that moment, Riki turned towards the girl and took in her appearance in its entirety. Silvery white hair, cyan blue eyes, pale silky skin, a cloak worn down in places. He had never seen someone so foreign yet at the same time so pretty. As he kept his gaze, he saw her lips moved to speak.

“No matter how lonely, no matter how cold the world becomes, please stay by my side. My hand, do not let go of it. Without it... it will be cold. Warmth is too precious to lose.” It was a whisper for him and him only, but Riki barely heard her words over the rush of wind in his ears. Though he didn’t mind. Her serene expression more than made up for the lost words, communicating her message all the same.

The ice however, began to thin as fast as her words each passing second. The arm she reached out began to quiver more while the icy tendrils narrowed beneath their bodies, her face strained, her breath tight in her throat. Riki pressed his legs closer as to not scrape against the mountainous rock, feeling powerless watching her give it all to survive.

—Until a moment’s panic washed through the two.

They passed through nothing but air. Freefall feels no different than realizing the futility of life’s pressures—every worry, stress, pain becomes temporary at the face of the drop itself. When they both simultaneously watched the starry sky and the snowy ground encompass themselves, a certain level of peace arrived. There was no regret, no doubts. Despite how brief their experiences felt, their time of exhilaration could have been worth a thousand lifetimes.

And thus, the rush of wind stopped. They hit something. Something they couldn’t see. Something soft. It was like a dream.

...Yes.

This was a dream.

Riki and the girl found themselves sitting on an invisible surface still hundreds of meters above the ground. It took him long to realize they had stopped and once his hand ran against the surface, that was when it hit him. It was Oluka’s Aoi. She had formed a bubble of air the size just enough for them to fit on top and sent it out of that vehicle in the nick of time. To them, it felt jarring to experience the much slower descent than the fall they had just gone through, but it was a much deserved place of rest.

Oluka… You came through.

Like all dreams however, they disappear before they can be remembered. The bubble popped still a few meters above the ground, and much to their surprise, they again felt the cold wind rush against themselves. Riki and the girl fell and hit the ground, flinging snow into the air. The two equally groaned as they felt the soreness of their bodies and coldness of the ground.

As Riki raised himself to a seating position, he wiped the snow off his face then rubbed both his head and his rib cage. He was going to feel it tomorrow after falling face flat. “Urk…! I gotta apologize. The people I know aren’t exactly gentle.”

“I… can tell.” she said, wiping the snow off her cloak. After checking for any damages, she breathed out a relieved sigh. No rips in sight.

She looked up to see that the blue sun of the observatory had ceased. It was safe to say Mary had decidedly cooled down in the time they were airborne. That left the girl instead staring at the sea of stars that was the night sky, and now that she had the chance to take it in, that certain pain surfaced once more. She held her breath in an attempt to push it away, but the pain rang out regardless.

“If she left us in the middle of nowhere like this, then that means they’re probably gonna blaze through here with that tank any time soon.” Riki said, as if this were a daily occurrence. “We probably won’t be stuck sitting here.”

“What kind of people do you know?”

“Not much.” He folded his arms and began to reminisce. “Just some noble girl with a chill valet, a swordsman that’s too trigger happy, a levitating girl, and a guy with the sternest face I’ve ever seen. You?”

Her gaze lowered to the snow beneath her knees, and then to the cloak. “I…”

Her solemn expression caused the suspicion to come to him that what happened to him also happened to her, and her next few words confirmed it.

“I don’t have a home to go to anymore.” A sharp breath. “I don’t even know if I ever had a home to begin with...” The breath caught in her throat, then tears welled up in her eyes. The permanent sensation that she had lost what she cherished loomed over her head—with no way to know what that something even was. That lack of ability to even grieve was just enough to send her over the edge.

And seeing her eyes redden, Riki bit his lip. He didn’t know what to say. Certainly he never had the experience of comforting a weeping soul before. Yet he was certain... he experienced the same feeling as what she was going through.

“Maybe it's not in my place to say this, but I want to ask you something.”

The girl didn’t respond, but he willed himself to ask it regardless.

“Do you like the snow?”

She looked up. “Huh?”

Riki looked up at the mountain’s side covered in ice, the moonlight causing the crystals to glisten and shimmer as if the mountain itself was an unpolished diamond. “I think… your Aoi… is pretty cool.” He gulped, attempting to find his words. “So what if there was suddenly a train that parked right here right now?”

“What are you…”

“It kind of sucks that the only sights I’ve seen were some city and a barren wasteland. So I was thinking it’ll be nice to let the world speak for itself. Have that train be filled with a lot of people and have them show off their cool abilities. Not only that but also talk about their experiences and all that.

“I’d have a ton of questions to ask them, of course. But… you’d always ask this first question to a stranger first, no matter who they are.”

Her eyes stayed towards his.

“Yeah, that’s right. I only have one thing to ask.” Riki closed his eyes, taking a deep breath before announcing his request. When he opened them back up, he extended his hand to her. “Your name. What is your name?”

That question alongside his incurious expression caused no reaction from her right away. The lack of response caused him to lower his hand and avert his eyes in embarrassment until he heard her unsuccessfully stifle a chuckle. When she finally processed the ridiculous question, the girl couldn’t help but burst out laughing.

“It’s Nagi.”

Too off-guarded by her laughter, Riki didn’t catch her name at first. Crap, I knew that was going to be too cringy… Dammit, why did I just have to go and—wait, huh?

He blinked, failing to parse what he heard and as if knowing this, the white-haired girl thought in her mind just how amusing he looked when flustered.

And yet… he’s the one who risked his life a moment ago. That’s right, it was him that risked his life… to drag me out of that cage.

She repeated herself, smiling as she did.

“My name is Nagi. Thank you Riki, for giving me a chance to see the world.”

[https://i.ibb.co/RhwHqk5/chapter-45-end.png]