Andalon closed her eyes as we crossed the room. I’d loaded NFP-20 corpses into a dump truck with my own two hands, and yet I couldn’t keep myself from gagging as we passed over the bodies of the dead and the dying.

For a moment, I paused, and considered something wild.

Even though this was, technically, one of Yuta’s memories, it was also—and just as technically—playing out within a mind-world of my own. In theory, I should have had editorial control. With that thought in mind, I tried to will the poor victims on the floor to be healthy and cured, or even to come back to life, but that arguably only made things worse.

Their bodies immediately returned to perfect health—and, mercifully, the fluids and worse on the floor all vanished into thin air—but… the sick did not get up and start living their lives once again. Instead, they kept to their futons, perfectly motionless, save for the rise and fall of their breath in their chests, and the occasional mechanical blinks.

I should have expected this. The only reason people in spirits’ memories seemed to be real was because that was how the spirit remembered them. The moment you wanted them to do something that went against what the spirit’s memories had scripted, it was like designing an NPC from scratch: difficult, and damnably so.

“Can Andalon open Andalon’s eyes now?” she asked.

“No, not yet,” I said.

Sighing in defeat, I led Andalon the rest of the way across to the other side of the room. I slid the wood-and-paper screen-wall-door out of the way and stepped into the next room.

The room was unexpectedly beautiful. Painted, calligraphic scrolls hung from the walls, depicting vistas of mountains and seas. The walls’ wooden panels were engraved with snarling tigers and portraits of men-at-arms. The panels covered the passages to other rooms.

But, lovely though it was, it would have been far more beautiful had it been happy.

I’d found the Uramarus.

Ichigo sat cross-legged in the corner, next to a bowl filled with many small, dark, river-worn pebbles. Sticks of incense jutted out from the pebbles, burning with a pungent odor. The raven-haired retainer’s eyes were closed in meditation, even as hemorrhages had begun to break out on his exposed arms. Yuta and his family were being tended to by two servants who hadn’t yet passed out from their fevers. Yuta knelt beside his wife and children.

Sukuna, the graceful noblewoman. She’d been an icy Munine beauty, at first, resentful of being married off to a half-breed of vulgar lineage. But Yuta had only ever shown her kindness, and through the years, the woman’s frost had melted, giving way to an enduring warmth. Like Uzé, Sukuna had a penchant for metaphysics and mysticism. Discussing The Lengthiness Road’s riddles with her had reminded Yuta of his lost firstborn son.

It was one of the first moments he’d shared a genuine connection with her. At the time, he never would have expected he’d be as he was now, bending over her flagging body, clutching her hand, desperate to keep her in the land of the living.

He’d already raised one child without their mother. Yuta refused to let that happen again, not to Genta and Hoshi. It would dishonor Uzé’s memory.

I shook my head. The emotions coming off Yuta were so strong, my awareness was starting to dissolve into them, and would continue to do so if I didn’t proactively keep myself grounded.

One of the servants crawled over to Ichigo and offered aid, but the retainer rebuffed her.

“Care for Lord Uramaru, first,” he told her.

“His Lordship told me to tend to you,” she replied.

Turning to the bowl of water beside their futons, Yuta dipped the bloody rags back into the bowl and slicked it across his wife and two children’s burning foreheads.

I wiped the tears from my face.

Andalon stared at the scene wordlessly, transfixed by the sight of the distraught father fighting to save the people he loved.

Her sea-blue eyes tightened with an unvoiceable longing.

Outside, a cannon boomed, making Andalon flinch.

I need to get Yuta’s attention, and fast.

I didn’t just need his help, I wanted it.

Walking up to Yuta, I knelt down and gently put my hand on his shoulder. The instant I touched him, he froze.

Then, he split in two.

The Yuta of the memory kept tending to his dying loved one, while the fullness of Yuta’s consciousness stepped away from himself like the ghost he really was. He looked at the scene for what felt like a long time.

“We’re inside your memories,” I said.

“I know,” he said, lowering his head and turning to face me.

“When does the time-travel happen?” I asked.

“Not for a—”

—But then he looked up.

“Oh no,” he said. “Please, no.”

Outside, there was a terrible crash. A hideous stench drifted into the building.

Walking toward the room we’d entered through, I looked out the open screen-wall to see a mass of flaming rubbish that had splattered across the garden. Branches, leaves and placid statues were covered in burning gobs that quickly set them ablaze. More and more burning rained down from above, giving off dark, repulsive smoke.

Ichigo rose in a fright, letting out a scream of rage. Scrambling over to Memory-Yuta, he grabbed his lord by the shoulders and shook him.

“Lord Uramaru,” he yelled, “we can’t stay here! We have to leave!”

I was ready to follow them when Ghost-Yuta grabbed me by the arm.

He shook his head. “I don’t want to see it burn,” he said. “I don’t want to hear their screams. Not again. Not again.”

There were tears in his eyes as he watched the rising flames.

I paused for a moment, and then nearly smiled—but I couldn’t bring myself to do it.

“I can help with that,” I told him. “It’s the least I can do.”

With a single thought, I fast-forwarded us through the memory.

The three of us yelped in surprise as things happened exactly as I thought they would—literally. Space itself shuddered and spasmed as time rushed forward. Everything moved. It was like fast-forwarding through a commercial on a television recording, only we were the recording.

I spoke a silent apology to every entity I’d ever fast-forwarded through.

It was not pleasant. It lasted maybe ten seconds, and I regretted not keeping my eyes closed for more of it. Just looking at all the herky-jerky over-cranked movements left me feeling nauseous.

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Yuta merged back into his memories. Andalon and I saw him, Ichigo, and several other members of his household in a desperate scramble to leave the estate. Servants, loyal to the end, helped carry Yuta’s wife and children to a carriage next to the stables on the lower rung of the manor’s two-tiered fortifying stone wall.

It was a daring escape.

The whole village was under siege, the army of the Third Crusade fighting against Munine colonists and their Trenton sycophants. The crusaders had breached the wooden palisade at the base of the hill, freeing a gaggle of Trenton militia-men to charge up the hill as the manor’s gates opened in the lower tier wall.

I let time run true in the memory once more, and I almost instantly regretted it.

Drums and shouts pulled my view westward.

I gasped.

Battalions of Munine soldiers were closing in, dispatched from the barracks atop the next hill over. Their forces split in two, with one half heading toward the manor and the other making their way into town. But the Munine struggled to move. Their fighting forces had been crippled by Darkpox.

Infected townsfolk fled like rats, and the Trenton forces cut them down without mercy. Not even Munine livestock were spared.

The result was an open-air madhouse. Regulars and irregulars clashed on the hill and in town. Flaming crossbow bolts speared holes in passing rifle smoke. Bodies fell on the road. Billowing fires pumped the air full of ash which blew like snow as it got caught in the night’s wind.

Yuta’s carriage sped along the road down the hillside. It hopped and jostled as it ran over fallen bodies. Two tides broke on the hillside as the carriage rode away: one of rebels, the other of the bodies felled in their wake.

Andalon and I stood atop the carriage, our feet resting comfortably on an invisible surface. Yuta, meanwhile, was nowhere in sight. On a hunch, I phased down through the carriage’s ceiling, where I found him merged with his memory-self once more. He sat cross-legged on the floor, once again at his wife and children’s side. His body swayed over theirs. Blood was trickling out of his nostrils, percolating through his hairy, sweat-drenched cheeks.

Grabbing him by the shoulder, I rose up and pulled, tugging Lord Uramaru’s spirit free from his body once more.

I was literally pulling him out of his memories, fighting to keep him from drowning in them. He got onto his knees as I set him down on the roof of the carriage.

Yuta stared at his hands in shock, and then at me.

“What happened?” he asked.

“I skipped ahead through your memories,” I said. “Apparently, your memories dragged you back in.”

Tensing, he closed his eyes. “It’s as if I am living through it all over again. It is difficult, Dr. Howle. Terribly, terribly difficult.”

I nodded. “I know.” I lowered my head in solemnity. “I’m so sorry for your loss.”

I couldn’t think of his family without thinking of my own. I chuckled bitterly.

“I wonder which one of us will end up suffering the most,” I said, before glancing up at the sky.

Yuta’s face softened. “Do not say such things, not even in jest.”

“Mr. Genneth… what’s… what’s happening?” Andalon asked, afraid. She pointed at the sky.

I looked up, beyond the silhouetting flames burning in the distance.

Not even carnage could dim the stars’ beauty. They blossomed in the spaces between the treetops, paving Yuta’s Night in a twinkling cobblestone. And yet…

I stared.

Fricassee me, I thought. “What is that?” I asked.

Pieces of the sky were missing, replaced by swaths of static, ripped from a dead television channel. The swaths swept across the sky, spilling onto the land. Trees, rocks, hills, and roads were muddied by the interference.

I thought of Yuta as he would have been, back when this memory was still reality.

“I think it’s like with Ileene and her lobotomy,” I said. I turned to Yuta. “You were passing into unconsciousness; that’s probably why everything’s turning to static.”

Andalon was listening intently, but Yuta didn’t seem to have heard me. Instead, he looked off in the distance, eyes wide and mouth slightly ajar.

“There,” he said, “the moon…” He pointed up at it.

The lunar disk hung overhead, swaddled in the encroaching static. Though it was hard to tell, it looked like the Moon had just come out from behind a cloud-drift.

“I remember,” Yuta said. “I remember the brightness of the moon peeking out from behind the clouds. The… the time-travel happened moments later.”

Then, out of nowhere, I got the worst headache of my life.

Screaming, I fell to my knees, clutching my head.

“Dr. Howle!” Yuta yelled.

I heard Andalon’s screams over my own.

Yuta looked up. “What—what’s going on!?”

I tried to raise my head, only to get bombarded by blue flames. They poured out of thin air, swirling around us like a mad zoetrope. The pine trees danced in their shadows, like lights at a rave.

With each impact, my headache lessened. One by one, the flames merged with us, leaving me tingling all over.

I felt a tug on my shoulder.

Turning, I saw Andalon on her hands and knees, across from me, near the edge of the carriage’s roof. “I… I’m remembering. Mr. Genneth, I…—”

—She let out a terrified yelp. Her mouth closed tight as her eyes went wide, burning with a cerulean light.

She started to tremble.

She was petrified.

It was like the world was closing in on her.

Crawling, I reached out to her. “Andalon! Andalon!”

I grabbed her shoulder. “What have you remembered!?”

“The darkness,” she said. “It made the stars go away. It… it ate them!” she shouted. “It ate them! It eats everything!”

Quietly—stunned—I looked up at the resplendence of Yuta’s starry night, comparing it to the unfathomable emptiness of my own.

My upper lip twitched. My shoulders tingled, like my skin was a vise, tightening upon itself.

Exhaling, I collapsed butt-first onto the invisible surface just above the roof of the carriage. My thoughts raced.

My thoughts raced faster than the carriage.

Words sprung from my memory.

My words, and Suisei’s.

“What’s your endgame?” I’d asked.

“To survive, and help others do the same,” he’d said, “while doing what good I can, when I can. And, perhaps, to understand why your night sky has no stars.”

“What is it?” Yuta asked me.

I looked him in the eyes.

“It’s Suisei—Dr. Horosha,” I said. “He knows about stars, even though there aren’t any in our skies. And not only that… he wanted to understand why.”

Yuta nodded. “Y-Yes, he told me as much.”

“What?” I asked, eyes widening.

Yuta shook his head. “He said something about Cranter Pit being a crater of a dozen million years’ age, and about the expansion of the universe and space ripping itself apart.”

I blanched.

Obviously, I needed to have a talk with Suisei, pronto.

“The fungus… it eats peoples’ memories,” I said. “Maybe it ate all the stars, long, long ago, and then made us all forget.”

“If we cannot trust our own memories, we cannot know anything!” Yuta said.

“You think I don’t know that?” I replied.

I closed my eyes and shuddered.

“How are we supposed to fight something like this…?” I muttered. I opened my eyes again, brow furrowing. “Could—could Suisei somehow be responsible for this? For all of this?”

Angel, I thought, forgive me for wanting a man dead.

Yuta shook his head. “He did not strike me as that kind of man. From what he told me, he was as troubled by the stars’ absence from your nights as you are.”

“Wait a minute…” I said.

I turned to Andalon.

Shiny Guys.

One Angel. One Sun.

Many Angels. Many Suns.

A shiver trickled down my spine. Even though my mental self had no tail, I could still feel it twitching with my fright.

“Mr. Genneth? Mr. Genneth?” Andalon asked.

She was freaking out.

Join the club, I thought.

“Could there be a connection?” I said, staring at her. “Could there really, truly be a connection between the Angel—the Angels!—and the stars?”

Suddenly, puzzle pieces fell into place.

One of Lassedicy’s foundational teachings was that, to redeem mankind, the Angel had sacrificed Himself, transfiguring His Face into the Sun. It was the sign of our covenant with Him.

Just as the Sun and its Holy Light keeps Night at bay, so too does the Bond keep us free from Hell’s icy depths.

I looked both Yuta in the eyes. “The Angel became the Sun. Now, I know the Sun is a star, one of many,” I turned my gaze to Andalon, “just as I know that there is more than one Angel.”

The carriage rollicked beneath us, trees and static skies rushing past as I made a wild leap of faith.

“Andalon… are the other stars… are they the other Angels? Were they?”

Perhaps, long ago, there had been many, many Angels—many stars—but now, only the one—our Sun—was left?

I didn’t know whether to be mystified or terrified, so I just went with both.

Suddenly, Andalon let out another shriek, even louder than before. She stared straight ahead, stabbing her finger at an approaching bend in the road.

“STOP! STOP! NO NO NO NO NO NO NO!”

I would have turned to look, but she flung herself on me, tugging at my clothes, screaming like she was being eaten alive.

Tears streamed down her cheeks.

“HELP! HELP! HELP!” she screamed. “WE HAVE TO GET AWAY! HAVE TO GET AWAY. NO, MR. GENNETH, GET BACK! GET AWAY!”

“Andalon!” I screamed. I grabbed her. “Get a hold of yourself!”

I tried to pry her off me, but she just wouldn’t let go. My mind-world powers refused to obey me. I felt my connection to Yuta’s memory grow tenuous, as if I was being pulled away.

“STOP STOP STOP STOP STOP! NOT SAFE! NOT SAFE! LEAVE NOW! LEAVE NOW!!”

“L-Leave?” I stammered, “but—”

“—MR. GENNETH, WE GOTTA GO!” she sobbed.

Yuta, however, wasn’t looking at her. He was looking in the direction in which she was pointing.

“What is that…?” he said.

I could barely hear it above Andalon’s screams. But I did.

Turning, I looked ahead, and through the static, I saw something like stretch marks, only on air instead of skin.

Or, maybe… claw marks.

Suddenly, I looked forward again. Andalon was kicking like mad, trying to get away from me, and in doing so, she’d struck me in the belly.

“Andalon!” I yelled.

She flopped onto her back, pointing ahead with a trembling hand and eyes as wide as plates.

“I DON’T WANNA LOSE YOU! I DON’T WANNA LOSE YOU!”

“Dr. Howle!” Yuta yelled.

I turned once more, back to the claw marks in the air. I thought I might have seen light coming out of them, or maybe the sheen of something like a mirror. Its particolored edge faintly glowed.

I thought of Duncan’s description of the rift that had brought him and his comrades into the future:

“There were many colors,” he’d said. “They were quite faint, and at the rift’s edge.”

It was a perfect match to what I saw here.

Behind me, Andalon shrieked.

“—NO!!”

Her voice shook the world.

She lit up like a torch. Her eyes turned to cerulean suns. Her hair undulated like blue fire. Her skin was the brightness of the moon crashing into the world.

Blue fire streamed from her hands, engulfing everything in an instant.