The battlefield tilted.
Not with gravity—but will.
The masked woman still hadn't moved from her place. But each ti her hand shifted, reality buckled around her. Entire seconds slipped away. Blades missed. Timing faltered.
She wasn't fighting.
She was erasing.
One thread at a ti.
And we were running out of ti to stop her.
***
A tremor passed beneath my feet.
Not from the ground.
From the thread.
It burned behind my ribs—pulling tighter, deeper. Not toward the woman. Not even toward the shikigami.
Toward the others.
Toward my companions.
Every one of them was fighting with more than power.
They were fighting with mory.
Their eyes had all changed.
Sowhere between the first wave and now, sothing inside each of them had begun to rember—not clearly, not fully—but enough.
Rin fought like she had once protected sothing sacred.
Sayo moved like she had once lost everything and learned to haunt the loss.
Shuji's hand trembled like it had already turned a gear that shattered ti.
Tatsuya fought like a man trying to outpace a shadow.
And Genzo—
He stood in the center of the fray like a man who had already died once for soone else.
***
She tried to take that from us.
The woman in indigo.
She lifted her hand again.
The battlefield flickered.
And Rin—mid-step—disappeared.
Just gone. Like a thread cut short.
I shouted her na.
The thread inside spasd.
And everything slowed.
Not paused.
Split.
I saw two versions of the world—one where she vanished, one where she remained.
And without thinking—
I reached into the space between them.
And chose.
Ti cracked.
Rin reappeared beside , collapsing into a crouch, breath, hitched.
She looked at , eyes wide.
"You—"
"I don't know what I did," I said.
But the thread behind my ribs flared gold.
***
I stood.
The world shifted.
Shikigami turned toward .
So did my companions.
Even she—the one in indigo—lowered her hand.
Because sothing in the thread had changed.
It no longer pulled backward.
It no longer burned.
It glowed.
And in that mont, I understood.
Every battle we fought.
Every version of ourselves.
Every failure—
Was still part of the sa thread.
And now, for the first ti—
I was holding it.
***
I took one step forward.
Ti buckled.
A hundred shikigami lunged at once.
And we moved.
Together.
Rin to my right. Shuji behind . Genzo and Tatsuya to the left. Sayo's shadow stretching across the battlefield like a net cast in silence.
Each of us—
A fragnt.
But together—
Whole.
***
Steel rang.
Light cracked.
Ti unwound.
And in the middle of it all—
She finally moved.
She descended like a final verdict.
The masked woman stepped into our world.
And everything we were.
Was about.
To be tested.
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