Not the absence of light, but something thicker — as if time itself had folded inward, collapsing into silence.
Arata floated.
There was no up or down, no sky, no earth beneath his feet. Only an endless blackness that pulsed faintly with shifting colors — violet, silver, and deepest red — like veins of energy flickering beneath the surface of the void.
Then came the voice again.
“Arata…”
It echoed from nowhere and everywhere at once, ancient and resonant, vibrating in the marrow of his bones. He opened his mouth to speak, but no sound escaped.
He wasn’t breathing. He didn’t need to.
He was no longer in the forest. No longer with Yume. The knight, the sword, the Queen — all of it felt impossibly distant. Like fragments of a dream that had slipped through his fingers.
A flicker of light bloomed before him — a single thread, glowing faintly, drifting like a strand of spider silk in the dark. It twitched, then spun into motion, forming a circle. Symbols began to emerge around it, familiar yet indecipherable. The same symbols from the map. But now, they pulsed in rhythm with his heart.
And then… he remembered.
The map didn’t lead him to the Tower of Origin. It was the Tower that had led the map to him.
Another voice joined the first — lighter, feminine, melodic, but no less powerful.
“You were never lost, child of twilight. Only hidden.”
Arata’s eyes widened. The thread of light grew, and for the first time, he saw something — no, someone — standing just beyond it.
A silhouette, tall and cloaked in radiant silver shadow. It had no face, but its presence felt vast, ancient… familial.
“Who are you?” Arata thought — the words forming not in his mouth, but in the space between thought and soul.
“We are the origin of your blood.”
“We?”
The thread of light spun faster — now creating a spiral that reached outward in all directions. Arata felt warmth on one side of his body, and chill on the other. When he looked down, his right hand glowed with a soft golden light… and his left with a swirling black mist.
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He recoiled instinctively. The dark side — the part he had feared, rejected, buried — it was still there.
“You must embrace both,” said the voice. “Only then will you understand what the Queen fears.”
The spiral suddenly collapsed, exploding into shards of memory.
Flashes.
A battlefield of fire and smoke. A silver-winged knight kneeling before a burning child. A woman with eyes like Arata’s — reaching for him before vanishing into darkness.
Then — the Queen.
Her crown cracking. Her threads unraveling. Her voice whispering: “The ninth key must never awaken…”
Arata clutched his head, gasping. The memories weren’t his. Or maybe they were — buried so deep that even time had forgotten them.
“Stop!” he shouted. “I don’t understand!”
The void rumbled.
And the voice answered, softer now.
“You were never meant to understand. Not until you chose to stand on the edge of ruin.”
The darkness began to peel away like layers of skin, revealing a vast sky of stars. He was no longer floating — he was falling. Falling through constellations that moved like clockwork gears, each etched with ancient runes.
Then—
A figure rose from the starlight below.
It was him.
But not quite.
This Arata was taller, older, cloaked in both shadow and light, his eyes burning with twin flames. He radiated power — not borrowed, not inherited — but owned.
“You…” Arata whispered.
The other Arata raised a hand, palm open.
“You are the fracture. But you can become the flame.”
The real Arata reached forward, unsure, trembling.
The moment their fingers touched — the world shattered.
Yume screamed as the light exploded outward from Arata’s body.
Sir Billion shielded his face as the ground cracked, threads of lightning weaving through the stone floor of the tower.
The knight who had confronted Arata had vanished — burned away by the surge of power.
And at the center of it all, Arata hovered in the air — unconscious, but glowing.
His body pulsed with both light and darkness, balanced and yet untamed. The map was no longer in his hand. It had become part of his skin — symbols glowing across his forearms like tattoos of fire.
Yume’s voice trembled. “He… he merged with it.”
Sir Billion’s eyes narrowed. “No. It merged with him.”
Then — Arata’s eyes opened.
And for a moment, the entire tower — the world itself — held its breath.
His voice was quiet, but it shook the stone beneath them.
“I saw it. The Queen’s truth. The keys… the ninth thread…”
“What are you talking about?” Yume asked, fluttering to his side, tears of panic and awe in her eyes.
But Arata wasn’t looking at her. He stared through the walls of the tower, into something beyond space.
“I have to go to Myrrden,” he said. “Before she finds the next piece.”
Sir Billion looked stunned. “How do you know—?”
“Because the Voice told me,” Arata replied. “And he was me.”
The Queen staggered back from her throne, her golden threads writhing like living snakes.
She hissed in pain, clutching her chest.
“The Tower responded…”
A shadow moved beside her throne.
“Shall I send the Veil to intercept him?” asked a cloaked figure.
The Queen’s gaze burned.
“No. Let him run to Myrrden.”
She smiled faintly.
“It’s already begun.”