They walked down the street of Nakaoka.
It should have been the same path they had taken before, but everything looked different now. Streaks of light pulsed through the cracks between the cobblestones. Where there had been nothing on their last visit, thin lines of luminescence now rose from beneath the earth. The lines stretched toward the far end of the street, eventually converging at a single point.
"I can see it now."
Koyoi spoke as he walked, careful not to step on the glowing lines beneath his feet.
"I visited the three wells and touched the sanctuary. That changed my eyes. Now, I can finally see what was always there."
Kuon walked with the Registry in hand. He wasn't using his artificial eye. The golden streaks on the Registry’s cover pointed in the same direction as the lines on the ground. They were being guided.
"Is it up ahead?"
Asahi stared forward, his gaze fixed.
Something stood at the end of the street. Only a faint silhouette was visible through the mist. As they drew closer, the fog began to thin, revealing that the street opened into a wide plaza.
In the center of the square stood a single pillar. It wasn't made of stone, nor was it made of ice.
It was light itself, shaped into a column. A pillar of silver-white radiance stretched straight from the ground toward the heavens.
Then, the sound died. Footsteps, the wind, even the sound of their own breathing—all vanished. The closer they drew to the pillar, the more sound itself seemed to thin into nothing.
"The Beacon of the Margin," Kuon whispered, coming to a halt.
He opened the Registry, looking back and forth between its pages and the pillar.
"This is the point where the control of the Principles is strongest. At the same time, it is where they are at their thinnest."
"Strongest and thinnest? Isn't that a contradiction?" Asahi asked, knitting his brows.
"It is strong because the Principles are exerting their full power to suppress it. And it must be suppressed because the boundary here is so fragile—so thin. The path to the Archives lies directly beneath this pillar."
Koyoi looked up at the column. The silver-white light reached upward until it dissolved into the mist. Despite being a pillar of light, the surroundings remained swallowed in darkness. This was not light meant to illuminate.
It was light meant to seal.
The cobblestones of the plaza were etched with a pattern. Lines of light radiated outward in concentric circles, swirling in a vortex around the pillar. They weren't letters, but rather a blueprint of the world’s structure—the very architecture of the Principles mapped onto a flat surface.
Koyoi stepped onto one of the lines. A vibration traveled up from the sole of his foot, echoing through his bones to the back of his head. It felt as if he were standing upon the very skeleton of the world.
The pouch at his side pulsed. But it wasn't a pulse of warmth; it was a cold, frantic thrumming.
Shizuku was terrified. To anything that bore a name, the pillar’s power was a fundamental threat.
"It's all right," Koyoi whispered, resting a hand over the pouch’s opening. "We’ll be there soon."
Kuon finished reading a new entry in the Registry and closed the book.
"The entrance to the Archives is directly below us. But we cannot enter from here; the Beacon of the Margin blocks the way. We’ll need to take the train to the Archives' station."
"A detour, then?"
"If we tried to break through the pillar's power head-on, both the Registry and Shizuku would be destroyed. We have no choice but to go around."
Asahi glanced at the pillar one last time before turning his back to it. "Where is the station?"
"East of the plaza. You should see the lanterns."
The three of them crossed the square. As they moved away from the pillar, sound began to return. Footsteps. The wind. Their own breathing. They hadn't realized how much comfort could be found in such ordinary, everyday sounds.
At the eastern edge of the plaza, the glow of a paper lantern appeared. A small station stood there, tucked away as if hiding in the shadow of the Beacon of the Margin.
Koyoi rested his hand over the pouch’s opening, syncing Shizuku's pulse with the rhythm of his own breathing. Kuon kept the Registry closed, his finger merely tracing the corner of a page. Asahi gave a sharp nod, planting his feet to show he was ready.
The three of them began walking toward the station. Behind them, the silver-white light of the pillar grew narrower and dimmer.
None of them looked back. They kept their eyes on what lay ahead and took the next step.