The color of the mist had changed. Asahi was the first to notice.
“It’s not white anymore.”
Asahi stopped in his tracks and looked up.
Ever since they had entered the Sea of Oblivion, the mist had been a flat, featureless white, like spilled milk. It was a white that swallowed both direction and distance. But since this morning, a grey-blue tint had begun to bleed into the depths of the fog. It wasn't that the white was receding; rather, another color was beginning to show through from beneath it.
“Proof that we’re nearing the North,” Kuon said.
Kuon opened the Catalog. A pale blue light illuminated the pages. Koyoi stepped up beside him to peer at the book.
The change in the Catalog was even more striking than the change in the mist. In the south, the pages had been choked with grey, but now they were turning blank, one by one. It wasn't that the text was vanishing; it was as if a grey film was peeling away, revealing that nothing had been written there to begin with.
“The records are disappearing,” Koyoi whispered.
“No. The number of pages that were originally blank is increasing,” Kuon corrected. “The records of the South were managed by the Observers. The closer we get to the North, the further we move beyond their control. That is why there are no records.”
Kuon flipped through the pages. Very little writing remained, but the characters that did were strangely vivid—far easier to read than when they had been buried in the grey. Golden veins pulsed along the edges of the pages, and each character seemed to glow with its own light.
“There’s not much there, but it’s so bright,” Koyoi said.
“Likely because we are nearing the original source of the Catalog,” Kuon replied. “The precision of the copy is improving. There may be fewer entries, but the resolution of each one is much higher.”
Kuon touched the page. A faint vibration traveled through his fingertips—a tactile response he hadn't felt in the South.
Asahi flicked the scabbard of his sword with a finger. The low metallic ring was swallowed by the mist, vanishing sooner than usual.
“The sound... it fades differently here.” Asahi tilted his head. “The mist in the South ate the sound. The mist here—it lets it through.”
“Lets it through?”
“Hard to say exactly. In the South, if you raised your voice, it felt like hitting a wall and bouncing back. Here, it pierces through. It feels like it’s escaping to the other side.”
Koyoi strained his ears. It was certainly quiet, but the quality of the silence was different from that of the South. The silence of the South had been a suppressed thing—a heavy stillness that felt like an order to stay quiet.
The silence here was simply the silence of nothingness. There was no entity doing the suppressing, no one giving orders. It was merely the silence of a blank space, where nothing had yet begun.
“It’s the silence before a beginning,” Koyoi said.
Asahi turned to look at him. “What’s going to begin?”
“I don’t know. But I know it’s not the silence of an ending. I can tell that much.”
The pouch at his waist pulsed. Koyoi pressed his hand against it. The rhythm of the Droplet was different now. In the South, it had pulsed at steady intervals, like a heart. Now, the intervals grew shorter, then longer. It was like breathing—the irregular breaths of a creature just beginning to stir from sleep.
“The Droplet has changed.”
Koyoi cupped the pouch in his palms.
“Before, it was a pulse. But now... it’s like it’s breathing.”
“A change in reaction means a change in the environment,” Kuon said, closing the Catalog.
The three continued to walk. The grey-blue of the mist gradually deepened. Even the ground beneath their feet was shifting. In the South, it had been white sand. Here, the sand held color—a pale grey. Here and there, brown earth peeked through.
Asahi stopped and knelt. He pinched a bit of soil and brought it to his nose.
“It’s dirt. Just plain dirt. It has a smell.”
“A smell?”
“The sand in the South didn’t smell like anything. This earth... it smells like the air after a rain.”
Koyoi knelt as well and touched the soil. His fingertips came away damp. In the middle of the parched Sea of Oblivion, here was moist earth. It felt like living soil.
Kuon remained standing, staring ahead. The blue light of his prosthetic eye probed the depths of the mist.
“The Boundary is near.”
“The Boundary?”
“The northern edge of the Sea of Oblivion. The place where the sea ends and the terrain changes. In the remaining entries of the Catalog, there is a single word left.”
Kuon opened the Catalog again and pointed to the final entry.
A single word, glowing in gold.
“Hoshino,” Koyoi read aloud. “The Star Field. I wonder what kind of place it is.”
“We cannot judge by the text alone. But at the very least, it is a place different from the Sea of Oblivion. It is a place where the management of the Order does not reach—or perhaps, a place that existed before the Order ever did.”
A breeze blew past. It was the first wind they had felt since entering the Sea of Oblivion.
It was weak—a mere ghost of a current brushing against their cheeks. But it hadn't existed in the South. The air was moving. It was blowing from somewhere, passing through to somewhere else.
Koyoi closed his eyes. There was a scent in the wind. The smell of earth. The smell of grass. The smell of water. It was the scent of a living place, worlds away from the odorless air of the Sea of Oblivion.
“It’s close,” Asahi said, his hand resting on his sword hilt as he stared North. “I don’t know what’s waiting for us, but whatever is beyond that mist isn't dead. I can smell it.”
Kuon tucked the Catalog away.
“The Sea of Oblivion ends here. Our journey through the South is over.”
“Our journey through the South?”
“We left the South at the border of the sands. We crossed the Sea of Oblivion. From here on, we are in the North. The frontier of the Order. A place where the Observers' reach is thin.”
Koyoi gripped his pouch. The irregular rhythm of the Droplet was slowly beginning to steady, as if searching for a new cadence.
“Let’s go,” he said.
The three walked into the mist. The grey-blue vapor thinned, the soil beneath them grew firm, and eventually, the sensation of their footsteps turned to the crunch of gravel. The wind grew steadily stronger.
Looking back, the white mist of the Sea of Oblivion stood like a wall. Seeing it from this side, it was clear just how unnatural that whiteness had been. Standing in the living air, that white looked like the color of death.
They turned forward. Beyond the mist, a faint light was bleeding through. It wasn't a star, nor was it a lantern. It was a broader, more subdued glow, as if the earth itself were luminous.
The journey through the South was over, and something new was beginning. Inside the pouch, the Droplet began to carve out a new rhythm. Koyoi matched his pace to that heartbeat and stepped forward into the North.