Upon the steps of the staircase, the names of those who had once passed this way were faintly engraved. Yet even those characters were half-dissolved, eaten away by the encroachment of *Logic*; only a handful remained legible.
When Koyoi traced the stone surface with his fingertips, the chill pooled within the grooves of the engravings seeped through to the very marrow of his bones, causing him to reflexively pull his hand away.
He placed a gentle hand over the drawstring pouch at his waist. The presence of the gods slumbering within pulsed faintly, but it was a fragile, ephemeral heartbeat—like a dream glimpsed from the depths of a profound sleep.
He realized then that the sheer density of this place’s Logic was stifling even the consciousness of the gods.
Feeling the warmth of the *Drop* against his palm, Koyoi looked down into the pitch-black abyss spreading beneath his feet.
There was no bottom in sight.
Only darkness waited there, its maw hanging wide, stretching on forever. The cold air crawling up from that void was the very breath of a ravenous hunger, seeking to uproot and seize the body heat of every living thing. The chill rising from the stone steps caused his exhaled breath to solidify into white mist, only for it to be dismantled into particles of Logic and sucked into the vacuum.
From the depths of the abyss, a low vibration occasionally shivered upward, as if something gargantuan were shifting its weight, causing the entire staircase to groan ominously. The flame of the lantern flickered wildly, and the shadows of the three companions stretched and shrank unnervingly against the stone.
Even the outlines of those shadows were being whittled away by the erosion of Logic; Koyoi could see it clearly with his own eyes.
The particles of information blanketed the stone steps like fallen snow. With every step they took, the grains shattered with a faint sound. Only a lingering scent remained to tell the tale—that each crushed fragment had once been a shard of someone’s memory.
Kuon remained silent, his eyes fixed on the *Catalog*. A pale blue radiance flickered across the pages.
He continued to press forward. The bluish-white beam emitted from his artificial eye maintained its unwavering precision even in this extreme environment, illuminating every stroke of the text.
However, a faint tremor resided in the fingertips with which Kuon turned the pages—a weakness he never usually showed. That trembling alone spoke volumes, betraying the fact that the information recorded in the Catalog possessed a gravity that far exceeded his most dire projections.
Kuon set his jaw, a deep furrow carving itself between his brows as he sought the oldest accounts regarding the *Staircase of Logic*. The ink on the pages was fading faster than he could read; the characters illuminated by the blue light of his artificial eye melted and vanished the moment they were touched, like snow under the sun.
He ground his teeth, clenching his jaw so hard it ached, and pushed the output of his artificial eye to its absolute limit in an attempt to sear the afterimages of the vanishing words into his memory.
As the intensity of the blue light increased, fine, web-like cracks began to spider across the surface of the thin glass covering his eye.
There was pain, certainly.
But Kuon had long ago resolved to accept such pain as the price for unearthing the truth.
"...Look. This is the speed of Logic’s 'Correction.' They’re trying to physically 'bleach' the very boundaries of the world—to wipe it all away as if it never happened—before we can even decipher the truth."
Kuon’s voice rang out. His words traveled down the surface of the stone steps and fell into the bottomless pit, returning as a chorus of overlapping echoes. It was an eerie resonance, as if the world itself were chewing on Kuon’s accusation, verifying its validity.
Kuon pressed his fingers firmly against the page of the Catalog, using the precision monitoring functions of his artificial eye to measure the exact speed at which the text was being erased by the erosion.
The numbers were worse than his most pessimistic estimates.
Bleaching.
It wasn't merely deletion. It was a world-scale falsification—the act of making existence itself "never having been" from the very beginning.
The strength with which Kuon’s slender fingers gripped the spine of the Catalog was no longer for the sake of reading; it was a final fortress, a desperate hold to keep his own mind from shattering in the face of this cruel reality.
"...Bleaching? Does that mean the 'pain' we're feeling right here, right now... will eventually disappear into that, too?"
Koyoi’s voice trembled as he asked. Though it was the voice of a child, the question carried a weight that seemed to shake the very foundations of the world. A thin veil of tears shimmered in his eyes like jewels, catching the flickering light of the lantern.
He pressed both hands to his chest, desperately trying to confirm the silhouette of the pain that undeniably existed there.
The pain was there.
It was proof that they were alive, and evidence that their memories remained. If even that were to be bleached away, where would the meaning of their standing here vanish to?
The *Drop* inside his pouch shivered in response to its master's agitation, spilling faint grains of light. That light shone with a singular warmth amidst the snow of information particles, looking for all the world like the flame of the last candle lit within a fading world.
"...Let’s move. The answers were left behind us."
Asahi spoke, swinging his thick arms. He had chosen the most grueling path: the *Trial of Silent Recording*.
He allowed the fluctuations of sound to remain as they were, maintaining the "Border"—the boundary of Logic—by offering up a portion of his own soul. With every passing minute, the rhythm of that boundary grew deeper, and the unstable seams of Logic were being audibly redrawn beneath his very feet.
But within him now lived the thermal energy of that "Drop of Light" bestowed upon him by the girl. He no longer had a single reason to stop or stray.
The three of them set foot upon the first step of the Staircase of Logic.
The stone surface sank slightly, and the wreckage of the engraved names emitted a pale blue glow, recognizing their presence. The vibrations from the abyss grew stronger, and the entire staircase groaned like the spine of some massive, living beast.
Koyoi pulled the pouch close to his chest, overlapping the warmth of the gods with his own heartbeat.
To seize the truth with their own hands before they were bleached—before they were erased—the three of them began their ascent across the bridge of darkness, one steady step at a time.
The flame of the lantern illuminated their backs, and within that light, the snow of information was stained a brief, warm gold.
One by one, the engravings on the stone steps sparked in reaction to their footsteps. It was as if the dying names were summoning the last of their strength, desperate to record the passage of these three.
With every step he took upon that fragile light, Koyoi felt a prayer for the countless names he had yet to encounter pile up quietly, but certainly, in the depths of his heart.