The sunset was not the color of the sky; it was the color of Names.
Beyond the town, along a path where no tracks remained, the mist took on a faint, reddish tint. It was not that the sun was setting. Rather, the light of Names—which should have fallen—was burning out before it could sink. Those embers stained the heavens in a thin, translucent vermilion.
Koyoi stopped and looked back. The town behind them had vanished, swallowed by the fog. There was only the mist.
“We... we really made it this far.”
Koyoi was startled by the weakness in his own voice. He had come so far from home, yet the atmosphere of the evening felt like the walk back from school when he was a child, bringing a faint ache to his chest.
Kuon opened the Catalog. The characters on the pages caught the sunset, glowing with a soft red hue.
“Written, yet unwritten... That is the nature of this path.”
“Are you scared?” Koyoi asked.
Kuon remained silent for a heartbeat before answering. “I am. But sometimes, being afraid is the right way to be.”
Asahi adjusted the weight of the sword on his back and stared into the crimson mist.
“...The sunset doesn’t lie.”
“Why do you say that?”
“If you want to hide something, you use white. Red is the color of showing,” Asahi said. “The sky has wounds it wants us to see.”
Koyoi gripped his drawstring pouch, pressing his fingers against the warmth of the Shizuku inside. The Drop did not shrink from the sunset. If anything, it seemed to be growing slightly warmer.
The path continued. Even under the red mist, the ground beneath their feet felt solid and welcoming.
The trees of the forest began to drink in the colors of the dusk. Bark that had been a silvery gray stained into a pale amber. The green of the moss sank into a deep jade, and the leaves at the tips of the branches began to shimmer, one by one, like polished bronze. These were colors Koyoi had never seen in the south. To eyes that had known only ash and white, the vibrancy was so sharp it almost hurt to look at.
The sky continued its transformation.
A bruised purple bled into the vermilion. Depending on the height at which the light of Names burned out, the colors shifted: those falling low turned red; those floating high turned a deep blue-violet; and between them stretched ribbons of orange and lavender.
“...I didn’t know a sky could look like this,” Koyoi whispered.
Kuon closed the Catalog. He hadn't stopped reading; he was simply watching. His artificial eye caught the fading light, glowing for a moment not with its usual gold, but with a rich amber.
“Don’t you need to record this?” Asahi asked.
“...No,” Kuon replied, looking up at the expanse while cradling the book to his chest. “There are some sights I want to see for myself before I turn them into records.”
Asahi let his hand fall from the hilt of his greatsword. The blade remained quiet in its sheath. Even the vibrations of the earth were still. It was a twilight that offered no reason to draw steel. He crossed his arms and leaned his back against the trunk of a tree.
Koyoi pressed the pouch against his heart. The Shizuku was pulsing, but it wasn't the frantic, hurried rhythm he was used to. It was peaceful.
There was no anxiety. No impatience. It was simply there, existing in the sunset alongside the three of them.
“It’s so quiet,” Koyoi said.
No one answered. There was no need to.
Tomorrow, deep within this forest, they would meet the Nameless God. They didn't know what would happen. They didn't even know if they would return.
But for now, they had this sunset. It might be their last, and for that very reason, they refused to close their eyes.
The colors of the sky slowly drowned in purple. The light of Names burned out one by one, leaving dark holes in the heavens where the night began to peek through.
Darkness was coming.
Koyoi squeezed the pouch tight. The Shizuku gave one final, quiet pulse.
As if saying goodnight.