The heart of the shadow held an image.
The moment the grey walls enveloped the train, something appeared outside the window. It wasn't the usual uniform grey. Ribbons of faint light were sandwiched between the layers of ash.
Something was moving inside those ribbons.
“A person.”
Koyoi pressed his face against the glass. There was a silhouette in the grey—or more accurately, a memory of one. The thin bands of light had preserved an image from the past.
Kuon had said that the heart of the shadow was a place where the information of the world’s Logic was overwritten. But that information did not vanish completely. It remained scorched into the grey layers as an afterimage.
The silhouette was alone. A massive back. Shoulders broader than Asahi’s.
The man was carrying something. He walked with heavy, leaden steps, clutching a cloth-wrapped burden to his back with both arms. He was on the very same path the three of them were traveling now. On the same tracks, heading in the same direction.
“It’s the First God.”
Kuon watched the image through his prosthetic eye. A pale blue light flickered within the socket, interfering with the grey layers and sharpening the vision slightly.
“The timeline is ancient. This is an afterimage from thousands of years ago. A record etched into the core of the shadow—the First God once walked this path.”
In the vision, the figure swayed with every step. The burden was heavy. A faint light leaked through the gaps in the cloth. A white light. A light that looked cold.
“That luggage...” Koyoi murmured.
“Names,” Kuon said, his voice dropping low. “He is carrying the names from before the Freeze. To bring the gathered names to the place of stagnation, he walked this road all alone.”
The image began to fade. The grey layers thickened, compressing the ribbons of light. Just before it vanished, the figure looked back once.
His face was invisible, overwritten by grey until only a faint outline remained. But that outline was trembling.
He’s crying, Koyoi thought. Carrying the weight of those names on his broad back, weeping all by himself. In a place where no one could see, deep within the shadows, sobbing silently.
The vision died. Outside the window, the world returned to its usual grey. Asahi stared out at the void, arms crossed.
“He carried them alone?”
“He was alone. There is no other presence in this record. No Observers, no other gods.”
Kuon looked down at the Catalog. The golden threads within were still vibrating.
“He was hiding. He gathered the names from the Observers and performed the ritual of the Freeze in secret, known to no one.”
“Why did he have to hide?”
Kuon didn't answer Asahi’s question. Koyoi understood that it wasn't because he lacked an answer, but because the shape of that answer had not yet revealed itself to him.
The train broke through the heart of the shadow. Beyond the thin mist, the lights of Hoshino came into view. The pouch at Koyoi's side pulsed with a warm rhythm—deep and slow, as if it, too, remembered the man’s back.
Koyoi rested his forehead against the windowpane, tracing the afterimage behind his eyelids. The back of a man carrying names while weeping in solitude. The weight of that loneliness seeped slowly into the depths of his chest.
In the distance, the lights of Hoshino wavered through the fog, and the steel skeleton of the train let out a faint, metallic groan. Without exchanging another word, the three were carried on toward the next station.