Upon the parched earth, there was nothing.
It was the very absence of anything that felt wrong. After emerging from the Sea of Oblivion, the roadsides should have been littered with stone monuments and fragments of records. Yet in this one area, the ground was smooth, as if it had been perfectly leveled, and not a single object remained.
Koyoi came to a halt and looked around.
The flat ground stretched out in every direction. He could see no end to it. There was no mist, and no wind blew. There was only the empty ground beneath a leaden, grey sky.
"...It’s a blank."
Kuon opened the Register. The pale blue light of his artificial eye scanned the ground, but it projected nothing back.
"There are no records. In this sector alone, there is no accumulation of information whatsoever. While the surrounding areas are piled many layers deep, this place is hollow."
"Was it destroyed?"
Asahi rested a hand on the hilt of his sword. Kuon shook his head.
"There are no traces of destruction. No signs of anything being scraped away, nor any evidence of weathering. Nothing was ever written here to begin with. It was left empty by design."
Koyoi knelt and touched the soil with his fingertips. It had no temperature. In the Sea of Oblivion, the ground had been cold; upon the layers of records, it had been warm. But here, the earth was the exact same temperature as his own skin, leaving him with almost no sensation of touch at all.
"...I can’t feel anything here."
"It’s not that you can’t feel it. There is simply nothing to feel because nothing has been written."
Kuon flipped through the pages of the Register. Page after page of white followed. Even within the Register, the records corresponding to this void did not exist.
"This isn't an act of destruction. It’s a reservation."
Kuon’s voice changed slightly. Beneath his usual analytical flatness, a hint of wonder had crept in.
"The Designer intended to write something here. They just haven't written it yet."
Silence fell over them.
Asahi stood with his arms crossed, staring down at the vacant ground.
"They intended to write, but didn't? Or was it that they couldn't?"
"I don't know. However, there is a signature at the boundary of the blank space."
Kuon directed the light of his artificial eye toward the edge of the void—the border where the smooth ground met the layered records. A faint inscription ran along the seam.
"The handwriting matches the originals in the Archives. It is the same hand that placed the seal on the Well of Hoshino. The First God carved the outline of this blank space with their own hand."
Koyoi stood in the center of the void. The Drop inside his pouch was still. It didn't pulse; it didn't react. Within this blankness, perhaps the Drop had become a blank as well.
And yet, strangely, he wasn't afraid.
"...It feels like a promise."
"A promise of what?" Asahi asked, looking back at him.
"A promise to write. They haven't written it yet, but they’ve saved the space. So that they can write it someday."
Kuon closed the Register. The light in his artificial eye faded, and he looked out at the void with his own natural eye.
"When the Designer created the Laws, they didn't finish everything. It wasn't a completed world; it was a work in progress. This blank space is a declaration that there is more to the story."
A breeze picked up. The wind blowing through the void carried no scent. It was a wind that contained nothing. Yet, within that wind, Koyoi felt a faint warmth.
It wasn't a human warmth. It was the warmth of something much older, much larger. It felt as if the being who had tried to create the world had stood right here, pondering what to write next. This was like the lingering scent of that ancient contemplation.
"...I wonder what the Designer meant to write here."
"To know that, we have no choice but to go to the Archives. if the Designer's intentions were recorded anywhere, it would be there."
Kuon looked toward the horizon. The silhouette of the tower loomed beyond the void.
Asahi stomped his foot once against the empty ground. No sound returned. Because there was nothing there, there was no echo.
"It’s creepy. A broken place is at least easier to understand."
"It isn't broken, so there is no need to fix it. It is simply a place that is waiting."
Kuon began to walk again. Koyoi and Asahi followed.
As they crossed the void, Koyoi paused just once. He felt as though the Drop in his pouch had grown ever so slightly warm. It wasn't supposed to react within the blankness.
And yet, the temperature he felt through the cloth had risen, just a fraction.
The Designer’s warmth and the temperature of the Drop were vibrating at the exact same frequency.
Koyoi said nothing and continued walking. The end of the void came into view. Beyond it, stone monuments and fragments of records were scattered once more. The places where the world had been written were beginning again.
As he stepped over the edge of the blank space, he felt a faint presence behind him.
He looked back, but there was nothing. The void simply lay there as a void, beneath the grey sky.
But Koyoi understood.
That space wasn't empty. It just hadn't been written yet. It was a margin left by the Designer for someone to fill one day.
It wasn't a scar from a broken world; it was the continuation of a story that hadn't yet ended.