The falling particles of information drifted down like silver powder, settling upon Koyoi’s shoulders and hair. When he tried to catch them in his palm, the particles emitted a faint glow the moment they touched his skin, leaving behind fragments of letters before vanishing into nothingness. They were names.
The lost shards of names belonging to the countless souls who had once been "bleached" here. Koyoi stared at the afterimage of that light, feeling a heavy, tightening ache deep in his chest. The thought that every single particle was once proof of someone’s existence filled him with an unbearable, swirling emotion—a mix of guilt for letting them slip through his fingers and a hollow sense of helplessness.
The droplet inside his drawstring pouch trembled slightly, as if reacting to the weight of the falling particles. That vibration traveled from his waist, up his spine, and pulsed through his entire body. A bell chimed once more, and as the stone lanterns flickered with a sudden, intense light, Koyoi’s shadow stretched unnaturally long, nearly dissolving into the cracks between the flagstones.
Kuon’s prosthetic eye traced the text of the register, line by line.
“...Look. This is the ‘Redefinition’ of the records. Before we can even decipher the truth, they are physically ‘bleaching’ the laws of the world itself. They’re trying to make it so none of this ever happened.”
Kuon spat the words out, his voice cold yet carrying a smoldering heat of suppressed rage. The blue light of his prosthetic eye intensified, the glow illuminating the pages of the register expanding to nearly twice its usual range. His intellect was working at full capacity, attempting to parse the sheer scale of this atrocity—the redefinition of providence.
However, the information recorded in the register was being overwritten in real-time, bleached away even as he looked at it. Before he could finish a single line, the text would be replaced by a different string of characters. Kuon ground his teeth, sinking the focus of his eye even deeper into the depths of the register.
A desperate race was unfolding between his eyes: the speed of his deciphering versus the speed of the erasure. A single bead of sweat trickling down his temple spoke volumes of his desperation.
“...Bleaching? Does that mean... even the names of those children will just turn white and disappear?”
Koyoi’s small, strained voice seemed to be swallowed by the storm of information particles. The moment he said "those children," the faces of the gods he had encountered on his long journey flashed through his mind like a revolving lantern. The gentle smile of the God of Rain, the silver-shining eyes of the God of the Moon, the soft breath of the God of the Wind.
Each one remained lit in his heart as an irreplaceable warmth. To have all of that painted over in white was a horror far more unbearable than the thought of losing his own life. Koyoi cradled the pouch in both hands, checking again and again through the touch of his fingertips that the warmth dwelling within had not vanished.
The pulse of the droplet traveled through his fingers, beating in the same rhythm as his own heart.
Asahi gripped the hilt of his sword with all his might, taking one final breath to steady his spirit amidst the storm of information. Every time a particle touched his broad shoulders, his instincts as a swordsman rang a faint alarm, but he pushed it back with sheer force of will. He did not close his eyes; he stared straight ahead, relentlessly searching for the location of the answer hidden deep within the storm.
His back was as solid as a wall, silently taking on the role of a shield to protect Koyoi and Kuon from the gale.
“...The night is long. But I’m going to drag the true ‘answer’ of providence out from that single point. I won't stop until I do.”
Asahi’s voice did not waver, even in the heart of the storm. Its low, heavy resonance cut through the falling particles and reached Koyoi and Kuon’s ears with unwavering clarity. Hearing that voice, Koyoi felt something that had been crumbling inside him regain its core.
In a world being bleached white, only Asahi’s words refused to lose their color. Like the will dwelling within a blade, they were straight, sharp, and profoundly warm. As the flickering of the lanterns gradually grew calm and the flurry of particles began to thin, the shadows of the three companions finally regained their clear outlines upon the flagstones of the station.