Stepping away from the station at Hoshifuri-machi, the sound died. The wind, the footsteps, even the rhythmic pulse of the pouch—all of it vanished. The world had come to a standstill.
This was a place where the records of existence had been thinned out. In the center of the plaza stood a stone pedestal. Upon it sat... nothing.
Only the ghost of something remained. A circular indentation.
The mark of a vessel once meant to hold water. Once, a Well had stood here as well.
"It was destroyed."
Kuon placed a hand on the pedestal. The stone was cold.
"After the Observers executed the Thinning, they destroyed the Well to erase the evidence. Every name that existed here... has been wiped away."
Koyoi looked around the plaza. The cobblestones were white. Abnormally so.
While the stones in Hoshino had been gray, these were a bleached, stark white. No letters, no light. Not even a trace of a name remained. They had been completely deleted. He looked down at his feet.
There were no shadows. His own shadow was gone.
All three of them had lost their shadows.
"In this place, the record of existence is too thin to cast a shadow."
Kuon peered at the ground through his prosthetic eye. The pale blue light from his lens was swallowed by the white stones.
"The culling took place here. They erased the names, erased the memories, erased the traces of existence—and finally, they erased the shadows."
For the first time, the pouch grew cold. Inside, Shizuku was trembling. It wasn't fear.
It was grief.
Among the names erased here, there might have been someone Shizuku knew. Not just her brother, but many more. Koyoi wrapped his hands around the pouch, trying to offer it warmth. No warmth came back. The pouch remained cold.
The sheer void of this place was draining the life from Shizuku. Asahi stood beside the pedestal, looking down at the ruins of the Well.
"Can it be rebuilt?" Asahi asked Kuon.
"The Well itself? No. But—"
Kuon opened his catalog, tracing the lines of a nautical chart.
"The names of the Seven Pillars are moving through the depths of the earth. This is their destination."
Koyoi looked up. "They’re trying to come here? Even without a Well?"
"Even without a Well, the coordinates of this place remain. The names move by relying on those coordinates. It's just that once they arrive, there is nowhere for them to land. There is no vessel to receive them."
Koyoi stared at the white stones. A stark, white ground with no shadows. A place of nothingness. And yet, the names were heading here. They were trying to return once more to the place from which they had been erased.
Koyoi pulled seven sheets from his bundle of transcripts. The names of the Seven Pillars traveling through the underground.
He arranged the transcripts around the circular indentation on the pedestal. He placed small stones at the four corners to act as the Well's substitute. The paper spread out across the white cobblestones.
The color of the ink on that paper was the only color left in this world.
"We can make a vessel," Koyoi said. "Even without a Well, we have the transcripts. We will build a place for the names to return to, right here on the paper."
The pouch grew just a fraction warmer. Shizuku was responding to Koyoi’s voice. From the bottom of the cold fabric, a single, tiny pulse beat back. The seven transcripts lined up on the white stones began to take on a faint glow.
From deep underground, the names were approaching.
They hadn't arrived yet.
But the paper could feel them coming. There were no stars in the sky. No golden streaks of light.
This was a place of culling. But the seven sheets of paper on the ground were shining. In the place where everything had been erased, a new vessel had been set. It was still small, fragile, and looked as though it might blow away with a single gust of wind.
But the pebbles he had placed on the stones kept the paper safe.
The three of them stayed in the plaza. They decided they would wait there until the names arrived.