Yekase levered a haul of secrets out of Kujou’s clenched jaw, like a crowbar biting stone, and they lined up with her earlier hunches.
The Shadow Realm War’s real bosses were the UK and France. They wanted Europe turbulent—countries second-guessing, burning fuel against each other—so fewer rivals would fight them for the Golden Apple.
The Icewater Sprite Institute was probing the link between soul and Soul Power. Kujou ran it. Their biggest trick was a way to hack the Soul Power field, brute-forcing past the sync rate.
And there really wasn’t a counter for that hack, like a blade with no sheath.
Kujou’s screams had reached the kind that made listeners mist up, but he still wouldn’t cut the link to end himself. He’d never planned a detach step. The “disarm the bomb” option never existed.
What now?
Kujou was finished, body and spirit crushed. Keeping him breathing was torture. But Valra had jacked into the Soul Power field too. Leaving her alive was a live wire in floodwater.
Check how Lu Yao’s fight is going…
Yekase turned to the other front, eyes scanning like a hawk over broken rooftops.
“Uh.”
Peace Walker’s arms were gone.
The squad mech was built from smaller units snapped together, so a disconnect was normal. But those exposed cross-sections looked like they’d been cleaved clean with violence—copper veins laid bare. How?
Bang!
Valra blasted backward out of Peace Walker’s chest in a shower of sparks.
“Eh.”
Lu Yao darted after her, jets sputtering pale fire. Mechanical armor wrapped her limbs in a steel cocoon, spray ports carving arcs of thrust. She achieved solo flight, but her moves were stiff, her reactions dulled—caught in some trap and forcing herself through it?
Valra flung fireballs and whirling discs over her shoulder, a thick barrage like sleet. Lu Yao slipped through what she could, but impacts still clipped her. Blood tracked down her shoulder, striped her face.
She needs help… but if we don’t solve the Soul Power field, we’re just mopping water while the roof leaks.
What do I do?
Think—faster than a storm front rolling in—
If Arcadians and we could truly understand each other, maybe there’s a way from inside to evict two illegal users from the local net. But the city’s “residents” are in that unreachably mute state. They’re only shadows projected by the Soul Power field. Their real souls aren’t here.
Ling Yi might bend it by will alone. Yekase didn’t have her gift. Sorry—not happening.
Meanwhile, a heavy premonition of “headline news” thickened in her chest like thunderheads stacking.
“Hey.”
She spoke to Kujou, lying there, unable to die, wanting to.
“The Soul Power field’s changing. What did you do?”
“Miss Valra… catalyzed the reaction. This city… has become… a Soul Power engine!”
“What?!”
“You… already lost!”
“Alright. You can shut up.”
Yekase planted a boot on his jaw. Pain snapped his mouth shut like a trap.
A Soul Power engine—Valra was burning Arcadian souls for fuel, stoking herself brighter. And Lu Yao’s condition—
Yekase had heard a city-legend: some ace pilots had terrifying spatial senses. They saw through chaotic trajectories like threads in a loom, and their control was as clean as moving fingers. Most uncanny of all, they shared a bond—unexplained empathy—transmitting feelings and ideas across empty air.
Was Lu Yao one of them? Dragged by Arcadia’s dead, her mind eroded by a hundred thousand souls’ centuries-deep loneliness.
No more waiting. No time to hesitate. This will kill her. Even if she lives, the damage will scar both flesh and mind.
She staked her life to protect Arcadia. Yekase would stake hers to protect her.
“I feel you by my side!”
If Yekase had any ability that brushed Soul Power, she’d throw it now.
Magical Girl Icarus arrived in a spiraling vortex, a crimson scarf snapping like a banner. It flicked across Kujou’s skin, and he shrieked hoarse, feeling phantom fire lick his body.
“Long time no see, everyone. Yes—I need help again.”
The small mouth behind the scarf murmured.
No.1, Super No.1, V3, Lalabel, Shanon, Xi, Rainbow, Fuyutsuki, Aura, the one whose name I can’t remember.
And Ivaris.
The fallen, the returned, the sleeping, the watchers.
…Lend me your strength.
Power that overcomes limits and pierces the ridge—leaves villains nowhere to hide—tears them from the Soul Power field they’re using to dodge—
…
In the Sidonia Hills, two figures flying through whiteout looked up.
In Central Asia, someone soaking in an oasis pool tilted their head.
Beyond the universe, someone bit a pink-and-white candy sphere, cracked it, and smiled.
“I’m saying—trust other people a little more too.”
…
…
Yekase felt Flash Energy bending, turning into Soul Power. Slow, like sap climbing a tree, but she had to wait.
Then the battlefield shifted again, like a chessboard kicked.
From the palace’s direction—at the tip of a leaning stone column—
Harrison’s narrow, not-sturdy silhouette appeared.
He faced Valra’s way and raised… a shard of roof tile?
She blinked. It was a tile. Square-cut. Earth-brown. No adornment.
That was the treasure Arcadians hid at the palace’s deepest point. A secret weapon that failed against Outer Entities. The foundation of their nation.
“Arcadian residents!”
“By this tile as witness, I assume the office of acting Speaker!”
What…
Who was he talking to?
Yekase got her answer—the whole city, inside and out. The residents she’d thought were mere shadows all raised their heads toward Harrison.
“Commencing—the first collective vote of this year!”
Soul Power flames burst alive on every body at once, like candles catching in a wind.
So they weren’t only shadows? Yekase’s breath caught. She hadn’t expected the world to turn this ideal.
Lu Yao caught the slowing Valra, swung a downcut hook, and hammered her like a rag into the ground, deep into the ruins.
“The motion is:”
Harrison’s voice choked, but the tile in his hand held steady—like a sacred fire that had burned five hundred winters without dimming.
“Arcadians… may they rest. Those in favor—raise your hand!”
…
People in the streets raised their hands.
Shopkeepers raised their hands.
Children at play raised their hands… elders at twilight raised their hands… women with vegetables raised their hands…
“Unanimous.”
The first was a boy kicking a ball in a small square. He hugged his beloved leather football, lifted his head as far as his neck would go, stared at the cloudless, cold sky—an unfamiliar, foreign sky.
His shape dissolved. He became a bright blue flame and rose, slow as a lantern.
Arcadians who saw that frail glow stopped everything and watched, quiet, as the miracle once theirs drifted upward.
Then the second flame.
The third.
The fourth—
From every corner, hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of Soul Power flames rose—big and small, pale and deep.
Above dead ruins, the air became a sea of lanterns—lively as a festival.
Then, one by one… each flame faded, like fireflies blinking out.
“No—this can’t be! Arcadia, ruined by a random calamity—chooses rest?”
Kujou forgot his pain and shouted, broken. “Five hundred years of solitude! Pain! Hatred! Confusion!—All meaningless to you?! Less than that cracked tile?!”
Yekase crouched casually beside him and fished a strawberry-milk lollipop from her transfer crate, clamping it between her teeth.
“Looks like you lost.”
“I won’t accept it! I don’t understand! I—”
“Those who die holding grudges may be as you say. But do you truly think they held grudges while alive?”
“Huh?!”
“Outer Entities came from the far side of the galaxy to invade. And Arcadians? They bet their lives to protect home. Their will endured into our time, centuries later. What’s there to hate? Even the city they reprojected hums with quiet and joy.”
“——!!”
“Someone once told me, ‘The body may perish, belief persists.’ Everyone dies. Even a Longlifer won’t live to watch the universe go dark. Every life just wants to scratch a mark into the world. In this dark cage with a radius of 46.5 billion light-years.”
Yekase snickered, pulled out a second lollipop, unwrapped it, and pushed it into the mouth of limbless Kujou.
“Sweet?”
“Kill or cut, whatever. I’m a man of the samurai’s land. I won’t tolerate this insult…”
“How’s it an insult? I want you a bit at peace before you die, so you don’t haunt me at night. Oh—right. I’ve killed a lot of zealots. You wouldn’t be near the front of the line.”
Kujou Tetsuya, the genius onmyoji from Japan, stared through the slit Yekase tore in the mech shell at the boundless sky, a banana-flavored lollipop on his tongue, and finally went quiet.
Banana is awful. You did that on purpose, didn’t you, he thought, as his mind blurred.
“I’m Yekase.”
“You can call me Magical Girl Icarus, Mechbreaker, Crimson Magus, Scarlet Saint, Shepherd of Beasts—take your pick. The dead deserve respect. You’re about to be dead. Greatly respected.”
“…”
“I hope the afterlife’s a corner hotpot joint. Sixty a head.”
“…?”
“If so, even we could sit and laugh over the pot. I want to know… even mortal enemies, irredeemable villains. I want to hear their thoughts. If you have a dream, I’d listen.”
“…”
“Can’t afford sixty a head? Didn’t spirit money inflate a long time ago? Then it’s on me.”
She looked down. He was already quietly gone.
