The battlefield tilted.
Not with gravity—but will.
The masked woman still hadn't moved from her place. But each time her hand shifted, reality buckled around her. Entire seconds slipped away. Blades missed. Timing faltered.
She wasn't fighting.
She was erasing.
One thread at a time.
And we were running out of time to stop her.
***
A tremor passed beneath my feet.
Not from the ground.
From the thread.
It burned behind my ribs—pulling tighter, deeper. Not toward the woman. Not even toward the shikigami.
Toward the others.
Toward my companions.
Every one of them was fighting with more than power.
They were fighting with memory.
Their eyes had all changed.
Somewhere between the first wave and now, something inside each of them had begun to remember—not clearly, not fully—but enough.
Rin fought like she had once protected something sacred.
Sayo moved like she had once lost everything and learned to haunt the loss.
Shuji's hand trembled like it had already turned a gear that shattered time.
Tatsuya fought like a man trying to outpace a shadow.
And Genzo—
He stood in the center of the fray like a man who had already died once for someone else.
***
She tried to take that from us.
The woman in indigo.
She lifted her hand again.
The battlefield flickered.
And Rin—mid-step—disappeared.
Just gone. Like a thread cut short.
I shouted her name.
The thread inside me spasmed.
And everything slowed.
Not paused.
Split.
I saw two versions of the world—one where she vanished, one where she remained.
And without thinking—
I reached into the space between them.
And chose.
Time cracked.
Rin reappeared beside me, collapsing into a crouch, breath, hitched.
She looked at me, eyes wide.
"You—"
"I don't know what I did," I said.
But the thread behind my ribs flared gold.
***
I stood.
The world shifted.
Shikigami turned toward me.
So did my companions.
Even she—the one in indigo—lowered her hand.
Because something in the thread had changed.
It no longer pulled backward.
It no longer burned.
It glowed.
And in that moment, I understood.
Every battle we fought.
Every version of ourselves.
Every failure—
Was still part of the same thread.
And now, for the first time—
I was holding it.
***
I took one step forward.
Time buckled.
A hundred shikigami lunged at once.
And we moved.
Together.
Rin to my right. Shuji behind me. Genzo and Tatsuya to the left. Sayo's shadow stretching across the battlefield like a net cast in silence.
Each of us—
A fragment.
But together—
Whole.
***
Steel rang.
Light cracked.
Time unwound.
And in the middle of it all—
She finally moved.
She descended like a final verdict.
The masked woman stepped into our world.
And everything we were.
Was about.
To be tested.