Chapter 7: Reckoning in Sky Castle Zalegrande! (While It’s... You Know... Falling)

Kanako had been told that she was an “Isekai Writer.” She could make the worlds she imagined become reality.

She hadn’t been told why she was that way, but if it was something she could do, she decided, then it was worth a try. Even if her power could destroy the world, in the state she was in now, Kanako would use it without hesitation.

The sorceress had said the school was a good location. The powers of an “Isekai Writer” would increase with the number of readers she had. If she wanted to bring an isekai into being, the sorceress had told her, then she should use the school, where she already had influence.

Numbly, Kanako had done just as the sorceress said.

Her memories of what had happened after that were hazy. The next thing she knew, she was running across the athletic field away from Yuichi and the others. While outside, she saw the moment when the castle and the school overlapped.

The isekai was here. In that instant, Kanako felt the gears lock into place.

Kanako remembered that the sorceress was waiting for her on the roof.

This was a good start. Now she needed to be taught how to turn the entire world into an isekai.

She was just heading towards the new school building, when suddenly, that announcement began. It was the sorceress’s voice. She was saying something about a game, but she had never mentioned anything to Kanako about this...

But then, the change was being fueled by her story, The Half-Isekai Classroom. Perhaps the sorceress was trying to recreate the tragedies that played out in the story.

Kanako had to go to the roof. Before now, just thinking about it would have filled her with terror, but now, she was at peace. She could use magic now. In this world, Kanako Orihara was effectively God.

Take me to Zalegrande Castle!

With that one wish, Kanako’s body lifted into the air.

Trembling, with eyes clenched shut, Kanako flew. Soon, she arrived on the roof.

She opened her eyes and looked down, but the sorceress was nowhere to be seen. Had she gone into the castle, then?

Kanako flew in through the rows of pillars above.

The minute she entered, the world twisted around her. Up and down had been reversed, but since Kanako was floating, the effect had been minor.

She touched down and looked around. She was in the mid-air corridor. It was lined with pillars, like walls, on either side, with archways supporting it. Magical lights lined the ceiling, making things as bright as daylight there.

Kanako knew this place. A slowly-curving hallway ten meters wide and a hundred meters long, linking the Black and White Towers.

This was the isekai that Kanako had created.

But right now, it only existed within the school, and this was far from the world that Kanako wanted.

Therefore, she needed to know. She needed the sorceress to tell her how to turn the whole world into an isekai.

Kanako began walking forward slowly, in the direction of the Black Tower.

The corridor’s gentle curve prevented her from seeing all the way to the end of it, but before long, a person came into view. The woman in glasses, the sorceress, was standing in front of the door that led to the Black Tower. When she saw Kanako, a faint smile appeared on her lips.

“Thank goodness you’re here. I was afraid you wouldn’t come.”

Something was wrong.

The sorceress really did seem to be glad to see her. But something felt off to her about the way the sorceress was acting.

“I never stick to just one plan,” the sorceress continued. “I’d come up with quite a few alternatives in case any one of them failed, but here at the end, with success in my grasp, I started to realize I had neglected one small detail.”

Kanako began walking towards the Black Tower. The closer she got, the greater the sense of wrongness grew.

“What do you mean?” she asked, uncertain of what the sorceress was talking about.

“I neglected to take steps to make sure you’d come here. I’d be utterly disgusted with myself if I’d come this far and failed to stick the landing.”

“What would happen if I hadn’t come here?” Kanako asked.

She realized part of what was off. The sorceress had always been blunt, but she had always seemed to be concerned about Kanako. There was none of that concern for her now. The sorceress wasn’t ignoring her completely, but Kanako had a nagging feeling that something about the way she was being treated had changed.

“There was a chance you might get pulled into the game and die, and the isekai would disappear,” the sorceress said. “Besides, as the creator of this world, your powers are limitless; I couldn’t have you running amok in the middle of the game. I should have ensured a way to get you off the game field and keep you safe.”

“Game? What are you talking about?” Kanako asked. She had heard the announcement. There had been a similar setup in the story Kanako had meant to write, but she didn’t know why the sorceress was going through with it.

“It’s a little hobby of mine,” said the sorceress. “I like to trap people in an area and make them kill each other in various ways.”

Kanako paused. That was the last thing she had expected to hear the sorceress say.

“I have an ability that lends itself to the creation of these games, but it doesn’t work on enclosed spaces I create myself,” the sorceress went on. “I need someone else to create them for me. It’s quite troublesome, and makes it hard to set up fields of any decent size. The most participants I’ve ever had in a game before was a few dozen.”

“What are you...” It made no sense to her. Making people kill each other? Enclosed spaces? Abilities? Games? The words jumbled together in Kanako’s mind, never fully parsing.

“I wanted to create a game on a larger scale,” the sorceress said. “I was going to use the Evil God’s power, but that plan hit a major setback, so I turned my attention on the school isekai enclosed space plan I had been working on, and what do you know? It all worked out. Thank you, Kanako Orihara. I couldn’t have done it without you.”

“I-I see... all right,” Kanako stuttered. “But I don’t care about that. I just want to go to an isekai. How can I make the whole world into an isekai? Please, tell me.” Kanako didn’t mind being used, just as long as she learned how to turn the whole world into an isekai.

“Don’t you understand what I just said?” the sorceress asked. “I’m trying to say that I have no further use for you.”

No further use for her? Why? Kanako couldn’t understand.

“If you turned the whole world into an isekai, it would stop being an enclosed space,” said the sorceress. “Why on Earth would I help you to do that?”

“But... you promised...” Kanako stumbled. The world was growing dark around her. If that was the case, then none of it meant anything.

“Promised?” the sorceress asked. “I told you how to do it already. If you can’t do it, then it’s just a sign you weren’t powerful enough. Don’t blame it on me. Here, I’ll show you. Do you see something strange about how this castle is set up?”

The sorceress opened the door to the Black Tower. There was nothing inside. The floor, walls, and ceiling were gray, with only the windows and doors decorated in grand style.

It was only natural; Kanako hadn’t decided what should go in the Black Tower yet. She couldn’t bring to life a place she didn’t know.

“Your setting is haphazard,” said the sorceress. “How do you expect to rewrite the entire world with such a trivial imagination?”

“But... that means...” Kanako found herself wavering, then she fell to her knees.

“Did you really think the meager despair caused by your mother not loving you is power enough to change the world?” the sorceress mocked.

Meager? Meager, she’d said? All of Kanako’s despair, her loneliness... and she’d called it meager?

Suddenly, it all made sense, and something inside Kanako snapped.

She let out a moan of agony, and swung the staff in her hands, even while still on her knees.

Immediately, shards of ice appeared in the hallway.

They were smaller than the icy weapons that Rochefort had crafted — more like little knives than spears — but they filled the hall.

“That’s not good,” the sorceress muttered. “‘Inviolable Domain’ doesn’t prevent suicide...”

Suicide? Kanako didn’t realize what the woman had meant by that, at first. Then, she realized that the tip of the ice knives were pointed towards her.

“Attacks like that won’t work against Outers,” the sorceress said. “Your failure was a foregone conclusion, but it seems you were particularly unlucky. I hope you can still stop them. I’d prefer you to remain alive too, after all...”

Shocked out of her anger towards the sorceress, Kanako froze.

Stop them? She didn’t know how. She didn’t actually know how to control her magic.

“Stop! Disappear!” she screamed.

As if taking that as the trigger, the knives of ice fired off towards Kanako.

If she had racked her brain, she might have thought of a way to stop it. But the minute she saw that wall of ice knives, Kanako’s heart gave up. She lost her ability to think of anything, and closed her eyes tight.

✽✽✽✽✽

Yuichi ran for the oncoming barrage of ice knives.

“Orihara! Put up a wall of ice to block them!” Mutsuko called out from behind him, but Kanako probably couldn’t hear her.

Protect Kanako. Yuichi felt time slow down as he focused his mind on that one task.

The ice blades slowly came for Kanako. Kanako knelt, immobile, eyes closed. Makina watched, brow knitted, from some distance away.

He was too far away. He wouldn’t make it like this. The icy blades were going to run Kanako through.

But Yuichi had the power to overturn despair, and a method for breaking through seemingly insurmountable situations.

Furukami!

Yuichi stretched his power past its limits, and kicked off the floor with all of his might. The flagstones broke away and went flying off behind him. He brought his body as low as it could go, sailed across the floor, grabbed Kanako, and rolled.

The rain of ice knives came a millisecond later.

Yuichi sat up and looked at Kanako in his arms. Her eyes were squeezed tightly shut, but she didn’t seem hurt.

Yuichi let out a sigh of relief as he realized he had made it in time.

Kanako, as if only just noticing that she was still alive, slowly opened her eyes. “Sakaki the Younger...”

“Orihara... are you okay?” he asked.

“What’s wrong?! You’re covered in blood...” Kanako paled as she registered Yuichi’s current state.

There was a broken ice knife sticking out of his left arm, the result of prioritizing Kanako’s protection over dodging. It had impaled him, then broken off during his roll, which had resulted in terrible damage to his left arm. He probably wouldn’t be able to move it for a while.

“I’ll be fine,” he said. “This is nothing compared to the punishments Sis dishes out.”

“R-Really?” Kanako looked at him questioningly.

“Yeah,” he said sincerely, thinking back on her previous punishments. “Sis does worse than this without batting an eye. So seriously, it’s fine.”

He could hear Mutsuko shouting objections behind him, but Yuichi ignored her. He was also hiding the fact that his left leg was in serious pain from how he’d strained it.

“Oh, thank goodness. I thought I might have to change the rules for what happens when you die,” Makina said. She was standing a little ways away, in front of the Black Tower. She sounded relieved, though she wasn’t addressing anyone in particular.

Still holding Kanako in his arms, Yuichi glared at Makina.

He’d pushed himself too hard. He could still move if he had to, but he wanted to conserve energy for as long as his opponent remained still, and focus on recovering.

“It’s lucky for me that Kanako Orihara didn’t die, but what are you people doing here?” Makina asked. “You should be playing the game inside the school with the others.”

“If you didn’t want us here, you should have forbidden it with some special rule,” Yuichi said.

“You’re right, I should have done that,” Makina agreed. “Even if I assigned it now, it wouldn’t apply retroactively, so it wouldn’t get you out of the castle. But I can do this.”

She stepped into the Black Tower, then turned back to Yuichi and the others, and spoke her words of power.

“I’m adding new rules. Anyone who leaves the hallway linking the Black and White Towers will die. The exception is Kanako Orihara. If she leaves, she will merely lose consciousness and be immobilized until the game ends.”

Makina was just stating a few rules, but that by itself seemed to change the air around them. Yuichi’s instincts were telling him that her words had become reality.

“That’s a pretty roundabout method,” said Yuichi. “Why don’t you just say ‘everyone dies’?”

Makina seemed to enjoy listening to the sound of her own voice, so Yuichi was hoping he could get her to talk a little more about her game. At least, if she did, he could buy a little time.

“I can’t imagine how buying time will help you, so I’ll explain,” she said. “My power has limitations regarding rules of death. I can’t set rules that mean unavoidable instant death. And the reason I made Kanako Orihara an exception is that if she dies, the school isekai will disappear. Is that what you wanted to hear?”

“So you could make it happen with the right combination of rules,” he said. Even if instant death was forbidden, there were easy ways around that. Having limitations on the rules was no reason not to just kill them.

“It’s true that I could do it, if I wanted to set rules just to kill you,” she said. “That’s not my style, though. I much prefer situations where a game that could be solved with some consideration is bulled through thoughtlessly, until at the very end, the participants realize how they should have done it, and die in despair. Or one where people could solve the game easily if they all worked together, but they betray each other one after another and end up destroying each other... that sort of thing. If I want to see that, the games have to be winnable.”

“That’s no reason not to kill us, though,” he said. “Besides, we can’t take part in the game if we’re trapped here.”

“I was instructed not to interfere with you, Yuichi Sakaki,” she said. “So I can’t just kill you. Of course, you’re still participants in the game, so you’ll die in a few hours either way.” Makina’s expression was bored now; she seemed to be getting tired of answering Yuichi’s questions.

Then, something completely unforeseen happened.

Natsuki Takeuchi was in the Black Tower.

Yuichi noticed her first, and just as he did, the battle began. Makina noticed her next, and when she did, the battle ended.

Natsuki had moved up behind Makina silently to strike her with her scalpel. It was a flawless surprise attack. Makina didn’t see the attack coming, and should have been ripped to pieces, helplessly.

But Natsuki’s scalpel missed.

The attack that had been aimed at her neck slid off in a random direction. Despite her shock, Natsuki tried to regain her initiative, but Makina struck out with a back kick, hitting her in the solar plexus and sending her flying. Natsuki bounced off the wall of the tower, and then lay still.

“Takeuchi!” Yuichi shouted.

It had been only one kick. It would require a more powerful attack than that to kill her, but it was enough to send her into a heap on the floor.

“Oops, I let my guard down,” Makina said. “I didn’t realize there were more of you. It’s true that under the rule I just added, you’d be safe coming in through a route other than the hallway. Still, violence means nothing in the face of ‘Inviolable Domain.’”

“Where did that kick come from?” Yuichi demanded. It didn’t seem like the kind of move a teacher would be capable of.

“I study martial arts to amuse myself,” said Makina. “I don’t take it particularly seriously, but I have lived for a very long time. I’d say I’ve reached master level by now. By the way, I can bypass ‘Inviolable Domain’ myself, which is the reason I could hit her.”

Her words heaped despair on top of despair. If he left the hall, he would die. His enemy was protected by an invincible force field, she was a martial arts expert, and she could add new rules whenever she wanted to.

“Sorry... younger Sakaki... I’ve been so stupid...” Kanako said weakly as she pressed her face into Yuichi’s chest. She must have felt that it was all her fault.

“It’s okay... I never realized you’d been through so much...” Yuichi was regretting the superficial way he’d always looked at Kanako. If they’d talked more, if they’d been closer, maybe she wouldn’t have been driven to this.

“How upsetting. You make it sound like you think you could have done something,” Makina objected, seeming offended by his words. “Kanako Orihara. This has all been set in stone since before you were born. Your mother’s personality came as the result of my manipulations, as was the fact that you were born a girl, and the way your mother treated you. I’m the one who made you like isekai stories, and the one who made you decide to become a writer. And of course, I made your debut as an author possible. Do you really think that a little nothing like you could have ever been published without my hand guiding the way? What I’m saying is that you are who you are as the result of my continuous manipulation of your destiny.” Makina said it all as if she were bragging.

“Why... why me?” Kanako stumbled. “Why my...”

“Don’t get the wrong idea,” Makina said carelessly. “It’s true that I manipulated your destiny, and things turned out this way as a result. I’m sure it sounds like I’m boasting of my skill. But as you know, destiny is not always cooperative. Things never go exactly as you plan them. That’s why I do this same exact thing whenever I have the chance to. It’s mere coincidence that you turned out this way, yet I want appreciation for the effort I put in to guide you to it. Still, I don’t want you to just look at the result and think that you’re special. This is fully the result of a lot of hard work, and it’s frustrating to hear people claim otherwise. That’s all that I’m saying.”

“But... then I...” Kanako spoke, unable to find the words.

Yuichi was speechless.

He didn’t want to understand what it was that Makina was trying to do, but he did. She was saying that she had twisted Kanako’s entire destiny, all to create her stupid game here at the school. And she was hinting that she had played with the destinies of others the same way she had played with Kanako’s.

“Perhaps it’s bad form to say this only after I’ve succeeded, but I think it went very well,” said Makina with satisfaction. “Your misery levels were just perfect. It would have been easy to make you more miserable, but humans are strange creatures. They can adjust to too much misery. Some even grow stronger in adversity, although most of them break down or kill themselves. I suppose this is proof that a light hand is necessary. Everything in moderation! An insensitive and neglectful mother appears to be just the right formula for making a person just a little bit depressive. Maybe that twisted depression is necessary for a writer to be successful, as well.”

Why was Makina saying all of this? There was no reason for her to say it all out loud.

Just as Yuichi was about to ask her, he realized that Kanako was crying.

“What... what’s the point of living? If destiny... if it’s all set in stone... then what’s the point of living?” she choked out. It was hard to make out the words between her sobs, but he could tell that she was devastated.

“Orihara...” Yuichi couldn’t think of what to say to her. He knew that even if he could, she probably wouldn’t hear him.

“Why are you telling us this?! This has nothing to do with your game!” Yuichi screamed back at Makina, trying to vent his anger.

It was one thing for Makina to brag about manipulating everything and achieving her goal. But why did she have to mock Kanako?!

“I thought I might get an amusing reaction,” Makina responded simply. “I wondered how someone might react to learning that their whole life has been the result of someone else’s machinations. But I’m disappointed. The bawling-your-eyes-out response is so cliché. If she’d gotten angry, now that might have been slightly amusing...”

Yuichi tried to scream, but the words caught in his throat. He was too angry to say anything.

“Ende likens the world to a story, but I believe it’s more like a computer game,” said Makina. “Who hasn’t played a simulation RPG where they sent a unit that’s grown useless unarmed onto the field to be slaughtered, or a romance adventure game where they picked the most irresponsible choices to see what would happen?”

Makina said all this without a trace of guilt. Perhaps she was trying to get an “amusing” reaction out of Yuichi, now. If that was the case, she had more than succeeded.

Yuichi was angry. There was enough rage coursing through him to meet all of Makina’s perverted expectations.

Yet he forced that swelling, violent emotion down into the pit of his stomach, and stroked Kanako’s hair gently.

“Orihara. I’m just an ordinary kid in high school,” he said. “I won’t claim to have understood the life you’ve lived, the suffering you’ve been through, or the sadness you must be feeling. I don’t think it would help to say something superficial, like ‘just put it behind you and keep living your life.’ But... please don’t say that destiny is set in stone.”

“But... there’s nothing we can do... I can’t take it back... everyone’s going to die... I’m sorry... it’s my fault...” Kanako’s response squeaked from her throat in fits and starts.

“Wait here.” Yuichi laid Kanako down with a smile as she looked back up at him, tears streaming from her eyes. “I’m gonna go crush this jackass destiny of yours.”

Yuichi stood up and fixed his eyes on Makina.

The claim that one would change destiny was usually just big talk. But this one time, it might be possible. There was a way to change destiny right in front of his eyes.

“It’s true that I represent destiny right now, in a way,” said Makina. “Killing me would solve most of the problems you’re facing right now. But how will you do it? It might be interesting if you could, but you’re surely not so naive as to think I’m going to leave this room, are you?” She gazed at Yuichi from inside the tower.

If he left the corridor, he would die. That meant he couldn’t enter the tower.

And yet, dragging one leg behind him, Yuichi started walking towards her. His right leg was nearly useless, but it could just support his weight. His left arm was in a bad way, too.

“I thought I didn’t have to worry about you,” Yuichi said determinedly. “I thought that whatever you were doing, it was none of my business. Someone’s dying right now, somewhere in the world. Whether through an accident, premeditation, or simple malice, I thought, ‘These things happen.’”

He steadied his breathing. It was fine to be angry, he reminded himself, but he mustn’t let that swallow him up.

“But you people are different, aren’t you? Just because you’re bored and have time to kill... you use people like pieces on a board, toy with them, and erase them, claiming they’re just ‘stories.’ You set yourselves up as gods and play with people’s destinies. You put them up on a low-rent stage, then jeer when they don’t amuse you.”

His every movement was a reminder of the pain his body was in. He was in awful shape. Yet he was confident that he could still call upon just enough power to pound her into the floor.

“Damn you people!” he snapped. “Who do you think you are? What do you think Orihara is? What people are? I’ve made a decision: I’m gonna crush each and every one of you! I’m gonna make it so you can never play your stupid games again!”

“That’s a nice head of steam you’ve got going, but it’s comical in the extreme,” said Makina. “Have you forgotten the situation you’re in? So blinded by your rage, you can’t see that all the realities of the world are standing in your way. Or do you think your anger will awaken something? Some convenient power to burst through the situation? If so, then by all means, try it... That would be interesting, in its own way.”

Makina continued to watch Yuichi from her position inside the tower. There was a faint smile on her lips. She must be quite interested in seeing what Yuichi had planned.

“I’m not going to awaken anything. I already have the power to crush you. Right here, right now.” Yuichi focused his power into his right arm. He was just going to walk up to her and punch her. That was the only thought in his mind.

“Now, wait just a minute, here...” Makina stared at Yuichi in disbelief. “Are you actually so stupid you’re just going to charge me, blindly? I thought that you’d grasped the scope of my abilities.”

“I made up my mind that I’m going to slug you,” he answered. He could only do that if he was standing next to her; therefore, he had to walk up to her.

“It just seems such a boring way to die...” Makina said.

Yuichi set his left leg into the tower. If he left the corridor, he would die. Yuichi didn’t care. He pulled his dragging right leg into the tower, too.

That instant, Yuichi’s heart stopped.

✽✽✽✽✽

Makina watched it all happen, dumbfounded.

At first, she couldn’t tell exactly what had just happened. She had to sort out the order of events in her mind.

Yuichi had entered the tower, and his heart had stopped. Then he had pounded his right fist into his chest.

“Uh?” Makina grunted now, slack-jawed, in a voice she almost didn’t recognize as her own.

“I was wondering how it would come. Is that all it is?” Yuichi continued walking towards Makina, completely unfazed.

“How did you...”

“You think a person dies just because their heart stops beating?” Yuichi asked. “Give me a break.”

“What are you talking about?!” she exclaimed.

If someone’s heart stopped, they died. They just stopped moving. She considered that a fundamental law of the universe. The idea of something happening to contradict that had never entered her mind.

“With proper training, you can keep moving for a little while even after your heart stops,” Yuichi said. “And if you can move, you can get your heart started again. It’s pretty simple.”

Yuichi stated this so matter-of-factly, Makina actually began to find it plausible. But... no, surely it wasn’t possible. There was no way a person could restart their own heart.

“Yuichi Sakaki! If you move from that spot, you will die!” she commanded, setting a new rule for her closed space.

In a typical death game thriller, ridiculous rules were enforced onto the participants, but they were neutral and impartial. The story wouldn’t work if they weren’t; there was nothing interesting about a story where the rules kept changing on the fly.

But in Makina’s case, such principles were self-imposed. She only employed them for her own amusement, which meant that if she felt like it, she could always change the rules at any time.

Makina waited for the power of her words to activate. But Yuichi kept walking forward.

This time, he didn’t even act like his heart had stopped. He just kept walking towards Makina.

“Impossible...” she whispered. Why hadn’t it worked?

Yuichi answered, as if he’d read her mind. “The same move won’t work twice.”

“Ah...” How could he claim that? Yet, Makina realized, there might be worldviews where such rules were in place. Yuichi Sakaki seemed to believe it as a fundamental law of the universe. For him, it went without saying. He didn’t have a moment’s doubt.

“Yuichi Sakaki cannot get within five meters of Makina Shikitani!” she shouted.

“To hell with your damn rules!” Yuichi barked, his voice loud enough to shake the tower.

Then, without a pause, he stepped within a five meter radius of Makina.

Makina was dumbstruck. She had no idea what was happening.

“I don’t have to follow any stupid rules you set on a whim,” said Yuichi. “What gives you the right to do that, anyway? Because you’re an Outer? You have the power to control destiny? To hell with that! I don’t have to go along with anything you say!”

What was playing out before Makina’s eyes flipped her understanding of the world completely on its head. She had lived for a long time, and she had acquired enormous knowledge in that time, through experience. Yet nothing she had seen would have ever suggested that a person could nullify her powers solely with willpower and determination.

Yuichi arrived in front of Makina. He was within arm’s reach now; close enough to strike.

“Do you really want to challenge me in hand-to-hand combat?” Makina demanded. “You saw me take out that student, didn’t you?”

Yet Makina regretted the words even as she said them. Why did she have to speak so highly of herself?

“You really think master-level martial arts is enough to go toe-to-toe with me?” Yuichi replied, as if seeing right through her.

Right on the money. Makina had no faith that her meager martial arts skill could mount a challenge against Yuichi. He was a high school student with an injured left arm and a right leg that he was dragging behind him. Yet she was the one who didn’t stand a chance.

“I-I’ll take the girls behind you as hostages...” Her voice cracked. How long had it been since she’d felt this emotion? Long enough that she couldn’t actually remember the last time.

“Go ahead and try,” Yuichi said.

The girls behind him showed no sign of moving. They had put their faith entirely in Yuichi.

Makina couldn’t use her ability to kill someone who wasn’t moving. She couldn’t set rules that resulted in unavoidable death.

Yuichi’s eyes seemed tranquil as they rested on Makina, but he couldn’t fully hide the fire burning behind them.

Makina was like a deer in the headlights. Yet, she remembered, she still had one final sanctuary.

Inviolable Domain, her protective barrier. Yuichi had already acknowledged its existence, so he shouldn’t be able to break through it now.

Makina’s confidence returned. This series of irregular events had almost caused her to lose her cool. But Makina was an Outer, a being who existed outside of destiny. She was not bound by a natural lifespan; if there was ever any chance for her to survive, no matter how slight, she would.

“You think you can’t die?” Yuichi asked, reading her mind once again.

The way he kept doing that sent a chill up her spine. But once again, she reminded herself that it didn’t matter. No matter what he said, he was still powerless against an immortal like her.

“I’m going to hit you with my ultimate strike,” Yuichi said. “You can’t dodge it. You can’t block it. It’s going to hit, and you’re going to die. Which means you’re at the end of your rope.”

Surely, it’s a bluff, Makina told herself. There was no move that powerful. No such technique existed within her vast storehouse of knowledge, especially since Yuichi had shown no sign of being able to defy her defensive rule.

Yuichi just stood there. He wasn’t even in a fighting stance.

It snapped into place. If there was really an “ultimate strike,” then naturally, it wouldn’t have any special stance.

Fear.

She suddenly remembered the name of the feeling that had been monopolizing her heart all this time: the fear of death. That emotion she had forgotten for so long had now taken her as its prisoner.

Makina was terrified.

Yuichi Sakaki was just standing there, with arms at his sides, yet this terrified her from the bottom of her heart. Once she remembered the name of that feeling, it was like plunging backwards into an abyss.

Her legs trembled. Her heart pounded an alarm. Her breath grew short. Her eyes darted about.

It felt as if time had stopped.

Her entire body was on high alert, her every sense focused on detecting some sign of what Yuichi was about to do.

“Plea—” Even she wasn’t sure what she was trying to say, yet the instant she opened her mouth, the words were cut off.

Yuichi’s right fist was buried in her torso.

An invisible strike. He had not telegraphed it in any way, nor had she perceived the movement itself. It had pierced through her defensive membrane, eliminated any chance of dodging, broken her ribs, and buried itself deep in her trunk.

There was not a fragment of waste in the application of power. It was a direction of force almost bizarre in its straightforwardness, produced for no purpose but to deal a fatal blow.

A blow sufficient to take the life of Makina, of an Outer.

She couldn’t escape.

Any possible chance of survival seemed to fly from her.

That lone strike would send Makina plummeting into the ravine of death.