Episode 3: Mother

“He” was wandering through a world of deep, thick fog. “He” didn’t know who “he” was, and no voice told him, either. Nor did “he” know where “he” was supposed to be going. “He” just moved on instinct, like a wild animal, tracking his food.

Ba-dum, ba-dum…The pulsing stones housing amber light were his food supply, and they made his body bigger and stronger. Each time “he” absorbed a stone, someone’s screams echoed in his head. The voices accumulating inside him were always just more pained screams and moans for help; “he” couldn’t find a voice that would lead him out of the fog. “He” was still walking in the fog, searching for that voice.

A little while ago, “he” had heard one lone voice calling him. Had that been his name? “He” groped through his hazy consciousness for the memory: What name had the voice used?

Jude—

When that voice penetrated his mind, for just a split second, something burst in his head.

A white yard blanketed in gunpowder smoke. A half-ruined gray building. A half-collapsed wall of blocks. A chin-up bar crushed out of shape. A tiny smoldering sand pit. A young redheaded boy crouching, back hunched, piling up rocks in one corner of the schoolyard. And another boy watching him work. And then “him,” watching them from afar.

A fragment of memory flickered back to life. “He” had never expected to encounter those boys again as his comrades when they’d grown up. His conscience tormented him. First he’d taken the young children’s lives, and now he was about to make the boys who’d survived and grown do the same things he’d done. In his heart, “he” vowed to be their honorable and devoted superior. That wouldn’t erase his sins, of course. It was the sentence “he” imposed on himself for crimes too great to ever atone for, even if “he” spent his whole eternal life trying.

Ksssshhhhhhhh…

In some corner of his consciousness, there was a low sound like a machine gauge going past the red zone. “He” detected an energy mass resonating with his heart, one even bigger than his heart, which was already greatly swollen. If “he” took that into himself, “he” would grow more, and gain knowledge, and maybe he could get out of this fog.

Slowly, “he” started walking. “He” pushed through the slight feeling of repulsion that happened when like poles of two magnets were brought together, dragging along the lump of cables and pipes and carrion that his body had become as “he” made his way toward the mass of energy hovering at the edge of his consciousness. One step. Another step. Whoever got in his way he slayed, and ate, and made into his own flesh.

At that time, “he” had no concept of his own ugliness. “He” was unaware that his body had become as horribly ugly and misshapen as his name.

His was the name of the criminal who betrayed the Messiah. The name of one who carried a lifelong burden of sin.

“How are you feeling, Lord Sigri?” he asked the Elder who’d just awoken on the cot next to him. Sigri blinked vaguely a few times and then squinted sternly up at him for a while before his expression finally relaxed. Julius supposed he couldn’t see very well without the glasses he usually wore.

“Julius, eh? Where are we?”

“The Security Forces’ crisis headquarters. I think my father will be back here soon, too.”

Julius carefully kept his tone calm, wary of startling the injured man. He didn’t know how much that was worth, though, since the bustle of foot traffic in the hallway outside created a never-ending muffled din. It would be easy enough for the older man to figure out from the atmosphere that the situation wasn’t good.

“What about my daughter and…him?”

Sigri hesitated midway through the question, apparently not sure how to refer to the Undying. Julius ended up hesitating a little, too (he himself had never referred to him as anything but “that guy” or “you”), before he answered. “They went to look for one of their friends. The woman who was staying at your house, I believe.”

“Friends…I see…” Sigri echoed slowly, as if savoring the taste of the words in his mouth. “They’re my daughter’s friends, aren’t they? So my daughter has something wonderful, then, something I don’t have…” he muttered to himself. Julius thought he heard pride in his voice.

“…Lord Sigri,” Julius said slowly after a moment’s hesitation. Sigri looked up quizzically.

“Rumor has it you repeated my father’s message word for word during the uproar in the cathedral.” He’d heard the reports. People said Father Sigri, the Eleventh Elder on the Council of Elders and the highest-ranking priest in the Preaching Department, had taken leave of his senses, called a normal believer names, and shouted abuse at the Council of Elders.

There was a pause, and then Sigri let out a dry laugh. “Ahaha. That felt good.”

Julius couldn’t help laughing with him. They looked at each other, laughing oddly cheerfully together.

“Julius, sir. Your father’s come back,” reported a soldier who appeared in the doorway. The confused riot outside the room had calmed down some, replaced by a mild sense of relief and the comfortable focused tension that came from trust. The father Julius respected gave his men that kind of high morale. The Elder in charge of the Security Forces was already gone, a victim of the recent string of Elder deaths, and in the discord among the Church leaders a successor hadn’t been named yet, which meant that for all practical purposes his father currently bore right of command over the whole army.

Julius’s father appeared through the narrow doorway of the little room they were using as a makeshift infirmary clanging with the weapons of war, carrying a rifle and saber and decked out in full-body armor plating under the officer’s greatcoat he wore. The pure-white greatcoat that was the emblem of the Church Soldiers was filthy with scorch marks from torches and black coal-tar-like fluid. Julius could see his exhaustion as he wiped sweat from his forehead with his glove, but when he looked at Julius and Sigri he gave them his usual bright, cheerful smile.

“Sigri. Glad you’re all right.”

“I wouldn’t exactly say ‘all right,’” Sigri said sardonically, sitting up in bed with a protective hand on his right shoulder. Julius helped him. “If you’ve got one head and four limbs all still attached, you’re plenty all right,” his father said, laughing him off unsympathetically. At that, Sigri gave a little burst of laughter himself.

“Can’t argue with that.” Then, in a melancholy voice, he murmured, “…I suppose there were a lot of deaths.”

The mood of the room grew heavier at that.

“What’s the situation?”

“As you can see, it’s not good,” Julius’s father answered sourly as he set down his weapons. “We’ve finished evacuating the people who were left on the streets, but apparently there’s a group still stranded in the cathedral. I sent a rescue team.”

“And the monsters?”

“They just keep on coming,” he spat, and then suddenly fixed a glare on Sigri. “You know where those things came from, don’t you, Sigri?” he demanded with a harshness that rode the line between question and condemnation. Julius’s father didn’t give people that truly sharp look very often. If Sigri had been one of his subordinates, he probably would’ve gone pale as a ghost and frozen stiff on the spot. Sigri, however, accepted it with a serious face and without turning his eyes away.

“…Certain of the Elders were attempting to manufacture Undyings. Those things are the defective products.”

“Ma—” Julius blurted, on the verge of interrupting the adults’ conversation, but the charged mood around them proved too much for him, and he fell silent. Manufacture Undyings?! His father had evidently guessed this already. He didn’t look particularly surprised, and his glare didn’t soften.

“You didn’t take part, I assume?” his father pressed.

Meeting his gaze head-on, Sigri shook his head. “I didn’t take part, no. But…”

“But you stood by and watched, is what you’re saying.”

“…Yes.”

As soon as the word was out of Sigri’s mouth, his father’s fist shot past right in front of Julius’s eyes and slammed square into the Elder’s bony jaw. Sigri’s body slammed hard into the wall next to the cot.

“D-dad!”

Julius rushed between them and tried to help Sigri up, but Sigri waved off his hand. “It’s fine.” He sat up on his own, wiping blood from the corner of his mouth. “Good thing I wasn’t wearing my glasses. You would’ve broken them,” he accused, which wasn’t exactly what most people would consider the appropriate response. His father replied with equal breeziness. “Lucky for you, I guess.” He was shaking his fist out lightly. The only one upset here was Julius. Those two were completely unruffled.

“It’s been a long time since I took one of your punches. Since Setsuri, I think.”

“Well, it wouldn’t do to deck an Elder. I hit extra hard to make up for all the times I’ve had to hold back.”

“I am still an Elder, you know…” Sigri replied, hunching his shoulders.

“Well, if you ask me, the Elders can all eat shit.” Julius’s father dismissed him flatly, looking strangely proud of himself.

“Reporting in, sir!” cried one of the soldiers, dashing into the room. All eyes turned to him. Looking a little intimidated, he bowed and gave his report. “We have word that a walking energy mass of unknown origin has broken into the energy tower and destroyed portions of it in the process. Energy supply in those portions is coming to a halt.”

“The energy tower?”

As they all exchanged wary looks, the light illuminating the room abruptly went out. Julius’s field of vision was blanketed in darkness, and he could just barely make out the shadowy outlines of the people in the room with him. With the uneasy feeling that he’d been suddenly tossed into a void, he looked around apprehensively. It was the middle of the night by now; fighting back against the monsters without light would be fatal.

“Scrape together all the lights you can find! Torches, lanterns, anything!”

His father’s reassuringly powerful voice sent the other soldiers running out of the room to follow their orders. He didn’t show any signs of agitation even now.

Julius heard sounds of commotion from all the groups of soldiers outside. Somewhere off in the distance, the howling of a beast echoed.

“Julius, you stay put. Take care of Sigri for me.”

“Dad—”

His father took up his weapons and dashed out of the room. Julius watched him go, unable to stop him, and then groped his way quickly to the window. In the flickering torchlight at the base of the tower he could make out soldiers running to and fro along the walls.

A shiver ran all the way down his spine at the sight of the scene outside.

Their headquarters tower was completely surrounded by a pack of monsters. Body after slack, rotting body shimmered in the light of the orange torch flames. Stooped forward and swaying slowly left and right, step by step they closed in on the tower.

That day, the last and longest in the capital’s history, wasn’t over yet.

And while Julius doubted any divine miracle had ever occurred before in this city of God on the graveyard, that day would be remembered for the advent of a true miracle…

Kieli sat beside Beatrix’s pitiful remains one more time, looking down at her and combing through her hair with her fingers, that hair that was so beautiful even cut short.

Beatrix…

Kieli began to speak silently to her.

I didn’t let go of his hand. And I never will, either, no matter what. Because you told me what to do, Beatrix. Thank you…

Kieli stroked her cheek one last time and then laid Harvey’s coat over her.

They’d found what appeared to be a little painting storeroom nearby, and they’d carried Beatrix’s body inside. Lots of canvases of religious paintings stood propped against the walls, not framed yet. The smell of oil paint permeating the room calmed her somehow. It was just like the smell in Sigri’s house…in the house where she was born.

…Maybe it was the slow but steady passage of time doing it, but she realized that somewhere along the way she’d almost begun to accept that fact without even thinking about it. She didn’t know how to feel about that.

“Are we leaving Beatrix here?” Kieli asked, turning to face Harvey where he waited by the wall near the door. He nodded.

“Yeah. We still have things to do…”

Nonetheless, Harvey stayed slumped on the floor holding one hand to his chest and looking as if it still hurt a little just to talk. Kieli was pretty sure moving would be a lot more of a trial. But in his mind’s eye, it wasn’t this place Harvey was seeing. He was looking somewhere else. The direction Jude had walked off in. Even if he couldn’t physically see the departing back of the man who was at once his old friend and his enemy, he was still fixing his sight on it all the way from here.

Kieli thought that really, Harvey had probably already forgiven Jude. The Jude in Harvey’s world was a cobbler who lived a quiet life watching over the gravestones in his yard, and a criminal tormented by regret, and the boy who was that world itself hadn’t blamed Jude at all. There was no way Harvey actually wanted to raise a hand to his old friend, to turn on one of his own.

He was bottling up his own feelings, though, and preparing to settle things with Jude. Not to take his revenge, but to free an old friend trapped in a life of guilt.

And Kieli…Kieli hadn’t thought she’d forgiven her father yet. But she realized that as time went on, her feeling of instinctive rejection was starting to fade. Had she already forgiven him, deep down, and her mind was just being stubborn about it now? Had Kieli managed to forgive her father, just like Harvey’d forgiven Jude? She couldn’t really figure out how she felt.

She thought she’d like to talk with that man. He’d traveled with her mother, Setsuri; he might know. Know how her mother had felt about her father, Sigri, and whether she hadn’t hated him anymore…

She’d been lost in thought, staring at the floor, but now Kieli steeled herself and raised her face.

“Harvey, you’re still in pain, right? I’ll go get you some water.”

It came out sounding sharp, almost as though she was picking a fight, and Harvey gave her a funny look.

“Nah, I don’t need any. Let’s get moving.”

“It’s okay. A little while ago I found a water fountain nearby, so I’ll go straight there and come straight back. You rest until then.”

Harvey was moving to stand up. She put her hands on his shoulders and pressed him a little forcefully back down to sitting. He tried to resist, but it was plain that his body wouldn’t do what he told it to, and in the end he plopped back down. Kieli squatted in front of him and drew the braid of golden hair and the copper-colored stone that had come apart out of her skirt pocket.

She pressed them into Harvey’s hands and said, “Listen, I want you to fix the lucky charm Beatrix gave me. And while you’re doing that, I’ll get some water. Okay?”

Kieli knew she was pretty much trying to railroad him into this. She waited on pins and needles for his response.

“…Okay,” Harvey agreed. Although he was frowning, that was still a lot easier than she’d anticipated. She could laugh with relief.

“Okay, I’ll be right back. Hang on to the Corporal, too.”

Kieli took the radio from around her neck and handed it to him as she left the storeroom. She looked left and right down the colonnade outside to make sure there were no failures wandering around and then gave Harvey a little wave as she shut the heavy door of the storeroom and left him behind.

She began making her way through the silent colonnade alone, careful not to walk too loudly.

I’m sorry Harvey, Corporal…In her heart, she gave them a bow and an apology.

Kieli thought she might be able to touch that man’s heart, just like she’d been able to touch Harvey’s inner world. If they could talk inside his heart, then maybe she could bring his heart back. That way they could avoid a situation in which Harvey would have to settle the score with Jude, the old friend he cared about a lot. She didn’t want Harvey to do something like that, not if there was any way around it. Because he was the kind of person who always got hurt himself whenever he hurt someone else.

And…Kieli also wanted to ask that man who must’ve known her mother so well a few questions.

Had my mother forgiven my father?

Is it okay if…I forgive my father…?

He lifted the little stone and the unraveling braid of golden strands to eye level with his left hand.

“…How does she expect me to fix this thing one-handed?” he muttered to himself, eyes narrowed, and stuck it in his pocket.

Leaning back on one of the paintings propped against the wall, he looked over to where Beatrix’s body was lying just beyond his field of vision. Resting in front of a big, finely detailed religious painting like that, she might as well be part of a painting of a beautiful angel herself.

Fzzsh…bzzzzzzz…

The radio prodded him with a stream of faint static. He murmured back without moving his gaze from the angel in the painting, “I know, Corporal. Does that girl think she can fool my instincts?”

Sheesh, how many years does she think I’ve known her? Using that obvious excuse to go running off alone—it was plain as day what she was thinking. “Stupid idiot. You don’t get to take my last job away…” he grumbled, standing up. His body hurt all over and he was a little unsteady, but he got to his feet by bracing himself against the painting with his hand.

He took one last glance at the body still so soft even in death that if he didn’t know better he might believe she was only sleeping, and then he let his eyes fall shut and said his farewell. “Sorry, Bea. This is good-bye.”

“He” ate a giant energy source and took it into himself. His body grew even bigger. But his mind didn’t grow at all: If anything, his consciousness only spread out even thinner, and “he” didn’t get any closer to the answer “he” sought. “He” looked around for more energy, but “he” couldn’t sense any energy bigger than himself anymore.

His enlarged body was too heavy for him to walk now. With each step “he” took, all the things he’d fused with wailed and moaned in pain. The cables sticking to his body got yanked whenever they caught against something. Each time “he” felt a pain as though he was being ripped apart. With each step dead flesh came loose from his body and plop, plopped down in rotting clumps. “He” kept right on going, though, searching for his next source of energy. To maintain this giant body, “he” thought, would take an even larger energy source.

Why do I need to get bigger, though? A thought suddenly struck him: What had “he” been looking for?

Yes: I wanted to remember. Remember who I am, why I exist.

What was that scrap of memory that burst in me?

Who was that boy?

Whose voice was it calling me then?

That’s right…I have to make amends to that boy. That’s why I still exist. Am I still not powerful enough to beg that boy for forgiveness? How big do I have to get before I’m strong enough?

His entire bloated body hurt like hell. But, “he” thought, he still had to get bigger to make amends for his sins. Much, much bigger.

Unable to understand that the act of doing so would increase his sins, “he” kept on walking.

The colonnade was a mess of half-eaten failure corpses. Kieli carefully avoided touching them as she walked, feeling sick. They did make it easy to trace the path that “he” had taken, though. All the lights had gone out a little while ago, so the colonnade was dim, but the clouds had thinned enough to let in just a little moonlight. The horrible corpses were even more sickening in its bluish glow. Suppressing her nausea, Kieli nervously made her way down the path “he” had traveled.

Eventually she found herself in a claustrophobic passageway where pipes of all sizes twisted and turned along the walls so thickly that she couldn’t see through them to the stone. Maybe she was near the energy tower now.

Was it really okay for her to have come alone? Had she been reckless? She already regretted it, but she forced the thoughts out of her mind.

Slither…

Kieli felt something warm and clammy grab her ankle.

Too stunned to jump back right away, she turned her neck with stiff, jerky movements to look down. The half-eaten failure with its hand around her ankle lifted its head up to look at her almost pleadingly. Its body was half-eaten, was nothing more than a horrible lump of meat now. She could see a tiny shard of its core still buried in its flesh. Coal-tar-like blood sluggishly tried to regenerate it, but it was decomposing too fast. Pieces of its body rotted off as she watched. It was such a grotesque and pitiful sight that Kieli thought it might’ve been better off not surviving in this in-between state at all.

Unable to do anything else, Kieli desperately yanked her foot free and ran away. Should she have taken out that last fragment and put it out of its misery? But she was too scared even for that. As she ran, she was seized by a terrible vision of every single corpse around her starting to move, reaching their hands out to her for help.

Their painful gurgles of grief wouldn’t get out of her head. Forcibly banishing them from her thoughts, Kieli ran.

In her peripheral vision, she caught sight of a giant shape lurching heavily in the shadow of the pipes. She slowed her steps, startled, and peered down the passageway.

There he is…!

“He” appeared from out of the shadows of the pipes, bloated so much bigger than the first time she’d seen him that there was almost no comparison. And he had changed in other ways, too: he was so much more monster than man now that she could barely recognize him as a person-shape that walked on two legs.

Even as Kieli unthinkingly took a step back, she mentally shook herself. No, you’re the one who came looking for him, so you could talk! So try saying something to him!

“U-um…”

The monster tilted its head and gurgled questioningly. That got Kieli’s hopes up. He’d reacted as if he could hear her, so maybe he could understand her—

Owooonn…! With a bellow, the monster launched its body of carrion and scrap metal at her. Kieli instinctively jumped aside, and the monster’s fist hit the pipes on the wall behind her. A few of them crushed out of shape and spat white steam.

She’d messed up. She shouldn’t have dodged.

Next time you can’t dodge, she instructed herself, gulping. To do that, she had to lose consciousness, so of course she’d come here prepared to take at least one hit. Kieli stood still and gazed at the monster head-on while it prepared for its next attack, waiting for that girl to appear.

She was pretty sure that the ghost girl who’d drawn out her spirit body for her when she’d gone to sleep next to Harvey would show up again here. It was a gamble, but she felt strangely certain about it. And then she should be able to touch that man’s world, just like she’d been able to touch Harvey’s inner world. She should be able to touch his world.

She finally heard the voice of the girl she’d been waiting for. Kieli couldn’t see her, but she sensed she was nearby. Still steadily watching the monster’s movements, Kieli asked in her mind,

As the girl’s presence faded away with those despairing words, the monster charged again. Kieli gazed at it head-on as it attacked, unable to completely give up hope. Is it really too late to talk to you…?

Just as the monster’s hand was about to connect with her face, she suddenly felt herself floating up into the air. The monster’s swipe missed her and slammed into the pipes again. Kieli witnessed this as her body flew in an easy arc through the air and then got deposited back down again a little ways away.

She looked up with her mouth hanging open.

“You idiot!” an angry voice shouted at her without preamble.

Harvey looked seriously pissed. Still bewildered, Kieli asked, “Wh-what are you doing here…?”

“What’s wrong with you?! You’re the most reckless…” Harvey trailed off and just opened and closed his mouth a few times as though he couldn’t even find the words to keep yelling at her. He was really, truly angry. Kieli knew full well that when Harvey stopped talking, it meant he was really angry.

The monster yanked its hand out from where it’d gotten stuck between two pipes and slowly turned to face them again. “I’m chewing you out later, believe me,” Harvey told her, which sounded like a message from the radio around his neck, and then he raised the saber in his left hand and turned from Kieli to the monster.

“I’m sorry for you, Jude…All messed up like that, long dead but you still can’t really die…”

Owooo…nn…!

The monster gave a howl that sounded distinctly like a sob. To Kieli, it seemed as if Harvey was crying as they faced off, too. Crying on the inside.

“Come here. I’ll end this for you.”

The monster charged with thundering footsteps that shook the ground. Holding his saber low, Harvey stared straight at his opponent and didn’t move.

In the next second, it looked to Kieli as though their bodies collided and sort of mingled together. The tip of Harvey’s saber was thrust into the center of Jude’s body, but at the same time Jude’s arm had pierced straight through Harvey’s side and out his back again. Kieli let out a hoarse scream.

With his arm still stuck in Harvey’s abdomen, Jude dragged Harvey in and tried to absorb him into his body. Half of Harvey’s body buried itself in Jude’s flesh.

“Harvey!” Kieli’s scream echoed in the air.

That was when the change came.

Kieli heard a snap as something cracked. A beat later, the amber light in the center of Jude’s body burst like a firework for an instant. Decay rapidly spread out from it in all directions like the spokes of a wheel, and the carrion of the failures he’d absorbed started to peel away from his body.

I always wanted to ask you.

Did I manage not to go off course? I didn’t care who you used to be. Whoever you might have been before, you were our commanding officer, and you were the person to show me my first path forward, and thanks to you I managed not to stray from that first path. So I don’t want you to add any more crimes to your list. I don’t want you to suffer. I’m making this my responsibility, and I’ll put you out of your misery.

He plunged the saber in with all his might, and the tip pierced directly through the center of Jude’s core. Through the amber-pulsing stone heart that was like a misshapen hunk of lava now after fusing together the energies of so many of their kind. At the same time, his opponent’s arm jabbed into his side and straight through him until it came out the back.

As Harvey’s body was sucked halfway into Jude’s flesh, saber and all, he raised his face and looked up into Jude’s eyes.

“Why did you…”

Blood frothed up in his throat.

“…miss on purpose…?”

The other man could’ve gotten Harvey in the heart. Harvey’d been prepared for that when he closed in. And yet his opponent had stabbed him just slightly off target. He’d assumed the self-awareness it would take for Jude to do that had long since vanished without a trace.

Sand-colored eyes buried in a mass of flesh looked sadly down at him.

Images burst to life in his consciousness.

Men in simple prison uniforms, digging a mine at the rock fault. A man with hair the color of sand among them. Day after day, long, indifferent hours of digging. Superintendents yelling angrily at prisoners pushing a trolley full of fossil resources. The sandy-haired prisoner expressionlessly digging on.

War eventually breaking out. On the battlefield, equally long, indifferent hours of combat just like an extension of the digging. A bomber plane disappearing across the sky, and in its wake a city turned to ash. Corpses of innocent civilians littering the ground. A sandy-haired soldier gazing expressionlessly at them. Corpses of little children on the ground of a scorched schoolyard. Boys piling up stone graves. A sandy-haired soldier watching this equally expressionlessly.

And then, years later, meeting his brash new subordinates: a redhead and a man with slate-gray eyes. That day, the sandy-haired man felt anguish for the first time. He realized how many sins he’d indifferently committed over the centuries, how many lives he’d taken. And then came the long years of a suffering so awful it tore his heart apart in his chest. All those feelings flowed into Harvey.

“I see…” Harvey let out a sigh of breath and blood. Coughing, he pressed his forehead against his opponent’s chest as if voluntarily letting himself be sucked in and muttered, “You’ve been hurting for a long time, haven’t you…? I’m sorry I got here so late. I’ll end it for you now.” He groped for words. “…It’s enough. You’ve suffered enough. Let’s end this. I’ll do this last thing for you. I’m willing to go with you. Jude…”

Sorry, Kieli…

I know I promised, but I might not be able to go home with you after all.

Harvey shoved the saber in hard. Just the way his commanding officer had trained him to fight. It was the best fighting style for him, since he didn’t have much power or stamina. He was taught how to go after the vital points with precision, not using any unnecessary strength or unnecessary motion. How to use guns and sabers, the most effective ways to kill, how to think. The guilt that had always lurked deep in his superior’s heart, and even his sense of mercy. After he’d died and become empty, his superior had poured all of that into him. It’s only natural that we’re alike. Because I’m pretty much a copy of you.

The giant, irregularly beating fused core cracked. An instant later amber light burst like a firework, and a weird pressure punched through him.

In that moment—

Bang!

A shock wave burst from the speaker of the radio hanging around his neck, and the recoil shot Harvey out of the flesh that had sucked him in.

“Corpo—”

Did he save me? Sitting on his backside, Harvey looked down at the radio. For a little while he was just stunned, but then he came back to himself with a start. The Corporal was so beat-up he couldn’t even talk anymore; there was no way he should be able to fire a shock wave like that. Black smoke rose from the speaker, which had clearly discharged more power than it could handle.

Aaaa…Owooonn…

While Harvey’s attention was focused on the radio, Jude let out a sorrowful howl and began to withdraw. “Jude!” He tried to stand up, but his body was having none of it. He sank weakly back down to the floor and couldn’t move any further. As Jude trudged heavily away, the carrion of the failures he’d fused with and the bits of junk he’d absorbed rotted off and the pipes crawling the walls around him shriveled at high speed and began to rust over.

The same fossil fuel decay phenomenon he’d seen at the radio tower in the ravine—

That’s right. Jude had never told him how long he’d been alive or when he’d become an Undying. Those scenes that had burst to life in his mind for an instant—they were of prisoners working the first mines in the pioneering era. The man had already been alive back then. Jude’s “core” had to be a very old one. It wasn’t made from wartime fossil fuels; it was made from the pre-War ones that caused the decay phenomenon.

The large form that had degenerated into that deformed monster receded from his field of vision. That man had lived all alone for all the hundreds of years since the pioneering era, unable to die, and now he was trying to take everything on himself and leave just as much alone.

“What the hell? Why are you leaving me behind…?!”

Harvey was still crashed out on the floor, and his pleading voice sounded so thin and hoarse that he felt ashamed of himself. Joachim and Beatrix were both dead, and now even Jude was leaving him behind to survive the fight all alone, again…

What the hell…I’m totally pathetic now!

And even though he’d prepared himself to die with Jude, it turned out that he still hadn’t been able to stop picturing Kieli, all the way to the end.

Kieli…?!

Harvey came back to his senses with a jolt.

He lifted his face and looked around him. Kieli should have been right nearby, but he didn’t see her anywhere.

“Kieli!”

So his name was “Jude.” “He” remembered that it was a name “he” had given himself. It was the abominable name of the traitor who, according to the holy book, had sold the Messiah to people of a different religion back in the days of the mother planet. And he had inflicted that name on himself. Now he remembered that. Jude. That was his name.

The redheaded boy had forgiven him. Told him it was okay to end this. With those words from the boy, “he” finally had permission to die. He finally had permission to end the atonement he’d eternally sentenced himself to.

So, “he” thought, he had to go someplace far away. Someplace far, far away where he could die without involving the boy.

Slowly, “he” kept walking. One step and then another. With each step, his cracked and misshapen fused core pulsed ominously and leaked amber light that sent rot eating into his flesh. Parts of his body shriveled up into clumps of dry meat and rusted scrap metal that came loose and fell. “He” left a meandering reddish trail of rust and decay behind him as he walked, as though decades had passed by along with him. “He” groped his way through a world as vast and dark as a valley floor no light ever reached.

Then his mind registered one small, faint light near the edge of this world shut up in darkness.

His consciousness was drawn to that light. The thing giving off the pale, soft light was a small, skinny creature. As “he” was now, he could probably crush it with his fingers. It was too small to replace the flesh that had fallen off, but it could probably satisfy his hunger for at least a little while.

Without his conscious thought, his hand stretched out to kill the tiny light. “He” was unwittingly about to add to his crimes again.

But instead his outstretched hand stopped short in front of the light.

There was something about this creature’s pale light…vague nostalgia washed over him.

“Setsu…ri…”

The thick-voiced word escaped spontaneously from his mouth buried in flesh.

The tiny light smiled a little bashfully.

“My name is Kieli. Is it okay if I walk with you for a little bit…?” the light said, and hesitantly reached out a hand to him. “He” took it, carefully, gently. It was a small, white hand. “He” was sure the faint being’s hand would break so easily if he used even the tiniest bit of force the way he was now, so he was tentative when he gripped it.

Kieli…Kieli…

He repeated the word over and over in his heart, trying to recall what it meant.

“Kieli”…Now he remembered. That was the name of the tiny life who’d smiled at him long ago. The name of the pale little light who’d greeted him with an innocent smile that forgave him everything even when “he” was tortured by his sense of sin. When that mother and daughter had appeared before him and accepted him for what he was, “he” had thought about whether making them happy would serve as an atonement. In the end, though, he hadn’t even gotten to do that. All he’d managed to do was drag them into his own problems. “He” had added to his list of crimes just by involving himself with them.

The girl with the faint light smiled and squeezed back at his hand. In her face “he” saw that little baby’s innocent smile. Ah…the young, frail life that had smiled at him back then had grown up so much. His heart was full with feeling. She’d grown up into a woman just like her mother, with a light you never lost sight of, no matter how pale and soft it was.

Tears welled up in his eyes that saw only a world of nebulous shapes now.

A wail escaped his mouth.

He felt it: This was the moment he was released from all the guilt that had tormented him.

An enormous, thick palm enveloped Kieli’s hand. It was a vaguely nostalgic feeling. Somehow she sensed that this was the same hand that the big man with the short, sandy hair and stubble had held her with when she was a baby.

Kieli was walking hand in hand with this quiet man through a closed-up corridor surrounded by pipes just like they’d once walked together through the corridors of that ship, back when she was very young. With each step he took, everything around him but Kieli decayed as if the proper flow of time had finally caught up with it. As if he was returning this city of God built on a graveyard to its rightful form.

His hand was big and very strong, and it was also a little hesitant. Kieli softly gripped it back. As they walked, she began to speak to him.

“There were lots and lots and lots of things I wanted to talk to you about. My mom, and you, and Harvey—Oh, ‘Harvey’ is Ephraim. He’s been looking for you for a long time.”

He didn’t speak. Kieli didn’t know whether her voice was reaching him or not, but she kept up her own one-sided conversation.

Harvey was sure to get mad at her again for doing this. But…

Never turn your eyes away. Beatrix’s words came back to her. It wasn’t hard to take them as Beatrix’s last wish before she was assimilated into him.

I know, Beatrix. I haven’t settled my own problems yet. I have to ask him everything I want to know, without looking away. Otherwise I still won’t be able to forgive my father, or the people here, or this man who killed you…Or myself, either, for being rejected by my father and ruining my mother’s life. I might have to keep on hating forever. I’m not a good person like Harvey, and I’m not open like him, so I can’t accept everything and forgive it all yet…

“I don’t know if you know this or not, but Mom died on that boat. But I got rescued, and Grandma raised me in Easterbury…She was pretty strict sometimes, but she was a really nice person. Then Grandma died, and I went to a boarding school in Easterbury, and after that I met Harvey…Ephraim. And there’s also a person called the Corporal who lives in a radio, and right now, the three of us are traveling together. You and your friends have given me lots of happiness. I think I was a happy girl. I think I still am.”

She was remembering all kinds of things, and before she knew it, somehow she was telling him her life story. Kieli didn’t know if the man walking next to her was interested in this kind of thing, or if he was even listening in the first place, but she let her words flow naturally without worrying about it.

Lots of things had protected her, every minute. The feeling of her grandmother’s hand, the feeling of Harvey’s hand, the feeling of Beatrix’s hand, and then the feeling of her father’s hand…And the man next to her right now. She’d held hands with lots of people like this in her life. She’d always had someone protecting her. I was lucky, and happy—

“So…um…”

When she talked about her memories the words just poured from her lips, but when it came to the one thing she wanted to ask most, she hesitated and didn’t finish her sentences.

I was happy. But…What about my mother? Kieli’s mother had been shunned by her father and avoided by the people around her for having a daughter with weird powers; she’d been assured security for life, and then her daughter had wrecked that life for good.

She lowered her gaze, steeled herself, and asked.

“Was my mother…was my mother happy?”

One step. Two steps. Three steps.

They walked wordlessly side by side. Fragments of dead flesh peeled away from the surface of his body and fell, and with each of his steps the scenery around them decayed.

There was no answer from the man next to her.

Could she really not touch his heart after all…?

Just as Kieli lost hope, it happened.

Images poured into her mind’s eye like flashes of light through the hand in hers.

She could see a black-haired woman bouncing a baby. She recognized that place: the bar on the parish border. She could see its familiar counter with glasses and bottles with old labels lined up on top.

Large male hands lifted the baby out of the mother’s arms. Their owner cradled the baby in his own brawny arms as gently and carefully as he would a doll made of spun glass. The baby seemed to feel secure wrapped in the large man’s arms and began to nod off. The woman peered into the baby’s face and tenderly combed through its hair with her pale fingers.

Kieli could feel her heart, her wish.

Please make this girl happy. Please, let every happiness in this world wrap around her and keep her safe.

Kieli could feel just how much she loved her baby.

She whispered the words and softly kissed the baby’s cheek.

And maybe it was just Kieli’s imagination—but she thought she saw the woman lift her gaze for just a second and look right at Kieli with a smile in the striking dark eyes so much like her own.

The image faded out.

When Kieli came back to herself, tears were rolling down her cheeks.

She looked up at the man standing next to her. The man from that day was looking down at her through the sand-colored eyes buried in the flesh of the ugly, twisted creature he’d become. Eyes the same sandy color as the sky that spread over this whole planet, that made her think of his big hands indulgently cradling the whole planet. Those eyes hadn’t changed since Kieli was small.

With tears in her own eyes, Kieli smiled at him.

“Thank you so much…” she rasped with a teary smile. “Mom…had already forgiven everything, hadn’t she…”

She couldn’t make out the expression on the ruined mass of flesh his face had become, but she had the feeling that he smiled and gave her a little nod. And then he let go of Kieli’s hand, instructed her wordlessly to stay in place, and walked slowly and heavily on.

Ahead of him was a circular cloister around a cylindrical space that went down and down. In its center, a giant furnace rose from the depths below all the way up to the high ceiling above, clanging away as it burned fossil fuel to make power. Amber light pulsed erratically in the center of his body as though it was resonating with the sound of the generator, and in response the carrion of the failures stuck to his body peeled off even more violently and fell in giant globs that decayed the floor and walls and everything around him to rust-red.

A bridge led to the power reactor in the middle of the cloister. Kieli watched as he crossed it with obvious effort, dragging one foot in front of the other as though the reactor was magnetically repelling him. The closer he got, the brighter and stronger the amber light seeping from his body grew, and thin beams like searchlights started leaking out in all directions.

He was gradually swallowed up by the light pouring out of him, until it was hard to see him at all. And then he disappeared into the heart of the brightly burning furnace.

Crackle—

The light burst even brighter. Kieli threw one arm over her face to cover it, unable to look directly at the blindingly fierce light. The hot blast whipped her skirt and hair about wildly.

Before the flames could reach all the way to her, she saw the corridor they covered rapidly turn to rust and begin to rot away, an ancient tree stretching out its petrified roots in all directions as the flames burned the life right out of everything.

The girl’s voice echoed in the back of her mind. Shielding her face from the blast and the dazzling light, Kieli took off after it. The girl in the white slip was calling her from down the passageway. Kieli broke into a run as the walls and ceiling crumbled away in the tide of decay, nervous all the while of the power reactor behind her.

She’d almost reached the girl—

With a roar, the cracked ceiling came crashing down on her head.

He felt the wave of a powerful magnetic field spreading out like a ripple on a lake as it surged toward him.

Harvey peered ahead of him as he made his way after Kieli by clinging to the pipes that crawled along the wall. He could see the snakelike pipes on the walls and ceiling beginning to warp and rust at high speed as the wave swept by them. Something stung his skin. A flap of it tore free from his cheek and blew away as if carried on a razor-sharp wind.

The wave of decay. If that got to him, there was no way he’d survive—

A face fuzzy with dark green static stretched up from the radio’s speaker to shield him, firing off a shock wave. “Corporal, cut it out!” He cradled the radio with his arm to protect it instead.

The shock wave and the staticky face dissolved in the air, and the warped speaker spit protesting noise. Kshht, gnn-zik! Gnn-crrrr!

“Shut up. You’ve already saved my ass plenty today,” Harvey hissed quickly in retort. Meanwhile, the wave of decay closed in on them. The radio blasted a shock wave from underneath his arm.

The blade of air collided with the invisible shock surging toward them with a wham, bursting and scattering.

“Corporal!”

That familiar invisible impact hit him, the one that was like crashing into a different, high-pressured dimension. An intense feeling of “off-ness” tore into the left side of his body, and what little sight he still had in his left eye was abruptly gone.

That was when it happened.

A black-haired girl wrapped in pale white light materialized in front of him with her arms spread wide. The decay phenomenon split in two around her and shot past him.

The girl vanished in the same instant.

A monster latched its gaping jaws around the blade of his inexpertly wielded saber. As it pushed him over, Julius desperately used the saber as a shield to take the blow and keep its teeth from reaching him. Abnormally overdeveloped canines ground down, doing their best to crush the blade. Now the monster was straddling him. Thick saliva dripped down from the corner of its half-open mouth onto Julius’s cheek. Sharp claws bit into his shoulders where it pinned him down.

Julius clenched his teeth and kicked the monster in the stomach with every ounce of his strength, knocking it off him. The blade of his saber snapped into pieces in the same moment. In the darkness broken here and there by the glow of their torches, he could hear a constant endless clamor of gunshots and clashing weapons, along with shouts and screams from the soldiers around him fighting just as hard as he was. Even Julius, who wasn’t technically part of the military force, had been forced to take up a weapon, and his priest’s clothes were thickly covered with coal-tar-like blood at this point. It made them heavy and sticky.

A new monster appeared in front of him, illuminated by the flickering orange firelight. Its lidless eyes bulged and rolled around in its head until they fixed on him for a target, and then it immediately shot out its limbs like released springs and launched itself at him.

“Shit!”

Julius shoved his broken saber into the monster’s mouth out of desperation. The hilt and his own hand around it plunged all the way to the wrist into his enemy’s throat. Even then, the monster worked its creaking jaws, trying to tear off the arm piercing it. Julius tried to pull his arm free, but those canines bit deep into his arm and fixed it in place.

He had so many little wounds dotting his body that he couldn’t really tell where he hurt anymore. It occurred to him to wonder if this was what they meant when they said Undyings didn’t feel pain.

His consciousness rapidly dimming, he even mused that if this thing tore off his arm, he’d look just like him. That might look kind of cool…

That was when the jaws about to rip his arm out of its socket abruptly went slack.

The monster he was fighting had stopped moving.

“….?”

As Julius frowned, puzzled, the decay of the already half-rotted monster’s body accelerated wildly in front of his eyes. Its skin and muscle almost seemed to evaporate away. Its suddenly brittle fangs broke off at the root, leaving the remains of the teeth embedded in Julius’s right arm as its mummified body crumpled to the ground at his feet.

Julius stood there staring down at the corpse and panting raggedly for a while before it even occurred to him to lower his suddenly irrelevant saber. The thing’s dried-up limbs were bent in unnatural directions on the ground. Julius’s arms finally went limp, and he dropped the blade as he looked around blankly. The monsters the other soldiers had been fighting were drying up the same way, turning to mummies and crumbling away one after another and leaving the men standing there looking baffled, wielding weapons that all of a sudden had nowhere to go. It was a scene straight out of a book where the cursed army of zombies just withered into dust when its leader was defeated and the curse was broken.

The sights around them were changing in sync with the crumbling monsters, too. As if the air itself were swiftly decaying, the buildings aged before their eyes and grew riddled with fine cracks and swaths of moss. The corpses of the monsters were swept into the phenomenon until they seemed to form the roots of a colossal petrified tree. Julius and the soldiers were surrounded by the monster-roots, stuck between them as they covered the whole area like meshwork. All they could do was gape.

Just a short time ago the air had been full of men’s shouts and clanging weapons, and now it was quiet enough to make them suddenly feel pointless.

Still dazed, Julius nonetheless got to his feet, grabbing on to a root for support, and surveyed the situation around him.

“Is everybody all right? Get me a count of the injured,” he ordered in his father’s place, and with a rustle the soldiers gradually stirred back into motion. Voices from all directions began reporting: “I’ve got two injured here.” “There’s one here, but he’s pinned and we can’t get him out.”

“Is Lord Sigri—” Remembering a very important fact, Julius turned toward the room they’d set up for their infirmary. The desiccated corpse-roots wove so thickly together around the building that he couldn’t even see through them to the right passageway. He tried to pick his way through, but when he got reckless and started breaking them he sent the decrepit walls and ceiling crumbling even faster.

“Julius, sir, it’s too dangerous.”

“But Lord Sigri is in there…”

Father Sigri was resting in an upstairs room. Julius’s father had told him to take care of Sigri, which meant Julius had to protect him no matter what, and yet at this rate he couldn’t even go check on the man. Julius gritted his teeth, balling his hands into fists.

It was as though the capital had aged decades—centuries—and crumbled into decay in the blink of an eye. What the hell was happening?

He heard a faint voice. It sounded as if it was whispering right into his ear, and at the same time so thin and faraway it could vanish any second. He turned in the direction he thought it’d come from, but all he saw were grim-faced soldiers milling around.

There it was again. A girl’s voice with a strange echo to it that seemed to be speaking directly to his mind.

Juli. There were only two people Julius knew of who called him that: his mother and a certain girl. And only one of those two was still alive.

“Kieli…?”

That man…I mean, Father Sigri, is safe. It’s okay…

He looked all around him, but her voice came from some mysterious place that seemed to get farther away the more he searched for her. It was unmistakably her voice, though.

Juli, there are some people trapped in the cathedral building who can’t get out. I’m going to tell you how to get to them, so listen close, okay?

“Huh? O-okay. I will.”

The girl’s voice was coming from thin air, but Julius cupped his ear and listened intently all the same. The soldiers around him frowned warily as he stood all alone apparently agreeing with nothing. The girl’s voice told him a clear route that would take him to the back of the cathedral. Evidently this phenomenon that had left them in a tangle of what looked like the petrified roots of a giant tree had spread all over headquarters, and the place was a maze now.

Okay, I’ll leave it to you…Be careful…

The girl’s voice began to fade out, and Julius hastily cried out to his invisible conversation partner.

“Kieli! Kieli, where are you right now?”

Right before the voice disappeared, he thought he saw a girl appear in front of him. A black-haired girl wrapped in pale, vague light. She and the light dwindled away into nothingness with a parting smile just like the one the Holy Mother wore in paintings.

“Sir?” one of the soldiers asked warily after Julius had stood there blankly gazing into space for a few moments.

He schooled his expression. “Never mind, it’s nothing. Wait here until my father comes back. I’d like just one team to come with me, though. There are civilians trapped in the cathedral.” He swept his eyes over the soldiers’ lost faces as they listened to his orders. “Is there anyone who’ll come with me? I need your help. Please,” he asked earnestly, and then waited for a response. Things were already so chaotic. If even Julius himself didn’t understand it, he couldn’t help doubting that anybody else would want to volunteer for a cryptic request like this that added to the confusion even more.

But then—

“I’ll come with you, sir,” volunteered a soldier, stepping forward. And as if that had been the signal, a whole chorus of them came forward clamoring, “Sir, I’ll join you!” Julius faltered briefly—so many of them had volunteered that he thought there were actually a few too many—but after a moment, he simply said, “Thank you. I appreciate it,” and bowed his head gratefully.

What in the world had just happened? All of them sat frozen in dumb surprise for a while, unable to take any of it in. The fossil fuel pipes crawling along the walls of the supply room shriveled into desiccated vines and rusted over; the walls and ceiling were weathering before their eyes, cracking and sprouting moss.

The whole area went dead silent. There was only the occasional sound of plaster falling off the now-ancient walls.

A voice suddenly echoed in Yoshiu’s ear.

It was a girl’s voice, one that seemed about to fade away any moment, and yet at the same time authoritative and reassuring. He looked around him, but he saw only young children and elderly. There was no girl who could be the owner of that voice.

No less bewildered than before, but unthinkingly drawn to the voice, Yoshiu stood up. One by one, the others got up, too. The barricade they’d built of church pews had rusted into a solid mass, too, but the men worked together to break it down until they managed to make a space just wide enough for a grown man to pass through. Then, one after another, they climbed anxiously out into the hallway.

The moment Yoshiu left the supply room, he was seized by the illusion that he’d been suddenly catapulted several centuries into the future. Enormous tree roots and blankets of moss covered the walls and ceiling of the hallway outside, filling the passage so completely in both directions that they wouldn’t be able to get anywhere unless they cut their way through.

“Helloooo! Is anyone there?” someone shouted. It started out hesitantly at first, but soon more and more people were crying “Hello! Hello!” to anyone who might be on the other side of the great tree roots blanketing their vision. Those who had knives took the lead and hacked at the roots, and the twenty-odd men, women, and children who’d been holed up in the supply room took one another’s hands and began their escape. Yoshiu helped the women and the elderly make their way down from the hole in the barricade. The man who’d been bitten by a monster outside the barricade made it out with help from someone else, too.

People who’d chosen their own safety over someone else’s just a few short hours ago, who’d turned away from the reality in front of them and said “We’ve got no choice,” were taking one another by the hand, supporting and encouraging one another as they began to make their way out. It was as though the evil spirits possessing them had released their hold. They climbed their way over and shoved their way through the great tree roots that spread like meshwork over the whole corridor. The able-bodied helped the injured, the women, the children, and the elderly, periodically calling for help to anybody who might be listening as everyone there worked together to move forward.

“…?”

For some reason he found his attention drawn to one side of the passageway. What was that? Entrusting the old woman he’d been supporting to the nearest person, Yoshiu left the tide of people and pushed through the roots as though something were leading him along.

Though the roots covered his entire field of vision, he made his way over and under and through them until he found a little room on the side of the passage sealed with a heavy door. The door was awfully rusted, but when he gave it a push the hinges snapped easily. It collapsed with a thud, sending up a cloud of dust inside.

When the dust settled, the thick, old smell of oil paints hit his nose.

It was a storeroom for paintings. The dim little room was completely carpeted in rust and moss just like the passageway, and most of the valuable paintings propped against the walls were moldering away, but there were still several left that retained their basic shape.

“Ah…ahh…”

Yoshiu whimpered at the sight before his eyes.

He crumpled to his knees on the spot.

Lying in front of him, fused forever into one of the tree roots, was her.

Her face so calm at rest, like a maiden who’d fallen asleep in the woods, and her short, gently waving golden hair were both a part of the root now, too—she was like an exquisite engraving carved into the tree, far more beautiful than any of the valuable paintings around her. She was an angel carved by a master artist.

Fat tears poured down his cheeks and onto his knees.

Ah, Yoshiu wondered, how many years has it been since the last time I cried?

This was his angel in her death: utterly crushing and utterly beautiful. This was his angel, preserved unchanging for all eternity as though the will of someone like a god had worked to ensure that her beauty would never be lost.

“…Hello! Is anybody there? If you’re there, answer me…”

He began to hear voices calling somewhere far away.

“Over here! Help us!”

Answering voices. Clanking armor-plated footsteps approached, along with a hum of male voices. Maybe help had come for them.

Almost all of the worshippers who’d fled into the bowels of the cathedral were safely rescued from the strange enchanted maze that day within only a handful of hours. Her golden head wasn’t among them, and there were only a few, including Yoshiu, who knew that her exquisitely beautiful sculpture-like form had been secretly left deep inside the cathedral for eternity.

There were many others besides Yoshiu who would later testify that they’d heard a voice guided by the Holy Mother that day. There would even be a few to testify that they’d actually seen the Holy Mother. She was a girl with long black hair and striking dark eyes, they said, glowing white and wearing a mild smile.

Suspicious of the way the commotion downstairs had gone suddenly silent, Sigri braced his right shoulder and sat up in bed. He managed to make it to the doorway on slightly unsteady feet, hanging on to the wall for support. The door to his little room was completely encrusted with moss. He wrenched it open half by force.

“What in the world…?”

What looked like the roots of a giant petrified tree spread over everything outside his room. They crisscrossed one another so tightly that he couldn’t take even one step through the doorway.

He heard a voice call him. With a start, Sigri looked around him.

He glimpsed the hem of a skirt glowing with white light on the far side of the roots blocking his path. When he took a closer look, he saw a tunnel near the floor that looked just barely big enough to crawl through.

This way, the voice repeated, and Sigri, drawn to it, stooped and followed it into the tunnel enclosed by roots. When he passed through the entrance, a narrow arched path hollowed out from the tree stretched in front of him. He saw a girl wreathed in light disappear down it.

“W-wait…!”

Protecting his right shoulder as best he could, he crawled down the tunnel. It was like entering into a withered plant. The path twisted left and right, and Sigri hit a fork or a dead end every so often. Whenever that happened, he’d catch a glimpse of the girl showing him which way to go. Sigri crawled single-mindedly after her like a man possessed.

After he’d been crawling for some time, a mossy and half-buried iron door blocked his way. When he looked left and right, a faint voice urged him on from the other side.

This way.

He pushed his uninjured shoulder against the door and shoved as hard as he could. Its rusted hinges came loose, and the door and Sigri both fell through to the other side.

The root-covered tunnel kept on going from here, but off in the distance ahead of him, he could see it growing a little less dark. The blue-gray night sky was beginning to lighten into a sandier tone, as though day was beginning to break.

If you keep on going straight, you’ll get out. I told Julius’s father, so I think help will be there for you soon.

He heard a voice somewhere speaking again. On his hands and knees, Sigri raised his head and looked straight up above him.

A girl with such faint presence that she seemed likely to disappear any moment floated there in midair.

Sigri wasn’t as surprised as he’d thought he would be. In fact, he found himself easily accepting that this girl with Setsuri’s blood would have mysterious powers. Striking black eyes just like her mother’s were looking down at him. In a scratchy voice, he spoke to her…to his only daughter. “You came to help me, then…?”

She looked down at him with quiet, commanding eyes and answered coldly and a little stiffly.

There are things you still have to do. You have a responsibility that comes with your status. Because you chose that status for yourself…

“You called me ‘Dad’ back there, didn’t you?”

At Sigri’s words, the girl tilted her head, looking a little lost. A bit sadly, she murmured, “You’ve already punished yourself enough for your sins. You’ve suffered enough, just like they have…”

And then for the first time, the girl faintly, ever so faintly, smiled for him.

But your real work is still ahead of you. You still have a big job left to do, don’t you?

“…Yes. I have a feeling I’m about to be very busy.”

Sigri returned the girl’s smile. Bathed in twinkling light, she rose straight up through the thicket of tree roots and climbed toward the sky. Sigri stared up at the place where the light had vanished for a while after it was gone.

Setsuri, our daughter really did grow up to be just like you…

In his mind’s eye, he compared the girl’s face with the face of the wife he’d once truly loved, but had forsaken in the end—a sin he could never hope to be forgiven for.

“All right, time to go…”

The capital was still in chaos, and he had a big job left to do as Elder. Even if he would never be able to atone for that old sin, he would take responsibility and keep walking the path he’d chosen for himself.

Sigri fixed his eyes straight ahead and began making his way down the tunnel toward the light in front of him.

Everything around her was bathed in a soft light. Kieli’s steps felt floaty, and she wasn’t sure what state she was in right now exactly, but strangely, she never got lost as she walked through the light.

She walked, finding people who’d lost track of the light and cowered in corners, people who’d lost their way and come to a standstill; and she showed them the paths of the light that she could clearly see, though it was often faint. When Kieli spoke to them they were always awfully surprised at first, and they looked wary. Still, eventually they each found the light and began making their way toward it. Once she’d seen them safely off, she went to others who were lost and showed them the signs pointing to the light.

Please let me share all the happiness I’ve been given with everyone else today…She didn’t have any lofty goals like Julius, and she wasn’t softhearted like Harvey, and she wasn’t strong like Beatrix, either. But Kieli was sure there must be something she could do for people, too. Please let me become as nice a person now as I was stubborn before. Please let me become one of the people who can make someone else happy. Kieli walked and helped people in trouble fueled on those hazy wishes alone.

And so she walked on air around the whole capital. She had the feeling she’d done a lot of walking and spoken to a lot of different people, but she wasn’t tired. Her body was light, and she felt a mysterious sense of freedom.

I wonder if I’m dead, she thought vaguely.

She came to an invisible staircase hanging in the air, and she climbed it step by step high up into the sky. When she had already climbed so high that she was starting to wonder whether she’d end up walking straight into Heaven, Kieli stopped and looked down at her feet.

Capital headquarters sprawled across the landscape far below her. It was a tranquil, completely motionless landscape, like a finely detailed painting done in rust-red.

Headquarters was only a forest of great dead trees and tangled roots now. Countless trees covered in rust, so many that the radio tower she had seen in the gorge couldn’t even compare.

Rust-red streaks fanned out from the looming energy tower at the center like a gigantic tree stretching its enormous roots far out in every direction. The sound of fossil-fuel boilers that had always filled the city was gone now, and at some point during the night the cloud of thick gray smog had disappeared, too. Soundless crystal-clear air was steadily permeating the whole city. To Kieli, it looked as if that rust-red picture depicted the sunset at the end of the world. As if everything that had wreathed the city before had died away into nothingness.

A clear wind blew down over the city from the mountain range with no smog in it at all. Along the mountain range, the slate-blue night sky began to lighten into the thin, sandy color of early morning, and the rising sun’s rays started to filter through the gaps between mountains.

It was as though everything that had been laid to waste was about to be born anew. It was the beginning of the world. I’m witnessing the moment when the end of the world turns into the beginning, Kieli thought.

That ceremony connecting the end to the beginning unfolded solemnly and silently far below Kieli’s watching eyes.

Little by little, people came crawling out of the rusty root-covered Church headquarters. Some looked blankly around them, some sat down on the ground and breathed sighs of relief, and some shielded their eyes from the morning sun as though it was somehow too dazzling now. They were like infants, newly born out of the great tree.

Kieli’s consciousness slowly transferred itself inside the root-covered capital. She sensed someone still trapped deep inside the tree. Her mind wound its way through a tunnel surrounded by roots.

There was a young redheaded man wandering shakily around the capital looking for something. Dragging his wrecked body along, stumbling over the roots at his feet and sometimes falling.

You have to go back.

Kieli heard a girl’s voice. The ghost girl from before was floating next to her all of a sudden, though Kieli didn’t know when she’d gotten there. But there she was, the girl in the white slip who kind of reminded Kieli of herself, smiling at her.

He’s looking for you, you know. You still have to go back down there.

When the pale girl tugged her hand, Kieli took the invisible staircase again, back down toward the earth this time.

She caught sight of herself lying on the floor of a tunnel formed by two collapsed walls that weren’t much better than heaps of rubble and rusty pipes now. The girl prodded her shoulder, urging her forward. Kieli felt a force pulling her rapidly back down to her body, but she turned to look at the girl. She was floating in the air, moving away from Kieli and up into the sky.

“You…” Kieli called to her before she left. “You were my very first invisible friend, weren’t you?”

The girl’s voice and faintly smiling face receded farther and farther away.

Yep, we’re old friends. You were the first one to smile at me, my tiny friend…

And then the girl’s voice and form were both swallowed up by a soft white light, along with everything else.

“Mn…ugh…” There were stinging pains in little places all over her body. When she cracked her eyelids open and blinked a few times, her cloudy vision gradually started to clear. She was trapped in an unlit space boxed in by pipes and rubble. Kieli sat slowly up. Fine fragments of rubble slid off her shoulders. “Ow ow ow…” Wincing and grabbing one aching shoulder, she surveyed her body. She was scratched up just about everywhere, but she didn’t seem to be seriously injured.

Ga-thud.

One section of the rubble was moved away by somebody outside, and a tiny shaft of light came in.

“Kieli!”

A hoarse voice called her name. Someone’s face peered in at her from a gap in the rubble, although he was backlit and she couldn’t really see him. She didn’t need to, though. She knew his voice right away. That low, gravelly voice that rumbled in his throat a little, in its usual sort of offhanded tone. She knew he must be looking a little bit ready to cry right now, too.

Smiling, Kieli forced her voice to unstick from her throat. “I’m home…”

She gripped his outstretched hand. The big palm and long, angular fingers that at the same time looked awfully thin and fragile: the hand she loved.

They wandered for a while through tunnels formed by the giant tree roots before they finally got out through a narrow gap in one tunnel wall, at which point they found themselves in a gloomy space where the air was stale and cold and smelled like rocks. It felt like a chasm in the mountain range. The sheer, rocky cliffs towering on either side of them cut off most of Kieli’s normal field of vision. Below them lay an impenetrable darkness that must keep going all the way to the floor of the valley; when she looked up above them, all she could see were a few thin, barely there shafts of light coming from far overhead.

When they stepped out onto a tiny path formed by a ledge along one rock wall, they found a narrow, rusty track eroded almost into nothingness.

“A trolley track…?” Kieli murmured, taking in the rails stretching out in front of them.

Harvey nodded from where he’d been feeling the nearby wall with his hand, taking stock. “Probably used to be for carrying fuel to the energy tower, back a long time ago.” He squatted on the ground and ran his hand along the rail to feel the rust. “It’s pretty old…It might be from before the capital was built, even.” The radio buzzed its agreement.

“A track from before the capital was built…” Kieli hugged the radio tightly to her chest again.

“Let’s try following it. We might find a way out.”

Harvey took the lead and began making his way down the path laid with rails, trailing his hand along the rock wall towering to one side of the ledge. The trolley track at their feet was definitely weather-beaten, and it broke off here and there. From what Kieli could see, it had gone a good long time without any repairs after it was abandoned.

Both of them were more than a little unsteady and beaten up. They took each other by the hand and worked together to move forward along the path, which abruptly changed elevation here and there where the rock had cracked. The freezing-cold air at the northern end of the continent hung stationary between the walls of the gorge. It stung Kieli’s skin painfully. Only Harvey’s hand, holding hers whenever it was time to climb over the bumps in the ledge, occasionally gave her own hand some warmth; otherwise she was chilled to the bone.

She wondered how long they’d been walking now. It seemed as though hours had passed, but for all she knew it might have been only twenty or forty minutes. It felt as if they’d been walking for a long time, anyway, and her hands and feet were completely numb and exhausted. Her body was so frozen through that she was starting to lose all sensation.

Harvey, who was walking in front, abruptly stopped. Kieli’s face bumped lightly into his back. When she looked over his arm to see what was going on, she saw that part of the rock ledge had crumbled away. Harvey was feeling along the edge of the drop with the sole of his shoe. Without turning around he asked her, “Kieli, can you see the other side?”

Kieli squinted across the gap in the rock ledge. “Yep.”

“How far is it?”

“About two meters, I think…”

“Okay.”

Harvey took a little step to get a running start and leapt over to the other side. He tottered a little, but otherwise his landing was more or less steady. Then he turned and signaled to Kieli with a wave. Kieli jumped after Harvey with everything she had, and he caught her on the other side.

“Have you gained weight again?” Harvey said teasingly as he set her down.

“What do you mean, ‘again’?!”

When Kieli pouted at him, he laughed a little…an honest laugh, as if his usual expressionless mask had fallen off, and then he plopped himself down on the ground.

“Wanna take a break?”

“Uh-huh.” Kieli wasn’t going to disagree. She was completely worn out from all that walking.

The path of the rock ledge and its rails curved lazily ahead of them, periodically sloping up and down, but always looking pretty much the same as far as Kieli’s eye could see. No light at the end of the tunnel in sight. She wanted to go back to where she thought Julius and the others had probably escaped to and let them know that she and Harvey were okay, but they wouldn’t be able to get back to the capital unless they could find a path aboveground somewhere. Even if they did get lucky and find their way out of this valley, though, who knew how far they’d be from the capital by then.

The speaker of the radio on her lap began leaking faint noise. Kshht…bzzzzzzz…

“He’s telling us to hang in there and walk a little farther,” Kieli murmured after a moment, her mind a little fuzzy. As soon as she’d sat down, the exhaustion had hit hard…Huh? she thought then, surprised at herself. “It’s weird…I understood what the Corporal said just now…” She’d heard his voice, too. Harvey’d said before that the reason she couldn’t hear him was because she wasn’t listening. It must have been because up until now she’d been so stubbornly rejecting reality, because she couldn’t just open up. But she could hear him now.

Harvey could hear the Corporal’s static-voice like this the whole time. Harvey’d understood. All this time he’d been saying, “I’m still okay. I’m still here.” All this time he’d been cheering the two of them on. “Hang in there,” he’d been saying. Their guardian was right there next to them, and he had been all along.

“You cold, Kieli?”

“Mm. A little.”

When she hunkered down and wrapped her arms around her knees, effectively hugging the radio, Harvey patted the ground next to him and said, “C’mere.” Kieli pressed up against him and they spread the long priest’s robes over both of them. It was at least a little warmer this way. The air around them was painfully cold, and she caught glimpses of frosted-over moss on the rock wall. Her fingers and toes and cheeks were numb. She couldn’t really feel them anymore.

It was cold, and they were both worn out and banged up all over…but this place was quiet, and it was only Kieli and Harvey and the Corporal here, and oddly enough, going back to just the three of them like this felt sort of fun. Maybe there wasn’t any exit out of here at all. Kieli kind of felt as though they might be following these tracks toward the world’s last terminal, but she also felt that she was basically okay with that, so the idea didn’t really bother her. A nebulous sense of well-being filled her heart. The world’s last terminal might be a happy place.

She tried gently settling her head on Harvey’s shoulder next to her. “It smells the same here as in that mine in Easterbury…The prisoners must have used this path a whole lot carrying their minerals, huh?”

“Yeah,” he answered as he planted a cigarette between his lips. The comfortable sound of his voice washed over her. Kieli started to feel sleepy, and she let her eyes flutter closed. She was afraid she might fall asleep for real if she didn’t keep talking, so she rummaged around in her mind for something to talk about.

“Do you think we’ll make it back to Easterbury?”

“Sure we will,” Harvey answered easily. As he searched his pocket for his lighter, he went on in the same casual tone of voice most people used to talk about what they’d eat for breakfast the next day. “First thing we’ll have to do is clean up. That house is pretty rusty, right? And covered in dust. No glass in the windows, either. We’ll have to do some patching up before it’ll be livable. And repaint the walls, and get furniture…”

“Right, yeah. Like beds and tables and kitchen stuff,” Kieli joined in. Harvey was talking about their plan so easily it felt out of place, but she just went with it. Not in spite of everything, but because of it. Because they might not make it home, because it might never come true, she closed her eyes and pictured a fun future. Right now she could let her imagination run wild. She could picture all kinds of fun things ahead for them.

“I’m going to set up the second-floor balcony for potted plants and grow herbs there. Then we’ll earn a living selling herbs!”

“We can just make our living on cards.”

“No, that’s not good enough!” Kieli scowled at Harvey for being a wet blanket. What kind of dream was that?! “It’s my dream to run a shop, okay? I’m going to run a shop and earn my own money. I don’t care if it only trickles in and I only earn enough to get by on. I don’t want to earn my money by gambling!”

“Okay, okay. You can do whatever you want,” Harvey said, laughing at her passionate insistence. The radio gave a staticky laugh, too.

“We’ll play rock music in the shop. Something bouncy and light would be good. Not too wild. You pick the songs, okay, Corporal? The Corporal will go on the counter. I’ll serve the customers, and…”

As she spoke, she could actually picture it in her mind. When there weren’t any customers, she’d turn up the music and hum along as she cared for all her seedlings. She could make dried flowers and artificial flowers, too. It might be fun to sell wreaths like the one Yana had made. They hadn’t been in contact with the bar on the parish border since they left, but when everything was over, Kieli wanted to try writing letters to them again. She hoped the bartender and Yana were living happily together.

And as for Harvey…as for Harvey…I can’t quite picture Harvey helping with the shop. Her imagination was rapidly spinning the tale of their fun future, filling it with images, but her mind started to get foggy, and her mouth couldn’t quite get all the words out anymore. She had a lot more she wanted to say, but the words started getting sort of stuck.

Her head started to droop as she nodded off. She felt comfortable, the way she did rocked by the vibrations of a train. She pictured it behind her closed eyelids. Right now, they were on a train bound for that transfer station in Easterbury. The three of them together, sometimes talking and other times just staring into space, taking their last journey and thinking about the new life they’d have after they got to the station. Harvey sat in the window seat just like always, joining the conversation or not as he felt like it and planting a cigarette between his lips. He reached into his pocket and fished out not a lighter, but a chocolate bar.

A chocolate bar?

Kieli snapped back to reality and opened her eyes. Sitting next to her against the rock wall, Harvey tried to light his cigarette just the way he would with his lighter, and then he looked down at the chocolate bar in his hand and blinked.

Harvey and chocolate. Now there was the most ridiculous combination ever. Kieli couldn’t help laughing. Harvey narrowed his eyes and glared down at the candy that had come out of his pocket instead of his lighter and made a bitter face as though he’d just bitten into a piece of unsweetened chocolate.

“What are you doing with that thing?”

“…Julius’s nursemaid put it in there. She said something like ‘Chocolate is good for tired people. It can have you feeling better in no time. So please, take it with you for medicinal purposes’ and forced it on me.” Harvey pouted. Then he gruffly thrust the chocolate bar at Kieli. “Here.”

Kieli decided to just accept it and be glad. She was hungry anyway, and she thought it might warm her up a little.

“Want to split it?…Oh right, you hate chocolate.”

“No, I don’t,” Harvey answered, only half paying attention as stuck his hand back in his pocket and rifled around for the lighter he wanted.

Kieli stilled her numb hands in the act of breaking the bar in half. Immediately, Harvey’s face told her he’d realized his mistake.

Kieli gave him a hard sidelong glare. “You told me you hated chocolate, didn’t you?”

“Did I?” Harvey asked with badly feigned innocence, looking in the opposite direction from where Kieli sat. Kieli persisted unforgivingly. “You did, didn’t you? That was what you said to weasel out of your promise again, wasn’t it?”

“Y-you just won’t quit…”

“I’m being perfectly fair!” She half-stood and leaned her body forward to force her way into Harvey’s line of sight, but her numb feet slipped on a rail. “Eep!”

She missed her footing on the ledge and fell, smacking both her face and her knees on the rails.

“Kieli?!”

Harvey instantly turned pale and started feeling around him with his hand. Kieli grabbed his hand when he held it out near her and pulled herself up. Covering her face, which smarted from going totally numb and then getting hit, she complained in a pitiful voice, “I dropped the chocolate.” The chocolate bar she’d let go of when she fell was tumbling its way down the valley below now. Still, if she hadn’t been lucky it could’ve been her tumbling, so she’d really gotten off easy with just bumps on her face and knees.

“I can’t believe you…” After a while just sitting frozen and pale-faced, Harvey heaved a drained sigh and let his shoulders drop. “Where does it hurt?”

He patted around Kieli’s face with his hand. They were sitting right next to each other and facing each other, too, but it felt as though he was feeling his way hesitantly through the dark.

“Harvey…”

She caught his fingers as they brushed against her lips and looked straight into his face. Her voice shook a little. “You…can’t really see much anymore, can you?”

For a little while Harvey gazed back at her expressionlessly, and then he smiled a little. His coppery right eye and dark brown left eye focused vaguely in front of her.

He drew his face close to hers and whispered in a soft, low voice, “I can see your face, Kieli.”

His thin, slightly dry lips touched hers along with his whisper.

A warm puff of breath flowed into her mouth.

…And then, for what might have been only a second but felt like an eternity to Kieli, she was staring wide-eyed at Harvey’s face in extreme close-up. His eyes had drifted closed. Directly below their jaws, the radio was spouting grating noise along the lines of “What do you two think you’re doing?!”, but Harvey didn’t appear to care, and Kieli was too tied up in knots to even hear it.

The lips against hers drew away. Kieli stayed frozen, sitting straight as a board with her fists resting on her knees, not even breathing. Harvey’s breath was still in her mouth, with the heat of his body still lingering in it. Harvey pulled his face away and said teasingly, “A replacement for the chocolate. Feeling warmer?”

And then he breezily looked away from her and began lighting his cigarette with the lighter he’d finally found in his pocket.

The radio was still squawking, “You’re taking advantage of the fact that I can’t talk! You know I told you I’d never allow such unchaste behavior while I’m still around to stop it!” in static at her feet. Kieli flicked the hem of her skirt over it without any real conscious thought. She didn’t even look; she was still gazing dazedly into space. She could hear a muffled tirade of noise coming from somewhere underneath her petticoat.

A beat later, Kieli felt her temperature suddenly skyrocket. Forget “feeling warmer”: she thought her face was about to burst into flames. She stayed frozen without breathing for a little longer just because it seemed like such a shame to let his breath leave her, but then her lungs started to burn, so she took a deep inhale, and then it hit her that this was Harvey’s vaguely smoky breath entering her body, and her temperature shot even higher.

“I, ah, ah…Th-that’s not fair! I didn’t—you—you took me by surprise! I wasn’t ready!” The words jumbled together in her head and blurted out of her mouth in spurts while she flapped her mouth open and closed like an idiot.

“‘Not fair’? You give me that even when I keep the promise?”

Harvey’s cheek twitched as he took a drag of his cigarette. Kieli pouted, miffed. “D-do it again, ri…right this time…” Her voice had faded into nothing by the end, but she looked up at Harvey through her lashes. Harvey looked at her out of the corner of his eye, too, so she flushed bright red and looked down, spine stiff. “N-n-n-never mind…” The radio was still grumbling something from inside her skirt.

A puff of warmth…and with it, priest’s robes coming into her field of vision. Harvey leaned over her and placed his left hand on the rock wall she was resting against, cigarette between his fingers, right next to her head. When Kieli lifted her face suspiciously, lips touched hers again, slowly this time.

She closed her eyes.

One second. Two seconds. Just about three seconds.

Enough for each of them to confirm the other’s touch, confirm that they both existed.

Harvey’s lips drew away. When Kieli opened her eyes, he was already facing away from her, puffing at his cigarette and staring at nothing. And then he darted a glance at her out of the corner of his eye and smiled shyly and guilelessly, almost boyishly somehow.

His breath in her lungs and the scent of his tobacco touched her heart as kindly and achingly as his smile. She was happy—happier than anything—and yet her chest hurt harder than anything, too, and tears welled up in her eyes.

She was sure something that had been worrying at Harvey’s heart for a long time had just stopped. The end of his world was so kind and warm, and so heartbreaking, too.

Kieli began to hear muffled, staticky music coming from underneath her skirt. She could make out faint snatches of familiar medium-tempo rock. Was this the music they played at the end of the world…? It was the same music that had always been right there with Kieli and Harvey on their travels. She thought she might be okay with going to the end of the world, if she got to have this music with her.

“Kieli,” called Harvey’s voice through the music.

I get to have the radio’s music and Harvey’s voice with me at the end of the world. I’m so lucky. I can die happy now…

“Kieli. Hey.”

When she felt Harvey shaking her shoulder, Kieli opened her eyes. She hadn’t noticed her lids starting to droop. Harvey was on his feet, looking around them. “Radio waves…the Corporal’s picking up radio waves…”

Surprised, Kieli flipped the hem of her skirt up and dragged the radio out from under the petticoat she’d covered it with. It was more than half static and it came in fits and starts, but yes—that was definitely the sound of stringed instruments coming from its speaker.

“Where from…?”

She squinted along the rock ledge with its trolley track. All she could see were the tall rock walls closing in the darkness on either side of them.

“Can you stand?”

“Yeah.”

Harvey took her by the arm, and she hung the radio back around her neck and wrestled her stiff limbs into submission. They joined hands and started making their way along the rock ledge again, following the music. The path’s slope had been gentle for a good long time now, but it grew steadily steeper as they walked. They took it one step at a time, working their legs for all they were worth.

Eventually they came to the end of the track. The crude lift there, which Kieli assumed had once carried fossil fuel up to the surface, was broken. But there was a series of protrusions in the rock leading upward, and it looked as if they could probably manage to climb with them. Harvey felt his way up by touch, climbing one foothold at a time and then lending his hand to Kieli to pull her up after him. They mustered all their remaining strength to make their way toward the top. Slowly but surely, the barely there music from the radio’s warped speaker started to come through firm and clear.

The tops of the sheer cliffs finally came into view. Pale sand-colored light filtered down from the narrow scrap of sky between the rock walls. When Kieli scrambled up to the last foothold and squirmed onto the surface, Harvey pulled her to her feet.

Her shoes touched soil.

“Whoa…”

Kieli could see her breath leaving her mouth before it disappeared right away into the clear, cold air.

The two of them stood still right there, not letting go of each other, and gazed wordlessly at the scenery spread out before them.

Beneath the lightly clouded far-northern sky, black soil stretched on and on as far as the eye could see. Crystal sparkles dotted it here and there where the frozen ground reflected back the sun’s soft rays.

It was a view beautiful enough to make her want to cry and spectacular enough to almost make her dizzy.

“I never knew there were wilds like this on top of the mountain range…” Kieli murmured, so moved it came out half-tearful. “Harvey, can you see it…?” she asked the man next to her hesitantly. Harvey’s eyes stayed fixed on the scene in front of them. He sucked in a deep breath, seeming to feel the vast tundra’s air more than he saw it, and then smiled on the exhale.

“Yeah. I can tell what it’s like…”

The radio was picking up the signal loud and clear now. When Kieli looked around her, shielding her eyes from the glare of the ice with her free hand, she made out what looked like a tall steel tower on the horizon far ahead of them. She jogged a few steps toward it and stood on her tiptoes, squinting.

Is that…a mobile radio station? Maybe it was from the same era as the one they’d come across in that northwestern canyon, because they looked a lot alike. The big mobile building with its tall steel towers was approaching them from across the tundra.

“Harvey, we’re saved!”

Kieli waved gleefully at the radio station. It kept coming closer, its wheels clattering loudly against the tundra. She waited excitedly, but it passed right by a little in front of where she and Harvey stood. “Ah—” Maybe they didn’t notice us…? Kieli froze on the spot with her hand still hanging in the air midwave. The radio station’s steel towers grew smaller again in the distance as it left the two of them behind, awfully tiny here in the middle of the vast tundra. The signal the radio was picking up steadily faded.

“I was so sure they’d help us…” Kieli slumped with disappointment, letting her hand fall back to her side.

“Kieli,” Harvey murmured, tugging on her sleeve. “The sound. It’s coming back.”

Kieli looked back up. The radio’s signal gradually picked up again. She could see the steel towers that had passed them by coming in close once again.

They waited there, and before long the mobile radio station skimming along the tundra with its big wheels stacked on top of each other came to a stop a little ways away from them. A rectangular hatch in the side wall opened up, and a figure came out of the darkness through it. Kieli waited, gulping unconsciously.

“Are you stranded?”

It was a deep male voice, with a touch of a pre-War accent that reminded her of the Corporal’s. A middle-aged man in tattered winter clothes had appeared from the hatch.

“Who is it? Who is it?” called an innocent, higher-pitched voice, and then a little boy popped his head out from behind the man. He had a winter hat on. “Wow! It’s people from the world Below!” he cried excitedly, his eyes shining.

And that was how Kieli and Harvey met the tribe that lived in the far-north tundra and broadcast music on their guerrilla radio frequency.

The world hadn’t ended yet.

Beyond the world’s last terminal stretched a whole new, wide—wide enough to make you sigh, or make you cry—world they’d never known.

The journey wasn’t quite over yet.