Chapter 439 - 181 Choose Me

—When she thinks back on that instant, the terror assaults her even now.

How her clinging fingers were cast aside, and her name was affectionately spoken.

The love in their goodbye. The determination and tears in their smiling eyes. Both carried far more than enough weight to silence her.

What should she have said? She still doesn't know.

What had she been thinking? She can no longer remember.

What ought she have done? She still fails to see any answer.

—And so Beatrice remains, even now, cowering motionless in the Forbidden Archive.

Beatrice: "...Lewes."

The sound out her lips is a fragment from a memory so ancient, even just the word sounds wistful. When she speaks that name, emotions bursting, the frozen time inside Beatrice—the four-hundred year void—instantly comes surging to the surface.

Beatrice secluded herself inside the Archive, waiting for THEY's eventual arrival, only after Lewes Meyer had been lost as her existence became impetus for the establishment of SANCTUARY, and the Warlock Hector had been repelled.

Beatrice had lost someone so close to her that they could safely be called her only companion. Anyone could see how haggard Beatrice was, having lost that friend owing to her own inability. And everyone knew that only time would mend her injured heart.

So her Mother's conclusion was simple.

Echidna: "I suspect that warlock will return to destroy me someday. I plan to set up means to oppose him before that happens... but even that might be fallible."

Beatrice: "Yes, Mother."

Echidna: "If we engage in confrontation again, it will develop into truly heated, absolute combat. Considering the enemy's strength, my chances of surviving are about fifty-fifty... or maybe a little lower? Since Roswaal's unfortunately lost his gate, and can't assist in battle."

Echidna lowers her gaze, but Beatrice's unaffected demeanour remained stable.

It's not that she's suppressing anything. Ever since that day, her emotions have almost entirely stopped showing on her face. Who could suppose the effect that the overwhelming loss, the emotional aftershock, had had on her?

It could be that her emotions froze exactly because her heart knows that effect.

Echidna looks at Beatrice and her unchanged expression, running her finger through her white hair.

Echidna: "I'm already one of the witches least suited to combat. Once I know I can't enlist aid from Roswaal, genius in sorcery, it's after expending all possible means that I finally begin seeing hopes of victory."

Beatrice: "...What should Betty do, I suppose?"

Everyone knows that Roswaal was half-killed in the battle to establish SANCTUARY's functions. His gate was utterly decimated, making him ineligible as a magician.

The sight of her comrade lying in bed, still moribund in this very moment, arises in Beatrice's mind. Sounding somewhat desperate, she assaults Echidna with questions.

Beatrice: "Should I do the same as Roswaal, and buy time until your algorithms are complete? Or should I sacrifice myself, conglomerate of powerful od that I am, and become the nucleus for the algorithm, I suppose? I won't regret it for an instant when it's for your sake, in fact. ...Please, use me however you'd like, I suppose."

Beatrice grasps her skirt and curtseys, displaying the greatest of trust to her mother.

Honestly, the emotion is far too brittle and fleeting to be called TRUST. But Beatrice is unable to comprehend her own present mental state, and even supposing that she did understand herself, she would have likely reached the same solution.

Reckless lust for vengeance, and indignation at her powerlessness—the question of whether or not she recognizes these two feelings of hers constitutes the only single difference.

Echidna: "—I see. Once you've told me that, even I can ask for favours without any reproach. You truly are a good girl, Beatrice."

Beatrice: "...Yes. Betty's your daughter, in fact."

Hearing such words from Echidna would usually overjoy Beatrice.

Perhaps Echidna was aware of that, for she was careful give Beatrice verbal praise only infrequently. But now those magic words sink into Beatrice's empty chest with a hideously hollow thunk.

Perhaps nothing will rekindle the fire in her heart.

Is what Beatrice thinks, and so she fails to immediately react to Echidna's next words.

Echidna: "Beatrice. I'm entrusting you to oversee my archive of knowledge. Until the time that must come does come, you'll protect the knowledge as the Archive's keeper. —So that nobody can steal it."

Beatrice: "...wha,"

Echidna: "Fortunately, you have unparalleled affinity for Yin magic. You'll use GATE CROSSING to link a familiar location to an isolated space. ...Yes, we'll call it the FORBIDDEN ARCHIVE. There, I want you to guard over the extent of my knowledge, compiled into books."

Beatrice's eyes shoot open in shocked turmoil as Echidna keeps speaking, leaving her behind. Beatrice had expected Echidna to order her to accompany her in this battle of life and death. Cast into an utterly unanticipated role, Beatrice can only glance about in bewilderment.

Even though witnessing her daughter's discomposure, Echidna continues without missing a beat.

Echidna: "It'd be best to link the Forbidden Archive to Roswaal's mansion. I'll dismantle my laboratory, and prepare for the final battle. I'm sorry, but I can't expend any people to carry the books. I'd like you to ask Roswaal about preparing the bookcases and securing labour."

Beatrice: "W-wait..."

Echidna: "It won't last forever. Both you and I are already liberated from the fetters of predestined lifespan. The cycling of the seasons isn't especially meaningful for us. But in saying that, once you consider that I may be lost, it's irresponsible for it to lack deadline. Which means..."

Beatrice: "Please wait, I suppose!"

After a deep breath, she shouts.

Beatrice cannot comprehend what her mother is saying.

Or no. Her instincts are screaming at her, telling her not to comprehend it. Echidna's thoughts are vast, always easily excelling what the ordinary man could possibly understand. Meaning that Echidna's statements represent the optimum, and Beatrice had never thought to interrupt her before.

But now is not like that. Nothing like that.

If Beatrice lets Echidna speak her whole screed, she will surely regret it.

If Echidna states the whole of her opinion, what she'll present is the absolute optimum solution with no purchase for debate. The world will follow a course affirming Echidna's stance, and Beatrice will be unable to defy it.

To defend against that, Beatrice must interrupt before Echidna can finish.

Beatrice: "Mother... what are you saying, in fact? I-I, don't understand what you mean with this Forbidden Archive, I suppose. Betty is! Staying with you!"

Echidna: "Having you with me won't influence the confrontation with the warlock much at all, unfortunately. Naturally, it would surely increase my chances, but... only by a pittance. It would fall under statistical error."

Beatrice: "B-but if it's better than me being absent, then Betty will help you, in fact! It'd be—"

Echidna: "You can't. The risk that we'll both be destroyed outweighs a tiny, potentially non-existent boost to my prospects of winning. Considering that there is a less than fifty-percent chance that I will survive this battle, I have to endeavour to ensure my knowledge survives to the hereafter."

And ensuring her knowledge survives to the hereafter means upkeep of this Forbidden Archive that she's trying to entrust to Beatrice.

In this moment, Beatrice curses her GATE CROSSING and her ability to create unique spaces. If she didn't have these powers, her mother would never desire that she take this ro—

Beatrice: "Don't... tell me... my powers were for this?"

Echidna: "—"

Beatrice: "You knew from the beginning that this would happen... supposing so, then it isn't just about this Forbidden Archive, wh-what happened in SANCTUARY was also..."

Echidna: "Having ways to anticipate things doesn't necessarily mean using them. I did have means to both perceive this route, and settle matters without travelling it. But I swear on my way of life that I have not utilized that power. That alone I want you to believe."

Echidna shakes her head in response to Beatrice's strangled question.

Echidna approaches Beatrice, who is chewing at her lip, before taking a book from the bookshelf and presenting it to her daughter.

Beatrice: "This, is...?"

Echidna: "An imperfect replica of my BOOK OF WISDOM. The Book of Wisdom's algorithms are both advanced and moreso complicated, so I didn't manage to fully unravel them all... but it should be enough to work as a simple guide for the owner's future."

Beatrice accepts the book, tracing her shaking fingers over the cover.

She raises her head to look at Echidna, who stares at Beatrice with the same faraway gaze she always has. As though she's looking somewhere into the distance.

Echidna: "There are two books. One goes to you, and the other has been given to Roswaal. I expect Roswaal will manage what comes next provided he reads the book. I know it's a one-sided request, but I want you to see it through."

Beatrice: "—"

Beatrice looks down at the book, her eyes wavering as she finally realises that she is far too late. I have to make her speak, I have to make her say it. Were her ideas, but they were not nearly sufficient.

Echidna, her mother, had already settled on all of her answers.

Beatrice could cry, pleading and clinging, but it would not change Echidna's stance.

Because that's the kind of person the WITCH OF GREED Echidna is, and the kind of witch she is.

Echidna: "We'll return to the topic of cutoffs. I might not return, but the archive must be opened to someone someday. Once that happens, it'll be clear to you. Someone suitable to inherit my knowledge will surely come for you."

Beatrice: "Come, for me..."

Echidna: "We'll call this person THEY. The cut-off is when THEY open the doors to the Forbidden Archive, and announce that your duties are over. —This is my final request."

Final request.

The phrase makes Beatrice swallow her breath, and look up at Echidna's face as she gazes back at Beatrice.

Her mother's constant, unchanging expression.

But Beatrice feels that, in just this single instant, it comes mixed with unfamiliar emotion.

Echidna: "Betty. —Please, be well."

※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※

After parting with Echidna, Beatrice obeyed her mother's request and went to stay in Roswaal's mansion, using her Yin magic to create the FORBIDDEN ARCHIVE and stockpile books of her mother's knowledge there.

It's the sea of knowledge that Echidna had spent her life amassing and cataloguing. When holed up in this room of books, it feels like her mother is embracing her.

Leaving aside the question of whether or not Beatrice used to perceive it that way, she did obey Echidna's instructions.

If she neglected to immerse herself in her duties, the bereavement tormenting her heart would exceed what she could bear. She passed her days in the Archive, oblivious to time, with the loss always plaguing her.

???: "Replicating souls... overwriting into vessels..."

Beatrice could not accurately determine just when it started feeling hollow.

But once enough time passed that she no longer remembered when she last held a real conversation, an adult Roswaal began venturing into the Forbidden Archive.

Roswaal: "I'll be iiiiiiiiiiiiiintruding once again today."

The skinny, unshaven young man limped into the room.

He used a cane and walked with a lumbering gait—the battle with the warlock had destroyed his body, and his gate had lost the majority of its functions. Even attending to daily life was an arduous task for Roswaal now.

Even so, after he recovered some amount of strength, he strained his inconvenient body and displayed his debilitated condition as he faced the bookshelves.

He was just skin and bones. His looks, known for their beauty, shone with no brilliance. His sunken yellow eyes alone blazed wet with insane ferocity.

Beatrice: "—Do whatever you want, in fact."

Though really, Beatrice didn't want to let anyone at all enter the Forbidden Archive.

Until the THEY that Echidna mentioned came, this place was meant to be Beatrice's SANCTUARY, never to touched by anyone's eyes.

But Roswaal was an exception. He alone was devoting himself to Echidna's wishes, as Beatrice was, a companion who she had spent more than a little time with.

Roswaal's wishes alone would permit Beatrice's heart to open the Archive.

It may have been Beatrice's faint sense of camaraderie that determined the fate of Roswaal L. Mathers, and his family.

Roswaal ventured to the Archive, sank into the sea of Echidna's knowledge, and staked his entire lifetime upon a search for something.

Beatrice did not know if his efforts ever wound up bearing fruit.

But the Roswaal L. Mathers who had studied with Beatrice under Echidna, ten years after Echidna and Beatrice parted—when bordering on thirty years of age—lost his life, and his descendant inherited the mansion.

Roswaal: "Myyyyyyyyyy goodness, it is a pleasure to meet you, Beatrice-sama. My predecessor had told me about you."

Beatrice: "...Roswaal's dead, I suppose?"

Roswaal: "The previous Roswaal has passed away. But do be at ease. I, the current Roswaal L. Mathers, have inherited the debts toward your duties and your mother."

The second Roswaal gave Beatrice a smile.

—With one of his eyes yellow, and one of his eyes blue.

※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※

Nothing especially noteworthy happened after that.

The Mathers family continued to introduce themselves as Roswaal down the generations.

Though aware that they did this to remember their respect for Beatrice's deceased mother, Echidna, Beatrice did not allow the Roswaals unlimited entry to the Forbidden Archive.

Naturally. The only Roswaal to whom Beatrice could give special treatment was the first one. All the other Roswaals were imposters.

She did accommodate them somewhat, given that they were providing the mansion needed to preserve the Forbidden Archive, but nothing further.

From then on, Beatrice would only ever open the Archive to THEY.

This awaited THEY, and the guidepost her mother had given her, forced Beatrice into solitude for a very, very long time.

???: "Your power is magnificent. Please, grant it to me as my spirit."

—Shut up. Get lost.

???: "You've been isolated here for so long. It's a horrendous fate. It doesn't matter who ordered you to do this, it's unforgivable."

—What would you know? About the precious duty my mother desired of me.

???: "You don't think knowledge ought to be free? Can you imagine how many lives would be saved if the knowledge stored here was spread? You must already recognize it yourself."

—It has nothing to do with 'how many'. I'm only looking to save a handful of people. And there's nobody I can save any more, except one.

Four hundred years.

Beatrice wasn't seeking them out, hadn't permitted them in, but even so many people visited the Forbidden Archive.

They each flung whatever words they'd fling at Beatrice, keeper of the Archive, before inevitably demanding that the Archive be opened.

Their proposals, propositions, and demands did sometimes sway Beatrice's heart.

She wondered countless times after the doors burst open, and she noticed the daylight spilling in from outside, whether this may finally be the arrival of THEY.

But, heedless to Beatrice's expectations, not a single one of them knew about THEY, and Beatrice's book mentioned nothing indicating that they were THEY either.

So Beatrice cast away the words, the hands, everything they offered her, rejected them, and kept her mother's words close as she passed the time until today.

Over the years, resignation and disappointment steadily overtook Beatrice's heart.

She wished that she had spoken with the first Roswaal more.

Ever since she lost the only person who could share her memories of Echidna, Beatrice had to face this concept called 'eras' all by herself.

She had nobody to rely on. Her only option was to be stubborn, and seclude herself inside an impregnable, isolated barricade.

Over four hundred years, her cage consequently took shape. Was it a prison locked from the outside, or from the inside? —Not even Beatrice could tell any more.

Puck: "Hey there, Betty. It's really been forever. It's me, Puck."

This inconceivable reunion was perhaps the only event that even minutely thawed Beatrice's frozen heart.

Beatrice: "B-Bubby? How come, you're here...?"

Puck: "This mansion's Roswaal went and swindled my daughter. So here I am with her. I wasn't expecting you to be here. I'm glad we got to see each other."

The name of this cat spirit, bashfully washing his face with his paw, is Puck.

Like Beatrice, he is a man-made spirit created by Echidna. He is the only entity who shares Beatrice's birth and circumstances, applicable as being her race.

The time that Beatrice and Puck spent together four hundred years ago was short, but felt long. Puck was created before Beatrice, and separated from Beatrice's group before the battle with the warlock had begun, wandering the world in accordance with his purpose.

Beatrice never thought that they would meet again, and practically considered him dead. She keenly felt how the centuries-long reunion made her heart surge.

But, her joy only lasted an instant—.

Puck: "After I left you, I spent about three centuries wandering the world before I finally found Lia. I'm not sure what you're waiting for, but I know your wishes will come true."

Beatrice: "Yes, yes I suppose. But I envy you, in fact. The role Mother gave Betty has..."

Puck: "Mother? Who was she, again?"

Beatrice: "—"

Beatrice remembers how Puck looked, not joking in the least, his head tilted in mystification. When Puck left, he and Echidna formed several contracts. Beatrice didn't know the detailed terms of them, but Puck's forgetting of Echidna is obviously part of it.

Beatrice: "...No, nevermind it, in fact. I'm glad I got to see you again, I suppose."

Puck: "Mhm, it's great, Betty."

Puck, having fulfilled his purpose and meaning in life, looked dazzling to Beatrice. But she knew that the topic she wanted to broach would only serve to impede his path.

So she kept quiet, smiling sadly as she wished her brother well with his future.

The unexpected reunion gave Beatrice slight joy, but moreso agony as her dead four hundred years pressed down on her heart.

Comparing herself to Puck, who fulfilled his role, Beatrice was dumbstruck at the overwhelming disparity in their performance.

And she thought:

Beatrice: "...I'm no longer able to ever laugh like you, Bubby."

Beatrice decided to get as little involved with Puck's beloved half-elf daughter as possible.

If she didn't, Beatrice would wind up taking out her pent-up resentment on the girl. She would do such wrong to her beloved brother's blameless, precious daughter that the situation would never be fixed.

Calling her heart to a stop and suppressing her emotions was her forte.

She had spent four centuries constantly doing it through the sunrise, after the sunset, submerged in the moonlight.

Her speciality. A familiar deed. Lucid resignation. That kind of thing. That kind of life—which suddenly met an intruder.

Subaru: "M-make it painless ok."

Beatrice: "It's incredible that you're so persistent in your frivolity, in fact."

It had truly been forever since someone had entered the Forbidden Archive without permission. While looking down at the boy, fallen on the floor from the mana drain, Beatrice sighs and strokes her hair.

Using her space-connecting powers to send the boy into a labyrinth had been an act of simple revenge.

Revenge for having to help in healing the boy when he came in wounded yesterday. Revenge for having to grant the request of the half-elf girl he saved.

Her plan had been to alleviate some of her sourness about the affair by pestering the boy.

Then he defeated GATE CROSSING on his first attempt.

He must not have noticed how shaken Beatrice had secretly been.

Beatrice: "Not someone I want to have anything more to do with, I suppose."

Said Beatrice after expelling him from the Archive.

Not even Beatrice could determine how he reached the Archive in one attempt. Perhaps his affinity was for yin magic, and he just happened to be on Beatrice's wavelength that day.

But even if he did have yin affinity, he lacked any affinity as a magician.

He'll only be staying for a few days. With that thought, Beatrice managed to ignore the uncomfortable strain in her chest.

Puck: "Betty. Were you mean to him? Come on, don't do that. He helped Lia, so you better give him a real apology."

Puck showed up in the Archive the next morning to scold Beatrice for her actions, and now she had to confront the boy she had just decided she'd stop having anything to do with.

Subaru: "She shows up, and what the hell does this loli start saying?"

Beatrice: "What I suppose is that word. I've never heard it before, and it still disgusts me, in fact."

Subaru: "It means 'too young to go down their route'. Sides I'm not really into younger girls."

Beatrice: "...Your extensive discourtesy to Betty loops around to be pitiable."

Tit for tat.

She hadn't intended to apologize anyway, but this conversation completely eliminated any urge.

Beatrice passed breakfast in silence, saw Puck's rather resigned expression, and breathed a sigh of relief. Seems like he'd forgiven her.

In exchange, it wound up that the boy would be sojourning in the mansion for the long-term.

Beatrice's desire to seriously start cursing the situation intensified, and she decided to excuse herself and return to the Archive. The mansion came with complex circumstances and history anyway, and right now was a state of emergency, too.

This gutless boy would give up before long.

All Beatrice had to do was endure until that happened.

Subaru: "Hey, Beatrice. Done with work so here I am to hang out."

Completely oblivious to Beatrice's thoughts, the boy came parading into the Archive while looking like a nitwit, annoying Beatrice even though she hadn't asked for any of this, and just kept doing it whenever he found time to spare.

Beatrice could only sit there, stunned at his impudence.

There had been others qualified to enter the Archive without Beatrice's permission. But they had all been seeking the Archive's knowledge, or seeking the powerful spirit Beatrice.

The second they opened they mouths, it'd be requests to liberate the knowledge. Or requests to contract with Beatrice. Always.

Subaru: "Beatrice. —Mind if I pull your drills and make them sproing everywhere?"

Beatrice: "Are you trying to die, I suppose?"

Just when it looks like he's going to say something serious, it's the same crap as usual.

He had been somewhat desiccate in his first few days after waking up gaining employment in the mansion, but after that, his overly-familiar attitude was off the charts.

...Is what Beatrice thought, when suddenly:

Subaru: "I'm stuck with no way out. Completely upfront, I'm looking for your help."

—He noticed the first signs of the Witchbeast Affair in the forest surrounding the mansion.

With his body bathed in a witchbeast's curse, discussing de-cursing and potential origins of the curse with Beatrice, she felt that there was something different about him compared to before. And she simultaneously noticed:

The yin power she perceived from him, and its somewhat crooked manner of peaking.

The witchbeast affair ended without being any of Beatrice's concern, he apparently resolved his differences with the maid sisters, and was welcomed in as a true member of the mansion.

He then went around being his jolly self, pestering her with an attitude even more over-familiar than before, and there was that one delicious episode among others about his mystery condiment called mayonnaise, all while Beatrice began meditating on an impossible fantasy.

—A boy who showed no great interest in the knowledge, or in Beatrice's power.

Could he be the one who Beatrice had been waiting for?

The suspicion was baseless, continuous, and exhausted her. But when she tried to deem it as a legitimate theory, she stymied herself by opening her blank book of prophecy.

Being that the prophetic text said nothing, this boy could not be Beatrice's awaited THEY.

And he was lacking in too many ways to be Beatrice's awaited one anyway.

First, his eyes were nasty. His attitude too. He hadn't any cultured refinement, and short legs. He regarded something else as more important than Beatrice, and was not gentle with her.

In fact she couldn't find anything good about him. It addled the mind as to what the half-elf girl and blue-haired maid found so appealing.

There wasn't anything good about him, so why couldn't he just be uniformly disliked and alone? If he was, then when he showed up in the Archive, she wouldn't hesitate to change the way she interacted with him a little.

Is what she sometimes thought, and yet.

Roswaal: "Beatrice. I'm thinking to invite Emilia-sama and Subaru-kun to SANCTUARY."

Said Roswaal to Beatrice after returning from the Capital.

A variety of questions whizzed through Beatrice's mind, her eyes wide. But Roswaal silenced Beatrice's queries with a single action.

He stroked the cover of the prophetic book in his hands.

Roswaal: "...Do you understand? Beatrice."

Beatrice: "I-I, do understand, in fact. ...Do whatever you wish, I suppose."

Beatrice could say nothing else.

After Roswaal turned his back to her, and she learned that he was leaving for SANCTUARY in advance, Beatrice decided that she would hole up in the Forbidden Archive and go without seeing anyone.

The writ of Roswaal's gospel was demanding contact with SANCTUARY.

Beatrice did start having hopes for her own gospel after hearing that. But her prophecy book contained endless pages of pure solid white as always, abandoning her heart in a wasteland.

Beatrice knew what came of Lewes Meyer's sacrifice.

She also knew that the place had gone unfreed for four centuries. And that people diverged from demihuman races were held inside there, awaiting liberation.

And that it was a barrier the half-elf girl needed to overcome if she was aspiring for the throne.

—But what would happen to Lewes Meyer's sacrifice if the place was freed?

To Beatrice's feelings of powerless about being unable to save Lewes Meyer? To her overwhelming sense of loss, that triggered her parting with Echidna?

Her emotions had nowhere to go. Sensing that the supposedly-frozen things had begun to pulse again, Beatrice knew that the end to her fate was truly coming.

Beatrice did not know the details of what happened outside the mansion.

The boy returned from the Capital with a memento of someone dear from Beatrice's memories. Seeing it, and feeling that the world had left her behind once again, Beatrice saw the boy's group off as they left for SANCTUARY.

And, thinking that what they would bring back from SANCTUARY would be her answer, gave up.

※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※

Beatrice: "And so Betty has decided, in fact...!"

Before they could bring back her answer, Beatrice sensed deadly violence whipping through the mansion.

Once she realised what was causing it, Beatrice understood that fate had truly deserted her.

Beatrice: "I won't break my promise to Mother. ...But it is meaningless to spend any more time in this emptiness, I suppose!"

THEY would never come. But she could not stop waiting.

Meaning that Beatrice needed someone to steal the option of 'WAIT' from her.

If that meant losing her life, then she'd offer it without any hesitation.

If there was someone, anyone, who she felt she could entrust this duty to even somewhat, then she could believe that her final wish would be granted.

So when the boy—Natsuki Subaru—burst into the Forbidden Archive this night, Beatrice's heart was moved with more emotion than can be expressed.

It felt like fate, which had never once attempted to give Beatrice's mind solace, had finally rewarded her.

If his hands would take her life and make her defy the promise, then even that would be—

Subaru: "I'm taking you out of here, Beatrice. —I'm dragging you out into the sunshine, where we'll play until your dress is caked utterly brown with mud."

—And he said this.

Beatrice: "Unwanted meddling, I suppose. Nobody asked for you to do that, in fact."

She didn't understand. What on earth was he saying?

He had never, not even once, behaved anything like THEY before. He had never snatched her gospel away and told her, "Sorry for the wait."

Subaru: "Stop getting thrown around by a blank book and a four-hundred-year-old promise. —Be the one who chooses what you want to do, Beatrice."

Beatrice: "—"

—So then why was he, after all this time, disrupting Beatrice's heart after she had already steeled her resolve?

I'm meeting my end, had been the only thought in her head.

She saw the boy upon his return, and hoped: I will end by his hands.

But he was trying to show her a future that diverged from her hopes.

This wasn't what she desired.

Her heart that could desire this hope had, over four hundred years of time, long ago withered to nothing.

Beatrice: "I-if, you... were THEY..."

...Is what it was supposed to be, but while listening to the boy's indignant speech, something changed in Beatrice's heart.

Her slumbering emotions shook like flowers taking bloom after winter. She raised her head.

There would be no taking this statement back, once she said it.

She was dispelling her four-hundred year obsession with her mother's binding words, and now clinging to something entirely unrelated and new.

And though she understood that, from her mouth, the decisive words—

Beatrice: "Will... you be Betty's THEY?"

Subaru: "Are you stupid? —Of course I wouldn't be this weird mysterious THEY of yours."

The instant he spoke it, his expression somewhat mocking, Beatrice's newly-budded hopes were betrayed.

She doesn't really remember what happened afterwards, as she surrendered herself to anger and expelled him from the room.

But she did know that she had said something she couldn't take back, and before it could develop into something that couldn't be taken back, was snuffed out.

Beatrice: "—"

What an utter clown she was.

This meant that she had done nothing more than betray her mother's instructions. And her betrayal had been barred from procuring results, degrading Beatrice's pledge into something horrendously cheap.

Beatrice: "I'm exhausted, I suppose..."

Then all she has to do is let things proceed as she had originally intended.

It had been a mistake to consider taking his hand in the first place. That had not been the owner of a heart so valiant that they could soil their hands for the sake of another.

That had been someone like Beatrice, constantly fretting about trivial things, indecisive and unsure, constantly piling excuses upon excuses, the owner of a weak heart.

And so the DEATH to end Beatrice would come in a different—

Subaru: "Finally back! Hey, stupid. Stop throwing people out halfway through conversations. Now just listen to me and—"

Beatrice: "—!"

Subaru: "Plot!?"

Butting in to Beatrice's contemplations, the boy bursts back into the Forbidden Archive.

The instant she sees the boy, edging on speaking something more, Beatrice's emotions seethe and she blasts him away with a pulse of magic.

She watches him fail to endure it and shoot out of the Archive until the doors slam shut.

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Their conversation had disintegrated, capped off with his decisive comment, and still. Just how shameless was he?

Beatrice cannot comprehend how he could leave her with that statement, and then show up so brazenly.

She puts her hand to her chest to deal with her irritation, gives a sigh, and—

Subaru: "How about cutting this out! Is this you throwing a tantrum!? If you're gonna resort to violence first thing, the conversation's not going any—"

Beatrice: "You cut it out, in fact!"

Subaru: "Dua!"

The higher grade of magical pulse impacts his head, proceeding down to batter his torso.

Once she confirms that the screaming, tumbling boy strikes the wall outside the door, the Archive once again severs its connection to the hallway.

She can't believe his persistence.

Is he ignorant to the concept of 'giving up'? Or does he not realise how deeply his thoughtless words had wounded Beatrice's heart? Whichever it was, the boy is continuously rejecting GATE CROSSING's goodbye.

Beatrice: "...This is truly no joke, I suppose."

With that irritated mutter, Beatrice drags the stepladder over from the back of the room, and takes her usual position opposite the door. She cradles her book of prophecy in her arms as she glares at the portal.

—The boy would be belting that door open once again.

With his selfish logic and inconsiderate sales pitch, he would come.

Times upon times upon times, she would reject him and cast him away.

Because he was not THEY.

Because he himself had forfeited his right to take Beatrice out of here.

And so Beatrice would never, ever leave here.

She merely has to end here, alongside her unfulfilled promise.

Because that was the only thing that would now grant Beatrice solace.

※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※

Blasted out of the room, Subaru crashes head-first into a wall for his breathing to halt.

This is his sixth time being thrown out of the Archive after his first failure in persuading Beatrice. He feels that all these repeated blasts in such a short timeframe have made him better at catching himself when dealing with invisible attacks.

But Beatrice's magic pulses are beginning to feel out how intense they can go without seriously damaging Subaru, meaning he absolutely mustn't slack.

Subaru: "This isn't the time to be polishing your stupid magic, fuck! She's not listening..."

Wiping away his sweat with his sleeve, Subaru demands that his knees get him to his feet.

He's been running constantly since yesterday, had blood shed and broken bones mended, meaning he's physically exhausted. The utter fatigue makes his vision hazy, and the only thing keeping him moving is willpower.

Subaru: "The fire's gonna be spreading for real around now..."

Subaru stoops himself low and turns his head this way and that, clicking his tongue, for fatigue alone does not explain his poor vision.

The fire that killed the massive witchbeast is steadily engulfing the whole mansion.

The lower floor of the main block is nigh completely drowned in flame, and he can see plumes of smoke wafting from the eastern and western wings too.

The spreading fire has driven most of the witchbeasts out of the mansion, so there are no monsters to block Subaru's path as he sprints about. But the temperature inside the building is heating up like an oven and his sweat is evaporating swiftly, his singed flesh bordering on charring at any moment. The building will start collapsing before long, and Subaru's fate will drown to nothing in the fire.

Before that can happen, he needs to fulfil his goal and flee here with Beatrice. But Beatrice's heart remains stubbornly closed.

Subaru: "It does help that the mansion fire's cutting down the number of doors, but..."

That's really the only conceivable benefit of the blaze.

GATE CROSSING only operates on the mansion's functional doors. So open doors or burned doors do not apply.

The further the fire spreads, the fewer doors will potentially lead to the Archive.

Subaru: "That said, the fire's gonna cook me before the doors are cut down."

And he doesn't want to think about what would happen if all the mansion's doors burn away. Subaru doesn't know specifically how Beatrice's GATE CROSSING links spaces to one another. Potentially, the incineration of the mansion may sequester Beatrice's Forbidden Archive, turning it into a permanently isolated hyperspace.

There is one place Subaru can think of that GATE CROSSING might connect to outside of the mansion, the laboratory with Lewes Meyer's sleeping crystal, but—

Subaru: "Would she link the mansion to there in her current mental state...?"

Beatrice's GATE CROSSING has sent Subaru to SANCTUARY once before.

Subaru has speculated on why this irregular event occurred.

Beatrice had emotionally detonated and forcibly expelled Subaru from the Forbidden Archive. Her intentions strayed as she focused intensely on a 'farewell'—and her GATE CROSSING consequently sent Subaru to the laboratory, is his idea.

That location is a symbol of sad and painful farewell for Beatrice. So perhaps that's why Subaru was sent to SANCTUARY back then.

Making it inconceivable that Beatrice's GATE CROSSING would link to the laboratory now. Beatrice is not focusing on 'farewell', she is focusing on 'end'.

If she loses her connection to the world, the mansion, Beatrice will reach her end.

It feels to Subaru that Beatrice's ultimate decision will be to do that.

Subaru: "I'm not letting you ever be ended like that!"

Taking a deep breath, Subaru breaks into a run while keeping low to the ground.

He leaves the previous door open and searches for the next door, batting away smoke as he proceeds deeper into the mansion.

He hears the constant crackling of the building's structure burning in the inferno.

His skin is scorched and the boiling air threatens to sear his eyes. He endures both with a grimace.

The smoke slipping into his nose brings him near to choking, when he discovers a yet-unopened door and pounces for the doorknob.

The blazing doorknob emits heat, and sears Subaru's hand. Already his palms are atrocious with many ugly burns. He is quite used to gritting his teeth in agony.

With a stabbing pain piercing through his temples, he kicks the door open.

Subaru: "—"

He tumbles into the room with its cloying stench of ancient books.

He opens his mouth wide and takes a deep breath, having fallen face-up, and he glares at the dim ceiling above.

A familiar atmosphere, and rage prickling at his skin—definitely the Forbidden Archive.

Beatrice: "You again, simply incorrigible...!"

Subaru: "Hauhh! Of, course I'm back! I'm coming here however many times it takes to kidnap you. If you don't like it then let me drag you out of here right now! Then that'll be the end of these exchanges!"

Beatrice: "Enough of your useless chatter, I suppose! I know that the mansion is burning, in fact! If you don't flee outside immediately, you will simply burn to death in the fire, I suppose!"

Subaru jerks himself up, his breathing ragged as he glares at Beatrice.

She remains seated on the stepladder, her round eyes as sharp as they can get as she bares her rage at Subaru.

For an instant, slight emotion dashes along the edge of those eyes, and Beatrice's lips tremble.

Beatrice: "Or... do you mean to burn dead with the mansion and Betty?"

Subaru: "Are you stupid! After everything I've said, you still don't get it!? I'm not thinking at all to die with you! I'm here to drag you out without you dying!"

Beatrice: "—! Domineering without fail, I suppose! Leave!"

Subaru stands up, pouncing for a bookcase to bide through the first magic pulse.

He feels the gale battering him, and then a second pulse that utterly drains him of energy. He glances up to find Beatrice with her left hand raised toward the ceiling, her face twisted in anguish as she forces herself to smile.

Beatrice: "I pilfered your mana, in fact. You must remember this sensation, I suppose."

Subaru: "You, little..."

Beatrice: "Should your grip on the bookshelf slacken, that is the end, in fact. Stop involving yourself with me, I suppose!"

The moment his knees start to give out, the third pulse of magic strikes Subaru from head-on. An invisible wall of force crashes into him. Unable to support himself, Subaru is again pushed toward the door, proceeding to tumble and fly out the—

Subaru: "Nnngh!"

—Reaching his limbs out as far as he can, Subaru manages to catch himself on the door.

Pain runs through his limbs, and experience tells him that his arms are fractured and may be broken. He grits his teeth and forces himself to ignore it.

Beatrice: "Wh—"

Subaru: "Go through it so many times, and even I can learn how to get through. So want to defer to my efforts and start getting in the mood to talk?"

Beatrice: "You've lost your chance to speak with Betty, in fact. By your own actions, you are the one who squandered it, I suppose. ...Why do you not understand that, in fact!?"

Subaru: "I don't get it, no. Since aren't you actually guilty for this as well?"

His hand against the door, Subaru gets to his feet and wipes away the blood dripping from his open lip.

He watches how Beatrice's brows furrow in utter confusion, and slips a wry smile.

Beatrice: "What's so funny, I suppose?"

Subaru: "I just confirmed that my consecutive assault isn't fruitless. If you're seriously rejecting me, stop with the finicky crap and just blast me away. You have the power for it. It'd be so much quicker to just do that."

Beatrice: "...You are telling me to kill you."

Subaru: "Not that you can. That was me being a jerk. Sorry. But if you're seriously rejecting me, then there should be easier ways for you to do it."

Beatrice, bordering on tears, has refused to kill Subaru before.

Subaru has not advanced to a stage where he can understand what her sentiment or reasoning was back then. So all he has is speculation. Assembled from what fragments of her past Subaru knows. He had his suspicions, and still asked that question, astounding himself with how mean-spirited he truly is.

But if he doesn't ask it, Beatrice won't realise.

Realise the contradiction between her thoughts and actions, and the fact of Subaru's presence here.

Subaru: "If you seriously don't want to see me, then seclude yourself in the Archive, Beatrice."

Beatrice: "What... are you... Betty has not taken a single step out of the Forbidden Archive, in fact. But you are forcing yourself in of your own accord, and...!"

Subaru: "Nope, that's incorrect. If you were serious about holing up in here alone, there's no goddamn way I'd reach the place so many times in such a short timespan. Your rejection's just superficial."

Beatrice: "That! Is because... yes, is because you are enacting the method to cheat GATE CROSSING, in fact. And the mansion is burning, reducing the number of doors..."

Stuck for words, Beatrice's rebuttal trails off to a weak end.

Subaru's statement has made her doubt herself. And even if not, Beatrice has lost the pillar that kept her standing through these four hundred years, and is currently unstable.

She can no longer tell if Subaru's words are right, or if her emotions are right.

Subaru: "—"

And honestly, Subaru doesn't know either.

He has no clue why he's managed to reach Beatrice's Forbidden Archive so unfalteringly in this short timeframe.

It may be because the mansion's doors are burning away, leaving him with fewer options.

Or maybe the emergency situation is prompting his yin abilities to showcase absurd strength, and that's letting him defeat GATE CROSSING.

It might be that Subaru is actually correct, that Beatrice is not truly rejecting him, and the doors of GATE CROSSING are open to him.

Subaru wishes it for it to be the latter.

But the reality is insignificant. What Natsuki Subaru needs to do here, now, is secure any possibility of bringing Beatrice out.

Beatrice: "You... you! Are not Betty's THEY!"

Yells Beatrice, clutching at her skirt.

She gives up on thinking as she appeals to Subaru, howling.

Beatrice: "You said you weren't, in fact! You... you said you weren't, I suppose. If you were THEY...

even if you said it as a lie, Betty would have believed you. Even knowing it was a lie, all I could've done was believe you, in fact."

Subaru: "Beatrice..."

Beatrice: "But you said you weren't, I suppose. Said you weren't, said I was stupid, in fact. Why yes, I suppose. You're correct, in fact. Betty is stupid, a stupid imbecile, who even now cannot disregard a promise from four centuries ago... and so! Nothing you say will change that it is over, I suppose!"

Choosing rejection, an invisible wind whips around the shouting Beatrice.

The torrent of magic gusts at her dress, at her long hair, filling the Archive with a tense and turbulent air. Subaru senses that this is the greatest gale yet, his body shuddering in terror at the coming strike.

His cowering heart wants to him to retreat, to flee outside the door.

He manages to suppress the urge, bites deeper into his lip, and raises his head.

To tell what must be told.

Subaru: "I..."

Beatrice: "—"

Subaru: "I'm not your THEY. I'll say it however many times. Your awaited prince isn't coming on his white steed. Not to the end, not ever!"

Beatrice: "—! Then! Betty shall simply rot here, in fact!"

Subaru: "Not happening. I'm not letting you choose that. I saying however many times it takes for you to change your mind. THEY isn't coming. You can't keep your promise. —But you won't be allowed to die."

Beatrice: "I just... hate you so much, I suppose!!"

With that, Beatrice's emotions explode.

The torrent of magic changes form as it adheres to a single goal, a white light dominating everything in Subaru's vision.

He doesn't even have time to feel the gust of wind.

The shockwave pounds Subaru through his front and out his back, scrambling all the innards he has. His blood flows backwards through him as everything inside him is wrung out his pores, the pain agonizing.

His eyes spin, he loses his sense of balance, undergoes overwhelming vertigo, loses all perception of sound and smell and light. This might be what humans call dying.

—But, Natsuki Subaru knows.

Subaru: "—What are you doing?"

Withstanding a nausea so intense his organs could spill out his mouth, Subaru forces himself to speak so that his weakness is imperceptible.

The world exists underfoot, and the moment he recognizes that fact, he steadily regains his perception. He has his limbs, has his head, his organs aren't spilling out his mouth, his soul hasn't shed its vessel.

So what. Same thing as usual, just a near-death experience.

Natsuki Subaru is learned enough to know: this is not DEATH.

Beatrice: "You are, joking, in fact..."

His vision sways, blurry and unstable.

Regaining enough focus to somehow recognize that he is inside the Archive, he gazes at the girl in front of him, her arms spread wide as though witnessing something unbelievable.

It's Beatrice.

Not even she can comprehend his failure to die, and the preservation of his fundamental shape.

But there's no mystery about it. Subaru knew it would turn out like this.

It is inconceivable that Beatrice would let herself kill Subaru.

Subaru: "Beatrice..."

Beatrice: "—"

His consciousness is hazy. But willpower allows him to anchor his near-forfeited mind.

The girl before him is wavering. She cannot comprehend her own self, unable to fully reject him, as she looks at a ragged Subaru in terror.

Suspecting that his voice will reach her in this instant, he scrambles to assemble his waning consciousness, and speaks.

Subaru: "I'm, not... your, THEY..."

Beatrice says nothing.

Subaru: "But."

The repeated and repeated rejections put Beatrice on the verge of tears.

The conversation would usually end here. Before it can—before Beatrice's emotions can swell to their limit—Subaru speaks.

Subaru: "I... want to be with you, Beatrice."

Beatrice: "—!"

Subaru: "You're kind, and so you won't be sad, I want to be by your side."

Beatrice: "Auh... ghh..."

Beatrice's expression twists.

It's as though she's suppressing fury, as though she's suppressing tears, as though she's struggling to keep some utterly undocumented emotion from showing on her face.

But she swallows her words, sighs a ragged sigh, and picks up the book on the stepladder. She flips through the pages, wrests through the pages, her fingers scrunching the paper, then gives quiet whine.

When,

Subaru: "—Wh, at?"

Before Beatrice can take any action, Subaru's vision warps.

It has nothing to do with his hazy consciousness or deficient blood. It's a question of reality.

The Forbidden Archive is beginning to bend in front of Subaru.

The ground around him warps, the bookshelves losing their balance as they topple down one after another. Books fall messily to the floor, instantly drowning the ground in a sea of tomes.

Even still, the world continues to bend.

The ground beneath Subaru's feet twists too, undulating like a bellows, preventing him from maintaining his balance.

Subaru: "What... what's...!?"

Beatrice: "—"

While clinging desperately to the door, Subaru looks at Beatrice.

He finds that in this rippling room, Beatrice's surroundings alone are untouched. The stepladder she sits on moves not an inch, supporting Beatrice's weight as she looks at Subaru.

Subaru: "—auh,"

Before Subaru can say anything, the ground beneath him tilts.

The floor under Subaru fissures open with a noise like the ripping of paper. A black space expands from beneath the floor-tiles, unmistakably about to send him somewhere by methods other than

GATE CROSSING.

She might even be imprisoning him in some non-existent, hyper-dimensional space.

Subaru: "—Shit."

It happens the moment he notices the hole and takes a step back.

The world slants in earnest, sending Subaru falling backwards in deference to gravity. The door's gaping mouth swallows him, sending him back to the blazing mansion through GATE CROSSING.

Subaru: "Hhot!"

The heat of the wall he crashes into makes him wail.

He raises his head, to find that he has been ejected into a hallway fully engulfed in inferno. The only thing he manages to recognize is the fact that he's in the main wing.

The flames singe him utterly as he looks at the door he just exited, and, noticing that the door's lower half is already swallowed in flames, is stunned.

It's a miracle that GATE CROSSING even worked. He doesn't think for a second that jumping at that door will bring him back to the Archive.

Subaru: "Fuck, ing... if, this is the main wing..."

Then he might be able to find a functional door upstairs.

Vaguely recognizing from the number of doors that this is not the uppermost floor, Subaru decides to head for the stairway, engulfed in flames as it is.

The smoke stings his eyes, tears welling over. His lungs burn with every breath, though he manages to keep the smog from snatching his consciousness by holding his jersey to his mouth.

Every minute counts. Like fuck he's actually going to reach the Archive—No. This isn't the time for whining.

He cannot forget Beatrice's expression at the end.

Subaru: "Stupid idiot, making that fucking face again..."

The numbness in his limbs from Beatrice's magic pulse leaves his body.

He drags his body along, the thing more or less obeying his will, whittling at his soul as he runs for the end of the corridor.

Beatrice's expression flickers through his mind.

It's the same face he saw in a previous loop.

When he and Beatrice faced Elsa, and the supposedly-defeated woman took Beatrice's life. When Beatrice shoved him away to protect him, and had her stomach destroyed.

When she saw that Subaru was safe, and her body wordlessly turned to particles of light.

Subaru has not forgotten her final expression from back then.

It was not relief at having protected Subaru, nor joy at having procured her desired death, but a grimace.

—I don't want to be alone. That kind of expression, obvious to anyone.

Subaru: "So like hell... like hell I'm gonna leave you on your own!"

With that, he leaps into the fire as he searches for escape.

He feels something squirming and wrong inside him, but the heat from his singed flesh and the pain from his burnt skin prevent him from focusing on it.

Were Subaru an objective witness to this, he might unwittingly recoil from how repulsive it was. Subaru, running through the fire with his pledge to bring out Beatrice, is wreathed by an overwhelming mass of black miasma, embracing him almost like a protective vestment of shadow.

Oblivious to this, Subaru breaks through the wall of fire and reaches the stairway.

He gives a ragged exhale, looks at the staircase above, and recognizes that this is the second floor. He proceeds to climb the staircase, thinking to dash straight for the uppermost floor—when.

Subaru: "—"

He hears the noise of something wet being dragged across the ground, and looks down. The noise is coming from downstairs. His rationality tells him that this is impossible.

All he can hear around him is the crackling and booming of the burning building.

This is a mansion seconds from collapse, and that is the first floor of the main wing, where the inferno started. Nothing should be moving down there.

Subaru's sprinting all through the mansion means he knows this conflagration, which even the witchbeasts fled.

So this noise has to be a hallucination.

—But if it is, then what's that?

Subaru: "...No way."

While dragging something along with it, a silhouette emerges from the flames.

It is destined for the upstairs as it climbs the staircase as Subaru had, stopping at the landing between the first and second floor—and looks up as it notices Subaru's presence directly above it.

The silhouette is wearing black clothes, holds a black knife, has black hair, and is a woman.

Subaru: "Elsa...?"

Elsa?: "—"

The silhouette doesn't respond. But this definitely looks like the black-garbed woman Subaru knows.

Why is she here? Could Garfiel somehow have lost? If so, then Subaru's battle—Subaru's battle to save everything—has ended in defeat, and,

Subaru: "No, I'm off..."

Just as he starts getting those ideas in his mind, Subaru shakes his head.

Subaru has to trust in Garfiel's strength. Even supposing that his opponent was strong, Subaru was betting on Garfiel to win.

Otto and Frederica had done everything they could to assist in evacuating Petra and Rem. Garfiel would have done his absolute best as well.

How would Natsuki Subaru have possibly gotten this far without believing in his companions?

Subaru: "Garfiel wouldn't have lost. So, why're you..."

Believing in Garfiel's valiant fight, Subaru flings words at the silhouette below him. This woman shouldn't be here. What is underlying her actions?

But just when he goes to question her, Subaru notices something.

Or no. He's forced to notice.

Subaru: "—You're not Elsa any more, are you?"

The dark eyes looking up at Subaru shine with not a speck of light.

The things are so hollow and empty that it's unbelievable that those are eyeballs in those sockets.

The noise is coming from the crushed lower body of the silhouette, dragging along behind it. But the thing still acts like it's alive, which Subaru finds incredibly repulsive.

Subaru did think she had life force enough that she wouldn't die, but she's still incapable of dying after all that destruction?

Subaru: "Though, this isn't the time to be pitying her...!"

Even supposing she's incapable of dying, Subaru has no words of sympathy.

Considering the fact that Elsa showed up before being half-dead, sympathy would be lenient treatment even despite her state. That said, Subaru doesn't make a hobby of tormenting walking corpses.

He rationalizes that she just needs to get caught in the mansion's collapse, and have the flames cremate her.

Subaru: "Get swallowed in inferno. I'm leaving to get Beatr—"

Shaking his head, Subaru disregards the silhouette and determines to head upstairs.

Subaru: "—Huh?"

With a slight noise, the silhouette leaps.

Its mouth gapes open as it aims for Subaru, swinging its wicked blade.

Subaru: "—"

The wind from the knife as it grazes past his nose makes Subaru's lungs forget to breathe and heart forget to beat.

The thing just tried to take Subaru's life, so natural that it may as well have been walking over to him.

But its strike just barely misses Subaru, instead shattering the floor before the tips of his toes.

The enemy hadn't been going on easy on him, its dead lower half had simply lacked the leg strength needed to pounce. If it had that leg strength, that attack would have killed Subaru.

Subaru: "You've gotta be kidding!"

He promptly kicks the silhouette as it pitches forward before ascending the staircase.

He dashes so intently that he forgets to breathe, glancing back at the shadow. The silhouette's head

sways from the kick and it jerks its limbs awkwardly to the ground like a marionette, then scuttling like a spider in pursuit of Subaru.

Subaru: "Are you joking!?"

He had called her a spider-woman before, but he didn't think she actually was one.

Stunned at her inhuman locomotion, Subaru soars to the top of the stairway. He imagines the silhouette pursuing him as he dives into the inferno of the third floor hallway.

In the very middle of this hall is the office. That room, being the sturdiest in the mansion, should still be generally undestroyed—

???: "—σσσ!!"

Subaru: "Dhhah!?"

Intercepting Subaru as he leaps into the blaze, a lion-headed witchbeast roars.

Having lost its mane, and with over half of its body burned grotesquely, this is unmistakably the witchbeast that Subaru's team supposedly killed in the dining room.

Apparently the near-dead beast returned to this door in adherence with its master's orders.

Meaning that Subaru is presently a moth darting into a flame.

An unanticipated meeting amidst fire. The pun is working disgustingly well.6

The half-burnt witchbeast swings its foreleg what with those giant claws. The attack grinds away at the wall, closing in to strike Subaru's neck, more than strong enough to mow Subaru down easier than a weed despite the beast's moribund state.

Subaru: "You're one-trick ponies!"

But Subaru dodges by ducking low and diving forward.

Subaru has learned from the other witchbeasts that they aim for their prey's vitals. Judging that the beast will definitely aim for the head, Subaru dives into a forward roll to slip past the beast's flank.

This beast, fully capable of devouring Subaru in one gulp, roars in rage as it attempts to readjust itself and face Subaru. But things will not come so easy.

Beast: "—σσσσ!!"

In pursuit of Subaru, the skittering silhouette bares its fangs at the half-dead witchbeast.

The beast, its back turned, is slow to react as the silhouette's flourished blade showers a slash down upon it. The beast's rear left leg is amputated at the joint, blood pouring from the crooked wound as the creature's shrieks echo through the corridor.

The beast whips its snakelike tail, striking for the silhouette that crawls across the ground.

The silhouette avoids it nightmarishly, manoeuvring beyond human capacity to bat the beast's tail away with its blade, stab its knife into the beast's open wound, and bore deep into the injury.

Subaru listens to the earsplitting screech resound as he heads for the office's door, certain not to let the opportunity escape.

He kicks the record room's door open on his way, but it fails to lead to the archive, instead leading only to time loss. The beast and silhouette are still fighting behind him, but being that the only howls he hears are from the beast, it's obvious how the scales are falling.

Subaru: "Beatrice!"

Having reached the office, Subaru prays to himself as he belts the door open. If the Archive appears before him, he can say goodbye to the monster battle. But what cruelly shows it self is only the sight of the dishevelled office.

Subaru: "Fuck... Then this wasn't it!"

Practically illustrating the strength of Beatrice's rejection, the office diverges from Subaru's wishes. He can no longer search for other doors, or return to the lower floors of the burning mansion. If there are any potential doors left, they'd be—

Subaru: "The hidden passage..."

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It's difficult to call the hidden passage, which opens via a mechanism, a 'door.'

The passage opens by way of a sliding bookcase, and it's rather unlikely that passing through its entrance would lead him to the Forbidden Archive.

If there are any other doors left, they'd be deeper inside the passage.

Subaru: "There should be a door midway through the passage that opens to a small room... but..."

In a previous loop, Elsa ambushed him from beyond that door.

But he doesn't know if that door falls within GATE CROSSING's area of effect. And above all, Subaru has to think that this is Beatrice's doing, leading him from door to door to try and expel him from the mansion through the hidden passage.

She may be aware of the mansion's current state, and be leading Subaru down a route that will give him survival.

In that case, the hidden passage may not even lead to the Forbidden Archive.

He may be led outside the mansion, to the mountain cabin at the end of the escape tunnel, and forever lose his chance to save Beatrice.

Subaru: "—Not giving me any time to think!"

Subaru hears the beast's death wail as the decisive blow is struck.

The witchbeast, which unwittingly put in a valiant fight to buy Subaru time, has most likely died for real to Elsa's silhouette.

With a shake of his head, Subaru dives into the hidden passage.

A spiral staircase lengthy enough to reach the mansion's underground welcomes him—and it seems that the inferno has reached even this tunnel, the heat and smoke precluding anyone from doing anything here.

Subaru puts his hand to his chest to cope with the aching, steeling his resolve as he speeds straight down the staircase. Descending right after ascending. The heat simmers him, and just imagining what colour his skin must be makes for a terrifying thought.

After eventually reaching the end of the staircase, Subaru peers into the darkness of the passage, his breathing ragged.

It seems like the smoke had been leaking in from a gap in the stairway wall, for he sees no effects of heat or fire in the subterranean passage.

Instead of the threat of burning, Subaru has to deal with fumbling in pitch darkness.

He walks in deeper for another ten or so meters before reaching a somewhat wider space, finds the door to the small room he's looking for, and stops.

Subaru: "Here..."

Subaru has never gone deeper into the hidden passage than this door. He doesn't know if any other doors exist beyond this door.

Meaning that this is potentially Subaru's last chance for a door to lead to Beatrice. And if this place functions as a proper hidden passage—

Subaru: "—"

Shaking his head to dispel his weakness of heart, Subaru reaches for the doorknob.

If Beatrice has lead Subaru here with intention for him to survive, then his chances here are poor. Subaru fearfully touches the doorknob—

Subaru: "Hhht! This door's another..."

Crying in pain as his hand burns, Subaru grimaces and glares at the door.

The door's response, as if it had reflected Subaru's heart, makes a wave of disquiet surge up in him and—he notices it.

Subaru: "The doorknob's, hot...?"

While the underground passage may be heated, there are no signs of fire.

The smoke and heat had likely been leaking in through a gap in the stonework that composes the staircase. If Subaru's speculation is correct, then it's inconceivable that this door would be so hot.

This door is hot enough that you have to wonder if it's indeed been seared by flames.

Subaru: "...Beatrice. If you can hear this, please listen."

Taking care not to touch the door, Subaru looks slightly upwards and mutters. With belief that his voice will reach the absent girl.

Subaru: "Did you lead me here? If you did, knowing that the only escape route is through this hidden passage, then honestly I'm speechless at what a schemer you are."

Beatrice's tactics to lead Subaru this far were indeed quite considerable.

The encounter with Elsa's shadow and the witchbeast surely had nothing to do with Beatrice, but she definitely led Subaru here move by move.

If he proceeds to open this door and reach the mountain cabin, Beatrice's plans will likely be fulfilled.

Subaru: "But apparently thing won't go so smoothly. ...I could open this door, but I won't manage to escape how you want me to. This isn't me being stubborn and insisting that I don't want to run away, okay? I'm at least half in that mood, yes, but... it's something more serious."

Addressing someone who might not even be listening, Subaru smoothly strings word after word. He taps his nails against the door blocking the way before him and gives a sigh.

Subaru: "If I open this door, I'm probably dead. You and the others might not notice this, but right now, that's how things are on the other side of this door. It's hard to explain verbally... but I understand the soul of science and I can tell."

Setting aside the failure in the dining room, Subaru's 21st-century knowledge is howling at him. This door Subaru is presently looking at is a door commonly found during fire-related emergencies, and must not be touched.

No joke at all, Subaru's life is in danger.

What comes next is a question of whether Beatrice is listening. And if she is, will she believe what he's saying?

Subaru: "Beatrice. I'm going to open the door. —I'm leaving how you judge my statements up to you."

Although aware that this thing before him is a threat to his life, Subaru's heart is rather calm. It's not that his nerves are steeled, or that he's resolved himself.

It's that he can calmly entrust his life to another.

I mean, after all.

Subaru: "—Beatrice, I trust you."

With his hand burning in pain, Subaru flings open the door.

And—

※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※

Rather than climb down the spiral staircase, the shadow reaches the bottom via something closer to 'plummeting'.

Shadow: "—"

The blood flowing from the shadow is clouded like muddy water, its visage as it drags its crushed legs along so ghastly it does not look a thing of this earth. With a wicked black blade in its right hand, and the dead witchbeast's heart in its left, the shadow clenches its fist to crush the organ as it proceeds deeper down the passage.

The skulking shadow has a human's shape, but not even it can determine whether or not it possesses human will.

Its body has been destroyed such that it cannot function, its life has been whittled such that it cannot revive, and it has already exhausted the absolute dregs of its vitality as a shadow.

If you asked how the silhouette could regardless be moving around like this, then the shadow would respond: because its personality before it was a shadow was just that intensely tenacious.

The shadow eventually, silently, reaches the deepest part of the passage.

The shadow lacks a will, and possess no goal other than to corner anything moving and take their lives. Sensing that its mark has gone through here, the shadow gives an easy flourish of its wicked blade.

Shadow: "—"

With a clunk, the door in front of the shadow splits apart.

The shadow kicks the door's debris aside, and moves to peer into the darkness beyond,

Shadow: "—"

A slight wind breezes by, making the shadow feel that they are being sucked into the darkness. White smoke overflows from deep in the darkness, and a haze begins to form before the shadow.

And then—oxygen flows into the room where incomplete combustion occurred, mingling with the traces of the fire, instantly superheating and bursting out of the room.

Backdraft.

There's no way that the shadow, a dimwitted thing moving only to destroy, could have anticipated the explosive phenomenon.

Shadow: "—"

The burst of flames engulfs the shadow, hellfire burning its body to nothing.

The shadow's body had lost means to either restore or revive itself, waiting only to rot, when incinerating fires envelop it, exceeding carbonization as the blaze peaks instantly hotter—and burns it to nothing.

The fire's momentum does not stop with merely the shadow as it proceeds to zoom through the underground passage, transforming the spiral staircase into a sea of searing heat, and gusts into the office to explode for even greater conflagration.

—The Roswaal Mansion now truly collapses as it meets its moment of demise.

※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※

Seeing how the Forbidden Archive has changed, Subaru swallows his breath.

Fissures run through the floor near the entryway, the hole to the hyper-dimensional space still alive and well. The fallen bookcases have no hopes of recovery, and in fact a portion of the room is up in flames.

The situation in the Roswaal Mansion has starting affecting the Forbidden Archive too.

Subaru: "—"

But, noticing the gaze fixed upon him, Subaru suppresses his shock and changes his gears. For now, he shall focus everything on only one single girl.

—For this is surely his last chance.

Beatrice: "You're an idiot, in fact..."

Subaru: "That's seriously the first thing you say?"

Beatrice: "Well you are, I suppose. Betty put in so much effort so that you might escape, then you squander the opportunity, and come back, in fact. ...The mansion no longer has any doors, I suppose. The Forbidden Archive has caught aflame too, in fact."

She's right.

The fire spreads to some of the fallen bookcases, turning the beloved books one by one into ash.

This entire place is flammable, and it's going to burn in a flash.

Subaru: "Which means this'll be the end both for me and for you."

Beatrice: "...Yes. It's the end, I suppose. There is not much that Betty desires any longer. The fire has spread to the knowledge destined for THEY, which utterly defies the promise, I suppose."

Subaru: "Does it. Then, I want you to listen to my final speech."

Beatrice's empty eyes look at Subaru.

She says nothing to encourage or refuse him, but the reaction probably means that she's at least willing to listen. Subaru gives her a nod, and takes a small breath.

The words he hadn't managed to tell her before, at their previous parting.

Right now, he will tell her everything he wishes to tell, in full.

Subaru: "Beatrice. —Help me."

Beatrice: "...Huh?"

Assertion, spoken with chest held high.

Shock dashes through Beatrice's eyes in response to sooty-faced Subaru's declaration.

She had surely attempted to imagine what he would say.

While drawing near to her unavoidable end, Beatrice had definitely run many simulations of what words Subaru would accost her with.

I want to save you. I won't let you be alone. Perhaps those manly words, and the cool greeting she had expected from THEY, where what she had been waiting for.

But if Subaru is to communicate his true feelings, such statements are impossible for him.

Subaru: "So I've been considering how I'm saying this cool stuff like, 'I'm bringing you out of isolation', or 'I'm going to save you'. ...Really, they're all I could come up with while riding off momentum to get through the situation. So I've been sincerely considering. What is it I think of you? What do I think of you, and what do I want to communicate to you?"

Subaru presents his sincere, unadorned thoughts to the wordless Beatrice.

While turning a blind eye to how cowardly and unfair it is that he's leaving the reception of all this up to her.

Subaru: "This whole me saving you thing's a joke, the truth of it is, you don't need my help at all. You're strong, you're smart, you're cute... you can do anything you put your mind to, and can get done anything you want done."

Beatrice: "—"

Subaru: "You are more than capable enough of living on your own. Of course. If you weren't then you wouldn'tve managed four hundred years. So not a word of this stuff about helping you or saving you resounded with you."

Beatrice: "—"

Subaru: "But even though you're strong and smart and can do so many things, it scared you to live on your own. It hurt you. It made you lonely. Nobody can fault you for clinging to THEY."

Beatrice: "After you rejected... Betty's feelings... what could you... possibly understand!"

Biting her lip, Beatrice glares at Subaru with something like hatred.

But that wavering emotion fails to fully be hatred. Beatrice holds on to that fading fury, frantically trying to preserve it as Subaru shakes his head at her.

Subaru: "I do know. That you're kind. That when someone's having nightmares, you'll hold their hand to ease them. That when someone's in unworkable trouble, you'll offer your hand and open a path. That when someone you can't help hating loses someone close to them, you'll lament for them."

Beatrice: "Talking as if, you know anything..."

Subaru: "I'm powerless. I can't be any help to you. But if we're gonna say there's anything I can do, not wanting you to be alone, then it's only cling and beg."

Beatrice's eyes widen. Subaru presents his right hand.

It's raw with burn scars, disgusting to look at. But it's still better than his atrocious left hand after all the damage it took.

He wipes it, prepares it, makes it clean enough to suitably hold her hand.

Subaru: "Beatrice. Help me."

Beatrice: "—"

Subaru: "I won't be able to live with the loneliness without you. Help me."

To a third-party listener, it would sound an overwhelmingly pathetic and shameful form of coercion. I can't live without you, so please take my hand, is his threat.

He cannot do anything for the other, so he is teaching the other that they can do something for him, and by that rationale, demanding that they live.

It's an excessively selfish, unreasonable, and hopeless means of coercion.

Beatrice: "Not, fair... it isn't fair, in fact."

Subaru says nothing.

Beatrice: "Using, those words... and, saying it so... after all this, you... when you're not THEY... when you rejected Betty, and yet..."

She is tongue-tied, lost for words, hesitant to speak, emotional, and anguished.

Her eyes remain set on the hand presented to her as she firmly embraces the book in her arms.

Tears spill from her eyes.

Beatrice: "I was alone for four hundred years! I spent all that time in isolation, so what could taking your hand now, possibly... you'll just die anyway! Human lifespans pass like a blink of the eye to Betty... after all of this! How could I cling to this!"

Subaru: "It's impossible for me to imagine your four hundred years. I can't talk like I understand it, either. Four centuries, I haven't even lived a twentieth of that. I know I can't understand all of your fear for what'll come after I die."

Beatrice: "Then! Then... nothing you've said, presents any solution...!"

Subaru: "But, tomorrow, we can be holding hands."

Beatrice: "—"

Subaru: "Tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after that too. It might not be four hundred years, but we can spend our days together. It might not last for eternity, but tomorrow, and in this present, I can treasure you."

Beatrice: "—hk"

Subaru: "Beatrice. —Choose me."

Subaru has already chosen.

Now he presents the choice to Beatrice. It all rests on her.

Will she stay loyal to her mother, and punctuate four centuries by being swallowed in flames? Will she disregard her promise to her mother, abandon her meeting with THEY, and take Natsuki Subaru's hand?

Beatrice: "Y-you are, THEY is..."

Subaru: "Not me. Don't equate me to some other guy you built up in your head. I'm me. Natsuki Subaru. Take all your unreciprocated feelings for this four-hundred-year asshole you've never even seen, and dump them."

Beatrice: "—"

Subaru: "Rather than fear a goodbye that might someday come, live with me in a definite tomorrow. I'm weak, but I'm still aiming so high... if we're together, you'll be so busy fussing over me you'll stop having time to think about being bored or lonely."

Beatrice: "...nng,"

Subaru: "Choose me, Beatrice."

He'll repeat it however many times it takes for the words to reach her.

Because he understands her wavering feelings, and her wavering heart.

So that the selfishness of Natsuki Subaru can shoulder the burden of her guilt for her indecision, and shame for breaking the promise.

So that this girl will never cry alone again.

Beatrice: "But you'll go away..."

Subaru: "It won't last forever. The future you're fearing will definitely come. The time when you're left behind, eternal as you are, will almost definitely come. But if you think only of fear for farewells, and throw away all the fun of being together, it takes far too much out of both of our lives."

Beatrice: "But you'll leave me..."

Subaru: "Let's be together. Let's live together. Let's go together. Let's pile memories upon memories, enough to blast away your fears of goodbye, enough that you can smile and say with your chest held high: I enjoyed it. Enough that you recover those four centuries you spent in solitude, and counterbalance them."

Beatrice: "Even if... that happened! I'll be alone, someday!"

He steps forward. Closes the distance.

The girl's wavering eyes reflect him.

He looks pathetic, he looks deplorable, he's a far cry from the prince she's been waiting for. But right there is usual, mundane Natsuki Subaru.

Subaru: "You'll live forever, and the time you spend with me might only be a microsecond for you. So I'll carve it into your soul. My microsecond."

Beatrice: "—"

Subaru: "—That Natsuki Subaru was a man, who even through eternity, was too vivid to ever fade to sepia!"

The Forbidden Archive crumbles to the sound of shattering glass.

The area around Subaru and Beatrice is surrounded in spacial fissures and scorching flames. But in this second, he feels not fear nor fire.

The only thing in Subaru is Beatrice.

And the only thing in Beatrice is Subaru.

Beatrice's shaking hands clutch the book received from her mother.

With belief that unhooking her fingers means mending her centuries of solitude, Subaru reaches out his hand.

And shouts.

Subaru: "Choose me! Beatrice!!"

Beatrice: "—auh,"

Subaru: "You want someone to take you outside! That's why you are always! Sitting opposite the goddamn door!!"

With the decisive boom, the world meets its end.

The Forbidden Archive, the girl's isolated cage, is swallowed and disappears in rifts and fire. But the instant before that happens.

—A single book thunks to the floor of the Forbidden Archive.

※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※

Having escaped through the hidden passage and reached the mountain cabin, Otto's group watches the mansion burn from atop a hillock.

Otto, Petra, and Frederica. And Rem shouldered on Frederica's back. The four of them succeeded in safely evacuating through the passage to the mountains.

The mountains, and particularly the area around the cabin, apparently have a barrier around them to repel witchbeasts. They see no signs of either wild witchbeasts or witchbeasts in ambush in their vicinity.

But not a single person here has the composure to rejoice about their survival.

All of them gaze at the mansion with something like a prayer, waiting for visible change to occur. While trusting in the safety of Subaru and Garfiel, both still inside.

Otto: "—"

Putting the treatment of his wounds aside for later, Otto gazes at the mansion, regretting even to blink. Petra stands beside him, clutching her arms with a strength inconceivable by her youth.

She's worried, so worried, so worried it's unbearable. Everyone knows that the young girl feels great fondness for Subaru. Considering her grief, it's impossible that Otto not pray for Subaru's safety.

Otto: "—"

Otto gently places his hand atop her head to calm her.

He gives her a smile as she looks up at him in surprise, before returning his gaze to the mansion.

And he notices it.

Otto: "...There."

In the middle of the burning mansion's main wing.

A massive explosion of flame bursts from the office with the hidden passage that Otto's group used. The windows shatter, overflowing inferno spreading everywhere in an instant, before the mansion loses its shape—and collapses.

Petra: "Auh..."

Otto hears Petra's cry of grief.

And Otto, too, having witnessed the same reality and figured the same thing as Petra, withstands the urge to scream in denial. If he throws a fit here, it will be a disservice to the heart of the girl who most likely wants to cry even more than him.

But Otto's thoughts are instantly invalidated.

Petra: "Otto-san, look!"

Otto: "Adagh!?"

Just when Otto borders on lowering his gaze, Petra's little hand slaps him across the cheek.

The impact startles him, sending sparks across his vision and dizzying him. But he soon sees Petra's look of elation as she points at the mansion, hurriedly looks over as well, and understands.

Otto: "Hah, hahaha..."

—A pillar of white light is extending from the destroyed mansion to the heavens.

The light twists like a rainbow, changing its angle high in the sky, shooting far to the east. Practically announcing that its destination lies there.

Otto knows what rests in that direction.

So his cheeks relax as he watches Petra cheer in joy, and,

Otto: "Now it's all up to you. —Truly, I am exhausted."

※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※

Meanwhile, that same light that brought Otto relief is witnessed by Garfiel, half-naked and clad in only a cloth around his waist. He clicks his fangs.

Garfiel: "Ha! So y'did pull it off, Captain! Knew ya'd do it! 'S a POSTHUMOUSLY TOO HOSHIN

KEEPS HIS PROMISES!"

Having escaped the burning mansion and sprinted into the woods, Garfiel puts his hand to his hip and laughs like an idiot.

Lying on the ground beside Garfiel is a girl, her limbs bound in restraints made of the same cloth as Garfiel's waistwrap—Mei Lee, unconscious.

Spoils of war! Is not how he's going to boast about it, but she's a living witness who was involved in the attack, and there are many things they need to interrogate her about.

But above all, Garfiel's principles would not allow him to kill the young girl.

Garfiel: "'Said, th'shadow lady must'a been burnt t'a crisp."

Garfiel gazes at the destroyed mansion, sighing.

He threw a witchbeast at her which crushed her—it's an indirect method that left no feeling in his own hands, but Garfiel still did choose of his own volition to butcher a near-human life.

His fingers shake, and he can feel a wrenching pain in his stomach.

But Garfiel suppresses those feelings with a shake of his head, seating himself beside the sleeping Mei Lee before leaning against a tree.

Garfiel: "F'now we'll put off th'aftertaste'v winnin' and th'feelin' of killin'. Nothin' my amazin' self does now 's gonna accomplish anythin'. ...Countin' on you, Captain."

Thrusting out his fist, Garfiel glares at the trail of white light, and:

Garfiel: "Once this's all cleaned up, we got a guy we both gotta give a good smack 'cross th'face!"

※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※

—She's been caught.

She knew this would happen, and she still grasped for it.

Even though she's known forever that, should she take this hand, should she cling to this warmth, she would never be able to return to her nights of isolation and solitude.

Even though she'd admonished herself about how insanely foolish it was to live while depending on an ephemeral warmth.

That voice, calling for her.

Those eyes, gazing at her.

Those hands, requiring her.

Even though she'd known how she could not possibly refuse.

—Subaru.

"Yes, that's it."

—Subaru, Subaru.

"Yes. That's my name."

—Subaru, Subaru, Subaru.

—Subaru!!

"And you finally called me by it."

※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※

—The blizzard rages.

Blinding curtains of white unfurl, every puff of breath freezing the instant it touches the outside air of this gelid world.

The breeze bathing her is frigid, and the blizzard winds carry snow so sharp it nigh cuts the skin. But even amidst this ferocious storm, the girl with her silver hair fluttering holds strong willpower in her amethyst eyes, and faces forward.

"I'm never, never... going to let you take anyone!!"

A glow cases her arms as she stretches them out, and unleashes a massive volume of magical power. The blizzard amplifies the glacial magic that wreathes itself in pale light, which then slices through the world like an incandescent sword, one-by-one slashing apart the white witchbeasts passing overhead.

The unpleasant noise of their chittering fangs peals without end.

The embodiment of hunger—an ancient calamity beyond any salvation, specialized only to devour its prey, something with which no-one could coexist.

Faced with the multiplying malice of 'hunger' there stands, not retreating a single step, the silver- haired girl.

But her breathing is ragged, and she has lost some control over her gargantuan mana, with white crystal beginning to cover her lower body.

If this continues, she will soon transform herself into an ice statue.

But, even though she knows this, she cannot retreat.

"—"

The girl glances behind her.

There rests everything that she must protect from the witchbeast's slaughter.

A dilapidated ruin, and several lives who are placing their hopes upon her small shoulders.

And a man, having not entered the ruin, who dazedly observes the girl's battle, and a dead-still pink- haired girl in his arms.

Half her body feels frozen. But a fire blazes in her heart.

Who could possibly winge and whine after witnessing them?

For what purpose, and with whose confidence, is she standing here?

"I... I won't let you be the end to anybody! Everybody's hands were linked together... and I'm going to protect that! That is what I promised my Mother!"

A torrent of pale light crashes into the horde of approaching witchbeasts.

They cry no death wails, falling motionless amid the white gleam. They witness their companions' sad deaths, before instantly choosing to cannibalize them and chewing into ice.

It's terrible to watch.

But perhaps, potentially, that's what people look like too when they're clinging to hope. Even so. Even so.

"So long as I haven't forgotten about Mother and Juice, and about everybody today... and about what he wrote for me, I am never giving up."

Even if she does end up encased in ice, she will never regret it.

Cutting through the blizzard, the encroaching witchbeasts grow steadily and steadily nearer, closing in on the girl and those relying on her.

If she has to, she is resolved to give her life.

But just when the girl is tormented with that thought, she hears a voice.

"No need to push yourself so hard, Emilia-tan."

"—"

She knows that someone has just landed beside her, having descended from high above.

She looks aside. The blizzard blusters too strong, and she cannot make out their face through the veil of white.

But she knows exactly who this is.

Their voice, their attitude, and above all, the fact that they would always come for her whenever she most wanted them.

"You can hold off and fall back. —The inaugural battle of deliverance is here."

"I'm sorry. That kind of went over my head."

It feels like they're smiling.

The silhouette begins to walk, immediately followed by another, smaller silhouette.

She hears a second voice.

That sounds lively, as if the speaker's been waiting for a very, very long time for this moment—

"What comes next is a complete unknown, in fact."

"Yeah, we'll be doing something about this. —Together, me and you!!"

Spirit Beatrice and Contractor Natsuki Subaru, two people who will from now on engage in battles upon battles while linked hand in hand, commence their inaugural fight here.