The world, suspended between lines that creaked like damp paper, seemed on the verge of unraveling with just a sigh. In front of us, the space where the Shadowless Man existed—or suggested himself—oscillated between a tear in time and a rip in logic.
But we didn't move.
Neither Sera, with her hands ready to conjure pain, nor I, with my perception clouded by possibilities I no longer wished to see.
"If we face him now," she said, not looking at me, "there's a 50% chance one of us won't come back."
It wasn't a prediction. It was an echo, a possibility that had surfaced from my ability—one I could no longer ignore, even if I kept my eyes shut.
"And if we don't," I replied, "there's a 100% chance this world collapses from within."
Silence.
We sat on the curved root of a tree that didn't belong to this plane, beneath moons that cast no shadow. The air smelled like old ink, as if everything around us was made from abandoned paragraphs.
"Ryouhei," Sera finally said, "what if this… isn't just about the world? What if the Shadowless Man is also what you refuse to let go of?"
"My fear? My guilt?"
"Your obsession with controlling the ending. You've lived trying to avoid your original death. But what if this being is the consequence of your refusal to accept that you were disposable?"
Her words were like a twisted mirror. They didn't hurt because of what they said, but because of what they forced me to look at.
"Are you saying I should give up?"
"I'm saying… maybe fighting isn't always how you win."
We remained silent. Then, without saying it, our hands found each other.
It wasn't a pact of victory. It was one of truth.
Of what we were willing to lose. And of what we still wanted to protect, even if no one would remember our names.
---
When we stood again, the Shadowless Man was still there. Or maybe he had never left.
But something had changed.
Because this time, we weren't facing him as fugitives from the story.
We were facing him as those ready to rewrite it… even if the
price was to disappear between its margins.