Echoes
The place where evening gave way to night.
A wind laced with the chill of eternal snow came down the mountain.
Along with it, a man sprang to his feet.
The eyes beneath that abruptly lifted face turned toward somewhere beyond the mountain.
His gaze traveled straight toward the distant point he was watching, then finally bent away beneath the dark.
Below, Nordfjord—one of the few cities in the north—glimmered softly in the gloom.
The man’s eyes narrowed.
“The flow of mana has changed.”
It was more than merely changed.
For the first time in a long while, mana was stirring after the Fall of Magic.
The mana that had only ever clung to objects was now racing toward a single point, as if at the speed of an arrow—without the slightest warning.
“A sign of something?”
The man repeated the words and considered every possibility.
A mana storm seemed unlikely.
If it had been a storm, there should have been signs accompanied by violent physical phenomena, but nothing of the sort could be seen in Nordfjord below.
Then was it an awakening?
That, too, was almost impossible.
There was no talent in Nordfjord capable of awakening through mastery of mana.
Besides, with nearly all the mana in things having already disappeared, hoping for a natural awakening was a luxury.
It was to solve that very problem that he was here.
The last possibility that came to mind, right now.
“A mage….”
After mana had nearly vanished, a mage had to gather it somehow in order to use magic.
The method in play now was a new one he had never seen before, but there were only so many mages left in the world, himself included.
Information among them was extremely limited, and for that reason, there might be mana-handling methods he simply didn’t know about.
So, by rights, he should have been celebrating a reunion with one of the few comrades left in the world—but the man’s expression remained far from pleased.
“This is getting bigger by the minute.”
It was an awkward situation, to say the least.
If it really was a mage, then the purpose for coming here was obvious.
A month ago, the man had killed two other mages like himself.
If they had not shown such seditious intent, he might have been able to bring them to neutrality through negotiation or persuasion, or even draw them over to his side.
But they had tried to interfere with his grand work from the very beginning.
He had no choice but to remove the obstacles.
Though they were mages, it had been remarkably easy to deal with them, perhaps because they had left magic untouched for so long.
Even so, their raw ability had been exceptional.
Setting aside the waste of it, the man clicked his tongue.
“My mistake.”
He had been too hasty, what with the great work looming ahead.
He cursed his past self.
They were people even the dwindling circle of mages known as the Golden Dawn Society had not known about.
If he had persuaded them properly and brought them into the Golden Dawn Society, it would surely have benefited everyone.
Not doing that, and instead excluding them, had been the first mistake. The second had been failing to clean up after himself properly.
They might have been told to take revenge on the mage they had been close with, or, if not that, perhaps asked to stop his great work.
In fact, the great work he intended to carry out was already the subject of divided opinion even within the Golden Dawn Society.
Right now, he was proceeding under the subtle concealment operations of the pro-faction.
Working alone was part of that concealment, too.
If more than one mage traveled together, they were certain to catch the attention of the Society’s members.
The only fortunate thing was that there was just one mage.
“There may still be room for negotiation.”
At once, he pictured the Golden Dawn Society’s internal balance.
The pro-faction and the anti-faction were roughly even.
There was no one reckless enough to strike flint and meet head-on in open conflict.
Every mage was precious in the current age.
And besides, even if he had killed two mages, they had not belonged to the Golden Dawn Society.
Sending only one person could be interpreted in several ways.
Perhaps the anti-faction had no intention of fighting the pro-faction in a bloody war.
Then they would have sent a representative first, hoping to stop things through negotiation.
Sending two would mean intending to subdue him, which would only provoke the pro-faction he belonged to.
If it was someone other than the Golden Dawn Society, then it might still be possible to draw them in through negotiation or appeasement.
At worst, he could buy time—or, if that failed as well.
The man drew a dagger from inside his coat, its blade radiating a cold light.
On its broad surface, reflected not starlight from the night sky but the branches that had stolen it away.
Even in the dark, the white bark of those reflected branches stood out clearly.
He turned and looked back. A great tree had grown all the way to the point where eternal snow covered the mountain’s peak.
It would be soon now.
“…Soon, it’ll be finished.”
The man turned toward the sea.
Where Nordfjord met the water, only the streetlamps along the roads shone in lonely succession.
“What I need is conversation. And a compromise.”
The man began walking down the mountain.
▼
All at once, consciousness awoke.
The sea.
It was the sea.
Not a rolling tide, not a strip of land stretched thin on the horizon.
Filling the world was a single line crossing the center of my vision, and beneath it, a vast spread of colorless water.
The water was clear, but its depths were unknowable, and its breadth seemed endless.
As I had no other word to describe it, I could only call it the sea.
I abruptly raised the body that had been lying on the water’s surface.
I knew this place. I had known it. Human instinct told me so.
A place where things that exist within humanity but could never take shape—imagination, mystery, fear, and all the rest—gathered together and mixed into something beyond words, suspended between illusion and reality.
A place that pulled illusion into the real. A place human beings should not have, and yet must have for their very existence.
The moment I set foot there, ripples spread.
The ripples became waves and broke with a slap. It was as if wind had risen because of my presence.
[Location: Unidentifiable.]
“The Sea of Mystery.”
The instant I spoke the name, I was dragged beneath the surface as though the floor had suddenly vanished.
I flailed and snapped my mouth shut, only to realize breathing wasn’t difficult, and then relaxed my stiffened body.
I was heading deeper beneath the sea.
Free-falling toward the seabed, white particles I couldn’t identify drifted between my fingers and across my sight.
Not long after, I instinctively understood that each one of them was a mystery composing the Sea of Mystery itself.
[Unable to identify components. Error, error…]
“…”
As I sank to greater depths, my assistant AI’s voice repeated only errors before going silent.
It was still bright around me, but darker than when I had first gone under the surface.
If I kept going like this, would I be crushed to death by the pressure? The thought occurred to me, but I couldn’t be sure.
The Sea of Mystery had been revealed in almost no meaningful way at all. It was said to be the source of all mysteries in the world, and that it existed in a place impossible to observe.
Lastly, that no one could enter it.
I had no idea how I’d gotten in, but I had stepped into a forbidden place denied to human beings.
“But why, all of a sudden?”
Something hot suddenly shifted inside my coat.
When I dug into the inner pocket, I found a red runestone that I hadn’t put there, trembling and giving off heat.
The one I had been holding twisted back and forth as if trying to break free of me, and when I lost my grip for an instant, it fell away with a burst of bubbles into the sea.
As it sank, the rune emitted consecutive flashes of orange and red light.
It glittered as though a heart were beating within it.
The shimmer had a rhythm to it, as if it were calling something forth.
One last time, the rune flashed brightly.
“…!”
And then, something formed before my eyes.
No—more accurately, it felt as though my field of vision had changed.
It was a harsh land.
A place so hot that an ordinary human would have turned to ash just by standing there.
There was nowhere my eyes could reach that wasn’t burning.
Lava erupted endlessly from beneath the earth, pulsing with life.
Embers flew through the air, and when embers met embers, they became fire again and fell upon the land.
Beneath the place I looked down on, giants of fire were walking across the earth.
Among them, one so enormous it could be seen even from far away walked toward me.
At least, that was what I thought.
By the time I came to my senses, the giant was already right in front of me.
He lowered his head and met my gaze.
His eyes were orange like the sun, blazing fiercely.
When his mouth opened, a wave of heat poured over me, as though it would melt everything in its path.
─The last descendant of day and night, of future and past, has come to find me.
Find you? For a moment I couldn’t make sense of the words, until I remembered the red runestone.
Then did that mean the two runestones my parents had left behind had brought me here?
I didn’t dare ask. Merely standing upright without collapsing was already difficult enough.
─Through your eyes, I see it.
─Something that should not exist in this world has put down roots.
If he meant roots, could he be talking about the Gate of Yggdrasil?
That was the only thing I could think of right now.
─Though that thing’s resemblance to him is offensive, I will not let petty feelings come before my purpose.
─I shall give you my sword. The time is not yet right, so return when you are prepared.
What was he talking about?
Before I could even force out a reply, consciousness vanished in a flash.
Leaving the burning land behind, rising from the deep sea,
consciousness, surfaced.