allendalepharm Page 383
Page 383
He raised his hand and gently stroked Aozaki Aoko's cheek, a tender gesture that made her feel as if she had fallen into an ice cave.
"Watch closely as the light of dawn pierces the eyes blinded by fate."
Aozaki Aoko suddenly launched an attack. The spare magic bullet hidden in her sleeve on her left hand exploded at close range, and she used the shockwave to retreat rapidly.
As she flipped through the air, she saw a heart-stopping sight: the entire city of Misaki was suspended a thousand meters in the air, with a rolling sea of clouds below the buildings.
Instead of the ground, a huge magic circle woven from silver threads has been erected.
"Are you crazy?!"
Aozaki Aoko's voice was hoarse.
"The entire city has two million people..."
"Don't worry, they're all dreaming."
Shiraishi Kawa's figure appeared in the center of the magic circle.
Misaki City, which had been suspended in mid-air, stopped rising, like a chess piece suddenly pressed down by the hand of fate, eerily still in the center of the night sky.
At the bottom of the city, broken rock layers are still shedding rubble, leaving silver trails in the moonlight.
"What exactly is going on—"
Aozaki Aoko's questioning was interrupted by a sudden scream.
The entire city's residents were awakened by this supernatural sight.
One by one, the windows lit up, and a clamor of panic surged in from all directions.
Some people knelt on their balconies to pray, some huddled in corners with their children, and many more simply stood in the middle of the street, looking up at the bottom of the city, which should have been the earth but had now become a bottomless abyss.
"Can't you hear me, Shiraishikawa!"
Aozaki Aoko stepped onto the transparent staircase constructed of magic, each step leaving spiderweb-like cracks in the air.
Her red hair danced wildly behind her, like a ball of angry flame.
The man high in the air paid no heed.
The hem of his black trench coat billowed upwards against gravity, revealing the densely packed magic engravings inside the lining.
The engravings are going out one by one, like candles blown out by a strong wind.
"Timeline observation completion rate: 89%..."
Shiraishikawa muttered to himself, his pupils reflecting a galaxy of data.
His skin began to turn transparent, revealing the surging magic beneath being consumed at an alarming rate.
"Still 11 marks short..."
Aozaki Aoko suddenly felt a pang of heart palpitation.
She saw Shiraishi's left hand disintegrating—first the skin, then the muscles, and finally the bones, all turning into golden particles of light that dissipated in the night wind.
His face showed no sign of pain, but rather an expression of near ecstasy.
"Are you crazy? If this continues, you'll—"
"Shhh."
Shiraishikawa finally turned his head and used his only remaining right hand to raise his index finger and press it against his lips.
"listen."
Just as Aozaki Aoko was about to retort, she actually heard it—a vibration coming from the depths of the world, or like the mechanical roar of countless gears starting to mesh.
The sound made her magic circuits vibrate.
"here we go."
Shiraishikawa smiled, and the rest of his body suddenly burst forth with dazzling light.
That light was a hundred times brighter than the midday sun.
Aozaki Aoko screamed and covered her eyes, but she still felt scalding liquid flowing from between her fingers—it was blood.
Her retina was burned by 960 degrees.
"Crown of Dawn, I crown you."
Shiraishi's voice suddenly became incredibly loud, as if millions of people were chanting at the same time.
In the light, his silhouette completely vanished, transforming into a pillar of light that reached the heavens and the earth.
The city of Misaki, shrouded in darkness, was instantly illuminated as if it were daytime, all shadows banished.
Aozaki Aoko forced open her blurry eyes despite the excruciating pain.
She saw the beam of light spreading, but this ink was pure light.
The building becomes transparent the moment it touches the light curtain, revealing panicked people frozen in place, like insects in amber.
"This is... the aftermath of its birth?"
Aozaki Aoko was trembling all over.
She finally realized that the force that had previously made the city float was nothing compared to what was happening now.
The speed of light is incredible. In the blink of an eye, most of Misaki City had been swallowed up, and it continues to spread outwards.
Chapter 485 All things must die eventually
Aozaki Aoko realized with despair that this light might cover the entire material world—no, perhaps the entire Type-Moon universe would be affected.
"Stop...please stop..."
She murmured unconsciously, but then she saw something gathering at the center of the pillar of light.
It was humanoid. At its core, brighter than a star, Shiraishikawa reconstructed his body.
The newborn body was like a crystal sculpture, flowing with iridescent light.
When he opened his eyes, a blood-red light burst forth from his eye sockets, staining the whites of his eyes and pupils the same color.
The time for heaven has come.
Shiraishikawa's voice no longer belongs to humans, carrying an echo like metallic resonance.
"Then let me make this announcement—"
He raised his hands, mimicking the action of a conductor striking the beat.
"Time is about to accelerate."
In an instant, the sun hanging at the edge of the sky trembled violently.
Before Aozaki Aoko could even blink, the red sun had completed its journey from east to west and crashed below the horizon.
"No...this is impossible..."
Aozaki Aoko looked at the back of her hand, where the skin was visibly drying out and wrinkles were appearing.
She hurriedly mobilized her magic to resist, only to find that even the flow of magic was accelerated.
Shiraishikawa looked down upon everything from his high vantage point.
A strange halo formed around him, in which day and night alternated wildly, forming a Möbius strip-shaped fold in spacetime.
The buildings in Misaki City are beginning to weather, with walls peeling off and metal rusting, as if they have been there for hundreds of years.
But the most frightening thing is the change in the residents.
Aozaki Aoko saw the woman holding a baby on the street corner. One second she was crying, and the next she was an old woman kneeling on the ground, the swaddling clothes in her arms empty.
Several young people ran and then collapsed to the ground, turning into bones, which quickly weathered into ashes.
"What did you do?!"
Aozaki Aoko roared and flew toward the pillar of light, but was bounced back by an invisible barrier halfway there.
Her arm withered the moment it touched the barrier, as if all the moisture had been drained away.
Shiraishi Kawa finally turned his gaze to her, his blood-red eyes revealing no emotion.
"I'm just letting the universe go its own way."
"But they—"
Everything must eventually die.
Shiraishikawa interrupted her.
"I'm just making the process...more efficient."
Just then, Aozaki Aoko noticed a cockroach crawling out of a crack in the ground.
These insects seemed unaffected, continuing to crawl nimbly.
She suddenly realized something, and a chill ran down her spine to the back of her neck.
"You're not accelerating time... you're separating the timeline!"
Her voice trembled.
"To decouple biological time from cosmic time..."
For the first time, Shiraishikawa showed an expression that resembled admiration.
"As expected of Aozaki's successor. Indeed, when the universe comes to an end, these insects will continue to live—for a fleeting moment of eternity."
These words completely devastated Aozaki Aoko.
She finally understood that Shiraishi's true purpose was not destruction, but to create a paradoxical state that transcended logic.
All life experiences an infinitely long existence within an infinitely short period of time; it is both a fleeting moment and eternity.
"Can't..."
Aozaki Aoko dragged her withered body into the air once more, this time directly igniting her magical essence.
"You can't do this! Shiraishikawa, you can do whatever you want to me, but you can't do this!"
Shiraishikawa hovered above Misaki City, her long, silvery-white hair swaying eerily in the windless air.
"Look, what a beautiful cage."