The collapse did not end; it lingered as a failure in progress. Reality, forced past its breaking point, continued to fracture—quietly, violently, and irreversibly. Shards of space-time drifted around Null like conceptual debris, fragments of distance that led nowhere and dislocated sequences of chronology that had lost their linear order. Thin, translucent slivers of the continuum folded and unfolded like shattered reflections trying—and failing—to recall their origin.
And then—a shift occurred.
Null registered it instantly, drawn by a wrongness that even the surrounding existential decay could not match.
"…Oh?"
A portion of the fragmented shards began to congregate. Not randomly, but with a deliberate, haunting intent. Surfaces aligned, edges met, and the The broken metrics of reality pressed together, neither reforming nor repairing, but assembling into a coherent configuration.
Null's eyes narrowed."What now…?"
The fragments achieved perfect alignment and a pristine mirror materialized.
It stood human-sized and untouched by the surrounding cataclysm. Its surface reflected nothing—not Null, nor the void. It simply existed as a contradiction.
Then, it began to aspirate.
The black, devouring absence left by Dark EA's cataclysm was pulled inward. Shadows coated the glass, condensing into a thin, shadow-border. At the center, an oval aperture formed, Filled with an abyss that was far from empty.
Within that depth, an image materialized: an immense, ancient palace. Its architecture transcended space-time, with pillars that supported concepts rather than ceilings. And within that palace stood a silhouette of darkness.
The form was a congregation of Void-Blue Shadows, shifting at the edges, refusing to fully exist. Its face held only one feature: a cross-shaped set of hollows formed by absence. At the epicenter of those intersecting hollows, two sanpaku-like focal points surged with cold, dark-blue beams.
And they were locked onto Null. Unblinking. Uninterrupted.
Null stared back, his curiosity outweighing any sense of caution. He waited,
Seconds passed. Perhaps longer. In a zone where reality had collapsed and time no longer flowed reliably, the distinction had already lost all meaning.
But The entity did not move, speak, or gesture. It stood frozen like a primordial monument sealed beyond space-time. If not for those two dark-blue focal points burning into him with suffocating stillness. Null would have classified the image as a remnant of corrupted data expressing itself incoherently
Null's head tilted slightly, his white strands falling over his eyelids. "You're awfully quiet."
Still, nothing. The entity of void-blue shadows didn''t seem intent on acknowledging Null's existence beyond that dreadful, unbroken stare.
Null's patience thinned. Unless he wished to engage in a tedious staring contest with this phantom entity in a void zone which is incapable of reforming its reality structure, he would have to break this forboding silence himself.
He pointed his index finger directly through the aperture, "Yeah, you. Don't you have something to say to me?"
Absolute silence answered. The phantom entity did not react, but the dark blue sanpaku points surged ominously, pressing its gaze harder against the dimensional boundary.
"…Tch." Null lost his interest. "Since you have no intention of interacting with my existence… then you're not worth holding my attention."
He turned to disengage. "Goodbye."
Secretly, Fantasy Omnisciense whispered. Null paused, glancing back over his shoulder.
Something had changed. The dark shadows lining the mirror's edges had begun to pulse like a inhuman heartbeat.
Null's eyes flattened into recognition. "Hm."
He lifted Dark EA. The blade responded instantly, its segments rotating in a layered misalignment.
"You seem to be playing an interesting role in this world's grand mechanisms," Null voiced, a cold smirk touching his lips. "If possible… let's stage a true encounter between us in some valid form of reality, Mr. Hidden World Boss. Or should I say, you primordial bastard manipulating in the shadows."
His dark-red irises sharpened into absolute finality. "But for now—piss off."
The segments of Dark EA accelerated into overdrive. He threw it with a clean, decisive release.
The sword of cataclysmic rupture tore forward, grinding against the shattered reality. It struck the mirror.
The oval aperture shattered into collapsing layers that ceased to align. The ancient palace folded inward, its pillars distorting into impossible geometries before dissolving. The Phantom Entity was extirpated, as if the image had never been permitted to coexist under the same rules as Dark EA.
Dark EA spun once more in the empty void before returning to Null's grasp. He caught it effortlessly.
"How anticlimactic," Null rolled his eyes. "At least pretend to be interesting if you're going to put on such a mysterious, foreboding act."
He lingered for a moment where the mirror had been. "Still… that wasn't random."
It had watched and waited yet offered nothing. And Null had decided that silence was not a conversation worth continuing.
He turned away completely, Dark EA resting in his grip as the last remnants of the pocket dimension continued their inevitable collapse.
***
★ Installment 1: Magic of Elpis – Concludes.
* Second Cour: The Unemotionality Arc – Finished.