The Grave Keeper's sudden lapse in consciousness told him everything. Inori Yuzuriha had activated Time Erasure again. He moved to liquefy his body and evade the attack, but when awareness returned, his mind stuttered like a system hit by a virus. His vision went dark. The world's colors inverted.
It lasted barely an instant. The Grave Keeper knew he only needed to re-concentrate his psychic energy to break through this simple Void trap. But Inori would never let an opening like that go to waste.
By the time he tore through that black curtain, a silver blade was already there to greet him, reflecting a terrible cold light. Inori swung the sword in a sweeping reunion arc, pink hair streaming behind her as she raised the greatsword high and brought it crashing down. This time the edge bit true.
Like a butcher carving through bone without resistance, Inori cleaved the Grave Keeper clean in half. The thick-browed boy's split face froze in naked shock, but Inori didn't stop there.
"ORA ORA ORA ORA!"
In a blur too fast for the eye to track, she carved another dozen slashes across his sundered body, reducing the Grave Keeper to chunks of meat too mangled to identify, and only stopped when she was certain he could no longer regenerate with any ease.
"That should do it. Even you can't stand in my way now."
Inori blinked. The sword in her hand came to rest.
She had been fighting for some time, yet the blade remained as smooth as mercury, without a single stain of blood. On the ground, the remains of what had once been the Grave Keeper ignited like blue flame, crackling and bursting apart into countless motes of light before vanishing.
He still isn't dead. But if I keep moving forward and destroy the Apocalypse, he'll disappear along with it.
Inori didn't rest. She caught her breath once, then swung the Singer's Sword back into motion and charged the shambling crystal monsters in her path. She made short work of every last one and pressed deeper into the space beyond.
Shu Ouma couldn't make sense of what had just happened, but he understood the one thing that mattered: Inori had beaten the thick-browed man. That was enough. He followed carefully, and together they opened the final door and stepped into a strange tunnel.
The scenery here was like nothing he had ever seen, as though they had wandered onto the set of some fantasy film. The corridor beneath their feet shimmered with flecks of light as they walked, and the space on either side churned with blue fog. Below that lay a bottomless abyss. Shu's heart hammered. He kept to the center of the path and didn't dare fall even half a step behind.
"Inori, what is this place?"
"The Styx, I'd imagine. The road to the Apocalypse's endpoint."
Inori's eyes held nothing but the blank white radiance at the far end.
We're finally here, Inori.
But... I can't shake this feeling that something's wrong. Prepare for the worst. Prepare for everything.
Mana Ouma finally spoke.
She never interrupted Inori's focus during a fight or in moments of high tension, but the thought that this might be their last conversation, combined with the fact that this battle concerned her own fate, was enough to overcome her restraint.
Relax.
I, Inori Yuzuriha, have already factored everything in.
They entered the white light. What greeted her this time was neither soldiers with leveled guns nor crystal-encrusted Endlaves. Only a long stone staircase suspended in the void, and at its summit a purple, bud-shaped formation. Sealed inside it was a woman who shared Inori's face.
She was curled into herself, eyes shut, surrounded by a warm white glow.
That was Eve. The soul born when the Apocalypse Virus infected Mana Ouma years ago, copying her memories and personality. The true architect of Lost Christmas.
And there was one other person. A middle-aged man with hair half-turned to white.
"You've made it this far. Does that mean the Grave Keeper has fallen?"
Shuichiro Keido studied the girl who had fought her way in. Those old-fox eyes glinted with something shrewd.
But he quickly noticed she hadn't come alone.
"You're... Kurosu's..."
"Stop this!" Shu knew the man before him was his uncle, but no amount of blood relation could make him address someone who treated human lives as expendable and had framed his own sister with any kind of respect.
"All those people dead, and for what? Some fantasy about 'evolution'? We don't want any part of it!"
Shu rushed forward past Inori and shouted at Keido, voice cracking with fury.
"Achieving eternity through crystallization is humanity's destiny. Why can you people never understand?" Keido shook his head with a theatrical sigh, hands clasped behind his back. His ideology had been warped over a decade ago by jealousy toward Kurosu Ouma and the Grave Keeper's relentless manipulation. In his mind, ushering humanity into the crystallization era was a noble ideal.
"But—"
Shu wasn't about to back down, but Inori reached over and lightly tapped his shoulder. He caught the look in her red eyes from the side, and swallowed the rest of his words.
"Is that Gai Tsutsugami?"
Inori stepped closer. She raised a hand and pointed toward the top of the staircase, where a figure sat resting before Eve's throne. She had no time to waste arguing with Keido. She just needed to know whether her plan had actually worked.
"...How did you know?"
Keido's expression turned suspicious.
"I didn't think he'd survived."
Inori shook her head, her gaze darkening.
The specifics were impossible to confirm right now, but Inori remained confident. She had the means to handle any trap, because she had Epitaph, she had King Crimson, and she still had one final card held in reserve, unrevealed until this very moment. Even Mana didn't know about it.
"What does this mean? Have they become Adam and Eve?"
"Of course. The Fourth Apocalypse... the crystallization era is upon us."
Keido's voice surged with barely contained fervor, noticeably louder than before.
"And yet here I am."
Inori took one step forward.
The heel of her boot struck the floor with a sharp, resonant crack. One step. And yet that single stride was the culmination of two full years since the day she first woke in this body. The thing she had dreamed of doing every night since.
She would kill this man. She would rewrite Inori Yuzuriha's fate.
"You can't do anything. The world will not enter a crystallization era. Humanity will not become mineral."
"Hmph."
Calamity was bearing down on him, yet Shuichiro Keido showed not a shred of retreat. He gave a cold snort, then reached behind him and drew a jagged greatsword from what had looked like a decorative purple crystal formation.
"This was an experiment from ten years ago. Human genes implanted into other lifeforms for storage, used to manufacture powerful Void weapons."
He narrated this to no one in particular, a sinister grin hanging on his face.
"The Grave Keeper lost to me. What can one old man possibly do?"
Inori frowned. This man didn't seem entirely bright.
"All I need is to buy enough time for the two of them to complete the Apocalypse. Come, Inori! Make time stop! Push me to the brink! If you even have that kind of power!"
...What?
In all my life, I, Inori Yuzuriha, have never heard a more bizarre request.
He raised the sword and charged.
He was serious. But how? Was this still Shuichiro Keido? He was practically begging to die. Did he really believe that sword could buy enough time for Eve to awaken?
His form was riddled with openings. Inori identified dozens of kill trajectories in a single glance.
Whatever he was planning, this man was dead today. He seemed to have placed absolute faith in Gai Tsutsugami. That was why he'd chosen this suicidal assault. But Keido didn't know that Inori herself had orchestrated Gai's role as Adam. All she had to do once Eve awoke was strike her down and end it all.
"Come then, Shuichiro Keido!"
Inori stopped hesitating. She met his charge head-on, sword to sword.