The descent was not a fall. It was a return—into a world Rei no longer fit, yet now must save.
From the heights of the Sovereign Constellum, Rei and his companions pierced the sky aboard a Wyrmgate, a serpentine conduit made of memory-thread and starlight flame, forged by the All-Watcher for their reentry.
Beneath them stretched the fractured Earth. Kyoto burned with threads of corrupted spirit. Leylines twisted like severed nerves. Cities blinked in and out of dimensional resonance.
> [Codex Alert: Sovereign Breach Detected — Multiple Threads Leaking into Lower Planes. Projected Timeline Collapse: 14 Days.]
Eirenne adjusted the trajectory with grim precision.
"We're not descending into Earth as it was. We're diving into Echofire—the world caught between retold truths and failing reality."
Mireille cross-checked the distortion maps. "Dozens of rogue threads. Unbound Sovereign fragments. Even human spirits igniting without hosts."
Noira drew her dual blades. "Chaos. My kind of playground."
Karasu's voice cut through the ether. "This isn't chaos. It's fermentation. A convergence."
---
Landing Zone — Ruins of Mount Kurama
Flame rained like ash. The mountain had become a skeletal cage of burnt torii and blackened stone. At its summit, a former shrine now pulsed as a beacon of corrupted Sovereign power.
Waiting for them there: a man dressed in bishop's robes, but with no face. Just a blank mask. His voice was many.
"We are the Choir of Undoing."
Rei stepped forward. "Then sing your dirge."
> [Combat Initiated: Rei's Flame Unit VS The Choir of Undoing]
Each chant twisted space. Every syllable ruptured causality. But Rei had faced narrative itself—and won.
He anchored his flames with the Threads of Lysandrel, Vaelstrom, and Null Reflection, building not destruction, but rebuttal.
His companions joined:
Eirenne deflected chants with mirrored sound.
Noira shattered verse constructs.
Mireille reversed syllabic logic using temporal runes.
The battle climaxed as Rei ignited Flame of Anchored Ascension, driving it into the core of the Choir's hymn.
A moment of silence.
Then: implosion. The Choir shattered into embers of rewritten memory.
---
Aftermath — Shrine Reclamation
The blackened shrine flickered. Rei approached the inner sanctum. There, he found a child.
No older than six. Eyes blank. Hair of ink and soot. She looked up at him and spoke with a Sovereign's tongue:
"You broke the silence. You woke the old names. I... was once the Thread of Hesitation."
Eirenne stepped closer. "She's a fragment."
Mireille scanned her. "Half-formed. No vessel. No origin. Yet somehow... ancient."
Rei knelt. "Do you remember who you were?"
The child shook her head.
He extended a hand.
"Then walk with us. We'll find your name."
> [Thread Acquired: Unnamed Fragment — Trait Gained: Lingering Insight. (Passive) Allows detection of hidden narrative forks and unstable echoes.]
---
Final Scene — Earth's Skyline, Twilight Veil
As they gazed across the horizon, Rei's team saw what awaited them:
Tokyo suspended mid-collapse.
The Vatican engulfed in reversed time.
A massive tear above the Pacific, from which emerged EXE vessels, primed and armed.
Azazel's voice crackled through the Codex Link.
"You're back. And you're late. We've got warfronts. We've got Sovereign-corrupted reality fields. And... someone's waking Trihexa."
Rei closed his eyes, then opened them with renewed fire.
"Then let's remind them why the world changed when we returned."
The sky ignited with purpose.