Blank white fades into motion. Wind flows through a quiet field of tall, silver grass. Aki walks alone, the sketchbook tucked under one arm, the other tracing fingertips along blades of glowing grass. The sky is a soft purple gradient—peaceful, but not empty.
Aki (thinking):
"The battle's over. Spiral 0 is sealed. Yūgen is stable again… but I'm still here."
---
Cut to real world. Yumi sits at her desk. She's different—focused, driven. The spiral mark on her wrist has faded, but she still wears a bracelet over it. A sketchbook of her own lies nearby. She flips to a page: Aki's face, drawn from memory.
Yumi (softly):
"You didn't come back. But maybe you chose that."
---
Back in Yūgen. Rei appears in the distance, walking across the field. Her armor is gone. Just a cloak now. Kael follows behind, whistling a familiar melody, slinging his revolvers over his shoulder. They meet Aki near a large tree that wasn't there before.
Rei:
"So this is it. The calm after all storms."
Kael:
"I liked it better when things were exploding."
Aki (grinning):
"Give it time."
---
They sit beneath the tree. The camera pans upward—carved into the bark are their names. And Yumi's.
Rei (glancing at the sky):
"You could've gone back, you know."
Aki:
"I thought I wanted to. But Yūgen was never just a dream. It's me. It's us. All the broken pieces we hid from the world."
---
The world ripples. A new land appears in the distance—floating mountains, shifting clouds, a sea that curves upward like ink caught mid-spill. The Realm is expanding.
Kael (standing):
"So... we're building now?"
Aki (nodding):
"No more running. No more Trials. We create."
---
Rei conjures a staff—half-digital, half-organic. Kael pulls out a pocketwatch that controls gravity. Aki opens his sketchbook and begins drawing.
The scene zooms out—watching them work. Each line Aki draws becomes terrain, trees, creatures, life.
---
Final flashback montage:
Aki, in his hospital bed, hand twitching faintly, sketchbook beside him.
Yumi, placing a flower on his hospital table, whispering something with a smile.
Aki's mother, wiping tears and nodding quietly to the doctors.
The heart monitor, steady.
The Realm, pulsing once, as if breathing with the real world.
---
Cut back to Yūgen. The camera moves above the trio's new world. It's beautiful. Alive. Still changing.
Aki (voiceover):
"Maybe I never woke up. Or maybe this is what waking up really means—facing everything I was afraid to remember, and drawing something new from it."
The screen fades to black, and a faint sketching sound continues for a few seconds.
Then silence.
Faint static. Then silence. Then... breathing.
Darkness stirs. A low blue glow fades into view. Aki stands on the edge of a cliff in the Yūgen Realm, overlooking the vast, ever-shifting world he began to shape. His sketchbook is open, pages fluttering in wind that doesn't touch anything else.
Aki (thinking):
"It should've been over."
"But this place still dreams. Even after peace… something watches."
---
Cut to Kael walking through a strange new biome—upside-down forests that hum. He pauses, taps a strange orb embedded in a tree. It shows him a flickering image: a spiral with thirteen incomplete loops.
Kael (mutters):
"…We never asked how many Spirals there really were."
---
Rei meditates in a temple formed from her own memories—a childhood bedroom fused with battle relics. Her eyes open. She gasps. One wall ripples, showing an impossible reflection: Aki… from a future that hasn't happened yet. He's older. Colder. Wearing black ink-threaded robes.
Rei (shaken):
"That's not the Aki I know…"
---
Real world. Yumi sleeps, headphones on. She's surrounded by hand-drawn maps of Yūgen. A page flips on its own. In her dream—
A new symbol appears: not Spiral 0. Something deeper. Older. Alive.
Dream Voice (whispers):
> "You opened a door. But not all doors go both ways."
---
Aki walks through a valley of floating ruins. He meets an old figure cloaked in white static—neither Architect nor Enforcer. Its voice echoes like old tape.
???:
"You've redrawn the surface. But the foundation still remembers the first Seeker."
Aki:
"I saw him. I freed him."
???:
"Did you?"
A second, darker child walks past in the distance—identical to the first, but smiling.
"He followed you."
---
Suddenly the sky tears like paper. Black ink spills across the horizon, freezing the environment mid-shift. Kael and Rei appear beside Aki, both tense.
Kael:
"That isn't corruption. That's... memory rewriting itself."
Rei (calmly):
"We're being overwritten. Someone is drawing on top of us."
---
A booming sound from beneath the world. The ground fractures, revealing massive gears and threads—hidden machinery beneath the illusion of the Realm.
Aki (realizing):
"This isn't a dream anymore."
He grips his blade. It flickers—duller than before.
"It's a memory war."
---
Flash to real world. Aki's mother looks at her son in the hospital bed. The monitor's light blinks—but a second signal starts to appear on another screen. A dual EEG spike. The nurse frowns.
Nurse:
"Ma'am… there's a second wave forming. As if another brain's syncing to his."
---
Back to Yūgen. Rei stares at the sky as symbols pour across it like stars being rewritten.
Rei (soft):
"…Someone else is dreaming now."
---
Aki draws a door in his sketchbook. It glows.
Kael:
"Where does that lead?"
Aki:
"Wherever they are."
He places his hand on the door. The Realm pulses. Everyone braces. The door creaks open—
A girl stands there. Younger than Yumi. Long hair. Familiar eyes. She steps through.
Girl (quietly):
"You're inside my head now."