Shin looked down at his own chest with a faint sense of bewilderment.
Good question. How was he supposed to know?
Was it because this was a dreamscape that his power was somehow limited?
He seized the opening and directed the battlefield — the beasts he had shaped from his own flesh and blood closed in on the bishop from all sides, swallowing him whole in an instant.
Shin's figure continued weaving between the warships.
The so-called Black Keys of the Executors pierced into his body, raising no more than tiny, inconsequential sprays of blood before the muscles expelled them and the wounds sealed themselves shut.
But the dream's feedback was real.
The malice of those ordinary humans — the karma forcibly dredged up by the Great Witch of Earth — was pressing down on Shin's conscious self, one bit at a time.
Injuries sustained in a dreamscape dull one's movements, regardless of their severity.
A dream is a gathering of the subconscious — just as in a dream, the very instant you think what if this elevator falls the elevator will plummet, injury works the same way. The moment the doubt forms, the body responds.
The jet-black wings he had spread were now streaked with ragged patches of blood.
When the last warship finally sank into the flames, all that remained on the sea was splintered driftwood and the sharp, acrid smell of char.
Shin stood on the shore. As the phantoms dissolved, the frame that had stood so straight was now lurching slightly.
His body was riddled with wounds — they were healing, yes — but the exhaustion at the level of the soul was something that couldn't be hidden.
"It's over."
He said it quietly.
The words had barely left his lips before a white figure appeared before him as if by teleportation.
Yuki paid no mind to the blood pooling across the ground or the killing air that still hadn't fully dissipated.
She threw her arms around the boy.
Her petite frame couldn't even reach his shoulders — she could only lock her arms around his waist and hold on with everything she had.
"Shaya… you idiot!"
"Was it Hana? Tell me — was it Hana who asked you to do this, or…? You idiot, you knew perfectly well this was only a dream, you had absolutely no reason to…"
Yuki's voice trembled as she buried her face into Shin's blood-soaked chest.
Unlike the cold and lonely dream-fragments she had lived in — this was real. Warm, with a heartbeat.
"You didn't have to… if you'd just walked the path I laid out for you, you wouldn't need to worry about me…"
"Why did you have to…"
Shin felt the trembling of the small body in his arms and slowly folded his wings away.
"Because I don't want you to carry all of this alone, Mother."
"In a few more decades, those people will all be dead and gone of their own accord. But our lifespans stretch far beyond that…"
"Are you really going to keep shouldering this obsession all by yourself — for a hundred years? Three hundred? Five hundred?"
He steadied the Great Witch by her shoulders and let her lift her face. Then he turned and buried his own head against her instead:
"Mother — think about it. Please, think about it —"
"After five hundred years, when seas have turned to mulberry fields and everything has changed — what will I have left?"
"— I'll only have you. You and Meruru."
Shin had no way of knowing whether his words would be enough to make the Great Witch set down the burden of revenge.
In truth, he could will the wounds across his body to close completely in an instant. But he chose to endure the pain a little longer — because he needed those wounds as a backdrop to reach her.
"…Shaya, I promise you."
Slender fingers, silk gloves still in place, traced along the boy's face. Her eyes had reddened at the rims. She raised her gaze and made a promise that carried the weight of something essential:
"I will never hide anything from you again. Not now, and not in the future."
"From here on out, I won't manage where you and Meruru go. I won't selfishly restrict your freedom anymore."
"If you and Meruru don't mind having me around — then I won't go anywhere. I'll stay right here. Right here on Witch Island. Let me keep living here with you, until the day you grow tired of me."
The Great Witch closed her eyes. Tears fell without a sound.
The burden had not lifted entirely — but she felt the weight ease from her body all the same. Because at least she was no longer the only one carrying it.
Or rather: from this moment forward, the word lonely and she had said their farewells.
"Even revenge — I won't go off alone and in secret. I'll bring you with me. Or… maybe I just won't go at all."
"Since you've said all of that, Mother — let me tell you a secret of my own."
The Great Witch's chest wasn't the most comfortable surface to rest against. But that didn't stop the boy from finding it warm.
"A secret?"
"Actually…"
He thought for a moment, then leaned close to the Great Witch's ear and said, in a voice only the two of them could hear:
"I've known everything about you for a long time."
"Because — I've always known that you like to pour the things you're too afraid to say to us into the group chat."
The Great Witch's body went rigid in an instant.
She slowly pushed Shin away from her, and stared at the boy — who was making his most convincingly innocent face — with an expression of complete disbelief.
"Shaya, you… what did you just say?"
"Mother — do you remember the group member called [Aspiring to Be the Perfect Human Being]?"
"That was me."
"That new member who was at odds with you from the very first day they joined — the one who even had an argument with you — that was your Shaya. Me."
A beat of silence fell over the dreamscape.
The Great Witch blinked. Then, all at once, every message ever sent by that unfamiliar group member flashed through her mind.
No wonder. No wonder she had always felt there was something familiar about the "girl" in those earlier streams.
No wonder that, as a supposed newcomer, she had always seemed to deliberately pick fights with her — had dared to belittle her Shaya for no apparent reason. So it had all been intentional —
"Shaya…" For reasons she couldn't quite name, the Great Witch smiled. It was very clearly not a smile born from happiness.
"Has your mother ever taught you what filial piety means?"
To be continued…