"I told you I didn't go in... my shoes aren't stained with mud."
The voice of a trembling child.
Yet the maids stood in the shadows, whispering quite the opposite.
The child looked at her. Justicia. The pure, innocent angel. But her face began to contort, tearing apart from the inside. In his eyes, she transformed into a monster wearing the tattered robes of a judge—a monster dripping with predetermined condemnation.
The child lowered his eyes in terror toward the gleaming marble floor.
There, in the reflection of the pristine floor, Justicia was no monster. She was an angel radiating light. The reflection displayed the truth the world saw: she was absolute purity, and he... was the sole spot contaminated with mud in this entire mansion. He was the only guilty one.
The child remained staring at the floor, contemplating the beauty of the angel crushing him, utterly convinced of his own filth.
A sudden, fragmented gasp yanked him back to reality.
The icy cave. Tears burned against his freezing face.
Vanitas lifted his broken gaze toward the man standing at the entrance of the cave.
"Are... are you trapped in this maze too?"
The man did not move. His pitch-black eyes, like two hollow voids, stared down at him with a marrow-chilling coldness.
"The insects told me someone was searching for me," his voice was calm, heavy, as if echoing from the bottom of a deep well. "And the birds told me... the reason behind this search."
The man placed his hand on the hilt of his wooden sword.
"I thought I would encounter an opponent worthy of lifting a single finger to kill. But... watching you flounder through this maze has proven nothing to me but the utter triviality of your existence."
Vanitas's pupils dilated. The tears froze in his eyes. He was watching me? From the very beginning?
Something exploded inside his chest. Shame mutated into a blind, roaring fury.
"You saw me?!" he screamed, his voice tearing through his ulcerated throat.
He slammed his bare fist against the stone floor. The skin burst open, spraying blood.
"You could have gotten me out! Why didn't you free me from this hell instead of watching me like a slowly burning insect? If you had killed me, if you had hacked me to pieces... it would have been more merciful!"
He struck the ground again. The bones in his fingers cracked.
The man Vanitas had been searching for since the inception of this journey—Mugen—slowly squatted down in front of him. The distance between them vanished.
"You strike the stone because you know you are too weak to strike me."
Mugen's words were not a mockery. They were a clinical diagnosis of a hopeless case.
"Did you have to say it?" Vanitas whispered, his chest heaving violently.
"Yes." The corner of Mugen's mouth curled into an icy smile. "Because I enjoy establishing these facts."
Mugen paused for a moment, studying Vanitas's face, which was stained with tears and blood.
"I despise being hunted. But at the same time... I was in need of entertainment. And you provided an excellent show."
Mugen swept his gaze over Vanitas's trembling frame.
"Your problems, your fractured personality, your psychological complexes... they are all so ridiculous that they elicit nothing but pity. And now, this pathetic creature claims he will do what no one else has ever done? What the world failed to achieve?"
Mugen tilted his head slightly. "Tell me, spoiled child... there is a glaring flaw in this play. Why did you come here when you are fully aware of your actual size?"
Vanitas stared into those dead eyes.
Seconds of suffocating silence ticked by. Then... his shoulders trembled.
A dry laugh escaped his throat. A coarse, jagged laugh that sounded nothing like any mask he had ever worn before.
"You're right," Vanitas said, a smile distorting his features. "My play is trivial. My problems are laughable. And if I do have a true face, it is undoubtedly hideous."
He stopped laughing abruptly. His eyes locked onto Mugen's, and for the first time, there wasn't a single tremor in them.
"But do you know something, Mugen? I look at you, and I see something far more hideous than me."
The icy smile vanished from Mugen's face.
Vanitas pressed on, his words flowing like a slow-acting venom: "Why are you still alive? I have owned nothing since the day I was born, but you—you owned everything, lost it all, and yet you still cling to life. How wretched. Your entire world has rotted away into nothingness. You are merely a walking corpse moving without a purpose, claiming that your purpose is 'purposelessness.'"
Vanitas spat blood onto the ice between them.
"If my play is funny, then yours... is boring. Empty. At least I am entirely full of my own indulgence."
There was no warning sign.
A fist cut through the air at a speed that shattered the sound barrier.
It slammed squarely into Vanitas's face. Crack.
His jaw shattered instantly. His body was launched into the air, crashing hard against the cave wall before sliding down into a pooling puddle of blood.
Mugen had used no "Rei" energy, nor any alchemy. It was raw, monstrous, unadulterated physical might.
Mugen stood over him. He brought his second fist crashing down onto Vanitas's chest.
The sound of snapping ribs drowned out the howling wind.
A third punch. A fourth. Flesh tore; bones ground to dust.
Mugen did not stop. He continued to deliver brutal, blind strikes, one fist after the other. Blood erupted from Vanitas's mouth and eyes, splattering across the ice.
Is this man's life worth more than mine? The thought flashed through Vanitas's mind amidst the vortex of blinding white pain. Does the balance of the universe tilt in his favor simply because he is the strongest? His vision narrowed, collapsing into a black tunnel. For the first time... I don't want this. I want the scale to tilt for me. I want to surpass him.
A grotesque, bloody smile carved its way onto what remained of Vanitas's face.
Despite his fractured skull, he was ecstatic. His words had pierced the armor of this immortal entity. He had made him lose his temper. He had bested him, if only for a single second, in the arena of words.
He drowned in death, wrapped in a twisted sense of victory.
A violent gasp.
Cold air rushed into his perfectly intact lungs.
He opened his eyes. The wounds had vanished. His jaw had snapped back into place, courtesy of the seal embedded within his chest.
Mugen was standing before him, his back to the cave, staring out at the snow. His voice had returned to its absolute, detached coldness, as if the savage outburst from moments ago had never happened.
"Get up. Follow me."
Vanitas wiped away the dried blood still clinging to his hair. "Where to?"
Mugen turned. A single look—dark and entirely hollowed of life—was enough to freeze the vocal cords in Vanitas's throat.
He shut his mouth. He rose silently and followed him.
They stepped out of the cave. The white void of the maze stretched out endlessly.
Mugen stopped. He raised his head toward the dead, gray sky.
Then, with a calm, effortless motion, he raised a single finger.
The atmospheric pressure plummeted instantly, as if the entire forest had caught its breath.
Vanitas suffocated. The air was violently forced out of his lungs. Craaaaack!
The sound of reality's fabric tearing apart.
The gray sky cracked like a colossal sheet of glass, then collapsed into shards that dissolved into nothingness before ever touching the ground.
The maze vanished.
New air rushed against his face. Snow of a different texture—natural, melting against the skin rather than burning it. The sky exploded into an infinite, deep, pristine blue.
The sound of... birds. Real birds.
Vanitas fell to his knees. He buried his hands in the genuine snow.
For the first time since his birth, he did not feel like a mirror, a tool, or a mask.
He looked up at the open sky and breathed. He inhaled the cold freedom until his chest was entirely full, thanking this cruel, accursed world for simply granting him the right to exist.
[Excerpt from the book: Figures from the Age of False Gods]
Chapter 5: Mugen, Blade of the Goddess Izanami
"There is not much definitive information regarding this figure, for reasons too numerous to count or catalog within this record. However, what we know for certain from the surviving historical fragments is that he was titled the 'Blade of the Goddess Izanami.'
Mugen was the final guardian and the striking arm of that goddess, who was ultimately slain by the hand of 'Lord Osmium.' To this day, no one knows with absolute certainty what befell Mugen after that cataclysmic confrontation; yet historical lore suggests he perished in that fierce battle.
One of the strangest pieces of lore whispered about him concerns the unique form of his weapon; Mugen did not carry a metallic sword like other warriors, but instead donned a wooden sword. Legends claim it is an unbreakable blade; even if the entire world were to shatter and existence itself were to perish, that wooden sword would never break. Today, the whereabouts of this blade remain unknown to all, and many believe it rests somewhere in hiding, waiting for someone to unearth it."