With trembling hands, Yuto turned to the next page of the diary.

The ink bleeding across the paper looked like blood his father had shed. In this world where Yuto—his son—had never existed, King Luke Belkain had not been the gentle father Yuto knew, but a pitiful man consumed by the monster of loneliness.

On the next page, the handwriting grew still more anguished.

[After my wife left me, this palace was no longer a home to me. It feels like an enormous coffin.]

[Without a wife or an heir, all I have left is this kingdom, Belkain. Yet how cruel this land of Callisto is. The constellations start wars as their moods dictate, and people die like toys in the palms of their hands.]

[Everything has gone wrong. I do not even know where it began. In my youth, having recognized the injustice of this world, I thought I would set everything right. But I am powerless. I have no one left.]

[If only I had even one child, I could have told myself I must change the world for that child's sake. I could have struggled on, determined to change it at any cost. But with not a single soul of my own blood left, what am I striving to change the world for?]

[Ah, my kingdom of Belkain. My people. Must I burn away my life to set the world right for them? Once, I would have done so without question. But now... now...]

[On my throne, I am surrounded by my subjects. When I parade through the streets, countless people come out and chant my name. Why, then, am I so lonely?]

[I live beneath the eyes of thousands, yet I feel no one's warmth. When I enter my bedchamber, silence alone swallows me.]

[After my wife left me, I lost my way in this vast castle. If... if only there had been a single child to call me 'Father.' If that child's laughter had filled these cold corridors, I would not have gone mad in this terrible solitude.]

Yuto's eyes trembled with every turn of the page. Page by page, he turned through the weight of the loneliness his father had left behind. The maddened anguish filling every margin was enough to tear his heart to shreds.

[Ahhh!]

The handwriting changed. The loneliness and despair that had seeped so painfully through the words suddenly turned to hope and elation.

[Belkain's great guardian constellation! The Shattered Star has understood my loneliness!]

[Callisto may be nothing more than a playground for constellations who delight in mortal suffering, but even in this world, salvation exists!]

[Nothing in Callisto can last forever, but 'Babylon' is different!]

'Babylon...?'

It was a word Yuto did not know. Filled with questions, he turned the page.

[The Shattered Star whispered to me! Babylon is a paradise of souls, to which only a tiny fraction of the souls who have suffered in Callisto may ascend!]

[Time does not pass in Babylon, so there are never any farewells. No misfortune exists there; it is filled with happiness alone! A paradise of souls, filled with everything one could wish for!]

[My wife, who departed before me, is waiting there. Even the child we were never granted in Callisto—we can have one in Babylon...!]

Yuto's eyes shook violently. In his previous life, the sight of his son Yuto had rooted his father in life on this earth. But his father in this world—driven mad by loneliness and the ache of never having a child—had lost the ability to judge rationally.

[In Babylon, I can enjoy eternal rest beside my wife, holding our child's hand.]

[I want to go to Babylon. I must go to Babylon! I have no attachment left to this world. The constellations are destroying it, and that is something I cannot possibly stop on my own!]

[But, but—I hesitate to take my own life. If it truly were only me, I would end my life this instant and ascend to Babylon, but I am the king of Belkain. I have countless people who are like children to me...]

Now the diary contradicted itself from one page to the next. It was proof that Luke Belkain's mind was descending completely into madness.

[How can I leave for Babylon with a light heart? How can I save my people?]

[The Shattered Star has answered the question that has tormented me for so long. The merciful Shattered Star has promised to guide not only me, but every last person in Belkain, to Babylon...!]

No.

Yuto's eyes shook violently. He foresaw a horrific destruction he never wanted to accept, and prayed desperately that he was wrong.

[Belkain is a utopia reached by casting off one's flesh in Callisto and ascending as a soul alone. To go to Babylon, one must first die in Callisto.]

[I am the king of Belkain, and I hold the lives of all its people in my hands. If I, their king, give the order, my people are executed.]

[Would guiding my people, who are slaughtered at the constellations' whims, to their true sanctuary of Babylon not be the final mercy and grace a king can bestow?]

"Please."

Yuto bit down hard on his lip. The corners of his wide-open eyes split, and bloody tears streamed down.

[I have decided to become a savior. As king of Belkain, I offer the lives of all my people. Thus, I shall raise them all to paradise. It is perfect. There is no need to live in this world filled with nothing but suffering and despair. Ascending to Babylon together, forgetting every agony of Callisto, and knowing only happiness—that is true salvation.]

Bloody tears pooling in his eyes, Yuto turned the page. The diary's paper felt damp and crumpled beneath his fingertips. The handwriting was so unsteady that the sentences were difficult to decipher, and tear stains dotted the page.

[It was all a lie.]

The words that followed were no longer full of hopeful elation.

[Purple mist is engulfing the capital. Lightning seethes in the sky.]

[The Shattered Star spoke. Babylon is no heaven. The souls of the people who will die today will not ascend. None of those souls will journey to a radiant paradise. They will remain upon this land as restless spirits, suffering for all eternity.]

[My people will not be saved. The Shattered Star laughed at me. Tonight, all my people will die, and Belkain will fall.]

[Humans release aether of the greatest purity at the moment of death. The more agonizing, painful, and sudden the death, the more explosively the quantity of aether increases.]

[The empty shells of their bodies remain upon this earth, becoming a curse and a poison that contaminates the land. Denied even the chance to pass on, their souls will remain here, screaming in agony forever.]

[The people I loved, those who were like my own children, are trapped in an unending hell because of me!]

[Ah, my wife! Where are you? Does Babylon truly exist? I cannot go to Babylon. None of my people can go to Babylon. This horrifically foolish king has destroyed Belkain with his own hands!]

[The Shattered Star mocks my loneliness. He used me to make a sacrifice of all Belkain, and tonight he reaps the harvest.]

[I am no savior. I am a butcher who has thrust every one of my people into eternal hell. I am no king. I am a madman who slaughtered his entire homeland to fill the constellations' bellies.]

The final page of the diary was so mangled that it had almost lost its shape. Written there was one last confession that would plunge Yuto deeper into despair.

[If, if only I had had a single son. If only I had had a son like that bright child I once saw in a dream.]

[If only there had been a single soul of my own blood to clutch at my clothes and bring me to my senses when, devoured by terrible loneliness, I was about to make an insane decision. Would I have made this choice?]

[O God, why did You not grant me even a single son?]

"Ah... aaah..."

The golden diary slipped limply from Yuto's hands. Clutching his chest, he sank to the floor.

Belkain's destruction. The eternal suffering of its people. His kind father transformed into a crazed butcher. The root cause of every one of these tragedies was none other than the absence of a son.

Because the person called Yuto had not existed in this world, his father had been lonely. Driven mad by that loneliness and blinded by a constellation's whispers, the king had laid his entire nation upon the altar. His father's touch, so warm in Yuto's previous life, had become the cruelest blade of all in this one, destroying his homeland.

'Because of me... Was it because of me? Because I wasn't here, all of it, all of it was because of me...?'

The entirety of Yuto's eyes began to turn the pitch-black of the abyss. He had never wished to regress like this. None of this could possibly be called his fault.

But now, he could not think so dispassionately. He gasped for breath, clutching his chest. Guilt shook his mind.

"Aaaaaah...!"

An anguished scream rang out. The darkness of the Void pouring from Yuto swelled, bearing down upon the entire room. Pitch-black darkness swallowed everything, and dozens of hands formed by Void Touch erupted from the floor.

Those hands seized Yuto himself. They looked almost as though they were restraining him, preventing him from going on a mindless rampage. Held by dozens of hands, he fell to his knees.

"Y-Yuto...?!"

Levian, who had been watching him read the diary from a distance, screamed in terror. Flokai rushed toward him in alarm, but the Void's darkness pouring from Yuto became a solid wall, blocking his approach.

"Ugh... uuurgh...!"

A beastlike groan escaped Yuto's mouth. The dozens of Void Touch hands rising at his feet still held his limbs tightly bound.

'My father broke because I was never born. Belkain was slaughtered because I didn't exist. Because I wasn't here... this entire hell came to be...'

That cruel chain of cause and effect slashed his heart to pieces. Yuto could not possibly accept that the miracle of regression had, in truth, been the cruelest trigger of Belkain's destruction.

"Yuto! Come to your senses! Please!"

Levian's tearful cries from beyond the wall of darkness grew steadily more distant.

"Yuto! Yuto! What's wrong with you?!"

Flokai's cries receded as well. Yuto's vision flashed red, then sank into pitch-black darkness. A bitter chill penetrated deep into his lungs, and his consciousness plummeted into an abyss so deep that he could not even scream.

"Poor thing."

Every other voice sounded far away, but this one sounded very close.

The girl.

The girl who had introduced herself as the Void's agent was suddenly standing a short distance from Yuto. Alone in the darkness, she slowly approached him.

"Ah... aah..."

Curled up on the floor, clutching his chest, Yuto barely managed to lift his head to look at her. She approached, crouched down, and met his gaze. Her eyes were as unreadable as they had been the last time—but when she reached out and touched his cheek, her hand felt strangely cool and gentle.

"None of this is your fault," the girl whispered.

"You did not choose not to exist. It was not your absence that drove your father mad, but the cruelty of the constellations who mocked and exploited a man's loneliness."

"If I... if I had been at my father's side..."

"Yuto, open your eyes. Do not let yourself be devoured by the guilt the ghosts of the past show you. Do not try to erase yourself. It is true that you did not exist in this world at first, but you exist now."

The hand caressing his cheek moved down. She laid it over his hand as he clutched his chest.

"What dwells within your heart? What did you return for?"

"I... I..."

"Your task is not to punish yourself. Those who deceived your homeland and brought your father to ruin. The beings who destroyed your life—what did you swear you would do to them?"

The moment he heard those words, the guilt and despair crushing Yuto scattered. He saw the resolve he had engraved deep within his soul.

"... Revenge."

Yuto answered, clenching his fists.