No death throes could be heard from the distortions as they faded from this world, but invisible shock waves could be felt in the air.
Blood spurted from the wound. Pyrovault was following the distortions to the grave. Perhaps unsurprisingly, he began to laugh.
The large man thudded noisily to the floor. Karamori collapsed face first at the same time.
Silence befell the ruins of the workshop. The only sounds were the echoes of the violent battle and the heavy panting of its participants. The respiration of one of them—Pyrovault—was growing steadily weaker.
A rapidly expanding puddle of blood formed around him. As it expanded, his breathing grew weaker.
Karamori, unable to lift his head, heard a whisper in his ear.
“That was…magnificent…”
He couldn’t see the man’s face. But he knew that he was smiling.
With those last words, Pyrovault’s breathing fell silent.
“Is it…over?” Fujinaka muttered.
Just how long had passed since the fight ended? It had probably only been a brief moment, but the sudden silence had messed with her perception of time.
The tension of the fight had dissipated, leaving Fujinaka feeling half dazed. She didn’t seem to share Archive’s injuries, and fortunately, her own were shallow.
She saw Karamori stir across the room and rushed to him.
“Karamori! Are you okay?!” she asked.
His wounds were terrible. His full-body suit had been slashed and torn all over his body, and open flesh was visible through the gaps. His feet were so gruesome she couldn’t look at them. The floor around them was stained with fresh blood.
Yet, somehow, he was alive. His breathing was weak but stabilizing, and while he looked so disoriented he could barely open his eyes, he was clearly gazing up at the sky.
Fujinaka searched for the right thing to say, but Karamori interrupted her by pointing weakly to their right.
“Huh…?”
“I’m…fine… You should…still have time…”
He was pointing to a corner of the collapsed workshop that was just barely not caught up in the fighting. Asahi Fujinaka was lying there face down in his own blood.
Fujinaka gasped.
“Dad!” she cried, sprinting toward him.
Asahi Fujinaka’s eye was hollow. His blood, which continued to spill unimpeded, had stained his clothes dark red. He was still breathing, but only very weakly.
When Fujinaka reached him, his unfocused eye turned toward her.
“Hitsugi…”
“Dad! Why? Why did you do all this?!”
Fujinaka frantically searched his body for the source of the bleeding, but his clothes were so drenched that she couldn’t find it. She was at a loss for what to do.
Her father just smiled weakly.
“Ha-ha… Is this…divine punishment…? I suppose this is…a fitting end…for a madman…”
“A-a madman…?”
“That’s right… I…did you a terrible wrong, my dear. I caused…so much pain…for so many people. Even knowing that…I couldn’t contain myself… What am I…if not mad?”
His eye opened and closed sleepily. Tears welled in Fujinaka’s own eyes as she watched him.
“Dad… You can’t die! You have to hang on!” she cried.
All the questions she wanted to ask about why he made her and the motives for his actions had vanished from her mind. She was just a girl who didn’t want to lose her father.
Her tears began to fall. Asahi Fujinaka’s eye opened slightly at the sight.
“Why…are you crying? I was…a terrible…father…”
“I don’t know!”
Fujinaka desperately tried to wipe the tears away, but they just kept coming. There was no stopping them.
“I—I don’t understand it either! D-didn’t you…make me to love you no matter what?!” she asked, the words spilling out of her mouth. That was the biggest doubt that had been haunting her over the last few days.
Asahi Fujinaka looked directly into her eyes.
“Absolutely not. I would never make a daughter who has no choice but to love and obey me. I swear it on my life!”
He declared that with enough clarity to momentarily ward off his looming death. The force of his tone made him cough up blood and pushed more blood out of his wound, but he didn’t seem to care.
Asahi Fujinaka looked around the room.
“Ahhh… Look at all this, Hitsugi… Look at all my inventions…”
He pointed weakly at nothing.
“This is the…Mind Anchor. It has the ability…to reproduce any phenomena that it remembers… So I had it record the capability of a vanit…that could spawn slashes in the air…and made it into a weapon.”
He spoke joyfully, but his eye was vacant. His life was slipping away with each word.
Fujinaka nodded as he spoke, tears continuing to fall.
“That ring…is called the Infection Stone… It’s made from a stone…that turns anyone who stares at it for too long…into a gemstone… And a metal vanit…that traps a person’s gaze…if they catch a glimpse of it…”
Asahi Fujinaka’s smile vanished. He stopped talking.
“Dad?”
“Oh, God… All my proud inventions…are worthless… All my effort…was for nothing… It’s no wonder I was killed…”
His one eye made a lap of the room.
“Huh…? Hitsugi? Where did you go?”
“I’m here! I’m right here, Dad! I didn’t go anywhere!”
Fujinaka grabbed his shoulders and leaned her face into his. It didn’t seem like her father heard her voice or felt her touch.
But he was smiling.
“Oh. She’s not here… That’s…good,” he said, smiling softly. There was relief in his voice.
With those final words, Asahi Fujinaka gently closed his eye.
Fujinaka wailed, fat tears cascading down her face.