...

  I woke up, my eyes snapping wide open, only to find myself standing on an endless white path path that stretched into infinity, leading into nothingness and beyond.

  I looked around, w if I was still dreaming or if this was somehow real. Everything seemed to blur together in the endless, infinite expahat stretched out before me.

  I frowned, looking down at my arms, at the mangled and bloody mess they were supposed to be, and then at my legs.

  Spotless. My transformed dress ristine, and my skin was hairless and smooth.

  I sighed, rubbing my eyes, and turned around, taking in my surroundings.

  Then, I pinched myself. Hard.

  "Ouch," I muttered to myself.

  Okay. Not dreaming then.

  Maybe?

  The world around me seemed to ripple and distort as I looked at it. It was as if reality itself was bending uhe weight of some unseen force that I could not see nor prehend, and that thought terrified me..

  The pce felt real enough to me.

  But it was so quiet here. So still. So... empty. Like all the color and life had been drained out from existeself. There was nothing but the endless void and me, floating along this endless white path like a lost soul.

  I sighed and started to walk, following the path wherever it would take me.

  "Hello?" I called out. "Is ahere?"

  My voice echoed through the vast expanse of space, like it was boung off ent walls. I waited for a reply, but none came.

  "Hello?" I tried again. " anybody hear me?"

  The only respohat I received was silehe sound of my owhing reverberated through the air, but there were no signs of life.

  Was I... Dead?

  Was this limbo?

  No... that didn't seem right. There was something wrong here.

  I tio wander forward through the strange, alien ndscape, taking ihing around me as I went.

  "Nen, nen korori yo, Okorori yo..." a soft, hauntingly beautiful voice suddenly sang from the distance, a voice that felt as old and distant as time itself.

  It was a familiar voice, but one I couldn't pce. It was the kind of voice that could make you feel safe, or scared depending on the mood of the singer.

  "Hello? Is somebody there?!"

  I paused for a sed, w where I had heard the voice from before. The lulby sounded like something from a memory long fotten. It felt... familiar somehow. It felt f, almost like home.

  It sounded so sad and so distant.

  "Hello? Please, anyone hear me?" I yelled, my voice crag as my throat dried.

  I couldn't see anything. Everything was blurring together and fading away into nothing. It felt like I had been walking forever, but I could still feel the path beh my feet, even though it was barely visible now. The white path that I had followed was growing fainter and fainter as time passed.

  I looked down at my hands and stared at the smooth, , pale skin of my palms, as if trying to find some kind of sign that everything was going to be alright, that this wasn't all some sort of crazy dream or halluatiht on by my death.

  "Please... Somebody..." I whispered, my voice shaking. "Please..."

  "Bouya wa yoi koda, Nenneshina..."

  And the world shook.

  I fell onto my knees as the path shook and trembled around me, cracks f on the surface. I screamed, scrambling bay feet, trying to keep my bance. I tried to run, but my legs refused to move, and the world around me began to crumble, falling into pieces all around me.

  The world shattered intments, like a gss that had been thrown against the ground. Everything became a kaleidoscope of colors, spinning around and around me, swirling faster and faster. A maelstrom of broken shards that threateo e everything that was left of this strahereal pce, leaving only a void in its pce.

  "Is a there?! Please, help!" I screamed, clutg at my head.

  The colors swirled around me, blindih their brightness. They twisted and turned and spun in circles, and the entire universe shattered into millions upon billions of pieces, leaving only the void of oblivion behind.

  "Help me!" I screamed again, but there was no oo answer me. I could hear my own voice eg in my ears, my words being lost amongst the deafening silehat surrounded me.

  The colors tio swirl, and I watched as they broke apart and reassembled into nees. They formed patterns and designs, swirling in circles, f lines and shapes that were impossible for my mind to prehend. I watched in horror as they twisted and turned, merging and splitting, creating aroying each other as they swirled in an endless cycle.

  The colors began to take shape, and they formed an intricate mosaic that seemed to be telling a story. I watched as the patterns and images slowly became reizable to me, and they started to tell me a story that was beyond anything that I had ever seen or imagined before.

  A story about the creation of a universe.

  "Bouya no omori wa Doko-e itta..." The singing tio grow louder, as the entire universe exploded ience, expanding outwards from the epiter where I was, like an explosion of light that pierced the darkness of existeself.

  And then it stopped all at once, coalesg into a room as if nothing had happe all.

  I stood on a baly that overlooked an endless field e wheat, swaying in a warm, gentle breeze that blew through my hair. The sky above me was a deep violet, the stars twinkling in an array of different hues, each twinkling and shining brighter than any other star I had seen iy. It looked like an artist's rendition of the milky way and gaxies beyond, even.

  But the stra part was that the sun was high up in the air in twilight, like it was te iernoon but not quite su.

  I turo face the voice.

  A woman sat in the room behind me, swaying bad forth in a rog chair. The room retty pin, and reminded me of a barebones dorm room in Kaleidoscope Academy.

  The woman, however, was one of the most hauntingly beautiful people I'd ever seen in my life, and I found my eyes drawn towards her.

  Her long, pitch bck hair flowed in the wind from the window, and her face was covered with a veil of pure white. She was wearing an e suhat matched the fields outside, and a straw hat rested atop her head. If I had to guess her age, she looked like she was somewhere in her early to mid twenties.

  She was singing, and she was g, swaying bad forth in a rog chair. Her eyes glowed e like the sun itself as she looked down at the book she held, trag her finger along the pages of the old leather bound book as she sang the mencholic lulby. "Ano yama koete, sato e itta..."

  Her aura radiated sadness, loneliness, and loss, a feeling of grief that made me want to cry.

  I couldn't bring myself to speak as I watched her from afar, mesmerized by her beauty and her voice. She looked like she was iwenties, but she felt... a.

  I stepped forward, approag her cautiously, but she didn't notice me. Her eyes remained fixated on the book in front of her, trag along its lines. She was oblivious to everything else in the world except the story that was unfolding in her head a. A story that seemed so sad, and so lonely.

  I took aep closer, my hand reag out towards her, hoping to get her attention somehow. But I stopped myself before I reached her, afraid of what she might do if she noticed me there.

  "Again, and again have I tried, but I ot ge your fates," She murmured softly as her firaced along the lines of text, tears streaming down her face as her aura grew darker and more paihe sadness in her eyes deepening.

  I briefly hat she had a faint Japanese at, and eaking in Ameri English.

  I frowned, and decided to take a ce.

  I slowly walked towards her, clearing my throat and trying to make as muoise as possible, but she still didn't aowledge me.

  "Excuse me?" I called out. She tio ignore me.

  "Hey! you hear me?"

  No response.

  "Please!" I begged, feeling desperate now. "I need your help! Please!"

  This was... like the time in the bunker. But how did I get here? Did something in the horde mao transport me away? Where were my cssmates? Were they okay?!

  She looked up from the book she was reading and frowned, standing up from her chair. A scowl crossed her face as she stepped forward, walking across the room.

  I turned, followiride, only to realize the room was far rger than I'd first realized, filled to the brim with books.

  No, that wasn't quite accurate.

  The room looked like a regur pin modern apartment, but it was attached to an a, are-looking library plete with a glowing blue circle in the middle of a rge open area. I walked alongside her as she reached the edge of her room. The modern, stone floor seemed to blend seamlessly into a oakwood. I looked up, marveling at rows upon rows of long, tinuous bookshelves that lined every inch of wall space, stretg upwards into infinity in a spiraling pattern.

  Each bookshelf held millions upon millions of books, all ly arranged and anized acc to some unknown order that made no seo me.

  The woman's room looked almost unnatural juxtaposed against the library it ced in. As she tio walk through the library, her face hardened as she took a deep breath.

  And then, she broke into a sprint, dashing toward the books at a breakneck speed, right arm raised as she threw a haymaker seemingly at empty air.

  ...Only to scream as she smmed hand-first into a glowing transparent gss-like wall that appeared in front of her. I could hear the crack of her wrist as it broke, the siing sound reverberating through the entire library as she cried out in pain.

  A series of thirty statues that were carved in a marble-like substaned around her, all of which radiating a glow that filled the library with a kaleidoscope of colors.

  They all looked humanoid. But beyond that. If I had to actually describe them, they looked like divine idotry, even. Pieces you'd find in a museum, spanning a wide range of cultures and art style.

  "Stupid....System! How could you all be so stupid?! Your dumb experiments won't work!" She screamed, smming her hand into the wall agaiears flowing freely now as blood trickled down from her palms. "Fuck your World System!"

  She buckled at the knees as the statues collectively drowned her with a thick, golde of energy that seemed to directly press down at her form.

  "We... 't do this forever! Don't you uand that? We 't keep doing this! We have to stop!" she cried. "We have to stop, please! You have to let me go!"

  The wall rumbled as it began to crader the force of her repeated blows, and I watched as she tio sm her fists into the glowing barrier, over and ain. She screamed and cried, her voice eg through the endless library.

  Her fists bled and her arms began to bruise and break, yet still she fought on.

  "Stupid!" She yelled. "I told you all! We're not going to make a difference if we keep doing things the way we've dohem fod knows how long! I o go back! Please, let me go!"

  Her aura radiated pain, sorrow, and grief as she tio punch at the invisible barrier, and I couldn't help but feel pity for her as she tile in vain against the wall that kept her here. The invisible barrier that held her in her cage of a room. The barrier that kept her here, locked away from whatever she was trying to reach.

  She stopped, falling to her knees as the twelve statues glowed again, their auras radiating outward in a wave of energy. They glowed sht it blinded me, and the world shook as a deafening roar reverberated through the air around us.

  A fsh of lightning streaked across the sky, followed by the crash of thunder and rain. The sted outside the walls of the library, and it shook the foundatioh my feet.

  "Screw you, Hephaestus! And screw you especially, Inanna! Using me as a fucked up battery and processor. And screw the rest of you too!" She yelled. She pu the wall one more time before colpsing to her knees i.

  "Screw... all of you... I'm... so sorry..." She sobbed quietly. "Iz...i. Ik..."

  The statues radiated power as she slumped to the floor, defeated, the wall around her crag as her blood seeped into the cracks and the air around us grew cold and silent once again.

  "I... I'll save you all... I promise..." the woman murmured as her eyes fluttered closed, the st words leaving her mouth before she fell unscious on the floor in a bloody heap.

  The glow from the statues slowly beginning to fade away along with the library, leaving nothing but an eerie void.

  The world shook, and the world around me blurred and shattered, shattering into a kaleidoscope of color.

  And suddenly, I found myself staring up straight into ed, warm and familiar brown eyes.