The Seventy-Second Section · Following the Winds of the Past
The distant past.
On a moonless night.
In the darkness, a Sarkaz woman with flaming hair slowly opened her eyes.
She reached out, searching for the only light beside her. Her movements were clumsy and stiff. After several failed attempts, the sword flew into her hand of its own accord.
"Laevateinn," she whispered. She hugged the sword tightly.
"—What happened, Surtr?"
"—Did you escape from a terrible dream world?"
The girl did not answer. She only trembled lightly, breathing in and out as her pounding heart showed no sign of calming.
Only several minutes later did she finally hum a soft whisper through her nose.
"Mm. It was terrible. A terrifying dream world. It was a world I had some impression of from my past life. It was... Blade of the Immortal."
Blade of the Immortal, a dark world. A world she had once told Laevateinn about.
"—...That really was an extraordinary dream. Surtr, did you escape from it?"
The sword might have wanted to comfort her, but the girl only shook her head slowly.
"No, I won." The girl spoke softly. "I won in the end. I descended deep into hell, crossed the corpses of the five Hands of God, and faced the bottom of the abyss formed from all of humanity's evil thoughts over countless years. Then I... burned the abyss."
She seemed to have returned to that moment, to the end of the war she had single-handedly unleashed—using the hopes of all people who yearned for peace as kindling. Fiery rain fell from the heavens, plunging straight into the end of the eternal night.
All people suffered.
And in that special world, all suffering had been transformed through countless years of prayers and curses into the source