The white roses at the Star Ring's core withered and bloomed again. When the tenth spring arrived, Horikita Suzune stood alone on the observation deck.
In the morning light, the Nano Star Ring refracted ripples like the aurora. As the Mechanical Dolphin leaped from the Silver Sea, she heard a child's voice she hadn't heard in years:
"Mom, I'm back."
Bai Mei hovered amid the drifting motes of light, his Stardust Cloak transformed into the slender figure of a boy.
Silver starlight still swirled in his pupils, but a jagged crack now marred one fingertip—the price of rewriting the laws of the universe.
"Your hand..." Horikita touched the crack. The Nano-swarm suddenly surged, etching an identical wound into her palm.
"The Mirror Universe is calling for help," Bai Mei said, lowering his eyes. "I interfered with the fate of too many galaxies. The backlash is beginning to eat away at every timeline."
When Hirata Yosuke rushed into the laboratory, the holographic star map was flashing blood-red alerts.
The green dots representing peaceful universes winked out one after another, replaced by the all-consuming "Void Tide"—a darkness beyond the laws of physics, now creeping backward along the paths of Bai Mei's interventions.
"The causal chain is collapsing!" Fine cracks spread across Kei's Mechanical Heart. "Every time he saves one universe, he must destroy the causal balance of another..."
Horikita clutched the white rose at her chest. Pain flared where her Bio-chip connected with her plant nerves.
Among the fragments of memory she had sacrificed ten years ago, the final moment before Kiyotaka vanished came back to her: he hadn't willingly become the Star Ring Protocol. Tsukishiro had forcibly elevated him to a higher dimension by implanting the "Law of Equilibrium."
"Find Tsukishiro's original laboratory." She severed her neural link to the Star Ring. "The method to stop the backlash must be hidden there!"
After passing through a quantum vortex beneath the Silver Sea, the three entered the "Forbidden Corridor" Mirror Horikita had once mentioned.
Time twisted into spirals here. Portraits of Kiyotaka at different ages lined the walls—from a dying old man to an embryo. Beneath each portrait was a label: "Test Subject γ-419 through γ-999."
"Tsukishiro was even crazier than we thought," Hirata said as his bionic eye scanned the horrifying data. "He conducted cloning experiments across every timeline at once. These γ-series are vessels designed specifically to contain the 'Law of Equilibrium'!"
Bai Mei suddenly dropped to his knees, gasping. The cracks on his Stardust Cloak spread to his neck. As Horikita caught him, a hidden portrait appeared on its own: Kiyotaka was nailed to a cross, a Stardust Dagger of the same origin as Bai Mei's plunged into his chest.
"Find... my origin..." Bai Mei's pupils began turning into data. "γ-000 is..."
The floor collapsed with a roar, and they plunged into a pure white space. A crystal coffin floated at its center. Inside lay a boy with Bai Mei's face, his whole body bound in black chains—the Causal Entropy Entity behind every timeline.
"Welcome to my prison." The boy in the coffin opened his pupil-less eyes. "I'm γ-000, a shackle forged by Tsukishiro from the entropy of ten thousand universes."
The rose emblem on Horikita's chest burned with pain. She suddenly understood: Bai Mei wasn't the inheritor of Kiyotaka's humanity. He was the "lock core" Tsukishiro had created to imprison γ-000.
Every time Bai Mei altered the laws of a universe, γ-000's chains loosened a little—until the Void Tide swallowed everything.
"Kill me," γ-000 said, his voice as hollow as an abyss, "or watch every timeline return to zero."
Bai Mei raised the Stardust Dagger, but couldn't bring himself to strike. Horikita took his hand. Her Bio-chip resonated with the stardust energy. "There's a third choice—"
She plunged the dagger into her own chest.
Rose and stardust mingled in the blood, while Horikita's memories became billions of threads of light that wound around γ-000.
The cracks in Bai Mei's body quickly healed, while the chains binding the boy in the coffin snapped one by one. Each link turned to stardust, filling the universes devoured by the Void Tide.
"Are you insane?" γ-000's body grew increasingly transparent. "If you replace the law of entropy with your own consciousness, you'll be trapped forever..."
"Then let me be trapped," Horikita said with a smile as she began to fade. "That's better than letting my child bear the sin of deicide."
Bai Mei roared and seized the last thread of light. His Stardust Cloak wrapped around Horikita's fading spirit. γ-000's chains shattered completely, and the Void Tide receded. The price came into clear view—
Horikita's body turned into a crystal statue, forever standing guard at the entrance to the Cage of Entropy.
Ten years later
Bai Mei knelt before the statue, the Stardust Dagger plunged into his chest. Blood seeped into the cracks in the ground, where blue roses bloomed in a spreading carpet.
Hirata's observation logs showed that the Void Tide across all universes had turned into the "Sea of Genesis." Yet every year, a crystal petal fell from the fingertip of one statue.
"Mom is watching us from beyond time." He picked up a child from the new generation. "When the flowers bloom again, I'll take you to see her."
In the depths of the sea of stars, Horikita's spirit gently touched a rose. Countless paths of light stretched out beneath her feet, each leading to the dawn of a different universe.
And on the darkest path of all, Kiyotaka's shadow waited with a lantern in hand:
"It's time to go, partner."
"This time, I'll be the one to light the way to humanity."
Before you continue