Ever since she recognized Shanks, Uta had barely been able to think straight.
Shanks's face looked more weathered than she remembered.
Beneath that seemingly composed, heartened expression lay words left unspoken... and a deeply buried look that resembled pity.
Uta had always been sensitive to emotions. Now, with considerably more experience, she had encountered all sorts of people face-to-face.
Fragmented clues and memories surfaced in her mind like flashbacks.
The flames towering over Elegia seven years ago...
-Why... why was he looking at me like that...?
-Why wouldn't he defend himself...?
-Elegia... it wasn't me...
-He used me!?
-But...
The violent conflict within her suddenly broke the shackles around a fragment of memory, one she had deeply repressed and Gordon and Shanks had carefully concealed.
An ominous melody...
An enormous, distorted figure with a crazed smile.
A ruined city...
The Red Hair Pirates... fighting back.
-It... it was me...?
Uta abruptly raised her head, her face white as paper, her pupils contracting in utter terror.
The fragments flashing through her mind threatened to burst through her instinctive defenses like a dam on the verge of collapse.
The truth brought no release. Deeper, darker despair and self-loathing spread through her like sludge.
-I... destroyed everything?
-I was the killer...
Overwhelming guilt, the bewilderment of being deceived, and complete rejection of herself swallowed Uta like a mire.
At that moment, her mental defenses collapsed completely, leaving a gaping breach.
The will from that forbidden score, which had always whispered deep within her consciousness...
The Demon King of Songs, Tot Musica, seemed ready to seize her by the throat.
-I mustn't sing-!-I mustn't sing-!
-I mustn't sing-!-I mustn't sing-!
-I mustn't sing-!!!
-If... it happened again... I...
"-Aaaaaah-!!!"
She couldn't hold it in anymore...
Uta let out a hysterical scream unlike anything she