That ancient figure stood up, and the black night bore down with a rumble.
"Just like you, back then I kept wondering whether I should give up, whether I should compromise. If becoming Finality was my destiny, why should I resist? But later, I understood. That was a world my companions and I had built together. I didn't want to stand by and watch everything we'd achieved together be so easily destroyed."
"And perhaps it was that obsession that gave me a chance to awaken again at the moment I became Finality."
He turned his head and glanced sideways at Lynn.
"Child."
"Once we reach this stage, that stubborn resolve is all that can keep us alive. If this world is a dream to begin with, then even if it dissolves into nothingness, it is still a dream in the end."
"And a dream can always be changed."
He turned, step by step, and walked toward the distant darkness.
For one fleeting instant, Lynn seemed to grasp something through his daze. He abruptly raised his head, his pupils widening sharply, as though countless fine droplets of rain had swept through his eyes.
He scrambled up and gazed, trembling, toward the direction in which the figure had gone.
"But what did you leave behind?! What exactly did you leave... for the future?!"
The figure stopped.
"I left you all."
In an instant, his receding figure turned into countless golden pages. They fluttered across the entire pitch-black night sky, like an immense library, like the accumulated record of an entire life.
Only then did Lynn understand that he had been speaking to his memories all along.
Because he refused to die.
Because there were still so many things left unfinished.
He stood with his head lowered amid those countless fluttering pages, beneath