Chapter Text
The air on the second floor of the Pleiades Watchtower, Electra, did not feel like air at all.
It felt like cold, crushed stone, thick with the scent of dried blood and old worn down iron.
Subaru Natsuki stood with his back pressed flat against the massive stone door of the trial chamber.
His hands were clawed behind him, fingers digging desperately into the ancient grooves of the masonry, trying to find purchase against a reality that was actively tearing his mind apart.
He was shaking. It wasn't the rhythmic shivering of a man caught in a desert chill, it was a violent, erratic tremor that started in his knees and rattled all the way up to his jaw.
His eyes, naturally sharp and inherently mean-looking, were bloodshot and wide, tracking movements that nobody else in the room could see.
Because three minutes ago, in a world that had already been erased, he had watched Reid Astrea slice Julius Juukulius into neat, unrecognizable ribbons with nothing more than a wooden chopstick.
He had watched Beatrice’s small, fragile frame burst into glittering, useless mana fragments as she tried to shield his retreat.
He had felt the sticky, hot rush of Emilia’s blood across his own face before that brute of a man brought his chopsticks upon Subaru's head too.
Return by Death had thrown him back to the stairs just outside the trial door.
The transition had been so fast, so seamless, that his body still registered the phantom pain of a crushed skull.
"Subaru?"The voice was soft, melodic, and entirely too innocent for the slaughterhouse Subaru was currently trapped in.
Emilia stepped forward, her silver hair catching the dim, magical light of the tower's corridor.
Her amethyst eyes were clouded with deep concern, her hands half-raised in a gesture of gentle comfort.
She looked so perfectly whole.
There was no blood on her white and purple dress.
Her throat was intact.
Her chest rose and fell with a steady, rhythmic breath that Subaru found himself desperately trying to mimic, only to choke on his own saliva that grew more and more dry by the second .
"Subaru, you're... you're acting very strange," Emilia said, her voice dropping an octave as she took another hesitant step.
"You just ran up the stairs and threw yourself against the door. Are you hurt? Did something happen in the Green Room?"
"Don't touch the door," Subaru croaked.
The sound that came out of him was disgusting-a wet, desperate rasp that sounded like a dying animal trying to bark.
He swallowed hard, his vocal cords screaming.
"Nobody touches the handle. Nobody goes inside. We're turning back. Right now. We are going back down to Alcyone."
Behind Emilia, Julius Juukulius narrowed his yellow eyes.
The Greatest Knight stood with his hand resting naturally on the hilt of his sword, his posture immaculate despite the grueling trek through the Augria Sand Dunes.
He looked at Subaru not with malice, but with the cold, evaluating scrutiny of a military commander watching a soldier lose his mind on the front lines.
"Subaru, my friend, your demands are lacking in both logic and explanation," Julius said, his voice smooth, measured, and entirely unbothered by the cosmic horror anchoring Subaru to the stone floor.
"We have spent weeks crossing the Sand Time barrier. We have evaded the primary swarm of Mabeasts. We are standing on the threshold of the second trial, the very key to unlocking the Sage's hidden knowledge so we might save those who have been hollowed out by Gluttony. To turn back now, without a single strike delivered, is a cowardice I know you are not capable of. What did you see?"
"I didn't see anything! I just know!" Subaru screamed.
The volume of his own voice made him flinch.
He pressed his head back against the stone door, the cold surface offering zero comfort to the wildfire raging in his skull.
"I know what's behind there! You think you're ready for an epic fantasy? You think you're knights and heroes going to pass a test? It’s a meat grinder, Julius! It’s a literal slaughterhouse! If you open this door, you die! She dies! We all die, and I—"He stopped.
The air in his lungs instantaneously froze.
A familiar, icy grip tightened around his heart. The invisible, shadowy fingers of the Witch of Envy slid out from the dark corners of his soul, wrapping around his chest like cold barbed wire.
The stench of miasma—thick, rotten, and sweet—flooded his senses, drowning out the smell of dust and iron.
“If you tell them... I will take her,” the silence whispered in his mind.
Subaru’s jaw clamped shut so hard his teeth clicked.
A single drop of blood trickled from his lip where he had bitten down to keep from screaming the forbidden truth.
He couldn't say it.
He could never say it.
He was trapped behind a transparent wall of absolute isolation, watching the people he loved walk toward an open grave while he was legally forbidden from shouting a warning.
"Subaru..."A small, warm weight attached itself to his coat.
Beatrice stood at his side, her distinct, butterfly-patterned eyes wide with a mixture of fear and profound confusion.
Her small fingers clutched the fabric of his sleeve, her drill-tails swaying slightly as she leaned her forehead against his arm.
"You are shaking terribly, I suppose," Beatrice murmured, her voice laced with a rare vulnerability.
"My contract allows me to feel the turbulence in your gate. It is... it is completely chaotic, Betty thinks. You are terrified. But you must trust us. You have Betty. You have the half-elf girl. You have the knight. We are not weak, I suppose."
"Betty, please," Subaru whispered, his voice cracking as he looked down at the spirit who had promised to stand by him until his final breath.
He wanted to lift his arm and scoop her up, to hold her tight and run down the stairs until the tower was nothing but a speck on the desert horizon.
But he couldn't move.
If he stepped away from the door, Julius would push past him.
"Please, just this once. Don't ask me why. Just trust me. We need to leave. We need to abandon the tower."
"Abandon the tower?" The words came from Emilia. They weren't spoken in anger. They were spoken with a heavy, profound disappointment that cut through Subaru’s mania cleaner than any blade Julius possessed.
Emilia walked closer, stopping just a foot away from him. The light from the corridor illuminated the subtle lines of exhaustion on her face—the strain under her eyes, the slight tension in her jaw.
She had been carrying the weight of an entire kingdom’s hatred on her shoulders for over a year, and she had come to this desert looking for an answer, a cure, a way to make things right. To prove to the people of the kingdom that she is not a monster, and that she deserves to be a ruler, just as much as the other candidates.
"Subaru, look at me," Emilia commanded softly.
He didn't want to.
He tried to look at the ceiling, at the floor, at the dust motes dancing in the air.
But her amethyst eyes caught his, forcing him to ground himself in her presence.
"We are a team," Emilia said, her fingers interlacing in front of her chest.
"When we left the mansion, you told me that we would face whatever came together. You told me that I didn't have to carry the burden of the Royal Selection alone. But ever since we arrived at this tower, you've been... you've been keeping secrets again. You look at us like you're waiting for us to break. You treat us like we are made of glass."
"You are made of glass!" Subaru roared, his voice cracking under the weight of his unshared trauma.
"You have no idea how easily you break! You have no idea how many times I've had to watch the pieces scatter across the floor!"
Julius stepped into the space between them, his hand leaving his sword but his expression hardening into something deeply stern.
"Subaru, that is enough. Your words cross the line from caution into outright insult. Lady Emilia is a candidate for the throne of Lugnica. I am a knight of the realm. We are not children to be sheltered by your unexplainable paranoia. If there is a threat behind this door, we face it as a cohesive unit. We draft a strategy. We share data."
"I can't share the data!" Subaru screamed, tears of sheer frustration finally spilling over his eyelids, hot and burning against his grime-streaked cheeks.
"Don't you get it? I can't tell you! I want to! God, I want to tell you everything! I want to tell you how it feels to watch you die! I want to tell you how many times I've smelled your blood! But every time I try, the universe tries to tear my heart out of my chest!"
Julius frowned, his yellow eyes tracking the sheer, unadulterated madness in Subaru’s expression.
To Julius, there was no logical framework for Subaru's words. There was no spell, no Divine Protection, no curse known to Lugnica that functioned on the parameters Subaru was hinting at.
All Julius saw was a young man succumbing to the crushing psychological pressure of the Augria Sand Dunes—a non-combatant completely breaking down under the stress of an ancient, cursed watchtower.
"Your mind is unwell due to the misama, my friend," Julius said softly, his tone shifting from authority to a profound, pitying sorrow.
"The miasma of this place affects us all, but it seems to have taken a specific hold on your anxieties. Step away from the door. Let us take the burden for a moment. Rest in the Green Room with Rem."
"No..." Subaru whimpered. He looked at Julius. The man who had beaten him in the capital, the man who had become his closest ally, the man who had forgotten his own name because of Gluttony but still stood like an unyielding wall of chivalry.
Julius didn't understand.
Julius couldn't understand.
To Julius, a knight’s duty was to face the trial and overcome it through martial prowess and tactical genius.
To Julius, this was an epic fantasy.
To Subaru, this was a psychological horror movie where every save point was bought with the currency of his own agony.
"Subaru," Emilia said again.
She didn't look angry.
She looked incredibly tired.
She reached out, her cool, pale fingers gently brushing against his trembling wrist.
Subaru didn't pull away, but he didn't lean into the touch either.
His body felt completely numb.
"When you do this," Emilia whispered, her eyes shining with unshed tears, "when you scream at us, when you block the path and refuse to let us help you, it doesn't make me feel protected, Subaru."
Subaru's breath hitched. "Emilia...?"
"It feels suffocating," she said.
The word dropped into the quiet corridor like a heavy block of iron.
Suffocating.
Subaru’s world instantly stopped spinning.
The manic energy that had been keeping his knees locked, the frantic urge to scream, the desperate desire to pull them away from the brink of death—all of it evaporated in a single, silent second.
Suffocating.
Every single loop.
Every single time he had thrown himself onto a knife, jumped from a cliff, or let a Mabeast tear his stomach open just so he could reset the world and see her smile again.
Every single night he had lain awake in the dark, clutching his own chest, silently screaming into the void because he was completely alone in his memories.
He had endured the physical and psychological mutilation of a hundred lifetimes just to keep her world clean, innocent, and whole.
And to her, his ultimate sacrifice felt like an anchor dragging her down. It felt like an annoyance.
It felt like a lack of trust.
"Ah," Subaru said.
The sound was completely flat.
The tremor in his hands stopped.
His fingers relaxed, slipping away from the ancient stone grooves of the Electra door.
His shoulders, which had been hunched and tense for as long as he could remember, dropped into a heavy, loose posture.
The frantic, desperate "Hero" who had stormed out of the capital to save the world died right there in the dark stone corridor of the watchtower.
The man who was left was just tired.
He was so, so tired.
"Subaru?" Beatrice looked up, her expression shifting from confusion to a sudden, sharp panic.
The bond between them—the contract that usually thrummed with his chaotic, fiery emotions—had suddenly gone completely cold.
It felt like reaching into a warm stove and finding nothing but grey, dead ash.
"Subaru, what is... what is wrong, I suppose? Answer Betty!"
Subaru didn't look at Beatrice.
He didn't look at Julius.
He kept his eyes locked on Emilia’s face, tracing the beautiful, half-elf features he had literally died for dozens of times.
He didn't see a goddess anymore.
He didn't see the center of his universe.
He just saw a girl who wanted to play a game he could no longer afford to fund with his own blood.
"You're right," Subaru said.
His voice was completely steady now, devoid of any anger, madness, or fear. It was the voice of a man reading a weather report.
"I'm sorry, Emilia. I've been making things very difficult for you."
"Subaru, I didn't mean it like—" Emilia started, her face flushing with instant regret as she realized how deeply her words had cut.
She reached for him, but for the first time in their entire journey, Subaru smoothly, quietly stepped to the side, evading her touch entirely.
He cleared the path to the door.
"Go ahead," Subaru said, gesturing toward the massive stone handle with a polite, empty wave of his hand.
"The trial is inside. If you think you can pass it, then by all means, go through. I won't stop you anymore. I won't hold you back."
Julius let out a slow, cautious breath, looking between Subaru’s dead eyes and the open doorway.
"Subaru... are you certain?"
"Completely," Subaru replied, his face an unreadable mask of absolute apathy.
"I'll be downstairs. Take all the time you need."
He didn't wait for a response.
He turned his back on the trial door, on the Greatest Knight, and on the silver-haired girl who had been his entire reason for living.
He walked down the stone stairs, his footsteps echoing in the quiet of Electra, steady, rhythmic, and completely unhurried.
He didn't look back once.