1

Guren Izaya's heart skipped a beat every time he made a leap of faith, and he just finished jumping off the rocks that connected the floating islands.

One more jump, and...

He took it, landed awkwardly, and started flailing. Thankfully, a hand reached out and pulled him up by the arm.

"You okay? That was close," sighed a paler than usual Miyuko.

Still reeling from his heavily pounding heart, Guren exhaled and gathered himself. "Yeah, I'm fine."

"Don't push yourself. We'll get to Kiyone, one island at a time."

She lightly tapped him on his back, and her reassuring smile put Guren's thoughts at ease.

Deep inside, Guren felt inadequate. It was he who wanted to save Kiyone so desperately, but when push came to shove, he was nothing more than a bystander.

He stood back when Miyuko was blasting those shadowy monsters away, and he was the one who keep needing to be saved.

Those thoughts hung around his mind while he followed his companion's confident strut.

How could she be so confident?

It amazed him.

While he had those thoughts of awe and wonder ever since they woke up in this world, the whole trek through Babel made him look up to her even more.

Growling sounds crept up as they approached the broken down shrine on this island.

Miyuko drew her blaster, entering a defensive stance as Guren waited in anticipation.

Dark aura engulfed an arch by the shrine, and from it formed a large silhouette. He expected something humanoid, like the tiny imp-like creatures that had troubled them, yet the aura gathered near the ground.

Three strands first formed as the tails materialized, and following it, the body of a hound-like creature followed.

The beast, standing almost twice as tall as they did, snapped at the air, its three eyes aimed at them.

"Stand back, Guren. This one's a tough one."

The blaster on Miyuko's hand gathered energy before she let it loose, striking the hound square on the head. The impact, once capable of taking out those small creatures, merely caused the creature to flinch.

Now that he had more time to focus on the situation, Guren could tell what his friend was warning him about. Indeed, there was something off about this creature.

Narrowing his eyes allowed him to see some purple mist surrounding the beast. Unlike the creatures that attacked them before, looking at this monster alone gave him temporary fits of nausea.

It was if this thing exerted its own aura on the surroundings.

Letting loose a powerful snarl, the hound bounded towards them.

Left staring at the monster, Guren felt an arm pull him to the side.

He heard the sound of clothes ripping.

When he got back up to his feet, he heard the sound of Miyuko's blaster letting loose even more rounds.

"Snap out of it!" urged Miyuko, who continued firing at the monster. The shots remained ineffective, but the repeated barrage managed to stun the monster.

The smell of smoke filled his nose, and like smelling salts, it snapped him out of his daze. With his senses restored, he glanced around.

"Over there!" he said, pointing to a makeshift bridge of floating rocks at the end of the island.

Miyuko fired one last batch of energy bullets before grabbing his hand.

The blaster released a wheezing noise as Miyuko clicked her tongue.

Guren likewise gulped, knowing that Miyuko retreating without hesitation was a bad sign.

The two hurried through the rocky terrain, their shoes creaking along with the barren floor that suspended them high above the void. Guren heard a howl from behind him, and tremors started.

The ground of the floating island shook with each of the hound's powerful jumps, and it would overtake them in no time.

We're not going to make it!

All of a sudden, he felt a tighter grip on his hand, and Miyuko's force caused him to screech to a halt.

"This way!" she pointed at a fork on the road.

Feeling his entire weight being pulled by the surprising strength of the woman, he nearly stumbled down the branch path right before a powerful gust, no doubt caused by the lunging beast, blew across his back.

His legs voluntarily ran ahead in spite of how they burned with each step. His entire body knew that stopping now would mean certain death, and the same can be seen in Miyuko's body language.

"W-wait, Miyuko?" he asked out of concern. With no floating rock formations to serve as a bridge, running towards the edge of the island led to certain doom. "That's the wrong direction."

"It will overtake us if we don't do this."

As if to confirm Miyuko's words, the roar of the hound echoed behind him.

Feeling her iron grip, Guren braced himself as they approached the edge.

Fighting off the instinct to close your eyes was never easy, especially staring down a cliff.

"Ready? Jump!"

Kicking her legs off the ground, Miyuko leapt higher than Guren had ever seen her do before. Likewise, he found himself being carried by her strength as his own legs cooperated and kicked off the rocky terrain.

The two shouted as the wind battered them in their descent.

Both of them fell down with a thud after a fortunately short time airborne.

Exhausted, Guren flopped with his arms out on the ground.

"Hah... Hah... Why didn't Kiyone tell me she's friends with an action heroine? You never showed anything of the sort when we're in university."

"Hah... Trust me, that fluke sequence probably shaved ten years off my lifespan," panted Miyuko in return. "I just took a gamble on one of these moving islands. Divine intervention again? Either way, you know you can trust me with gambling."

In contrast to him, she was still on her feet, yet her arms idly hung down.

"We're so close to paying for it, though. What kind of scientist gambles so drastically?"

Guren sighed in relief while meeting Miyuko's wry smile, then he started looking at the other islands in the distance. Seeing the other being swiftly left behind in their island's upward trajectory left him with a slightly melancholic feeling.

"That thing's way stronger than anything we have seen before," he said. "I sure hope we don't run into anything else like that further up. I'm actually really scared for you right now."

"Look, this island's taking us towards the portal that you were pointing at."

Miyuko seemed to have ignored his concerns.

Feeling re-energized, Guren stood up, and with joy in his heart, watched the island containing the portal come closer and closer to their view.

"I'll scout the area. Let's find a place where we can disembark from this island into those makeshift bridges."

Seeing Miyuko walk away, Guren cannot stop thanking fate that he had met such a cool person in university.

2

The transition through that particular portal was the longest one of them all. Perhaps it was due to his adrenaline riding high, but this one seemed to take forever for Guren.

The mess of colors gave way to a hue of red, and his face quickly met hard ground... or so he thought.

Surprisingly, the stiff fall was broken by carpeted floor.

He still rubbed his cheeks upon getting up, and he stood right in time to see Miyuko looking ahead.

Before he can do anything else, a powerful force kicked him in the gut. Coughing while clutching his belly, Guren forced himself to focus at the object in the far end of the room.

Nothing moved in sight besides Miyuko, who had heard his grunt. However, something else was in the room.

A throne flanked by statues of three winged beings.

One held onto a sword, and the other had a circular object in her hand. The third one, wearing a blindfold and having her hands spread over the throne, held onto a chain of beads.

Failing to maintain his focus, Guren clutched his head and shouted at the pressing migraine.

"Guren, hang on!"

With him clutching his head in pain, Miyuko's worried words barely registered. The already thin air in the room took a turn for the worse, and he found himself opening his mouth wide to breathe.

He dropped down to one knee before that voice spoke again.

"Guren, you've made it. I'm so happy."

The voice came from the direction of empty throne, but he cannot determine which of the statues was responsible for it. It was at that moment when excitement seized him.

"Guren! Guren!" called out Miyuko, desperation in her voice. Her hands slammed down like hammers, and he screamed out.

However, the screams were not from the pain of his female companion's tight grip. It was from the internal waves that scorched and tormented him in his head.

As suddenly as they started, the powerful sensations died down.

"Miyuko..." he lightly shoved her away, finally overcoming the pressure that assailed him. "Kiyone is here!"

Those were words that caught her off-guard, and she responded with her gaping mouth and shocked expression.

"Kiyone is here. We're here! We made it!" he repeated with eyes wide and veins bulging. His body shook in excitement before he leaped to embrace Miyuko.

Only Kiyone had ever experienced anything close to the strength of the firmness of the embrace that he held Miyuko in. "We did it, we did it!"

He jumped up and down, ignoring his friends' complaints, before walking down the aisle. He strode on the red carpet that led towards the throne, and he barely gave a second look at the stained glass that decorated the throne room.

"Kiyone! I'm here!" he shouted in triumph.

"I knew you'd make it here."

Both he and Miyuko stopped, but he had a confident look on his face.

Has she finally heard Kiyone's voice?

Hearing the sweet voice was obviously what caused her to stop. The voice bounced against the walls, repeating itself in intervals. For an ordinary person, such a thing was pure nightmare fuel, an unsettling phenomenon.

For Guren, it was not, for it carried the voice that he had yearned for. A few hours was too long to not hear that voice.

"Kiyone, where are you?"

Seeing nothing on the throne, he turned his sights upward, and the hairs on his body stood on end the moment his line of sight reached the ceiling of the room.

Above the throne, in front of a circular piece of stained glass, was the person he had been looking for.

"Kiyone?"

However, the love of his life looked quite different from what Guren remembered.

The tank top that she wore was gone, and so were the tights that she wore. The only remnants of her attire on the real world was the large ribbon, the very same one that he had given her when they shopped on their first date.

In place of her attire was a gown, white as snow and sparkling like what a bride would wear.

White gloves that extended all the way to her elbows completed the look before whip-like wings sprouted from her back. They looked almost ephemeral as if they were made of magic energy instead of solid material.

Guren looked at the descending angel in admiration. Her wings fluttered as she made her way down, and it was only at that point when he realized how big Kiyone had become.

He had always seen Kiyone as his angel, a tender soul that protected him and kept him strong in times of need, but he never expected things to become this literal.

Gulping and rubbing his hands together, Guren called out to his love.

"I've come for you, Kiyone. Although... you also have to thank Miyuko here. Without her, I wouldn't have been able to come here to save you."

He nudged his companion in excitement, but the lack of reaction from the gray-haired woman pulled away his enthusiasm.

A glance showed how transfixed Miyuko was.

For the first time inside this world, she was the one more captivated by the sights and sounds that he was.

Kiyone stopped her descent a few meters away from them. Proudly displaying her size, her wings spread out in full bloom.

He estimated those extensions, all eight of them that scattered white waves of energy, to be the length of a truck from end to end.

He refused to think of her as a giant monster or anything of the sort, but there's something off about her. Her eyes, one purple and the other golden, added more to the disturbing appearance.

"Kiyone, let's go back home," Guren urged with a now-shaky voice, fighting off all reservations with his might.

It was looking more and more like a bad idea, but he would never accept having gone through Hell for nothing.

"Right. Kiyone is what this host's name is," she spoke in an uncharacteristically monotonous voice.

"H-host?"

"That is what humans call it, right? A body being co-inhabited by a dominant being."

Kiyone, or what was supposed to be Kiyone, struck a smile that pierced through his existence. It was a wry, sly expression that Kiyone never had in her arsenal.

"W-w-who are you?! What did you do with Kiyone?"

"Who are you? Ah, the human prompt for asking an organism's identification. Apologies, for I had mere hours to accustom myself to human behavior and language."

The winged being tilted her head and stared at the ceiling above. She slowly levitated, and she played with her fingers while looking as if she was in deep thought.

"Looking at the human library of words, perhaps 'Absolute Order' would be an apt name. For it is I who first ascended above all this world's denizens and helped maintain the balance between this world and yours."

The Absolute Order slowly swooped down, but she had barely reached Guren before the latter swatted at it. As she retreated, he prepared to speak, but a trembling hand on his shoulder stopped him.

"Wait, let it talk."

Miyuko's voice shook along with her body.

"Are you serious?!"

Guren, in frustration, looked at her before seeing her grip on the blaster loosen.

"We're right at the cusp of the greatest discovery in the history of mankind here, Guren."

She then directed her attention to Kiyone, more accurately, the being possessing her.

"Absolute Order, what is this world of yours? What role do you play in the grand scheme of things?"

"A curious human, huh? Looks like my host's recollection of the organism called Miyuko Sadohara was quite accurate, after all. Stubborn and headstrong, bound by curiosity as her memories say."

The Absolute Order raised her arms, and the wings all followed in their erratic movements. Tremors began, and the throne room's walls collapsed outward, revealing a panoramic view of moving pictures.

"As for your question... This world is an extension of yours."

3

Today was a wild ride as is, but this world continued one-upping itself and surprising Miyuko.

Her curious excitement only compounded when she laid her eyes on the images that surrounded them.

"Those are..."

She let out a soft gasp as recognized them all.

The skylines of Shiroki City. The shrines of Tenka Peak.

Even sights that she had never seen in person were projected in those images that blurred into each other, creating the panorama of lights and color.

Castles of a faraway land. The ports of a city she failed to recognize. Ruins that were only documented in historical photographs.

"When this world was born, there was nothing. Empty wasteland gave way to ruins and stone structures. Then came the first towers. Those skyscrapers were the last additions to this ever-growing world."

Both of them looked at the great being. Miyuko cannot tell determine her partner's thoughts, but she was caught by amazement – both due to this world and the improving eloquence of the Absolute Order.

She was unable to conceal her thoughts and started thinking out loud.

"Ruins, then stone structures, towers into skyscrapers... that's just like how human history progressed!"

"Such is the nature of this world," replied the Absolute Order. "An extension of your realm, this is a world shaped by human memories and experiences. As the human race accumulates memories from experiences and handed down traditions, this world evolves."

The gray-haired researcher needed some time to digest everything, but she cannot afford to let the momentum stop now. She felt her body tingling, not in fear but of excitement. She wanted to know more.

She knew that her research was headed somewhere, but nothing could have prepared her for this. The last thing that she expected from the IRIS was an ability to connect to a world outside of hers.

The theories she read about were indeed true. There indeed existed a parallel world, and it was something that evolved along with human energy.

"Esotericism..."

Wide-eyed, she realized the repercussions of this incident.

Her experiment had reached its pinnacle.

Rumbling sounds cut off her train of thought, and the stone warriors with weapons broke away from the throne that they surrounded.

The throne then began emitting bright light which erupted, blinding her in an array of white.

She shook her head and waited for her vision to clear up, only to gasp in wonder.

Where the throne used to be was now a gigantic sphere. Paper scrolls surrounded the sphere, almost mummifying it with countless layers that continued moving. Auras and energy particles likewise surrounded the sphere, giving it a look of a sacred artifact.

While she looked on, she glanced sideways and saw that her companion, the lawyer Guren Izaya, also had his eyes fixed on the sphere. Wide-eyed and in a state of complete stillness, he had his full attention on it.

Miyuko, however, noticed the most striking thing about the sphere.

The scrolls kept coming.

Instead of the scrolls simply orbiting the sphere in a loop, new extensions to them were added from the panorama, making them lists with no end.

"I believe you humans call it the Akashic Records. This is where the 'truth' that you humans believe in reside. What you call the 'truth' is simply a collection of energy, a collective understanding that your ancestors had come to agree on. Even the concept of life and death itself is inscribed in these scrolls. These scrolls hold the key to reality in your world."

Akashic Records.

A compendium of memories, crafted from the actions, thoughts, and feelings of man since the beginning of history. Encoded in a plane beyond human reach.

Along with it come esotericism and the collective unconscious.

A feeling of guilt washed over Miyuko, for she comprehended everything that this being had said. Those were concepts that run contradictory to the supposed creed of Elysium scientists. Those concepts of the occult and the metaphysical were nothing but blasphemous artifacts from an era humanity had moved past, yet there she was, a woman of science who continued to fully integrate everything.

"Even now, the Akashic Records continue to get updated, and it shows how much the two worlds are connected. The two realms intertwine, and their dance drives forth evolution, yet for generations of human history, they have never crossed."

All of a sudden, a lot of the terms from occultism and psychology started making sense. All Miyuko had to do was to connect the dots to figure out the true identity of this world. More importantly...

She swallowed hard when she realized the implications.

This world effectively held the power to alter reality. Should there be a way to tamper with the Akashic Records, the rules that bound the real world can be crafted to the wielder's desire.

She felt the heat radiating from her body to her head, and sweat dropped profusely as she kept her eyes on the giant sphere.

The awe and wonder that she had when she stepped into Babel had been washed away by pure terror upon this new realization.

"That goes to say that the denizens of this world are also born from the Akashic Records. Traces of human energy come to this world and are given form."

"Nullity..." Miyuko's voice trailed off. "Something of excess and is therefore deemed of no importance."

"The discarded remnants of humanity, given life in this cursed world of imitations. That is a clever name, Miyuko Sadohara," affirmed the Absolute Order while nodding. The wings playfully danced in the air in agreement. "Among the millions of denizens that continue to multiply by the day, three of us have transcended our limits and stood above the rest."

"W-why do you have to tell us all this?" she asked.

"Isn't this knowledge what humanity desired? Knowledge and power? It was that thirst that caused the fall of man when he ate the forbidden fruit, and it was that thirst that continued to shape human history for generations. That desire was the one constant that ran along with evolution of a species. More importantly, consider it a token of thanks."

"Thanking us for what?"

The Absolute Order flew up. Seeing the being's spread her wings against the backdrop of the Akashic Records, Miyuko can't help but keep her eyes on how magnificent Kiyone's body looked.

She perfectly fit the bill for a ruler of the world.

"Thanks to your intrusions, I found the perfect vessel. Nullities have longed to evolve, but even the strongest among us, the ones who have ascended and transcended limits, can only go so far. Being the discarded dredges of humanity, we will forever be incomplete. We needed the last step: a human body to integrate with."

The Absolute Order said all those words with little emotion, and as unrattled as Miyuko was, she found herself reaching into her blaster's trigger.

"Now that my and Kiyone Shijo's will have merged, and I have become ruler of this realm, nothing less than the truth of the world will suffice as a gift."

"Shut up!"

Miyuko felt her heart pound at the impassioned shout. Within seconds, her fingers lost hold of the blaster. She looked sideways just in time to see a powerful stream of plasmic energy shoot out of the weapon that Guren now held.

The Absolute Order's wings closed up as a shield that blocked the blast.

"Give Kiyone back, you monster!"

His hands and body shaking uncontrollably, Guren glared daggers at the Absolute Order.