As Mary raised her sword to the heavens, it started to glow with a radiant light.

"I'm sorry," Mary said, "That this will be the last time I ever see you."

Mary darted forward, her motions lithe and smooth even in armor. She slammed her sword down towards Ninten's face, and he barely managed to bring his quarterstaff up in time. Ninten grunted under the weight as Mary's sword pushed closer and closer to Ninten's forehead. Her glowing blade radiated heat, and when her sword pressed inches away from Ninten's face it felt like being next to a furnace. Ninten looked past the blinding light into Mary's expression.

Empty. Resigned. Yet still somehow Determined.

Ninten let out a yelp and stumbled backwards. Mary closed her eyes and pressed a fist against her breastplate.

"This would be so much easier if you were willing to accept who I am," Mary said. "I never should have raised you to love me. Not even a lifetime will rewrite that mistake."

Mary's eyes flashed open, and she walked towards Ninten. She held her glowing sword in a loose grip as she strode forward. Once Mary got close, she leapt forward in a sudden motion and whirled her blade around, feinting left and then striking right. Ninten raised his quarterstaff to protect from the stroke to the left, and his vision flashed with pain as he felt the steel dig into his right side.

Nitnen gritted his teeth and lashed out with his quarterstaff, but by that time Mary had already danced away. Panting, Ninten placed a hand at his side and used Lifeup to heal the wound.

"I never deserved your love," Mary said. "You don't owe me anything. Claus and Lucas are perfect examples of what happens to people who stay around me. You're not doing the world any good by letting me break you just like I destroyed them."

Ninten took a deep breath and raised his quarterstaff in a defensive position to protect his chest.

"You will leave the V-game," Mary said, "Or you will shatter just like everyone else who set foot inside the Nowhere Islands."

She ran forward, and the tall grass seemed to part way as she approached. When she leapt at Ninten this time, she delivered a flurry of strokes. Ninten managed to block most of them with his quarterstaff, but a few of them snuck through his defensive wall and created lines of fiery pain along his sides and legs. And through each slice and stab, Ninten looked at Mary's face and stared into her wide, sad eyes.

Mary ended her string of attacks with a kick that sent Ninten stumbling backwards. His vision swam as he reoriented his balance. He looked up to see Mary pointed her blade at him, her eyes narrowed.

"I'll be whoever I have to," Mary said. "I'll taint my soul as much as I can if it gets you to escape." Mary smirked. "Not that I have much of a soul left in me, anyway."

Ninten hadn't stopped panting when she lunged at him next. His arms moaned as he raised his quarterstaff up, and screamed each time he braced himself against Mary's blows. And Mary showed no signs of slowing. Her sword became a blur as she flicked it this way and that, drawing Ninten's attention for just long enough to feint and lunge for a different part of his body. By the time that Ninten managed to stagger back out of Mary's reach, he could feel the pain clouding his thoughts.

Why was he here, again?

What did he hope to achieve?

Hopeless.

Ninten shook his head. If Mary kept up the pressure and the offensive tempo then she could have killed him by now. She was taunting him, giving him moments to catch his breath, because deep down in her heart she didn't want to hurt her precious baby boy.

At least, that was what Ninten hoped.

"I don't know what you're trying to accomplish by standing there and trying to block my attacks," Mary said. "You're probably trying to prove some point by not attacking me, but it won't work. I lived by life based on ideals once, you know. Don't cheat, don't lie, don't steal, don't kill. But I learned that those don't mean much once you're dead."

"Maybe not," Ninten said, "But hopes and ideals are the only reason to live."

"So you can still talk to me, at least." Mary advanced towards Ninten. "We'll see how long that lasts."

Mary swung her blade around at Ninten. It moved so smoothly that it seemed to slice through the air itself. She unleashed a barrage of attacks at Ninten, her sword blazing with light. Ninten gasped in pain whenever an attack snuck past his quarterstaff, and eventually he stumbled backwards and took a moment to catch his breath.

But Mary wasn't done.

She followed his retreating movements, pairing her slashes with each of Ninten's steps. Tears rolled down her cheeks as she hacked at Ninten with her sword, each of her strokes as clean and efficient as a surgeon cutting open flesh with a scalpel. More and more areas on Ninten's body lit up in pain, and eventually he let out a cry and fell on his rear.

Ninten looked up to see Mary standing above him, sword blazing and armor shining with white light. She raised her sword above her head, playing the executioner ready to deliver the final blow.

"Goodbye," Mary said. "I'm sorry that I couldn't be a better grandma for you."

Mary brought her sword down.

Ninten closed his eyes.

Thump. One heartbeat.

Thump. Two heartbeats.

Thump. Three heartbeats.

The pain didn't come.

Ninten opened his eyes and felt the iron underneath his hands and legs. He forced himself to his feet and looked around at the sloped iron deck that he stood on. The ocean waves rocked around in all directions. Past the iron deck was the bow of the ship, made of wood and shaped in the head of a dragon. Mary stood atop the dragon head, her armor gleaming in the sunlight. She raised her arms, and fire billowed out from the mouth of the dragon head.

"Welcome to the Geobukseon," Mary said. "It's as good a place to die as any."

Ninten looked around him at the iron spikes on the deck as the ship rocked around him. He stared up at the mast that flapped above his head.

"This is the same turtle ship as the one in George's office," Ninten said out loud.

Mary leapt off the dragon's head and onto the deck of the ship. She darted in between the iron spikes on the deck ass he ran forward. Ninten healed himself with Lifeup and dug his feet in to meet her charge.

Mary and Ninten repeated the same dance. She lunged in, slashed at Ninten until he grunted and staggered away, and then told him to flee. Ninten could feel his movements growing more and more sluggish as fatigue wore down on him, while Mary's footwork and sword strokes were as crisp and elegant as ever. Her expression remained neutral, her black eyes stone-cold.

Mary drove him further and further towards the stern. Ninten stumbled around the iron spikes on the deck as Mary forced him back, and she herself seemed not to even notice the spines as she wove around them. Ninten checked his PSI stores. Almost empty.

He couldn't keep going on like this.

Something had to change.

Ninten let out a shout and ran forward, dodging around the spikes. Mary looked at him, and her lips broke into a slight frown. She took a deep breath as Ninten barreled towards her, and then released the same sort of sigh as a veterinarian preparing herself to euthanize a sick animal.

Mary rose her blade at the last second. Steel slammed into wood, and Ninten's arms groaned in pain. Mary slammed a knee into his stomach, regarding him with iron eyes as his vision swam and he stumbled backwards. Ninten heard his quarterstaff clatter as it fell from his grip and landed on the ground.

Mary hesitated for just a moment before taking a step forward. In a single, smooth motion, she shoved her blade forward towards Ninten's chest.

Ninten leaned away from the glowing sword and fell backwards. He held his hands out behind him to brace his landing, but he didn't hit ground. The deck grew distant, floating above him like a cloud in the sky. Ninten saw flashes of the ship's wooden hull, the iron-cast cannons, the dark waves beneath.

Falling into oblivion…

Ninten let out a scream, and the world around him started to blur.

Ninten landed with a dull thud on wood. The damp boards beneath him creaked under the weight. He bit the inside of his lip to distract himself from the pain and hopped up to his feet, holding his arms in a defensive position.

He stood back on the damp deck with the wooden handrails and tables that were curled by water damage. The same deck where he had spent days as a child sniffling and crying as George scolded him and running around carrying building blocks and toy cars with Mary.

Back to the place that had brought him so many smiles and tears.

Mary stood atop one of the wooden tables. Her armor looked like dull iron rather than the lustrous metal she had displayed back on the battlefield. Her blade started to dim. She hopped down off the table, landing on the wooden panels and raising her sword at Ninten.

Ninten made a quick glance around the wooden deck. No sign of his quarterstaff.

"Why did you take me back here?" Ninten said. "I thought you had me on the ropes back on that turtle ship."

Mary darted towards Ninten, knocking over chairs and tables as she barreled towards him. Ninten leapt out of the way, leaving Mary to bring her sword down on the damp handrail.

"Unless," Ninten said. "You didn't want to bring me here."

Mary grunted, and yanked the blade out of the wood. The handrail creaked and started to bend where Mary had driven her sword into it.

"What's going on here?" Ninten said. "Why can't you just finish me off?"

No PSI, no strength, no weapon. Ninten should have been a sitting duck.

"Changing the scenery hasn't helped you out at all," Ninten said. "Is it something that I'm doing?"

"Ninten." Mary lunged towards him. "Stop. Please."

Mary's sword became a blur. Ninten tried to dart out of the way, but different parts of his body lit up in pain as Mary continued to press the attack. Her arms and sword whirled around her, but her face remained still, her eyes wide and sad as she delivered each stroke of her luminous blade.

"I…" Ninten coughed, his lungs screaming in pain. "Change, world. Take me to George."

"No." Mary recoiled as if struck. "Ninten, you don't know what you're doing."

"Take me to George."

Mary swung her sword at Ninten's neck. It whizzed by his throat as he stepped back, leaning against the railing.

The world had shifted once when Mary had been about to split his skull open, and again when she had knocked him off of the warship.

Ninten looked at the sea below him. At this point, he didn't really have a choice but to take the gamble.

"Take me to George," Ninten said, and leaned back over the railing.

Ninten felt his feet leave ground, and the world started to spin around him. Was he just tumbling in air, or was the world morphing around him? Ninten saw the ocean rushing up to meet him, and closed his eyes.

"Take me to George," he repeated.

Ninten landed on solid ground.

He opened his eyes to see black around him. Not darkness, just… black. He could see his red t-shirt and pale skin cracked with gashes and scars, but nothing in the distance. A drop of blood rolled down his arm and off of his fingertip, falling past Ninten's feet down into the emptiness.

Ninten looked up to see Mary standing in the distance, her onyx eyes staring at him as her armor started to dim. The steel plates on her body faded into dark grey and then black before breaking off into thousands of dark specks and floating away into the black background. Her sword also lost its luster, curling up and turning into a dull metal cane as its edges started to dull.

Mary let out a cry, sinking down and catching herself on her sword-turned-cane. She let out a low growl and clutched her chest, looking up at Ninten.

"Where is George?" Ninten said. "I asked the world to-"

"I told you to stop," Mary said. "I told you to run. Now here we are."

She walked forward, rapping her metal cane on the black ground to make hollow sounds.

"You still don't get it, do you?" Mary said. "Your words asked the world to take you George, but your heart was asking for it to take you to the source of evil. So here we are. Welcome to my real Magicant, Ninten."

Mary laughed, the dry sound echoing in the distance.

"What do you mean?" Ninten said. "I've seen you and George on the seaside deck. I know that's where you stay."

"That's where he brings me out when he needs me to talk to you." Mary walked closer still. "He trapped me inside this prison, Ninten. And now you're here with me."

Ninten felt his shoulders tense. He did remember Mary mentioning something along those lines.

"We need to get you out," Ninten said.

"I'll admit, I didn't think that your love for me would last this long." Mary pointed her cane at Ninten. "But the sands of time will wither away your feelings eventually. Anyone who stays near me will break down sooner or later. I just wish it had been sooner."

Ninten ran a finger down his arm and examined the red stains on his fingertips. "Battered, but not broken. That's how I'll stay."

Mary broke into a sprint, rushing towards Ninten with her twisted cane extended to her side. Ninten leapt back as Mary swung, the metal whizzing by his chest.

"You have to leave," Mary said. "You have to leave."

"Not part of the deal."

"Please, Ninten. Before it's too late."

Ninten continued to back away from Mary. "Too late for what?"

"If you stay here long enough, you could be trapped in here with me."

"You're bluffing. That doesn't make any sense."

"Look into my eyes, Ninten, and tell me that I'm lying." Mary staggered forward. "I killed hundreds of people with my own two hands in World War II. I brought a war to my homeland that killed millions. I planned to kill my great-grandson so that I could live longer, and decided to take Claus' life instead. Every time I close my eyes, I hear their screams."

"Grandma, I already know all of this."

"I promised to tell you the truth," Mary said. "I told you the truth. And I'm telling you the truth now. I don't understand it, but if you stay here then you'll be trapped with me."

Ninten took a deep breath.

"Please," Mary said. "You're not doing anyone a favor by sacrificing yourself when nobody's around to hear your screams."

"If people who enter this place get trapped, there must be a reason," Ninten said. "And we can overcome whatever's trying to keep us here."

"Oh, I'll tell you the reason." Mary lunged towards Ninten. "Everyone who encounters me ends up suffering for it."

Ninten started to step back, but Mary's cane slammed into his side. Ninten's vision flashed with pain, and he felt another blow land on his shoulder. Through the throbbing, he listened for sounds of a crunch, and heard nothing.

It was probably good that Ninten could still register pain. If he got really injured, then he might not feel anything.

But then again, did anything inside the Nowhere Islands V-game work the same way that it did in real life?

And was Ninten really still inside the V-game?

"I destroy anyone who comes close," Mary said. "And there's not much closer to me a person can get than sharing my mind with me. If you don't leave, Ninten, I'll end up dragging you into oblivion with me."

Ninten gulped, looking at Mary through spots of pain in his vision. "I just wanted to see George."

"Yeah, because killing George is going to solve everything, right? We can all just go back to being a happy family if he's gone. No hard feelings."

"I didn't say that."

"But you were thinking it. You still don't understand that you should be looking at me in disgust right now. George may have hurt your feelings, Ninten, but he didn't plan to kill you. Why are you cutting me slack here?"

"Because you love me."

"Is that what you think?" Mary walked towards Ninten, cane extended in front of her. "Maybe I don't care about you. Maybe I was just using you all along."

"If you really believed that, then you wouldn't want me to leave and save myself."

Mary lashed out with her cane, slamming the steel into Ninten's jaw. For once, he didn't try to dodge.

"I don't think I love you," Mary said. "I don't think that I have the capacity to love anyone. You can only look into so many desperate eyes and hear so many shrieks before it starts to take away something from you, Ninten. I just think that I owe you something."

Mary smashed her cane into Ninten's hip. He took a deep breath and bit the inside of his cheek to distract himself from the pain.

"You feel that?" Mary said. "That didn't make me feel bad at all. I could watch you writhe in pain for hours and it wouldn't make me feel a thing."

Ninten looked up and saw the tightness in Mary's eyes, her stiff posture. She was locking herself in place, making herself stony and rigid so that she wouldn't let herself feel.

The cold person Mary claimed to be would feel more relaxed around pain and suffering.

"I'm worthless," Mary said. "The world won't lose anything by letting me go. You won't lose anything by letting me go. So leave."

Ninten took a step forward. An image flashed in his mind.

A field of yellow-green grass swaying in the wind. She heard footsteps approaching, and looked over to see a group of men wearing dark green uniforms with guns slung over their backs approaching her. The man in front hesitated before opening his mouth.

"Are you Japanese?" he asked in German.

She nodded. Why not?

The man's posture relaxed.

"So why are you here?"

A moment of silence. She felt her fingertips tingling, ready to unleash a sea of flames on the soldiers. Would these men spread tales of her if she let them go? Could she take that risk?

She released a sigh. She would have to kill them all.

Ninten's head throbbed as he returned to the present. Mary let out a yelp of pain and pressed her thumb and pointer finger against her temples. She took a deep breath and then shook the pain off, glancing over at Ninten.

"Did you see that?" she said.

"Was that one of your memories?"

Mary muttered a curse under her breath. "You saw. Why did you have to be the one to see it?"

"It felt like I was inside your head."

Mary looked down into the darkness beneath her feet, her eyes remaining fixated on a single point in the void.

"Did you actually kill those people?"

"Yes, I did." Rust started to appear on Mary's steel cane. "Are you starting to see who I am? I'm surprised that it's taken you this long."

"Those were Nazi soldiers, right?"

"They were people," Mary said, "With lives and families."

"I can't get to angry at you for killing Nazis."

"Do you think that every German soldier supported the regime?" Mary said. "Those people were pawns. Puppets. And I killed them all. Think about it, Ninten. That could have been you. And for a time, it was supposed to be you."

"Listen," Ninten said. "You don't have to keep bringing up the fact that you planned to kill me. You didn't, and instead you gave me a wonderful family to raise me. That's what matters."

"Go away." Mary took a step back, pointing her cane at Ninten. "Don't you see what's happening? My Magicant is pulling you in. It's going to trap you in here with me."

"And you can't control it?"

Mary let out a pained laugh. "I always thought I could control my power, Ninten. Turns out that it ended up controlling me."

"I thought George trapped you here. Is he doing this?"

"I don't…" Mary grimaced. "I don't know what's going on. I just know that you don't want to be here. Please, save yourself and run. I don't think you have much time."

Mary's metal cane started to shrivel up like a dried stalk, curling in on itself until it shrank to the size of a kitchen knife. Mary's right hand was white from gripping the cane.

"I told you that I discovered PSI," Mary said. "I was also the first person to create a Magicant."

She forced a weak smile, looking up and around at the black background.

"It used to be a place filled with wonder and magic," she said. "But as time drew on, it started to show me images I wasn't ready to see. But I suppose I can't complain. Most of them were memories of times I hurt someone else. A Magicant's data comes directly from the PSI world, you know. I think that on some level, PSI itself was passing down judgment on me."

"So George…"

"George locked me away," Mary said, "Because I asked him to. Life in this Hell is what I deserve."

Ninten released a sigh. The pieces were starting to fit into place.

"I know that it probably doesn't make any sense to you why I wouldn't just state the truth from the start," Mary said, "But I guess I thought I could make you leave without regrets. I wanted you to feel good about leaving me to suffer. I suppose I put too much faith in hatred and not enough in love. And look where we are when love wins out."

Mary gestured to the darkness around her and laughed.

"I'm sure you wanted me to hate you," Ninten said, "But you promised to tell me the full truth from the start. Why didn't you tell me that you wanted to remain locked in your own mind?"

Mary's curled-up cane started to release specks of metal, shedding off more and more of itself until the darkness ate up the entire cane and Mary closed her hand to grasp only thin air.

"Ninten," she said. "Please, go now. I know that you want closure on this, but I can't let you go any further. Let Hinawa teach you how to erase the V-game, and live the rest of your life. Forget about me."

"Mary," Ninten said. "You never cared about yourself, did you? That's why you didn't tell me about how you were trapped here. Your own fate didn't matter as much as getting me to hate you."

Ninten started to walk towards Mary.

"No." Mary's eyes widened. "Stand back."

Ninten kept walking.

"My Magicant's going to destroy you just like it destroyed me."

Ninten kept walking.

"Please." Mary's body started to tremble. "I don't want to be saved. I want to die."

And there it was. The truth, laid bare after all the smiles and tears. The reason he was here.

Ninten took a step forward. Another set of images popped into his head.

A room painted white with a window looking out at the puffy clouds and blue sky. A man stood by the window, the light filtering in and casting his black suit in a dull glow. His hair was still jet black even as he turned around to reveal a face full of wrinkles.

"This is a complete farce, Mary. I know you've been hearing the stories. Forty percent of people in the prison camps dead from malnutrition."

These were people that decades earlier, the man might have killed personally. She kept her mouth shut.

"That does it." The man gripped the windowsill so tightly that she thought he was going to break it. "I'm going to teleport over there and kill Kim Jong-Il."

He said this before, of course, but something in his tone this time was final. No arguments.

But he had to listen to her, right?

"They'll just pick someone else to rule in his place," she said. "Nothing will change. You know that, George."

"I'll slaughter their entire family if I have to. I'll bring the entire country of North Korea down with my own two hands."

"What happens if you kill Kim and the military seizes control? Will that make it better for the people?"

"So what are we supposed to do? Stand by and twiddle our thumbs?"

"We don't have a choice."

"Fuck that. I should have crushed North Korea back in the Korean War. We were so close."

"And yet so far. Once China started sending soldiers, what were we supposed to do?"

"I could have crushed China too. Mao Zedong is another person I should have killed a long time ago."

"Fought China and started World War III? At least we don't have to worry about Mao anymore."

"He left a legacy of famine and lies, Mary. Just like Kim. I won't let North Korea hurt anyone else ever again."

"George, please."

"Don't beg, Mary. It's unseemly."

"You're doing more harm than good. If you go down this route, then I'll have to stop you."

His gaze snapped over towards her, and while his expression was neutral and his lips were drawn in a straight line, his eyes burned with a quiet rage.

"So that's how it is," the man said. "You know, for a time I thought that you cared. About me, Korea, the world, anything."

"George, don't do this to me. I'm doing what I have to."

"You're stopping me from doing the right thing. But isn't that what you've always done. Did you even try to stop the holocaust when you saw what was happening? When Seoul was crumbling, did you rush back in to fight the communists, or did you run away?"

"George…"

"What did you do in Cambodia when Pol Pot rose to power? What did you do in Russia when you found out about Stalin's gulag camps? At least I'm doing something."

In that moment, she felt so small. So cold. Like the entire world was just out of her reach.

As quickly as it came, the vision faded away. Ninten heard Mary cry out and saw her crumple to the ground. Her hands, stretched out in front of her, started to seep into the darkness below.

Ninten ran forward, and Mary raised her head up as much as she could, biting her lip. As Ninten's steps sounded on the black ground and echoed throughout Mary's Magicant, she shook her head at him.

"It's happening," she said, her voice raspy. "It's dragging us in."

Ninten halted as he ran up to Mary, kneeling down next to her. She tensed her arms and tried to move her hands away from him, but they remained locked in the darkness. Ninten could barely see the joints of her fingers popping out from the black below.

"Did you forget everything I just did to you?" Mary said. "Even though I'm in pain, I'm still a monster. Don't waste your sympathy on me."

"Does this happen to you often when you're inside your own Magicant?" Ninten said.

"I just told you not to-"

"Please just answer, grandma."

Mary sighed. "Yes. Sometimes my mind just takes me to this place and I see all of the terrible things I've done. It will release me eventually. Sometimes it takes hours. Other times it takes weeks."

Mary closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Her hands sank further into the darkness.

"Ninten. Please try to leave. You can't help me here even if you wanted to."

He supposed that it wouldn't hurt to see if she were bluffing about her Magicant trapping them both inside. Ninten stood up and closed his eyes, trying to push outwards with his consciousness. He counted his heartbeats and did his best to imagine his mind going up and out of the V-game.

Nothing. No tingling sensation, no feelings of detachment, no spinning. Ninten opened his eyes to see Mary looking up at him expectantly. After he shook his head at her, she laid her head on the ground and closed her eyes.

"So I guess that's it, then," she said.

"I'm sorry for taking us here," Ninten said. "I had no idea that me asking your mind to take us to George would end up with you here."

"No, it's my fault." Mary broke into a fit of dry coughs. "If I hadn't been so focused on how much I want to die, then maybe I would have been able to help you. Isn't that funny, Ninten? Even when I'm dead I can't bear the thought of existing."

"None of that is your fault," Ninten said. "I think a lot of people feel the same way as you, even if they don't want to talk about it."

"Those people deserve your sympathy," Mary said. "They didn't start wars and colonize islands in hopes of harvesting PSI-users from human populations."

"Grandma, I know that you're hurting. That's what matters."

Mary laughed, her arms and legs starting to sink into the darkness. "No, I'm not. I'm past the point of hurting."

"You're at the point where you're being dragged into the emptiness, where you wish you could hurt just so you know that you even exist. Is that right?"

Mary looked up at Ninten. "Well I wouldn't say it's that dramatic."

"You're literally being pulled into a pit of darkness, grandma."

"It will let me go. Eventually."

"But you don't have any control over it."

"I suppose I don't." Mary frowned. "But it's not like you should care. I tried to kill you in more ways than one."

"I'm trapped in the darkness with you unless you can find a way to get both of us out," Ninten said. "That's what matters to me."

"Trapped…" Mary pursed her lips as her arms sank further into the black floor. "Ninten, I'm sorry."

"You don't need to be sorry."

"I've failed you in every way as your great-grandmother. I thought just this once, I could actually make a difference and improve someone's life. But I guess some things never change. I'll always be the villain of the story."

"I don't see it that way."

"You're always too sweet to see the truth about me."

"How can you be the villain if none of these actions are really yours? In those memories of yours that you lived through, I could see that you felt powerless. Even in your Magicant, I was the one who was able to change the setting and force you to play by my terms."

"Didn't stop me from killing innocent people who greeted me and let me in back in that memory you saw." Her eyes narrowed. "And don't you dare tell me that they were just Nazis. They weren't given a choice on what to do once Hitler rose to power."

"And neither were you. You did everything you could to try and save the world. It wasn't your fault that North Korea invaded the South in the fifties and forced you and George to retaliate. It wasn't your fault that the American military kept everyone in the Nowhere Islands in prison camps after a fire broke out."

"Without me, the military would never have gotten a chance to hurt the Nowhere Islanders."

"But that doesn't make it your fault." Ninten placed a hand on Mary's shoulder. "We don't have to keep fighting each other, Mary. We can work together to accomplish something real."

"I've tried," Mary said. "I tried to make a difference in this world. Sometimes, you have to learn when to give up. Everything I did just made the world bleed."

"I know it's not so easy as killing a dictator over in North Korea," Ninten said, "But there has to be something we can do."

"I can't do it." Mary's elbow sank into the darkness. "I can't save the world. If I try I'll just end up destroying it. Earth can't afford to give me another chance. Better if I fade away entirely."

"Maybe it's not about fixing the whole world," Ninten said. "How about trying to save just one person?"

"If you think that helping a single person will overwrite all of the harm I've done, then maybe we don't understand each other at all."

"Maybe we don't need to understand each other. I don't think it's about what you've done in the past. If you can save one person, you can break the cycle of suffering. That's something that I had to live by when everything seemed lost in the Nowhere Islands V-game."

Mary's body fell still as it stopped sinking into the darkness.

"Just one person?" Mary said.

"Just one."

"Well, that I may be able to do."

Mary let out a yelp as she pulled her arms out of the darkness. Her hands and lower arms looked pale and stiff, and glowed with the sheen of marble. She lifted her knees and dragged her legs out of the darkness, wobbling to stand up straight.

"It hurts so much," she said. "I almost want to be back in the emptiness where I can't feel. But if you really think that I just need to save a single person, then I think I can take a break from being dragged into the darkness."

Ninten took a step back to give Mary some room. She stretched her arms up to the sky, and cracks started to run down her hands. Ninten bit his lip until he tasted blood. Maybe it was too risky for Mary to try and come out of the darkness into the world. If she broke now, Ninten didn't know if he would ever get her back.

"Thank you," Mary said, "For being the best great-grandson I could ever ask for."

Mary raised her hand up further into the sky, her fingers grasping at the air. A dagger appeared in her palm, and she closed her eyes as she held the blade in a shaky grip. She turned back to Ninten and took a deep breath.

"I can save one person," Mary said, opening her eyes.

She leaned forward and drove the dagger into Ninten's chest.

"I can save you, Ninten," she said, "From myself."