03/05/2010, Iwatodai, Day.

The sun hangs like a jewel in the cerulean sky, its light spilling over Gekkoukan High's rooftop in golden waves that catch in the leaves of the cherry blossoms that adorn the scenery of spring.

Makoto Yuki, leader of SEES, lies with his head cradled in the lap of his Aeon, Aigis, her metallic frame warmed by the sun, her fingers absently tracing patterns in his hair.

Her optics, usually sharp with mission clarity, now soften as she stares at the petals spiraling downward, each one a fleeting brushstroke of pink against the poetic blue of the sky above.

A tremor runs through her alloy joints, subtle as a sigh. She does not understand this ache in her core processor, this hollow whirring where logic should reign.

'This should be a day of joy' she thinks. The Dark Hour is gone. The world breathes again. Her friends, they will remember. They will reunite. And yet…

She lifts her arm, her hand eclipsing the sun. Cherry blossoms kiss her palm, their fragile weight a paradox against her sturdy steel.

For a moment, she imagines she can feel them with a human hand, the soft edges, the whisper of life clinging to petals already beginning to wilt. When she looks down at Makoto, his eyes closed in unguarded peace, her vocal modulator hitches.

"The wind…" she murmurs, her voice carrying the faintest static, like tears unshed. "It feels… nice".

The admission surprises even her. Spring's perfume, sakura and fresh grass and distant rain, floods her sensors. Data streams parse it into chemical compounds, but something deeper stirs, something that is not mere math.

"I am… finally noticing the beauty of passing things" she says, more to herself than him. Her gaze follows a petal's descent until it lands on Makoto's chest, rising and falling with breaths she does not need. "How transient it is. How every season ends, even this one".

Her hand drifts to her own chest, where gears turn in place of a heartbeat. Memories cascade, Nyx's towering figure, the gunshot's echo, Makoto's weight in her arms as the world dissolved. "We fought to stop the end" she whispers. "But now I see… living is not just defiance. It is…" she pauses, processors straining to articulate the storm in her core.

Makoto's eyes open, gray as dawn mist, and in them she finds the words. "It is choosing" she says, conviction steadying her voice.

"Fighting for what you can change" her fingers brush his cheek, colder than human warmth but tender nonetheless.

"And…" The breeze stills, as if the world holds its breath.

"Accepting what you cannot".

"I always wondered… what it truly meant to live" she murmurs, her optics locking onto Makoto's eyes. The sun gilds his face, etching shadows beneath his lashes, and for a moment, she envies the way his breath stirs the cherry blossom caught in his hair.

"Now, I think… it is listening to your heart. Fighting for what you can change" her voice falters, a glitch in her synthetic cadence.

A breeze sweeps the rooftop, carrying the scent of salt, not from the bay of Iwatodai, but from her own trembling lips. "Nothing lasts forever. Every life… even ours… will one day fade" her hand drifts to her chest, where her Papillon Heart hum where a human one should beat. "But when you accept that…". She closes her eyes, and the world tilts.

Again, memories flood her processors: Makoto ascending to the core of Nyx, their cries unheard as he was getting closer and closer to the Moon. The crushing realization that her strength, her purpose, had not been enough.

"I was tormented" she whispers. "Protecting others was my duty, but… it became more. When I chose to fight the Fall, something changed".

Her optics flicker open, luminous with unshed tears. "And when I thought I might lose you…" her voice fractures. The confession hangs between them, raw and fragile. "That's when I understood".

A smile blooms on her lips, soft as the petals clinging to Makoto's jacket. "What I want… is to protect you. Not out of duty. Not for the world". Her hands gently encase his. "For me. From now… until time itself ends".

A tremor runs through her frame. "I want to stay by your side" she breathes, and the first tear falls. It glints like liquid silver in the sunlight, tracing a path down her porcelain cheek. Why? Her systems strain to parse the anomaly, a machine, weeping. The tear is warm. She is warm.

"If I live for you… then nothing is wasted. My life… has meaning". Her grip tightens, as if he might dissolve like the blossoms in the wind. "So… thank you".

Makoto says nothing. He doesn't need to. His fingers curl around hers, calloused and cold, and in that touch, she feels it, the paradox of her existence. She is gears and code, yet her tears are real. She can't die like humans do, yet she mourns the fleeting.

"Hey, hey, hey!" Junpei's voice echoes across the rooftop, buoyant and brash. Aigis turns, her optics catching the sunlight as the rest of SEES emerges, Yukari's laughter mingling with Akihiko's gruff greeting, Fuuka's timid wave, Ken and Koromaru trailing close behind.

"They're here" Aigis murmurs, her voice soft with wonder. She gazes down at Makoto, his head still cradled in her lap, his breathing shallow but steady.

"I see it now… I have friends. We support each other". Gently, she squeezes his hand, her synthetic fingers curling around his with deliberate tenderness. "Not everything needs a grand purpose. Sometimes… caring is enough".

Makoto's eyes flutter open, more gray than usual and weary, but his lips twitch into the faintest smile. Aigis leans closer, her voice steady despite the storm in her core. "I've found my path" she declares, her words a vow etched into the spring air. "To protect you. With my life".

He doesn't speak. He doesn't need to. His chest rises once, twice, a slow, fragile rhythm, as sunlight pools in the hollows of his collarbone. Aigis brushes a strand of blue hair from his forehead, her touch lingering. "You must be tired" she whispers. "Rest now. I'll be here".

Makoto's gaze drifts past her, beyond the laughter and the petals and the vivid blue sky.

A flicker of cerulean dances at the edge of his vision, the butterfly, its wings shimmering like fractured stained glass. The same one that had greeted him that first April night, when the world was still a labyrinth of unknowns.

It hovers, delicate and eternal, before spiraling upward, dissolving into a trail of light that fades like a breath on a mirror.

Aigis' hand tightens around his. Warmth. Even now, her polymer skin radiates it.

The rooftop door bursts open. "Yo, Makoto! You're missing the party!" Junpei shouts, grinning as the group surges forward. Yukari rolls her eyes but smiles, Akihiko claps Mitsuru on the shoulder, and Koromaru barks, tail wagging.

Aigis turns to them, her smile radiant, rehearsed, human. "Welcome back" she says, her voice bright, too bright, as SEES crowds around.

Makoto's eyes settle on their faces, one by one. He memorizes the crinkles of Yukari's smile, Akihiko's chiseled chin, the way Mitsuru's red hair catches the light.

Then, slowly, he closes his eyes.

One.

A cherry blossom brushes his cheek.

Last.

For a second before his eyelids finally succumb to the weight he could swear to see another butterfly, a darker, more sinister one.

Time.

And dark encompassed everything.

03/31/2012, Sea of Souls, Unknown Time.

The Great Seal looms in the void, a monolith of two towering doors forged from molten gold, their surfaces etched with runes exactly as old as human sorrow.

They burn with a cold, unyielding light, casting jagged shadows across the abyss of the Sea of Souls, that liminal, metaphysical, realm where time curdles like forgotten milk.

Between them, anchored in the silence, stands a statue: a boy of stone, his face frozen in a serenity that borders on sorrow.

His hands are outstretched, palms open as if to cradle the world he saved, though his fingers have long since fused with the doors' gilded veins.

This is no mere effigy. It is Makoto Yuki, the Messiah, his body petrified but his consciousness unbroken, a living lock, a soul chained to the threshold between total annihilation and unyielding hope.

He has stood here since that final spring day on Gekkoukan's rooftop, when cherry blossoms fell like tears and his breath dissolved into starlight.

Now, his existence is a paradox: a vigil without end, a mind adrift in a body of stone. The Seal is not a prison of pain, but of titanic weight, the crushing, ceaseless burden of a thousand lifetimes compressed into a single moment.

To be the Great Seal is to exist in the afterglow of a dream. You wake from a nap at dusk, disoriented, the world smeared at its edges. Hours? Centuries? Just seconds? Time blurs like ink on wet paper. Your thoughts fray, your memories flicker: faces, voices, laughter, all slipping through fingers you no longer possess.

And the visions.

They come without warning. Not hallucinations, but shards of reality, piercing the veil of his solitude. The worst feeling of all, however, is the silence. Not the absence of sound, but the absence of end. Here, in the Great Seal, the waves of the Sea of Souls do not crash. The stars do not die. There is only the hum of Nyx's slumber beneath his feet, and the whispers of Erebus, the collective despair of humanity, scraping at the doors like a beast gnawing its cage.

And through it all, Makoto waits.

'How much time has passed?'

The thought drifts through Makoto's consciousness like a leaf on the still water of a pond, fragile and fleeting. It is a rare moment of clarity, a break in the endless fog that shrouds his mind.

The silence is unnerving. No pounding fists of Erebus, no whispers of despair clawing at the edges of the Seal. Just… stillness.

Has it been hours? Days? He tries to focus, but time here is a river without banks, flowing in all directions at once.

No memories surge forward to drown him, no faces, no voices, no fragments of a life he once lived. Just the void, stretching endlessly in every direction.

'I wonder what they're doing…'

The only moments that felt real were the ones when Erebus came. The collective despair of humanity acting like a monstrous tide crashing against the Seal, shaking him to his core. But Erebus has been silent for… how long? He can't tell. The absence is almost worse.

Then, in the darkness, a flicker.

A light.

Small and distant, like a star glimpsed through storm clouds. Makoto turns toward it, or at least he thinks he does.

In this place, movement is strange, less like walking, more like drifting, like swimming through a viscous sea. He reaches out, or imagines he does, and the light grows brighter.

And then he sees it.

The blue butterfly.

'Again?' thinks Makoto.

The blue butterfly hovers before him, its wings pulsing with an ethereal light that fractures the oppressive gloom of the void.

It spins once, twice, and in a cascade of sapphire luminescence, its form dissolves, replaced by the silhouette of a man coalescing from stardust.

Philemon stands before him, an enigma draped in elegance. His dark brown hair, streaked with strands of silver like threads of moonlight, flows into a neat ponytail that rests against the collar of his immaculate black suit.

The mask covering his face is a masterpiece of craftsmanship: ivory-white porcelain, smooth as a frozen lake, yet alive with intricate carvings.

On the left side of the mask, a single wing unfurls in relief, a butterfly's delicate veins rendered in obsidian, shimmering as if wet with midnight dew. His attire is a study in contrast, jet-black fabric tailored to perfection, a crisp white tie knotted with mathematical precision, trousers pale as bone, and shoes polished to a mirror's gleam.

"Greetings, Makoto Yuki" he says, his voice a melody that resonates not in the air, but in the marrow of Makoto's soul. It is both whisper and symphony, tender yet ancient.

"I am Philemon. A dweller in the rift between unconsciousness and consciousness". He tilts his head slightly, the mask's empty eye sockets somehow radiating a gaze that emanates a serene aura.

"Philemon?" Makoto echoes. "How… and why are you here?"

The figure raises a gloved hand, a gesture both apologetic and regal. "Forgive the intrusion. I seldom intervene directly in mortal affairs, though I observe always from the liminal spaces, the edge of a dream, the breath before a choice". His mask dips in a shallow bow.

"This meeting is… unconventional. But necessity compels me".

He steps closer, and the void shivers. Around him, the darkness ripples like water struck by a stone, revealing fleeting glimpses, faces Makoto half-remembers, laughter from a life suspended.

"You are the Universe" Philemon continues, his tone softening yet weighted with cosmic gravity. "A confluence of souls, a bridge between what is and what could be. What I ask… only you can achieve".

"I know what you sacrificed" he begins, fingertips brushing the air, where motes of azure light swirl like fireflies. "I have always watched. It was I who bestowed upon you the Wild Card, its potential coiled within your soul like a seed awaiting spring. And it was I who tasked Igor, my most loyal servant, to guide you through the labyrinth of your destiny".

"You… know Igor?" memories flicker in Makoto's mond, the Velvet Room's ever-lasting walls, the noise of the elevator's engine, that long-nosed grin both unsettling and comforting.

"Know him?" Philemon's chuckle is a soft chime, discordant yet beautiful. "I crafted the Velvet Room. It is a reflection of my will, a chrysalis where souls like yours are honed".

He steps closer, the void rippling beneath his polished shoes as if walking on water. "And now, I offer you reprieve. This Seal…" he gestures to the golden doors, their runes blazing as he speaks, "…no longer requires your soul as its keystone".

Makoto's consciousness reels. For the first time in... many days, something like hope fractures the numbness. "What of Erebus? Nyx?".

Philemon raises a hand, and the darkness parts. A vision unfolds: Erebus, that writhing mass of shadows, now fractures like glass under an invisible hammer.

"Erebus weakens" he intones. "Not because mankind has forsaken sorrow, but because the Shadows that feed it wane. Their roots… severed".

"How?"

"Shadows are born of humanity's hidden rot, fear, malice, the poison they bury in their hearts. For eons, they were nurtured by a… counterforce to my own".

His voice drops, the air thickening with the scent of ozone.

"Nyarlathotep. The Crawling Chaos. He is the shadow of shadows, the collective hunger for annihilation. Where I am mankind's silent prayer for growth, he is its scream for oblivion".

Philemon continues. "We are twin flames, he and I. Creation and corrosion. But now, the scales tip. His influence falters, here. The Shadows starve". He pauses, the butterfly on his mask trembling as if alive. "And so, Erebus crumbles… without its architect".

"What does it have to do with me?" asks Makoto.

"You, Makoto Yuki, are the living embodiment of the Universe Arcana, the convergence of all bonds, the arbiter of beginnings and ends. You did not merely stop Nyx. You severed the thread of a fate millennia in the weaving".

He steps closer, the void trembling beneath his feet. Golden motes of light swirl around him, coalescing into constellations that mirror the Arcana's symbols.

"Nyx was the progenitor. The catalyst that birthed Earth's Collective Unconscious, from which all Shadows, and beings like myself and Nyarlathotep, emerged. But you…"

His mask lifts. "You are the exception. The Universe itself anointed you. Not as a pawn of his, but as a singularity".

"Now, Nyarlathotep seeks to replicate Nyx's genesis" Philemon continues, his words measured but urgent.

"In another world, untouched by the Sea of Souls, he labors to forge a new Collective Unconscious. A festering womb where despair will reign eternal" His voice wavers, ever so slightly, on the word eternal.

"Why?" asks Makoto.

Philemon goes still. When he speaks again, his tone is glacial, each syllable sharp enough to draw blood.

"Because suffering is his sacrament. Annihilation, his liturgy. He does not simply want it, he is. For him, pain is a force as inevitable as entropy".

The butterfly on his mask shudders. "In this new world, he will not merely spread despair. He will become its god. A Nyx unbound, feeding on fresh anguish, until every star in its sky gutters out".

The faces of SEES flicker like candle flames in Makoto's mind: Yukari's seemingly heartless jokes, Junpei's reckless grin, Fuuka' shy smile, Akihiko's ramblings about training, Mitsuru's authority, Ken's dreams and promises, the memory of Shinjiro, Akihiko's pain when it happened, Aigis' trembling hands cradling his fading warmth, his walks with Koromaru. And Ryoji, his laughter a requiem for a boy who chose to bear the weight of eternity.

"A playground…" Makoto murmurs, the words ash on his tongue. "But not for joy. For suffering".

"Aptly put" says Philemon, his voice a balm that cannot quite mask the sorrow beneath. "But know this, Exception of Humankind, it is a destiny you can reshape. As you once did here".

Makoto's mind races. Tartarus' shadows, Nyx's true form, the finality of March 5th. They surge through him, not as ghosts, but as kindling. "Why me?" he asks, though he already knows.

The dweller's gloved hand rises, and the void parts. Stars bloom, each a pinprick of Arcana, the Fool's journey etched in stardust. "The Universe chose you long before you chose it" Philemon intones. "You are not its vessel, but its will".

"What is the Universe Arcana then? Igor never explained it to me" logically answers Makoto.

"You will find out" replies cryptic Philemon.

Makoto remembers the last words Aigis told him 'Rest'. But he cannot rest. Not yet. No, he was never meant to rest.

"I'll do it" he says, the words a vow carved into the bones of the cosmos.

Philemon's mask softens, or perhaps it is a trick of the light. "Fear not, because you will not walk alone. Your faithful Attendant waits you".