The mud left on Yurie’s fingertips was startlingly lukewarm.

  Not like the white sand’s chill.

  A living temperature.

  The slickness slid into the grooves of her skin and refused to come off.

  The pomegranate had burst, and its lawless seeds—mud and red-black pulp—crept outward, slowly chewing into the High Priestess’s “vertical” boundary. On Yurie’s palm, they glimmered with a poisonous sheen.

  Filth had touched the white stillness.

  Just that, and the world creaked in disgust.

  Yurie stared at the color of the mud.

  It was the exact same color staining Mermi’s legs—those four stubborn limbs that kept slipping on the white sand while she still fought, still tried to stand, still refused to go down gracefully.

  Yurie lifted her mud-smeared hand toward Mermi.

  “…We match now, Mermi.”

  For a moment—

  in this grotesquely warped world—

  that single spot went calm.

  Yurie’s mouth loosened into the smallest smile.

  A refusal to stay clean alone.

  Her body deciding first: I’ll take half of it.

  Embarrassment.

  And a kindness that felt almost like prayer.

  All of it lived in her muddy eyes.

  Still smiling, Yurie looked straight at the High Priestess.

  “If you hate getting dirty that much… you shouldn’t have come here in the first place.”

  She scooped up the mud-slick wreckage of the pomegranate with both hands.

  It was awful.

  The slime wormed under her nails and stabbed her nose with a smell that made her stomach twist.

  That smell—

  the smell of order dying—

  it was like that.

  She turned toward the brick-colored Gamaguchi she’d been carrying like a curse and pointed this reality at it.

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  “Yuri. What are you doing?” Mermi barked, bracing herself on shaking legs as she held the slope. It sounded like a scolding.

  And yet she couldn’t look away.

  “I can’t leave it behind.” “If I throw this away, I’ll end up just like that puppet—” “…And if you’re in the mud, Mermi, then I’m not staying clean. I won’t.”

  Yurie forced the mixed mud and seeds—the weight of reality itself—into the Gamaguchi’s hungry dark. It tried to spill back out. She shoved it down with her fingers, then clamped her hand around the silver clasp knobs.

  Pachin.

  The hard metal snap rang through the twisted corridor.

  And the world screamed.

  —Gggg… ggogogogogogogogo—!

  The axis of the earth groaned. A roar exploded outward from deep inside her ears, as if gigantic gears were being forced to bite into each other.

  The instant the Gamaguchi imprisoned the mud, the world’s axis—locked at forty-five degrees—began a violent rotation.

  The white-sand waterfall that had been collapsing nonstop couldn’t keep up with the flip in gravity. It broke apart into silver spray and scattered into the air.

  Yurie nearly got thrown, but the Gamaguchi’s strap bit into her shoulder and tethered her to the ground.

  It hurt.

  And that hurt was what made “not falling” possible.

  Zzz… Zzuuuun!

  Unnaturally heavy.

  It should have been one pomegranate—one stupid fruit—

  and yet the Gamaguchi now had the mass of a huge iron block, crushing down on her shoulder.

  —Ballast.

  Mermi’s old words arrived late and stabbed home.

  The roaring finally died.

  Only a high, ringing aftertone remained inside Yurie’s head.

  Her vision had returned to level.

  The white sand underfoot had stopped running, and the horizon drew the world’s boundary with an almost insulting straightness.

  “…Haa.” Mermi shook mud off herself and flicked an ear with sour pride. “Whoever designed this place has a truly vile sense of humor.” “I’ve felt safer with a roller coaster harness unlatched.”

  When Yurie looked back, the High Priestess—who had kept her perfect vertical—was fading like heat-haze, dissolving into the wreckage of collapsed sand.

  Until the end, she never once chose to look at Yurie holding the mud.

  —She doesn’t look.

  She doesn’t share.

  That is the High Priestess’s way.

  They left the corridor behind and stepped into a borderland wasteland that led to the next layer.

  The sky had turned a disturbingly clear purple.

  Yurie walked with the Gamaguchi hugged close like she was carrying a sleeping child, except the weight yanked at her shoulder every step.

  Don’t run.

  That was what it felt like the weight was telling her.

  “…Hey, Mermi.” “In the end, she didn’t say a single word.” “Even when we were covered in mud. Even when we were scared.”

  Yurie glanced back at the corridor’s receding scar.

  “So white. Sitting there like she was smart.” “…If it were me, I couldn’t just watch like that.” “Even if I got dirty—if your feet were slipping, I’d run over and slip with you.” “That’s not intelligence… that’s just cowardice.”

  “Funny, Yuri,” Mermi said, letting out a dry little laugh as she shook her golden coat back into shape. “That ‘slip together’ kind of resolve is so inefficient it doesn’t even exist in Her Holiness’s refined dictionary.” “For her, ‘intellect’ is just learning how to braid a veil that keeps the mud off.”

  Then Mermi snorted.

  “But… because you brought that mud-smeared bomb over here, my inner ear managed not to go on strike.” “I won’t thank you. But I’ll give you credit.”

  “That’s fine. I don’t need thanks.” “…It’s just—this Gamaguchi. It’s way heavier than before.”

  Yurie traced the Gamaguchi’s surface with a careful finger.

  Inside: the rusted silver needle… and the mud-smeared pomegranate.

  She still didn’t understand what was happening.

  But this weight—this weight was proof she hadn’t run.

  Two shadows stretched long across the purple wasteland.

  And the faint vibration of the heavier Gamaguchi carried, just barely, the presence of the next Arcana waiting ahead.