The sun was beginning to set as Yuu sat on the bench in the plaza, watching water fall from the mouth of the stone lion at the center of the fountain. The same spot where he had "slept" not too long ago.
Not bad for a first day.
Sona—the student council president and heir to a powerful demon clan.
Tsubaki—her vice president, who also possessed tremendous potential.
And Koneko—the small, white-haired girl who practically gleamed like an uncut diamond.
All three aligned with what he was looking for.
Three potential candidates for eternity.
"I guess it's time to see what else you can do."
He reached into the space beside him and pulled out the Vortexia.
The cube gave off a soft, almost timid glow, as if it knew it was being judged. Yuu rolled it between his fingers.
'The Ancient only used it to observe the multiverses. I use it to travel between them. But something like this…'
It was like using a supercomputer to play solitaire. Yuu had a feeling it was hiding much more. And until he investigated it himself, he wouldn't know.
With a thought, he sent commands to the artifact—and it activated.
The space in front of Yuu trembled. A cold air radiated from the point where the lines of the world began to tear.
A dark crack appeared, stretching until it took the form of a three-meter-tall doorway, its black frame seeming to devour the light around it.
Strangely enough, the people walking through the plaza didn't react at all.
They passed right by the gate as if it didn't exist—like their minds refused to process what their eyes were seeing.
"Oh. That's interesting…"
Yuu stood and adjusted the loosened tie of his uniform.
A calm smile crept across his lips as he stepped toward the dimensional door.
'A gateway to another world, or…?'
And with that thought, he crossed the threshold.
×××
Upon passing through the gate, Yuu came to a stop.
Around him rose walls of white marble, with pillars twisting upward like frozen serpents until they reached the vaulted ceiling.
Stained glass windows on either side showed a landscape of pure white light—so bright it hurt to look at directly.
"So this is where you used to live, Olddy."
He let the words hang in the air, eyes following the crimson carpet stretched out before him.
The carpet led to a staircase, and at the top of it—a throne. Simple, massive, and radiating an aura that made the air feel heavy.
"It'd be rude to turn down such an obvious invitation."
He climbed the steps and sat on the throne.
The seat felt unbelievably solid and heavy beneath him. Yuu shifted, let out a satisfied sigh, and allowed his body to rest.
Then—
[Initiating recognition sequence]
His mind went dark.
×××
After his death, Yuu had lived in a world filled with war and conflict, where beings known as Aeons could erase entire planets with a single thought. In that world, the powerful were feared and revered. Yuu was weak—he couldn't help anyone, not even himself.
Just an ordinary, talentless human with a single ability: Prologue and Epilogue.
A useless power in that world—one he couldn't use in battle.
And yet, that very power had made him immortal.
As long as there was a Story to be told, he could live forever.
Yuu learned to harness his strange gift, turning himself into a wandering traveler. A being devoted to learning all that he could. A man who lived—and learned.
Time passed. Wars grew crueler, bloodier. Yuu simply hid away in remote worlds, wanting no part in them.
More time passed. Yuu wandered and studied for years, decades, centuries. He learned to love the worlds he visited. He learned to love the many skies and the endless stars, the vast oceans and flourishing lands. He learned to love everything that existed within that universe.
Every time he met someone new, every time he saw a smile, every time he watched someone else find happiness—Yuu was happy too.
Every time a life ended, Yuu was there to see them off. He remembered them, learned from them, and moved forward.
Time became a constant. Sometimes fast, sometimes slow. Yuu didn't know anymore—nor did he care.
Time. Age. Years. The past. The present. The future. To him, those were all just strange words.
He was like a great snowball that rolled on without stopping. Like a path with no end. But a path can twist in many directions. A snowball might roll straight—but it can also fall into a ditch, get stained, become corrupted, and keep on rolling.
That was Yuu's story.
His path had twisted somewhere along the way, though he didn't remember exactly when.
All he knew was that, for a very long time, he'd been walking a road paved with tears and blood.
As decades became centuries, he had witnessed the rise and fall of civilizations, the destruction of worlds, and the birth of new existences.
The friends he made always grew old and died...
Each time he watched someone he loved fall, each time he lived through the End of a friend—Yuu felt as cold as the night.
The eternity so many envied had become an unbearable weight.
"Because you can't die, Yuu. No matter what happens—you must find a 'traveling companion'."
"A living being capable of sharing your eternity. Someone you can spend endless time with. Someone you can call a true Family."
Words he'd heard over and over again. That was everyone's wish—the wish of those he once called friends.
Eternity was a curse. Yuu understood that pain. He knew that truth firsthand. And even though it brought him suffering... he refused to let solitude devour him.
If he didn't have someone to share his feelings with—to laugh with, to cry with— If he shut himself off from the world... his soul would slowly rot away, becoming a lifeless stone. A man incapable of understanding the rest of the world.
Yuu never wanted that ending. That ending was the worst one imaginable.
In the depths of his loneliness, he followed the wishes of those people—those who had once been his friends—and searched for a traveling companion to share his eternity.
But…
But it turned out that, in the vast cosmos he lived, there was no such thing as a being with true immortality. No entity existed that could walk beside him through forever.
It didn't matter if they were gods—or even Aeons— All of them could die. And for him, who had found no one to share his eternal life with, he could only watch as the friends he made were taken from him one by one.
Time marched on. Eternity became a burden. Loneliness became a demon. And happiness became an impossible dream.
In the end, only he was left.
How could anyone go on living with the eternal pain of losing everyone they loved?
One day, Yuu realized that's exactly what had started to happen—his internal struggle with time itself.
He was a wandering traveler, adrift in the current of time—but he was also a human being with feelings.
He began to hate himself for having no end. For how difficult everything had become. He came to resent eternity. He came to hate time itself. He began to hate himself.
And eventually—he began to hate them all.
That dreamlike feeling turned into a nightmare.
Everything he had once loved—everything he had once felt—vanished.
His soul grew corrupted. He lost his humanity. Until he became something capable of only rage and hatred.
He had become the enemy of all.
A creature who had no friends, a person who had never known family.
And putting aside the fact that he possessed the ability 'Prologue and Epilogue', which granted him true immortality, perhaps because he was the being who had experienced time the most, something within him changed.
That being who wandered the universe, who had seen countless worlds, endured countless sorrows and joys, witnessed endless catastrophes, watched millions live and die, and died millions of times himself—that being, Yuu Izumi, came to understand the Beginning and the End of all things.
A concept deeply tied to Yuu Izumi's ability: Prologue and Epilogue.
The Beginning and the End.
Two sides of the same coin. Without a beginning, there can be no end. Without an end, there can be no beginning. The existence of a beginning is essential for anything to exist. And based on that beginning, one inevitably arrives at an end.
In Yuu's case, having lived in the cosmos for so long, somewhere along his endless existence, he attained what could only be called Enlightenment…
And he opened his eyes.
The Beginning and the End—a concept woven into his very ability, Prologue and Epilogue, the skill that granted him true immortality… became the path to something beyond godhood.
An Aeon.
Yuu Izumi was named one of those beings.
And with that enlightenment came a new name.
Aegis; Aeon of the Beginning and the End.
×××
Yuu watched those memories, confused. He couldn't understand why, after sitting on the throne, his consciousness had been dragged into the past, forcing him to witness fragments of his eternal journey.
Suddenly, a deafening heartbeat echoed in his mind, and he snapped his eyes open.
He was back in the castle hall.
"…What is that…?"
[Verifying energy signature]
[…]
[Aegis memory confirmed]
[Ancient's status: Deceased]
[Compatible candidate detected]
A blue window appeared before his eyes. And the mechanical voice he had heard just before losing consciousness...
[Aegis, Aeon of the Beginning and the End meets the requirements to ascend as a Pillar of the Multiverse]
[Do you accept the position as Master of the Castle of Fate?]
×××
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