IBHJ 1389

"Is the Akasha Arrow... a key?"

Shirou looked down at the arrow in his hand. Its light pulsed brighter by the second—like it was being called.

Something beyond the portal was resonating with it.

And not just with the arrow.

The Mortal Vortex deep within his soul suddenly began to spin out of control.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

His heart pounded like war drums. Blood surged. Magical energy spiraled through his body, wild and chaotic, short-circuiting his circuits and sending white-hot pain shooting straight to his brain.

"Agh—!" Shirou clenched his head and dropped to one knee.

"Master! What's wrong?"

"Scan me—now!" he growled between his teeth, eyes clenched shut.

"I'm checking—no abnormalities. No system failure, no magical backlash!"

"Then what the hell is this...?"

The arrow in his hand and the vortex in his soul were resonating—reacting to something beyond the portal.

Golden light bled from the arrow.

The vortex spun like it was being torn apart.

The pain blurred the line between body and soul, like something was ripping them apart.

And then—he was gone.

His consciousness was dragged from his body, ripped away by an unseen force that hurled him across space and time—

—into a place beyond comprehension.

The pain vanished.

So did his body.

No blood. No breath. No thoughts. No fear. Just... soul.

In that disembodied stillness, he drifted in an endless, glowing world of origin—limitless, empty, perfect.

And then he saw it.

A sphere. Vast and blue. Floating in the void.

Not matter. Not light. Something else.

He’d never seen it before, never read about it, never imagined it—but the moment he saw it, something deep within him knew.

The knowledge wasn't taught. It was imprinted.

This was the beginning.

The Root.

The First Cause.

The source of all laws, all form, all meaning. The place from which everything came—and to which everything would return.

It wasn’t just the origin of the universe.

It was the universe.

No existence could escape the domain of the Root.

Not even the so-called transcendents.

Except for those like Shirou—an anomaly, a foreign soul. A transmigrator.

He couldn't think. Thought itself was swallowed whole by the silence of this place. All he could do was drift, observing the source body from a distant, third-person perspective.

It was breathtaking.

Beautiful. Alluring. Eternal.

A single glance felt like it stretched across ten thousand years—because here, time didn’t exist. There was no beginning. No end. Only that blue, perfect sphere, pulsing with primordial light. It demanded nothing. It offered nothing.

Yet he couldn’t stop looking.

Because this was everything.

And anything born from this source—no matter how vast or powerful—would always be drawn back. Back to the First Cause. Back to the Root.

It was desire itself.

It was meaning.

And then—

"After everything ends… we’ll go see snow together."

A voice.

So faint.

It echoed through his soul like the last ember of a forgotten winter.

Memory bloomed. Her voice.

His promise.

The moment it returned, thought returned with it.

Emotion. Intention. Will.

Shirou gritted his teeth and shut his eyes. Every fiber of his being screamed to keep looking, to never look away. But he turned his back on it—on the Root, on the temptation to forget everything and become nothing.

Because he remembered.

He had people waiting for him.

No one escaped the Root. Not the wise. Not the broken. Not the divine.

Because the Root was everything—the origin, the endpoint, the desire, the ideal. The eternal gravity that pulled all things home.

But Shirou...

Shirou was never part of this universe’s story to begin with.

His soul—the code of his being—didn’t come from this cosmos. It wasn’t written by this world’s First Cause.

And that was the only reason he could walk away.

What gave him the foundation to resist the Root’s pull was the anomaly of his soul.

But what truly allowed him to break free—was a promise.

‘After everything ends, we’ll go see snow together.’

A single sentence. A vow that tethered him tighter than any chain.

He would see it fulfilled. No matter what.

He hadn’t come this far to lose himself here.

With that thought, the pull of the Root shattered like brittle glass.

His soul surged upward—free.

Shirou looked around. There was nothing here. Nothing except that one, immense presence at the center of everything.

The universal source.

The Root.

This was the very thing magi across history had pursued in madness and reverence.

The origin of all phenomena.

A wellspring of infinite potential.

The divine blueprint of creation.

It allowed all ideals.

Permitted all outcomes.

Validated every path—yet felt nothing.

Emotionless, not out of cruelty, but because it needed no justification.

The Root judged nothing. Because it was everything.

Planetary gods.

Cosmic gods.

All of them—no matter how vast—were just aberrations floating at the surface of this unfathomable sea.

This was the true god.

Not in name, but in function.

A silent god, watching all things unfold without ever lifting a hand.

“The resonance between the Mortal Vortex and Akasha Arrow brought my consciousness here... but why?”

Shirou frowned.

The Root had long since been polluted by the Lord of Salvation—sealed deep within the Gate of Truth by the Origin Civilization.

So this couldn’t be the Root in its purest form.

No...

This must be the recorded source world contained within either the Akasha Arrow—or the Mortal Vortex embedded in his soul.

And if that was true...

Then someone had made them resonate. Someone had called him here.

Suddenly, with a brittle crack, a door split open in the endless light of the Root.

A figure stumbled through.

A man.

Disheveled. Broken. His posture hunched, his movements heavy and ragged.

He dragged himself forward across the luminous void and stood before the Root.

Like Shirou, he stared at it—entranced. But only for a moment.

Then, with a visible shiver, the man pulled himself back into awareness. His eyes—bright with flame.

Those eyes…

Shirou could tell he wasn't a transmigrator, but possessed the light of awakening.

The man raised his hand toward the Root. “Power... power... Grant me power! Grant me the strength to stabilize this world! Source of the End—hear me!”

There was no answer.

Of course there wasn’t.

The Root never answered.

It permitted all things—but responded to nothing.

That man begged. Pleaded. Screamed.

His voice cracked with desperation.

He threw himself before it, face twisted in agony and longing.

It was a wretched sight.

And Shirou, watching in silence, closed his eyes.

There was no dignity in that kind of madness.

Only tragedy.

"You..."

"Don’t you want to see what you look like?"

The man’s voice trembled with defiance as he shouted toward the Root, teeth clenched, eyes burning.

It was a pointless question.

The Root had no mind. No thoughts. No ego to be provoked.

It was not a god—it was function.

An abstract totality. A record without will.

And yet—

Shirou’s eyes widened. His breath caught.

Ripples.

Massive, rolling ripples began to spread through the universal source.

“The Root... responded?”

That shouldn’t be possible.

The Root had no personality, no awareness, no intention. It didn’t react. It didn’t acknowledge. It simply was—a boundless ocean of data.

But the evidence was in front of him. The ripples shimmered, golden and endless.

It was responding to the man.

Shirou’s heart pounded in disbelief. “Impossible...”

The man laughed.

A low, broken, triumphant laugh.

“So you do desire. Of course you do... it’s only natural. You’ve created worlds. Spawned countless eyes, countless minds... all to observe yourself.”

His voice grew steadier as he raised his hand toward the Root.

“You crave a mirror, don’t you? I understand. I’ll give you one.”

His body trembled—but his resolve didn’t.

“Take me. My body. My soul. All of it. Use me as your vessel—your eyes. In return... grant me power. Power to crush those evil gods. To stabilize the world!”

The ripples deepened.

And then—

It answered.

Not with words. Not with thought.

But with motion.

From the vast source body, tendrils emerged—thin and infinite, like threads of divine silk. They descended, coiling through space, cascading toward the man in golden streams.

Shirou’s vision blurred.

A storm of light engulfed the world.

And then—

—a terrible pull seized his spirit.

A force like gravity, memory, and destiny all at once.

"—!?"

Shirou’s consciousness was wrenched away.

Dragged backward through the vortex of Root resonance.

The memory ended.

The source world collapsed behind him like a dream fading on waking.