Shinjiteita Nakama Tachi Ni Dan John Okuchi De Korosarekaketaga Gift -

Now he understood. Betrayal was the real prison.

He pushed harder, his boots skidding on loose gravel. The labyrinthine ruins of Dan John Okuchi—the ancient, singing prison-temple—hummed around him. Its walls were carved with warnings in a language older than kings. He had translated them for Marduk once, laughing about the paranoid fools who built a dungeon to trap a god. Now he understood

Shinjiteita nakama. The ones he had believed in. The labyrinthine ruins of Dan John Okuchi—the ancient,

That’s when Marduk had drawn his blade. Shinjiteita nakama

The floor beneath his former companions dissolved into light. Not killing them. Not punishing them. Just… choosing them. The light wrapped around Lyra’s shield and made it a cage. It wove through Torvin’s fingers and turned every blade he touched against his own shadow. It entered Marduk’s mind and showed him every future where his greed consumed him—and then made him live in all of them at once.

The stone slid free from his flesh without resistance, as if it had been waiting. It clicked into the altar with a sound like a key turning in the last lock of the world.