It is as I wanted it to be. A sunset.

My body wafts through the nuclear wasteland, and I watch bubbles filled with oxygen and radiation pulse towards the surface. I am pulled by the immense gravity of repeated chains and links of energy swallowed whole by a beast I have seen only the shadow of—an abyssal serpent of sheer grudges, born alongside every ounce of karma generated from this war—, and whose jaws have gobbled the blue core of the explosion to keep it stable. A sunset of overwhelming light, soon to claim my life as I have desired. To end the pain and to quell the miserable existence slandered by failure after failure, the original sin of the species I was born into.

The sunset I coveted, sitting atop Koutei’s head. Ashes of dreams…

… I am not alone, however, in my descent towards that raging, nuclear sun. A four-leaf clover floats just ahead through the water doused in the radiation they’d talked so extensively about in the set-up of that weird contraption—cold fusion, had they called it?—, snippets of information that shield this body of mine from dissolving into coalesced matter, and somehow survives destruction. The leaves are a bright blue, almost impossible to tell apart from the thrumming light, and its movements alongside mine are hypnotic.

I know it; recognize what it is beyond the plant-like form.

The scars sprawled across my face ache, left there by a terrible struggle against the influence of Douji, now lost and nowhere to be found within. Yukari cleansed me of it all and left behind hollowness. Shouldn’t I feel happy? Though lacking right and left arms, I am free of the parasite of my birthright—jagged horns sprout anyway, my teeth are sharp, and the way everything appears focused tells me my pupils have narrowed into slits—, and I…

I cry tears that disappear in the radioactive water, eyes following the clover.

Release the hold of the power, disappear in the nuclear sun.

It’d be so easy to spell the end of this life.

—she stands across the field of many flowers, each one a distinct shade of bright or deep blue, and she talks words I understand. Words forgotten with the way my soul snapped back to reality and replaced Douji’s. When had it happened? How? What propelled me from the confines of my psyche to take control over my worst half…?—

Gensokyo is dying above. Koutei is dead, an entire hidden society eviscerated under the sheer cadence of Manipulation of Understanding. Reimu shrivels and marches towards her end, and her daughter, their souls intertwined, shall meet the same ending. I’ve failed every single soul of this land and deserve nothing but the hellfire of the sun to which I drift so slowly… Yet, this clover and the whispers beyond its petals lure me.

What was I told by that unborn child?

What wrought unto me the desire to breathe again in this land I’ve failed…?

A shadow lingers past the clover, and it makes its way towards me. Hulking and horned, hair sprawled around her and… My eyes widen, my heart blisters with the dreaded sight, a loathsome spear lodging itself through me: her skin peels with every inch she takes down the radioactive water, blood curls and ribbons rising as she makes her way towards me. She’d lifted wards, yet they amounted to a crude defense against the biting radiation. Even so, Yuugi’s eyes were dead-set on me, carrying the same overpowered confidence and hope she’d looked at me with the day Yukari toyed with her for one nightmarish minute.

She manipulates unexplained phenomena, so why…?

The question means nothing to me as this shameful body springs into action, exploding towards her and grabbing the bigger Oni by the hem of her yukata with my teeth, eyes wide and animalistic with just how severe the damages appear.

My fault. I caused this.

Without hesitation, I bring us all the way up and explode through the surface of the lake, our bodies rolling across the shore, the lack of arms doing nothing to stop me as I kneel and manipulate my understanding of wounds to heal her. I-It’s not perfect. I don’t understand one thing about radiation burns and injuries— “Ha… I never once imagined spending so much time with Okuu would fuck me up like this.” Blood and peeling skin, shield wards flashing and eroding like a ridge under the scrutiny of a pluvial deluge, her wounds closed yet burning so thoroughly, the tanned skin had vanished. She rose to her feet anyway, tall as any summit. “What are you doing down there, Kasen? Kneeling… Get up at once.” Her voice snapped my spine to a dull halt, my eyes searching her figure for any sign of unraveling, her clothes clinging to her solely by mandate of heaven. “We won’t end the Hag by kneeling.”

I follow Yuugi's eyes and shiver as everything blurs, and I drink of Yukari’s wide purples ablaze with madness. Through the corner of my eye, I caught the object of her focus: that same blue four-leaf clover, floating as if it’d never left water.

Her words, though whispered, were of wrath: “… Give it back… Sekai.”