I wish I could blame it all on the Hakurei girl. An easy resolution, a way to feel good in the face of imminent death, and every screeching limb of mine begged the mind to do so, tainted blessings stirring to give birth to the antithesis of a backdoor—closed; a disguised floorboard—which stacked upon themselves like stars layered on the night sky, blanketing thousands of miles of straight lines that appear as if a full canvas. Working alongside my closed doors, even phasing through them, Hakurei red flames spewed towards Yukari’s most refined act of madness, blowing up hundreds of thousands of tons of debris as if nothing, their origins but thin air… the way the Hakurei girl was looking around with this palpable desperation shows the source is beyond my sight.

That tortured man and the bakeneko, the latter source of the tenuous faith I’m applying to protect us, lay on the gravel a few steps away from mother and daughter.

Standing alone against the crumbling world, it’d indeed be easy to pin the fault of our inevitable demise onto the girl who’d chosen this specific moment to have a meltdown and lose her composure…

… But, for the briefest of moments, the air is salty and the waves crash upon a makeshift boat, and I taste cheap beer on my tongue and I close my eyes to not look into innocent eyes. Hallucinations, I understand. My blood rivulets and that immaterial thing within is colored to the shade of tar, poisoning what makes gods—gods.

Winter is to arrive soon.

I could just lie down alongside these people and welcome it. Had I not done that for so long? I could’ve prevented this whole mess, yet I had no guiding star for the longest of times—a goddess like me, lost in a terrible night… All it took was a simple human. I wonder how he is doing.

He survived worse; he told me the history of men who survived worse odds.

If those humans could battle a thousand invaders and save their faith, why not this goddess to save her faithful?

Tainted faith yawns, and to the surface bubbles even more closed doors; the parasite left by Yukari’s cursed sword that’d mingled with the pool of tar squirms and rots muscle and my veins of power, the Backdoor withering away and every other strand of magic following true. They unfold anyway, malformed and stacked so tightly onto one another it would take a Gap to pry them loose; my knees buckle and the blood pools out of open wounds, a war against the incoming winter fought alone. For a single more second, I keep on fighting, and then another and another.

Then another second, gravel digging into my flesh.

Then one more, backdoors exploding and crumbling and arching outwards following the dwindling fervor of Hana’s Hakurei flames and the continuous gorging of Youkai Mountain, the surface or its sides likely unrecognizable. Such a sad thing; I recall the view being prettier than the Himalayas… Satono and Mai must’ve liked it—Gensokyo looks simply gorgeous from the Myouren temple. The Tengu would be mad about everything that’s happening, their sacred mountain defiled, same for the oni to a lesser extent. I wonder if they’ll try to wage war. I… wonder…

Ah, everything hurts so very much. My head spins, my knees are torn. That pulse of light within dimmers, devoured by a beast of tar and many eyes.

No, keep on wondering, Okina Matara; don’t focus on the pain, on the strain. Keep your mind away from it all.

Just another second, and then another. Winter is coming, but I can delay it.

These people rely on you.

Delay the inevitable until the boulders stop falling, and the world ceases its efforts to crush us—

A small voice…

—Or a miracle happens.

“Her legacy… I-I do not accept it,” a small voice booms, and, suddenly, my eyes are on her and not on sheer destruction, and the mind is void of pain and suffering, if only briefly. The sight is abhorrent yet deeply chilling: the girl lifts herself from the ground like a stringless puppet, the hole through her chest closing amidst a small pouring of black sludge adorned in peering red eyes. The red flames besiege her, and in all directions, long shadows are cast. Shadows of a mad woman, umbral hair swaying as if the cut threads of said puppet.

Yukari…?

I can’t see her face; she’s looking at the sleeping man on the ground, nothing else seems to exist. The wound in her chest had fully healed, leaving behind only rugged skin—imperfect control over the Gap…

“I—It's not mine; that love… I refuse to carry it—I love… differently,” she trudges onward, flames almost seeming to dodge her faltering gait. Her tails are limp, and her ears stand down. “M-My family… I don’t want things to end like this; I don't want her legacy—” the stretched hand goes to the cheek where five sulks lie, and the world drowns a strangled sob.

That hand then reaches forward.

A Gap opens past Anon. “—I just want to be h-happy.”

Freedom.

Just as my body moves to collect the bakeneko—unconscious—, spider webs shoot from within the Gap.

They pull us into the dark.