The path behind Izanami wound upward into a forest unlike any they had known. The trees grew in spirals, their leaves flickering between seasons—spring blossoms one moment, autumn gold the next. Sayo's breath caught as she stepped into the shifting light.
Time had fractured here.
Ren stayed close, his hand brushing hers as they walked deeper. They didn't speak, afraid that sound might crack the fragile stillness of this in-between world. The trail seemed to bend not only through the mountain but through memory itself.
"I've been here before," Sayo whispered.
Ren nodded. "In a dream."
But they both knew it hadn't been a dream at all. It was a memory from a life where this place had been a sanctuary.
The trail ended at a stone gate wrapped in moss.
Beyond it: the garden.
---
It stretched wide like a forgotten heaven. Cranes glided through the air above beds of blooming paper flowers. Trees bore fruits of glass and light. In the center, a koi pond shimmered beneath a canopy of silver vines.
And in the middle of it all sat Izanagi.
He looked up as they entered, his eyes calm. "You've returned together. That is new."
Izanami appeared beside him. "They have remembered. They've begun to write anew."
Ren stepped forward. "We've seen our pasts. We know what was lost. But we don't yet understand how to stop it."
"You are not meant to stop it," Izanagi said.
Sayo frowned. "Then what are we meant to do?"
"To choose what to carry forward," Izanami said gently. "Not all memory serves. Some binds. Some blinds."
The gods led them to a stone table covered in scrolls.
"Each scroll," said Izanami, "is one version of your love. Some ended in fire. Some never began. Others were beautiful but forgotten."
Sayo touched one scroll. It pulsed with heat.
She saw herself in a silk kimono, standing in a burning city. Ren—Akihiko—was across a bridge, shouting her name. But the flames rose too quickly. She never reached him.
She stepped back, tears in her eyes.
Izanagi unrolled another scroll.
A quiet life. A small inn by the sea. She and Ren as strangers turned lovers. They died old and peaceful—but the world had never changed. The veil between lives stayed intact. No memories carried forward.
"You can choose to forget," Izanagi said.
"But forgetting is a kind of death," Sayo replied.
The gods nodded.
---
They walked through the garden until they reached a circle of cranes perched upon a tree of bones.
"These," Izanami whispered, "are your lost decisions. The ones never made."
Sayo approached them, her hand shaking.
The cranes opened as she neared.
Each one showed a fork in the road—places in past lives where she had turned away. A confession never voiced. A promise broken by silence. A hand not held in time.
Ren stood beside her. "They're mine too."
"Yes," Izanagi said. "You are two halves of one arc. But even together, your choices must now be made alone."
The sky darkened.
A storm rolled over the edge of the garden.
Izanami looked at them. "There is one more thing you must remember."
The garden began to change.
The koi pond cracked like ice.
The trees wilted.
The light faltered.
---
Suddenly, they were in a memory neither had lived.
A battlefield.
Arrows filled the sky.
Ren—no, Akihiko—was running through mud and blood, searching for her.
Sayo—Hotaru—stood in a shrine, clutching a scroll. Soldiers approached. She hid the scroll in a statue's base before turning to face them.
Steel flashed.
She fell.
Ren found her too late.
That was the moment the cycle began.
They died protecting the story.
And the story, broken, began to repeat.
---
Back in the garden, Sayo gasped.
She collapsed to her knees.
Ren held her.
"It's not just about us," she said. "It never was. The story is the key."
Izanagi knelt before them. "Only by finishing what was started then—by sharing it—can you end the recursion."
"The book," Ren said. "The one we found."
"Yes," said Izanami. "It must be completed, sealed, and offered. Not to gods. To others."
"To be remembered," Sayo whispered.
"To be free," Izanagi affirmed.
---
They stood together in the heart of the garden.
Izanami reached into the pond and drew out a final paper crane—folded not from paper, but from light itself.
She handed it to Sayo.
"This is your memory of the true ending. You must write it. Speak it. Fold it into being."
Sayo nodded.
Ren took her hand.
They turned back toward the gate.
Behind them, the gods vanished.
The garden faded.
Ahead, the cranes began to fly once more.