Cracks spread across its face. Hoshino, shaking off his shock, felt vortices swirl in his eyes, but it was too late.
The Fiend's face scattered like fragments, its final words carried by the wind.
"The two moments of Its descent: eight days after the ritual begins… or… the second after my death."
Crick. Crack.
A sound like a door opening echoed simultaneously in the minds of all four.
Above the now snow-free Okura-kun IV, a blue wooden door swung open.
A black heart plummeted straight down.
What followed was a sequence both familiar and alien to Hoshino.
Different from before, Its body was now formed of snow, no longer possessing blurred human faces. The ring of stars was ice-blue, devoid of individual points of light.
"The descent is incomplete! We still have a chance!" Hoshino gritted his teeth.
Almost simultaneously, the sound of shattering ice came from around them.
He turned to look.
Hirofumi Yoshida, Himeno, and Kobeni all shattered into glittering ice dust.
A heartbeat later, he followed.
A moment of piercing, bone-deep cold, and the world shattered into thousands of pieces.
This cold did not stop. It radiated outwards from the Primal Devil at its center, turning everything in its path into crystalline ice before shattering it.
After about five breaths, the space around Hoshino's corpse began to distort.
A vortex, centered on him, appeared, expanding outwards, madly crumpling everything like wrinkled silk.
The Primal Devil observed for a moment, then raised a pale arm. Its whole body contorted, bursting with many ice-blue liquid droplets.
From the darkness opened above, powders of various colors fell, sticking to the Devil's index finger.
As the powders vanished, grey spread out. The snowflakes and ice crystals floating in the air were stained grey and immediately froze in place.
—Time had stopped.
The only thing unaffected was that ring of vortex.
It ignored the Primal Devil's supreme Authority, expanding dominantly outwards, faster and faster, devouring everything around it like a black hole.
Even the Primal Devil could not escape.
In the moment before being swallowed, the Primal Devil grabbed a nearby ice-blue gemstone necklace and hurled it high into the air.
It flew unerringly through the door.
Then, the Devil was torn in half by an invisible force and consumed by the vortex.
In the sky, a crow flapped its wings desperately, but it was no match for the vortex's speed of expansion.
In its final moment before being swallowed, it closed its golden eyes, marked with faint spirals.
"Checkmate, Hoshino-kun."
Makima opened her eyes.
Sunlight streamed through the tall glass windows behind her. The pen in her hand glinted faintly gold.
Scratch. Scratch.
Makima moved her pale wrist, adding to the list after [Not Human/Not Devil], [Aging], [Muscle], [Mirror], [Silkworm], [Avalanche], [Yurie, Chiyo], [Asa Mitaka], [Kobeni Higashiyama], [Time Reversal Range], [Authority Mutation via Kill]
she added one final note:
[Time Reversal: Highest Priority]
She gently closed the notebook, opened a drawer, and placed the black notebook on top of a yellow and a purple one.
Just then, a tall, well-built, and scholarly-looking purple-haired youth emerged from the shadows in the corner of the office.
"Makima-san, hehe, Ichirou has gone through countless hardships to bring you two documents." The boy's somewhat handsome face was full of sycophancy.
"One is about the recent unusual movements of the Chinese spies."
"The other concerns the Gun Devil. Turns out it died a long time ago."
"Mmm, thank you for your hard work, Yamada-kun." Makima took the documents.
"Wasn't Yamada-kun touring in Kyoto?"
"Makima-san's tasks naturally take top priority, hehe." Yamada clasped his hands, putting on an utterly obsequious expression.
"Makima-san, could Ichirou beg a favor of you?"
"Hmm?"
"From now on, please call me Ichirou. I beg you."
Ichirou Yamada fell to his knees with a thud, prostrating himself flat on the floor in a perfect, swift, and practiced dogeza.
Makima rested her chin on her hand, watching with interest for a while.
"That's fine, Ichirou."
"Yay!" Ichirou Yamada jumped up excitedly, then bowed deeply again. "Makima-san, Ichirou will definitely be your dog for life!"
"Mmm."
"Then Ichirou will take his leave!"
"Mmm."
Ichirou Yamada retreated into the shadows and disappeared.
Makima skimmed through the documents briefly, then threw on a black coat and left the office.
Meanwhile, in Hell, behind a blue door.
An endless ice plain held a single, lonely log cabin.
The interior was empty, the floor made of unplaned logs, the walls rough-hewn timber, minimalist to the extreme.
The Primal Devil woke up, tilting its head to look around.
From between the logs, a glistening sapphire necklace caught its attention.
Slender fingers hooked the necklace. The sapphire reflected a star-like ring and a pieced-together face.
It released a tiny bit of Authority.
The scene reflected on the gem's surface changed into a vortex. The vortex shrank until it disappeared, and ice crystals slowly condensed into the form of a boy.
"I see," the Primal Devil said.