Twenty hours. That is all the time Diana had since her retreat to compose herself. Twenty hours is both no time at all, and an eternity, all in one. The scene of Diana cutting down the silhouettes in the mist played on a loop in her mind without cease.

Cutting down Fiora was easy. It was her job back then. Even if she could take it back, it was the life both of them chose. Besides, it wasn’t like Fiora had a right to judge her either way.

The second target was equally easy. Arguably more so. That light, the way she kept speaking of its dangers, all a lie, even if Diana still believed the harm it brought to people, deep down to this very day.

But Melati? This was the first time Diana ever brought herself to cutting Melati’s visage down. She never could before. How could she? How could Diana bring herself to cut down the one person in this world that hadn’t wronged her, and the one person which Diana had wronged so grievously in turn?

And yet, she had. Diana had declared that she walks her own path, and cut Melati’s silhouette down. It had to be a coincidence that Melati had found her in that exact moment. Right? It had to be.

Diana had avoided Melati’s pursuit for almost a hundred years. She went from place to place, playing her games to stave off the stagnation in her soul. When she played hard enough? A coin would break. All the fate accumulated from flipping between a binary reality so many times in such a short span would cause Diana to face it. Her past. Her regrets. Her deepest fears and pains catching up to her. 

Every single time, she would cut them down. Two of them, anyway. When it came to Melati, her hand wavered. She would flee. Find somewhere else to go. Find other games to play. Find a way to cover her tracks, so Melati couldn’t find her. The pattern repeated for decades. It was a routine, a play that Diana had perfected again and again.

Every single time, she felt the light. The Path. Magia. The forbidden light she had been taught to avoid for most of her life, and all of her time as a Balancer. The light she hunted. The light that, if it ever caught her, would mean change, a change Diana was nowhere near prepared for. She knew what it meant, and she wasn’t done yet. Even here, in Mitakihara, where light from The Path seemed to flow quite freely. Light she only narrowly avoided letting into herself. That was the scariest part for Diana.

Mitakihara had always been an anomaly. She heard about it in her travels, how Mitakihara was a breeding ground for Kyubey’s “mad science”. Ironically, Diana herself fell into the anomaly’s grip. Five months was too long to linger in one location. The longest she had stayed in one place before was three. Still, she thought she was okay, since her coins weren’t exploding. It was foolish, in the end. Diana had felt as though she were getting stronger, even though nothing had changed between the previous century and this one.

Her coin broke. Fate had accumulated, and overflowed. But this time, Diana cut Melati’s silhouette down. And Melati, the real Melati finally found her. And Diana fled. But leaving Mitakihara wasn’t really an option. Diana knew, even a hundred years ago, that she couldn’t run forever. She told Yui as much, even. 

And that was the other thing. Yui Arashi. Diana wasn’t finished with her game. She hated leaving debts unsettled. And Yui won. Despite Diana’s protests, despite Diana’s clear advantage in battle, Yui did learn her power. She changed her mind, forcing herself into the other reality. She did so with confidence. She knew what she was doing. She understood the rules, as written, even if she didn’t know them. Twenty hours later, her head was calmer. Even if she was replaying her fated consequences in her head, she was calmer. She had to admit when she lost.

No, Diana Caelum could not leave the city, not while she owed a debt and prize to someone who played her game and won. But she couldn’t roam freely, given the bounty on her head. She did kill fifty three people— that Mitakihara knew about anyway. And Melati was here. Even if Melati was all business, and that business didn’t involve Diana, per se, she knew her old friend well enough to know that it was only a matter of time. She had to prepare.

At the edge of town, a small shack, abandoned for months now. No sign of damage from the attempted Erasure of Mitakihara, nor any signs of life. If there were, Diana would’ve tried something else. She was done killing people, given that someone— a high school girl, no less— had won that game. Diana wasn’t used to losing more than once in any given region or time period. 

But Mitakihara, as always, never ceased to amaze.

Diana: <…Just for a minute. Just… until I can breathe again.>

Diana entered the shack, still muttering to herself as she closed and locked the door. She was grateful that if there ever was electricity flowing to this place, there wasn’t any now. The last thing Diana needed was light. Light from lamps or bulbs, or from The Path. Diana avoided it until now, anyway. She could run just a little while longer. …Or she couldn’t.