Tsugumi teleported close to Akakuchi Town and looked up at the wall that surrounded the area from a deserted spot. The wall stood about ten meters high, lined at the top with sharp barbed wire.

It was heavily fortified, and understandably so. After all, the danger to an ordinary person entering this place would be immense.

…Still, the thought of entering this place now made her heart feel heavy. Inside these walls lay undeniable proof of the crimes committed by Tsugumi and her sister.

How many innocent lives were lost in that great fire? It’s easy to reduce it to numbers, but the weight of those losses cannot be measured by mere words.

The survivors and the families of the victims still believe that the fire was either an accident or the work of some monstrous beast. The government concealed the true cause, fearing the massive impact it would have on society.

An inexplicable new religious sect. A god summoning ritual created by human hands. The curse of a malevolent deity. The control over the crack in the sky. The hostility towards Amaterasu. The child with no official records, meant to be sacrificed. The life and death of Sakura Akane. All of these were massive landmines that the government couldn’t afford to handle.

Because of this, the truth about the incident would never be revealed. The crimes of Sahon, her elder sister, as well as Tsugumi’s own guilt, were all buried in darkness.

If Tsugumi ever spoke about the incident in public, she would undoubtedly be branded a dangerous political criminal and swiftly isolated.

…Perhaps this unspoken punishment, of suffering in silence for eternity, was the true penalty given to Tsugumi.

It would be a lie to say it wasn’t painful, but considering this was the extent of her punishment, it still seemed rather light.

With a sigh, she focused her mind and looked at the wall again.

She had permission to enter, so she attached a thread to the top of the wall, pulled herself up, and lightly vaulted over it. With ease, Tsugumi landed inside the restricted area.

“…This really is terrible.”

The sight before her left Tsugumi speechless.

Everywhere she looked, black and gray stretched out endlessly. Everything had been burned to ashes, and even after more than ten years, not a single blade of grass or tree had grown back. It was not an exaggeration to call this a dead land.

…She had thought she was mentally prepared, but this sight was far worse than she had imagined.

Was the power of the gods really this terrifying? The thought of trying to harness something like this seemed utterly foolish.

Maybe it was the oppressive atmosphere, but Tsugumi felt a tightness in her chest. It was probably a psychological effect, which would likely pass soon.

According to Tohno, ordinary people would feel a chilling pressure the moment they entered these walls, with the first symptoms being numbness in their hands and feet. But so far, Tsugumi hadn’t experienced anything like that.

Thinking of this, Tsugumi cautiously extended her exploration threads.

…The threads felt slightly duller than usual. Despite her resistance, it seemed the weakening effect was still present.

Normally, she could scout almost twenty meters with her threads, but here, their range was reduced to about fifteen meters. At the center of the area, the sensitivity might drop even further. She would need to be cautious about her movements.

With that, Tsugumi pulled her hood lower, spread her threads around her, and began to run quietly without making a sound. Her plan was to move in a circular route, spiraling inward.

The search area was too vast, so she would only be able to cover about one-fifth of the town, but that was likely the limit of what she could do alone.

Still, in a few hours, she would reach the center—the source of the great fire—and she would decide what to do after that.

“…Well, I’m not looking forward to it, but I suppose I should get going.”

Several hours passed, and Tsugumi continued running without stopping.

No matter where she went, all she saw were soot-covered ruins and abandoned, broken-down vehicles. There was no sign of life anywhere.

She had run around extensively, but she hadn’t found any traces of intruders. All that remained was to explore the central area.

So far, she hadn’t made any significant discoveries, but perhaps that was for the best.

If there were no traces here, then it meant that the involvement of the Star of Dawn was less likely.

Tsugumi herself had never harbored any ill will towards the Star of Dawn—the people who had been around Sahon.

Although she had been kept at a slight distance due to her position, most of them had been kind and considerate towards her. She didn’t have a particularly negative image of them.

Despite what they had done, Tsugumi believed that deep down, they were good people. She didn’t want to think that such people were involved in incidents that harmed others or invoked the magic flowers.

With a small sigh, Tsugumi stopped and looked up.

…Before she knew it, she had arrived in front of a large building at the center of the area.

There was nothing particularly familiar about it, yet it somehow felt nostalgic.

…And for good reason. This building—the remains of the Star of Dawn—was the place where Tsugumi had been born and raised.

It was her first time seeing the building up close like this, but it was much larger than she had imagined. Just the size of it alone hinted at how much wealth the Star of Dawn had possessed.

“I wasn’t told to go inside and check it out, but I suppose I should, just in case…”

Tsugumi muttered to herself softly.

This place, the source of the fire and the center of the contamination, was said to be off-limits to anyone without resistance.

Tsugumi felt a bit heavy, but she couldn’t tell if it was due to the contamination or simply exhaustion from all the running.

…If she considered her own safety, the best option would be to turn back now. There was no need to take unnecessary risks.

However, if there was indeed an intruder, this was the most likely place for them to be hiding. It was the perfect spot to conceal oneself, as the chances of other magical girls or gods coming here were slim. If she wanted to minimize future casualties, going in to confirm things now was likely the right thing to do.

Despite these conflicting thoughts, Tsugumi also found herself simply wanting to enter this place.

――That altar, lingering in the corner of her memory.

The altar where Tsugumi herself was once meant to be offered still had to be inside. She couldn’t remember anything about what happened there.

All that remained in her memory was the final image of her blood-covered sister clinging to her.

Maybe, Tsugumi thought, if she went back to that place, she might remember…something—something about what happened on that day when everything burned.

…Even if she did recall it, the dead wouldn’t come back to life, nor would it change the fact that the great fire had occurred. In the end, it would only be self-satisfaction.

But Tsugumi wanted to understand. As the blood-related family member of Sahon, she wanted to know what her sister had been thinking, what had driven her to cause that incident.

After pondering for a moment, Tsugumi chuckled wryly, thinking that Belle-sama would probably scold her again for this, and then she took a step forward.

――To the once gray, ruined home, where everything had burned to ash.

◆ ◆ ◆

Tsugumi walked alone through the building, its walls blackened by soot, with parts of the walls and floors collapsed in various places.

She had thought that something familiar might emerge once she was inside, but after considering it carefully, she realized that as a child, she had been confined to the inner rooms and wouldn’t have remembered much of the building’s layout.

Tsugumi’s current destination was the top floor—what had once been called the “Altar Room.”

It was a spacious area where an entire floor’s worth of walls had been removed, with an altar sitting in the center, and a mechanism that allowed the ceiling to open. In Tsugumi’s last memory of the room, it had been heavily damaged from battle, with the ceiling partially opened and on the verge of collapse. Now, ten years later, it was doubtful whether any of it remained intact.

As these thoughts crossed her mind, Tsugumi recalled a conversation she had with Tohno.

――The bodies of the people left behind in Akakuchi Town had been gathered in one place by a benevolent god and returned to their families.

However, the body of Kudou Sahon had not been found among them. It was uncertain whether she had been completely consumed by the flames, leaving nothing behind, or if someone had taken her body before it could be recovered.

With injuries that severe, survival seemed impossible…but if Sahon had made a contract with a god like Tsugumi had, it wouldn’t be surprising if she had managed to escape.

Still, Tsugumi was fairly certain that wasn’t the case.

Her last memory before fleeing the great fire was of Sahon’s bloodstained white clothes, her eyes devoid of light. Her once gentle, smiling face had been more than half-burned and disfigured by the flames. That was the first time Tsugumi had realized just how heavy a lifeless body could be. …She couldn’t bring herself to believe that everything from back then had been a lie.

With these thoughts swirling in her mind, Tsugumi wandered through the building, climbing the stairs as she relied on the faint remnants of her memory.

――With each step she took, fragmented memories of Sahon began to resurface.

The time she had been sick, and Sahon, panicking, had held her hand and stayed by her side all night.

The time they had stayed up late together, watching a meteor shower spread across the night sky.

Though Sahon rarely cooked, she would sometimes make clumsy treats just for Tsugumi.

The simple drawings Tsugumi made were treasured like precious artifacts, displayed in her sister’s room.

…All the memories that came back were of those happier times.

If the world knew what Sahon had done, they would condemn her as evil. But even now, after learning the truth, Tsugumi couldn’t bring herself to believe that.

――Because Sahon had always been so kind. No matter what anyone else said, to Tsugumi back then, she had been her one and only sister.

If Sahon had asked, Tsugumi would have been willing to die as a sacrifice.

“…Thinking about it now doesn’t change anything, though,” Tsugumi muttered with a bitter smile.

Everything had already ended. No matter what she said now, the past wouldn’t change.

With that thought, Tsugumi followed some unknown instinct to the dead-end floor.

…This was likely the Altar Room, but the Star of Dawn’s building had a complex structure with several connected constructions. She wouldn’t know for sure unless she looked inside.

――Her threads, which she had secretly extended into the room, didn’t sense the presence of any people, so she decided to go in and confirm it. If this turned out to be the wrong room, she would just have to come back again later, even if she didn’t want to.

With that in mind, Tsugumi let out a small breath and reached for the large door.

――At that very moment, before her hand could touch it, the door slowly began to open inward.

Almost as if someone…had been waiting for her arrival.

In her earlier search with the threads, there hadn’t been any sign of movement inside. She hadn’t made any particular mistakes.
Which meant that precautions against her threads had been in place from the start.

“――Could it be that my intrusion was detected from the beginning, and… huh?”

What met Tsugumi’s eyes as she raised her guard in surprise was an unexpected scene.

“…A-Asakura-sensei…!? Why… why are you here?”

She was so stunned that she forgot she was still in the form of Hagakure Sakura.

But Asakura, unfazed by Tsugumi’s reaction, smiled in his usual carefree manner and said:

“Welcome, Tsugumi-kun. ――I’ve been waiting for you all along.”