"Hello?"

Miku hollers out into her pitch black surroundings. No response.

An empty void is burying her in nothingness. With every twist and turn she takes and no matter where she runs, it's futile because whichever direction she heads leads into pure black. She tries shouting again but only a mere echo returns as a boomerang to the head. Resorting to other possibilities, she scurries around for a bit, yet lands in the same place she started.

It's pointless- whatever she does is getting her nowhere. Her voice is crushed into oblivion, and running off loops her to the beginning; her choices are limited at this point. What can she do?

Suddenly the floors give out and open up. Miku is being pulled downward, plummeting down a path that she feels no end to as the moment she began falling starts to feel like forever ago. She flails her limbs helplessly for the chance someone will be there to grab her hand and help her up.

But no one saves her.

"Do you really think you're fit to be the Messiah?" a disdainful voice echoes in the void. It's Mayu's.

"You're not the Messiah." She hears Luka's voice resound. "You're just a clumsy seamstress from a village."

Miku opens her mouth to scream at the top of her lungs but the words are unable to form a sentence that escapes her lips.

"How can we depend on you to save the world?" says Gakupo.

She's falling like a meteor crashing down to Earth. Sinking to the bottom- a weight attached to her foot and regardless of how hard she tries to shimmy out or find the key, she has no luck.

Falling...

Falling...

Falling...

The tealette blinks her eyes simultaneously and raises her head from the shoulder she was resting on.

"Did you have a nice nap?" Luka smiles.

Still adjusting to her previous dream, Miku replies weakly. "Y... yeah."

She shakes her head and disregards her friends' voices circling in her mind.

'What am I thinking? They wouldn't say that; they believe in me being the Messiah...' she reassures herself.

It's the second day of the trip and since the discussion during the rain yesterday, Len's speech is still jammed in her brain. The group continued their hike until hours of walking had finally pounded the two pairs of siblings into complaining. Rin started whining, Len attempted calming her down, Mayu agreed with Rin, and so did Ia.

The next thing they knew, they were setting up an afternoon fire to cook the meat from the food bag. Despite everyone's exhaustion, at last it was time to enjoy another bountiful meal. As little as it was, it'd sufficed Miku enough to fall asleep on Luka's shoulder for the past forty-five minutes.

Miku leans against the tree trunk, sighing as she reflects back on yesterday.

"Mmm-" The seamstress watches Luka stand up and fix her stiff posture. She's twisting her body left and right and outstretching her hands to the sky.

"Ah... you okay?"

"Mhm. You've just been napping on my shoulder for forty-five minutes, you'd expect someone'd be stiff from being still for so long," the dancer giggles.

"Sorry, Luka!" Miku frantically waves her hand.

"It's nothing to be sorry about. I understand you were tired and I just happened to be the closest person you could lean on," she winks. "Also can't forget how you and Rin were both napping on me at the same time."

"You're not aching or in pain or anything, right?"

"Nah. You both were a bit heavy, but no, nothing serious. And luckily Rin woke up earlier so I didn't have to deal with that much. But remember, I am a dancer. In case I'm still tense, I can always bust a move to get myself going again."

Miku laughs and redirects her gaze to the others gathered around the campfire pit. With the fire already doused by one of the members, they're off again chit-chatting while (most likely) waiting for Miku to awake- not even taking notice of the two's conversation a few feet away.

Luka says, "I'll go tell the eight we can get moving again."

The tealette nods understandably and grabs her bag from the opposing side of the trunk.

- × * . * × -

Gumi looks around the path and unsatisfied with the trail, she keeps her gaze ahead and taps Kaito's shoulder behind her.

"Hey, what did the scroll say we were supposed to come across next?" she questions and turns to the blue-haired male by the end of her sentence.

"You mean the landmarks it mentioned?" he clarifies.

"Yeah, either that or the directions it said to go... Do you know?"

He holds a hand to the bottom of his chin and does his best to recall everything he can from the scroll. Despite that Miku could pull it out right now, he chooses not to bother her for a tiny question.

"I-" He furrows his brow. "I'm certain it said we were supposed to come across a cliff next..."

"Well whatever cliff it is, I'm not seeing any."

Gumi turns back to the landscape and narrows her eyes to find said landmark to disprove her sentence. If the scroll could've been more specific-

"Boo."

She's startled by the voice behind her that she almost crashes into Kaito not too far ahead. Infuriated, she whips around and Gakupo's there with his fingers curled in front of his face.

She clings her hands over her heart, staring at the monk with a death glare as she pouts. Regardless of him being not at all threatening with that "devious" expression to scare her, any one member of the group should know better than to scare Gumi like that. Even giving her a jump from the smallest surprise always ticked her off.

"Gakupo-" she groans and repeatedly punches his shoulder with soft blows.

"What?" He throws his hands up in defense.

She lightly smacks his arm. "Don't scare me like that. Geez."

"'Kay, okay, I'm sorry."

Gumi inhales and presses the palm of her hand to her forehead. "No, no, it's fine. Just... it's fine." She extends that same hand to touch his chest and gently shove him backwards. "Just don't do that to me again for the rest of the trip," Gumi lifts an eyebrow and cocks her head to the side.

"Yeah, I got it," he sighs for the last time.

"Good."

The greenette huffs, continuing to scope out the area.

Exactly as Kaito had stated, she couldn't see a cliff far in the distance as he claimed there was supposed to be. Well, taking into account they were at the edge of a forest and simply looking out into the fields and mountains from afar, it was likely they wouldn't spot a tower with high mountains blocking the view.

"It's getting late," Meiko calls as she turns to the sky and the sun beginning to set on the horizon. "You think we should stay here for the night?"

Len shrugs. "I don't see why not. What do you think, Ri-"

He looks at his sister to get her approval, but as Rin plops herself onto the ground and carelessly drops her shepherd staff to the dirt, he's not surprised.

"Agreed," she mutters in a muffled voice.

Len slaps his hand over his eyes.

- × * . * × -

Miku's eyes gradually open to the night stars circling overhead. She groggily sits up and pulls away the blanket covering her body. She yawns, looks around at her friends sleeping peacefully next to one another, and drops herself back to the ground. Turning her body over with her stomach touching the dirt, she admits to stalling for time until she can fall back asleep.

She stares forward at her bag she'd been sleeping next to. The contents remained inside as she'd barely taken anything out. Glancing to the group and making sure no one was up, she returns to the leather bag and carefully unties the string.

The scroll is there in the rightful place she had put it in; still untouched since she first shoved it into the miscellaneous bag. Maybe she could continue reading the remainder she had yet to get to. Miku reaches her hand in and takes ahold of the scroll-

Rustle!

Rustle!

There's a noise of stomping footsteps in the grass, sounding so close to her that she instantly suspects one of the nine. Miku releases the scroll from her hand and ties the knot to the bag, again stealing a peek behind her. She finishes and sits up.

Where they all slept was a small clearing encircled by trees all around, except the trees parted to the left and revealed a lake pouring with water from a river. She watches a figure in the shadows examine the area and walk to the opening. And as far as Miku can see in the dark, there's a light source near the lake.

The figure saunters over to the light source, passes the trees, and vanishes from her sight.

Miku's baffled and pulls away her blanket from impulse- not even taking the time to confirm from an empty spot of their sleeping circle that it was a group member. Her eyes shift to the left and right while approaching the parting.

There, by the previously-put-out fire pit are Gumi and Gakupo- who she assumes must've recently relit it. Gakupo sits diagonally across from the greenette, relaxing as he leans back to close his eyes and listen to the crackling of the gentle fire.

"I don't know..." Gumi mumbles. She glances to Gakupo from her book, a hand under her chin, and clearly biting her lip.

Miku predicts she's picking up from the conversation she was having with him. Only now did she come in to eavesdrop, but she begins to wonder the topic of their discussion.

"You think maybe we should..." Gakupo breaks off immediately; tossing his head forward and his gaze crawling from the ground to meet the tealette's face.

They stare eye to eye.

Gumi hasn't yet realized what he's directing himself toward. As he looks straight ahead, she turns her gaze over to Miku who reveals herself from the bushes, strolling to an empty spot by the fire with them.

"Hey. Guessing you couldn't sleep, too?" The greenette stifles a laugh.

"Yeah," Miku answers and sits crisscrossed next to her. "So, what were you two talking about before I got here?"

"Nothing, just..." Gumi lowers her eyes to her book.

Gakupo quickly picks up on her sentence, "... the journey. How long until we get to the tower and which direction we might have to take to get there."

Miku nods and shifts her attention to Gumi. She watches the poet's eyes flicker from line to line on the page and amazingly, Miku can barely keep up. Gumi's as quick as lightning as she reads both pages and turns to the next in less than ten seconds (as Miku can count).

The book she packed was one she hoped the girl hadn't read (which was hard as it was since Gumi's read almost all the books in the village library) and was written in the smallest size she'd seen. Now receiving the firsthand experience of how enthralled Gumi is is unbelievable.

"Gumi, I've been meaning to ask... why do you read so much?" Miku shifts her sitting position and bites her cheek. She can't tell if it's just her, but the uneasy atmosphere around them begins to get to her.

At that question, the greenette masks a smile. Blinking her eyes and finally dismissing a thought, Gumi breaks a grin. She hands Miku her book.

"Read the first line of that page," she instructs.

The seamstress accepts the book and brings her eyes to the top of the left page.

'The world crumbles and so should thy hero. But he keeps his head high.'

Miku hadn't visitied the library lately and she wasn't quite a reader like Gumi herself. For the preparation, she simply took a book, rapidly flew through the pages, and stuffed it in the bag without giving it a second look. She's sure she hadn't read this one yet. She's inquisitive and slowly flips back to the cover.

"Heroic to One," the title reads, and Miku strokes the letters imprinted on.

"You happened to pack one of my favorites..." Gumi says. "If you want to know why I read so much, you might as well hear the whole story." She breathes before clearing her throat. "The day of the Divine Punishment, everyone was killed but us... Those days when I was a kid, I was so close to my mother and father. They kept me company when no one else was there, they even read me books before I fell asleep and I had always been so... immersed in those stories.

"My parents and I shared everything together- our time especially- but I never knew the magnitude of the situation. The fire started and at that time, I didn't know what was going on. I knew mom and dad were still in the house and I carelessly ran inside to save them. The next thing I remembered were the fumes clogging my nostrils and passing out." For a second she's tense, soon relaxing while she softens up. "I woke up and Gakupo was there..." she turns to the monk by her side. "He saved me from that fire."

Gakupo nods and informs quietly, "I knew the Divine Punishment was coming. My father was doing everything in his power to defy God, and regardless of anything he did, I knew none of it would work. I prayed every day that my father would stop and accept the truth, but he never did. One of those days I was praying, somewhere within me, the words 'Divine Punishment' echoed. I didn't have a clue on what it meant." Gakupo stares at the fires and its embers dancing below the smoke.

"Until the village fire struck, I knew this had to be it. It started a house across from mine and I went inside to see if there were any survivors or if they'd all fled to safety. Inside I saw a girl unconscious on the floor as flaming bits of the roof came falling around her." He glances at Gumi who doesn't meet his eyes. "I took her out of there and fixed her up. While I waited for her to awake I found some of the others: a pair of twins... one of the two sisters..."

The two pause for one long, devastating moment Miku feels to be the cause of. Reliving those memories even more terrifying than her own experience from back then. Now as if they'd rehearsed this storytelling before, Gumi takes a deep breath and continues like it was her cue.

"After I regained consciousness, he explained everything to me. It was hard to believe him that my parents were gone, so I didn't. The village fire gradually died down, but was still continuous. He, Rin, Len, Mayu, and I went to find survivors. We found three others..." She sorrowfully smiles, "I can still remember Mayu hugging Ia so tight when they reunited..." Gumi shakes her head, adjusting her gaze to Miku. "And then we found you."

The greenette brings a leg to her chest and swings an arm onto her knee. "There isn't much to say but after accepting the fact that our parents were gone and agreeing to live together, I told you we'd live even with that tragedy. And there I was, still trying to find a way to get over it. So when we got back and finished with the 'jewelry incident,' I wanted to get over the loss of the family I had... And all it took was for me to pick up a book and surround myself in the story- just as my mother and father had always done for me."

Miku's taken interest to their backstory- her mind repeats it over and over. Their experience is too traumatic compared to hers, and thinking that her own had been painful... putting herself in their shoes must've been worse.

(No one in their group ever shared their perspective on that day, did they?)

She'd forgotten entirely that she's still holding the book in her hands. The tealette scrutinizes the front cover again.

"Heroic to One."

Had not Gakupo saved Gumi in that fire, she wouldn't have been living to tell the story right now. (Or was Gakupo fated to save Gumi and arrived just in time...?) The blazing infernos every which way she looks, the cracking of the hot embers left and right, heat melting her body like her skin was ice- Miku can eerily imagine Gumi's position, and she gets goosebumps just thinking about standing there.

She reopens her eyes and blinks at the book while she flips to the page she bookmarked with her finger. She reads the left page, moves her gaze along to the right, and smiles at the bottom line.

'When the world is restored and the hero has fallen, he will rise and tragedy shall perish.'

A/N:

Almost 3K words for this chapter because dang, Gumi and Gakupo, why'd you tell your entire backstory? Nah, just more attempts to make you cry soon. The next chapter will include the tower, so stick around for the buckets while I gather my popcorn and foldable chair to watch the angst unfold.

Also-

That moment when you have to analyze every illustration from the MV to get some accuracy. The "Miku-and-Rin-napping-on-Luka" scene taken from this part of the video-