The World Being Rewritten

The way back took three days.

The path that had tested us so thoroughly on the way in had nothing to say on the way back. «The Thousand False Paths» still wore a thousand faces, but we no longer got lost. We had Mio-san's blueprint and Hina-chan's step-count ledger. The layer that had taken us six hours to cross on the way in took only two hours on the way back.

We decided to leave Night Crow-kun's luminous markers in place instead of collecting them.

"They're signposts for whoever comes next. ... Knowing my work will become humanity's property doesn't sound half bad."

Hina-chan was at the front of the final vertical shaft.

"Teacher! There's light! Up above! It's the sky!"

The sky, after three days away, was the evening sky.

And then――it was a wall of sound.

The crowd beyond the cordon erupted in a cheer like the rumbling of the earth. News drones filled a section of the sky, someone was crying, someone was laughing, and someone kept shouting, "Welcome home!"

【Welcome home】...