Story/Sunset Radiance

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Path: Kanae
Added: Version 5.2.6 (2024-01-12)
== Entry 17-1 ==
Type: Text Log
Prerequisite: Purchase Sunset Radiance
Requirement: Clear Chelsea with Kanae
Transcript
A thousand small fractures beneath every footstep, all softened at once by the smothering white all 
around them. A little interesting, a little strange to have here. Snow fills her footsteps as she leaves them 
behind and walks into more drifts. Snow, really, drifts all around her. Slowly, under a dark sky, the world 
is filled with white.
There, Kanae quietly considers her direction.
"It should be..." she whispers, looking toward the sky, "there... and then there." Her eyes trace something 
beyond what most might see glinting only vaguely up above in the dark, past the little waltzes and swings 
of thoughtless snow. She lowers her gaze after, and looks on ahead.
This a valley beyond a cliffside: it is an empty place, filled simply by empty cold. The white surrounding 
welcomes glimpses of the purple starlight above, leaving a hazy shimmer over much of the landscape 
and the far horizon. A plain place painted. Were this another time, she might stop to admire. Now, though, 
her course is kept with a sure and measured gait.
The silent night air, lightly decorated with those thousands of breaks below her; wind dancing only a little 
in the air. Her breath clouds her vision, warms her face...
Though she might treat it all unremarkably...
...so many would find it fascinating: this, the second snowfall of Arcaea.
== Entry 17-2 ==
Type: Text Log
Prerequisite: Unlock Entry 17-1
Requirement: Clear AI[UE]OON with Kanae
Transcript
The winds bite at her nose, and with that bite Kanae narrows her eyes and picks up her shoulders. She 
taps her nose tip, slightly frowning. The world is darker now, as it often becomes with distance from the 
daylight border; and in the valley full of wind's whispers and shouts and through increasing snowfall... 
Kanae wagers that she's beginning to lose her direction.
She promptly looks to the sky again. She looks for faint glints in the heavens.
Now it's a bit too "without light" for even her to see. So, slowly, she raises a hand...
What has been glinting from above begins to glint now stronger, and stronger. Soon, each spot of weak 
light from above begins to powerfully glow until each has neared enough to be made out clearly. Yes: these 
are shards of glass, shards of Arcaea, in seven pieces.
They crawl toward her and when near enough hang loosely in the air, each little one spinning at its own 
slow speed. The purple that the snow had caught rests within them as well, and her eyes pass over each 
surface carefully. She looks not at the memories that they hold... she looks at them all, together, "as" 
something. She bends her fingers, extends them, and like that the shards begin to shift. They, as seven, 
begin to swiftly form a shape.
They shape first like a face...and after, for a moment, like a sword. Like a shield for a moment, and then 
like a twisting vine. Imprecise, but recognizable shapes... as the glass pieces take each vague form, they 
dull, and dull, and dull—though an especial one will never dim. After some time, she turns her eyes to 
that last remaining bright piece... and turns as well toward it.
This is her strange touch, and her stranger guide—or it might be best to say the strange guide is herself. 
What she can do, and always could: she can, simply, make a compass of Arcaea using these makeshift 
stars and faux starlight.
Satisfied with the new aim of the glass, Kanae marches forward once more: just as the winds around her 
turn again, and turn more than a touch fiercer.
== Entry 17-3 ==
Type: Text Log
Prerequisite: Unlock Entry 17-2
Requirement: Clear A Wandering Melody of Love with Kanae
Transcript
She finds a storm ahead and walks on through it.
As it whips at her ears, as it scatters her hair...
She marches ahead, following a single point of light nearly hidden within the blizzard.
She holds her clothing more tightly to herself and thinks to close her eyes, but does not. Wincing, she 
keeps her eyes steady on the glass formation ahead and above her, even as the wind almost pushes her 
from her course—even as the snow begins to climb beyond her calves, beyond her knees. Her heavy robe 
begins to feel thin, and her breathing begins to shorten.
Her ears feel as if they're being cut. Her nose is like ice on her face.
And she continues on.
"Can I... make it?" she speaks to herself, and in the raging snow she can't hear her own voice. Despite that, 
she affirms: "I have to."
But wind pushes down on her again. She falls to the ground, her hand pushing through fallen snow until 
that snow reaches her shoulder. It pushes up into her sleeve and hugs her arm. The heat of her skin quickly 
dies, and she coughs flakes from her face. Snow overtakes her, and she looks above again.
She forces herself to stand, and collapses.
"Up..." she bids.
"Up...!" she insists.
She rises to her feet, and feels suddenly without energy. Tired. Ready to rest.
Her eyelids feeling heavier, she breathes out a breath that feels warm, and shuts her left eye.
Her right gazes around. Still cognizant, still thinking...
Her right eye catches sight of a free and flying glass shard.
Kanae shuts her mouth, breathing through her nose and shaking all throughout her body as she reaches 
out toward that piece.
It's only a chance...just a small chance...
But a small chance is why she is here. It will be fine. She swore that it would, and it will be.
She reaches out...
...and the glass comes to her, and overwhelms her with light as she drifts into its memory.
A new place, though not a new time. A cabin of somewhere, and from a look through the windows: in the 
dead of the night. Kanae is upon the floor, her breath shallow and her ears and face warming... Warming?
She picks up her chin and finds a fireplace blazing before her. As her head grows warmer from its heat, her 
eyes widen. That this would be something she would feel...that this would be something that seems so 
real. It is real, it's real. She eventually finds strength and crawls up to sit before the flame.
"..."
A quiet cabin on a quiet night, in a memory caught in a storm...
Letting her body warm, Kanae lets a small smile find its way across her lips as well.
There is some poetry to all this...
Sat in a little miracle, Kanae keeps warm and remembers what brought her here.
== Entry 17-4 ==
Type: Text Log
Prerequisite: Unlock Entry 17-3
Requirement: Clear Tie me down gently with Kanae
Transcript
In a great effulgence and after a rest and sleep she deemed necessary, Kanae lands outside of the glass 
into a new quiet landscape. This was where it drifted, evidently... Here, a deep chasm sits at a distance. 
Ice and snow spreads almost dazzling over the earth, but no new white comes to coat the place. The 
darkness of the night seems strangely abated... She turns to the glass shard now behind her.
"Thank you," she says.
Perhaps satisfied, the glass leaves then, and she beckons seven faithful from the sky.
The storm has not passed; her friend only carried her out of it. Howling from whence she came, the great 
and dark vortex of snow that had nearly taken her continues unabated. She pays it no mind, she only twists 
the seven shards' formations, and watches for what is left brightest in the end. With that, she knows she 
must find a way down the wide crevice she spotted on her exit.
"Should be close now..." she thinks aloud, now able to hear herself properly again. She finds a gentle slope 
into the deeper valley, and descends.
Entering a natural hall of earth, Kanae looks above those shadowing rock walls to the shards guiding her, 
and finds and heads the right way. As she nears her destination, her vision subtly begins to skew. The air 
seems to at once grow both heavy and light. She drops her gaze and looks out to her goal.
Other glass is drifting toward it. The walls of earth beside it are trembling with unnatural instability. There 
is a sound, also, humming low throughout everything. The culprit itself is still and firm where it exists—glad 
enough to be twisting the world around it, evidently.
But it seems weaker than it ought to be...
It seems, almost, wounded.
Then it might just be safe... it might, truly, be powerless...
...
This, this anomalous shard: this is Kanae's aim.
For this inert thing...
Now, pure and heedless, Kanae steps forward.
== Entry 17-5 ==
Type: Text Log
Prerequisite: Unlock Entry 17-4
Requirement: Clear Valhalla:0 with Kanae
Transcript
Her heart beats faster on her approach. It quickens, really, against her wishes. However, it is only her heart. 
Unlike her experience, her entire body is not lurching by the strange glass's influence. In her experience: 
ordinarily this is a kind of monster of this world altogether best left avoided.
But this monster seems to be sleeping a restless sleep.
Space churns further, yet Kanae continues on toward her goal and meanwhile looks to the sky again. 
This shard is merely a forgotten error of the world, no longer strong enough to even pick at the world's 
seams. But just to be safe...
In her sight...
there are many "constellations".
Glass shapes dancing or still, waiting for her inquiry or her call.
And which would be best for this...?
That one there: in the shape of wings.
She calls to its shards, and the anomaly stifles their motion. She frowns and steadfastly calls to the 
constellation again. Ten shards fall from the sky, starting and stopping in their fall from the strange 
shard's effects. She resolutely commands them through, and like spikes they surround the aberrant glass.
The ends of the ten shards aim toward the anomaly, and shortly the ten shards fire forth. Almost invisible,
an energy lifts up all around them. And, as these "star"-shards lock into place, whatever strangeness 
the odd piece could threaten... soundly stops.
This anomaly's influence is thus contained, left in a spherical cage. And in that cage she calls it closer—
calls it to float before her.
But she wastes no time gazing into its memory. She turns away and continues on—bringing the imprisoned 
shard by her side.
"That storm is definitely still going..." she remarks as she leaves the canyon, looking up at the sky to grasp 
her next direction. "How will I make it back through? Could I, maybe..."
Her words taper off as she lowers her gaze and begins looking around the pretty landscape...until she 
huffs through her nose and smiles.
Back again, she knows it by its sight: her new glass friend. She calls it toward her.
After arriving the cabin memory patiently awaits her and, still smiling, she wonders—Will this really work? 
Will she be able to bring an anomaly and other shards into a memory...? And what's more, attempt to 
guide it...
...Well, she will need to try.
The intrepid girl enters the memory with the anomaly and its cage in tow, calling to every constellation of 
glass above her as she does so.
And as she does so, she feels herself being connected to the heavens...
Thus, from within a warm dream, Kanae calls to those heavens and sets the shard's course...
...To fly through that storm of snow.
== Entry 17-6 ==
Type: Text Log
Prerequisite: Unlock Entry 17-5
Requirement: Clear Hotarubi no Yuki with Kanae
Transcript
A journey that may have taken three days, a goal sincere and clear.
That journey ends where it began: amidst quiet snowfall, amidst quiet snow fields.
Kanae lands to the ground, two thousand small fractures crackling, smothered in white, beneath her feet. 
The cabin memory loses the light of her exit and, after she thanks it again, it returns to its wayward journey. 
They will meet again.
The anomaly stayed, and is still with her at her side. Perhaps, in fact, it being there for the return was what 
made that return possible at all...
Regardless, it is all done.
Kanae makes her way to the cliff from where she'd first left. She climbs it steadily and quickly. Hurriedly. 
She needs all her speed, she needs to not wait a single minute longer.
And at the cliff's top, facing a familiar and barren expanse, she hears two pairs of beating wings before she 
can spot the two bats they belong to.
She turns to the sound to find a curious little white and black (and orange, and green) bat hurrying toward 
her. It is closely followed by a curious little black and white (and green, and orange) bat keeping up well. 
The two flap worriedly, excitedly, before her once they've neared enough to see what she's brought.
"That's it!" says one.
"That's it!" says the other.
"That's it?" asks Kanae.
"That's it!!" the two exclaim—shout. "That's it! That's it! Thank you! Thank you, thank you!!"
"Here," Kanae replies, bringing the bound-anomaly forward and presenting it to the two. "This is what you 
need to help your sick friend, right?"
"Yes! It will!" says one, as the anomaly hangs between them, the shards containing it shining.
"It has to!" says the other, nodding fiercely.
"Can I see her?" she asks kindly.
"Oh, um, maybe not..." says the one that sounds a bit mature.
"Oh, um, it's maybe dangerous..." says the other that sounds a bit childish.
"Alright... tell me how it goes after, then!"
"Yeah! We'll find you, okay!?" One of the bats moves with insistence as it speaks, the sphere of shards 
bounding with its movements and seeming to bother the other bat.
And with a soft smile and nod, Kanae answers, "Okay."
"Thanks, lady! You're the best! Y-You're..." the bat pauses, and its indefinite face turns. That face tightens, 
and where eyes might be droplets of water begin to form.
...The bat begins to cry.
"Let's go, Drem," says the first bat, beating its wings to bring itself backward. It nods to Kanae again. 
"Thank you," again.
"You're welcome," she says.
Thus, the two bats fly off.
"..."
Kanae watches as their shapes recede into the horizon. She huffs again, and turns with a smile. She returns 
to the cliff's edge, and sits with her feet hanging over it.
How long has she been in Arcaea?
It has to have been years now...
Past a sky dividing, past a sky shattering, and after lost light...
...Never has she found another face within this land. Even those bats' "faces" could only be called..."abstract".
"...Damn," she says with a laugh. Her nose bunches, and the smile on her face quivers. "Damn, haha..."
She covers her face, and hides her brimming eyes from the sky.
She shakes. She tells herself:
She can't see who it was that they meant to save, but...
...It was right to help those two.
"I hope..."
She begins to say, but she doesn't say it. She looks out over where she went instead. She looks at the still 
swirling storm. She looks up at the sky.
A single light dashes across it. Her eyes widen. Her smile finds strength again. She whispers...
"...I wish..."
In the quiet of the half-night, on a fading side of day and with white drifting down onto the gray land...
To herself, to the sky...
To everyone:
let this wish come true.
Category:Side Story