🧨 ARC4: When Rightness Shows Its Teeth

The sound changed.

It wasn’t the collapse we’d been hearing, or the impact.
It was the air itself—tearing.

Someone shouts.
But I can’t make out the words.
I can’t tell if it’s a warning, an order, or a scream.

Everything around me moved at once.

"Shift the placement!"
"Don’t close the distance!"
"—No, now we can push!"

Voices overlap.
Only correct things—flying at the same time.

There is no voice to stop it.
No space to wedge in a question.

"At this rate it won’t hold."
"If we want fewer losses, it’s now."
"Prioritize the overall optimum."

Right.
All of it—right.

So no one stopped.

Light runs in front of me.
Someone’s magic.
A controlled, perfect strike.

—It hit.

The next moment, it came back.

Impact.
My view flips.
The ground lifts.

Rubble flies.
People fly.

"—!!"

A sound with no voice leaks out of my throat.

"Now! Press it in!!"

My body answers that voice.
My hands move before thought.
Assemble. Release. Step in.

We’re making it in time.
—That’s what was decided.

The next light.
The next impact.
The next scream.

I can’t tell who fell anymore.
I can’t even tell which side.

"Damage within expectations."
"We can push through."
"No problem. Continue."

Correct voices push at my back.

There’s no reason to retreat.
No reason to stop.

By the time I noticed—
the option to go back was gone.

A shape lies on the ground.
It doesn’t move.
It feels like they were beside me a moment ago.

But I turned my eyes away.

Don’t look.
Don’t look. Don’t look.

If I look, my hands stop.
If I stop, I break the flow.

"Forward!!"

With that single word, everything is painted over.

I release magic.
Impact runs through.
Something collapses.

Each time,
"It was the right call"
is layered somewhere, again.

—No.

Something is screaming inside my chest.
This isn’t rescue.
It isn’t optimization.

It’s only—

"Push through!"
"Retreat is not permitted!"

Those voices won’t allow turning back.

I’m moving.
I can’t stop.
I’m not allowed to stop.

It was to protect.
It was to make it in time.
That’s what I thought.

But now—

What I’m breaking,
who I’m driving into a corner,
I don’t know.

I’m only moving forward.

Surrounded by correct words,
toward a place that can’t be taken back.

In that moment, I understood it clearly.

This isn’t an accident.
It isn’t a misfire.

—It has started.

Because no one stopped.
Because no one said anything but what was right.

The world
goes on from here.

Fueled by blood and light and correct arguments.

— Lumi🪄💕