WORLD'S END DECLARATION

Following Towards Blue Twilight:

“Currently, you’re looking at a life sentence.” The detective lets his words linger, waiting for a reaction. Theo doesn’t move. “However, given the circumstances, you could plead insanity and get away with three hundred years and psychiatric care. The numbers correspond to your lifespan, of course.”

For many young people, escaping to the new capital of Aether Sky has become a dream. Bonnie and Theo were no exception. After fleeing their respective homes in search of better lives, they eventually find themselves living the kind of life others could only hope for: well-paid positions at Harmony, a comfortable apartment, and each other.

Unfortunately, settling down gives the past ample time to catch up. Bonnie finds herself once more ensnared in the familial politics she tried to escape, while Theo hopes that if he keeps quiet, works hard, and avoids causing trouble, then the past will simply die out with him. That's the arrangement Xion made when he arrived in Aether Sky years ago.

The couple's carefully constructed life is torn apart one fateful evening when Theo crosses paths with a doppelganger of sorts,leaving him the lone suspect in a spree of exorcist killings.

With no other way to prove his innocence, Theo flees in pursuit of his brother, 17, and back to the past he buried in Polaris. Bonnie, under the guise of a business trip, trails him to Polaris with the help of a detective. She's determined to secure her family's reputation and Theo's safety at any cost.

They arrive to find Polaris in a far more fragile state than either could have imagined.

As the conflict between Dragon's Ascent, a coalition of exorcists and the gangs they fund in exchange for cooperation, and CIVIL-REGEN, the apparent force of order, intensifies, Bonnie and Koda race against time to find Theo before Polaris is swallowed up in its own despair

All three become irreversibly entangled in the fate of all of the city's inhabitants, and the harsh environment strips away all pretences, revealing the darkest interiors of those who dwell within it.

The ruins of the capital are bigger and far more lawless than any of them could have imagined, and the gnawing feeling that they'll never make it back home only grows. Polaris is full of well-intentioned criminals and ancient spirits still fighting a centuries-old war. Its long-running story seems to be reaching a grand finale, and the only certainty is that its conclusion will be written in blood.

17 wants nothing more than to ensure that there is no one left to remember how it played out.

“Theo is smiling, slightly too wide as always, but terribly warm. It’s out of place enough to send her reaching for her sword again. They’ve only ever looked that way a few times — why now?”