Miyamizu Mitsuha's fingers trembled.

The cold at her fingertips crept inward, as if it could freeze her heart.

The group chat interface flickered before her eyes.

She didn't know how to face a dream that might—possibly—be a prophecy.

Maybe the people in the chat, who came from different worlds, would know something.

But the glow of the screen couldn't disperse the deepening shadow in her chest.

Miyamizu Mitsuha: "Excuse me… have you ever heard of prophetic dreams?"

The message dropped like a stone into a still lake, sending ripples everywhere.

Frieren: "A prophetic dream? Hmm… in my world, magic sometimes brings vague hints. Dreams are one form."

Frieren: "But most of the time they're symbolic metaphors that need careful interpretation—not prophecies to take literally."

She spoke calmly and analytically.

Stella: "Prophetic dreams? That sounds awesome! Is it like seeing future battle moves in advance?"

Stella: "I've never had one, though."

Shiba Miyuki: "Precognition?"

Shiba Miyuki: "In theory, any observation that involves temporal factors is extremely difficult, and the uncertainty principle in such domains…"

Shiba Miyuki: "Apologies—I'm rambling."

Shiba Miyuki: "Mitsuha-san, did something specific happen?"

Hiiragi Shinoa: "Dreams, huh. Sometimes I do dream about bad things."

Hiiragi Shinoa: "But if you fixate on them, you'll just get trapped in the dream. Mitsuha, what kind of dream was it?"

Misaka Mikoto: "A prophetic dream? Why bring that up out of nowhere—did you see something bad? @Miyamizu Mitsuha"

Called out by Misaka Mikoto, Mitsuha drew a deep breath, as if she'd found an outlet at last.

Curled up on the tatami, hugging her knees, she typed—clumsy, urgent.

Miyamizu Mitsuha: "Yes… I—I had a very, very scary dream."

Miyamizu Mitsuha: "I dreamed of a comet tearing across the sky and falling on my town—Itomori."

Miyamizu Mitsuha: "Everything was destroyed. Fire, a deafening roar… and then nothing."

She paused, groping for words, trying to convey that bone-deep terror.

Miyamizu Mitsuha: "And… by a strange coincidence, I just saw on the TV news that there really will be a comet tomorrow night—the viewing conditions will be great…"

Miyamizu Mitsuha: "I—I don't know if it was just a coincidental nightmare or… or…"

She didn't finish. But the sharp edge of her worry had already reached everyone in the chat.

Erica: "If the 'coincidence' is that strong, maybe we shouldn't treat it as a coincidence."

Erica: "In my experience, a lot of things that look accidental have the shadow of 'fate' or 'omens' behind them."

Fubuki: "Ever heard of hazard warnings?"

Fubuki: "If a dream's content closely matches something that's about to happen, then even if science can't fully explain it, it's wise to treat it as a potential risk alert and take action."

Frieren: "Mm… I've lived a long time and seen plenty of strange things, but a dream this direct—and this frightening—is troublesome."

Marcille: "In my world, a clear dream about a specific place being destroyed is often an early manifestation of the world's pulse or some large-scale magical calamity. Definitely something to watch out for!"

Julis: "Do you need help? Crossing worlds is hard, but if it's about evacuations or getting warnings out, maybe we can think of something."

Busujima Saeko: "Sometimes dreams are projections of our deepest fears. Sometimes they're the soul's instinctive sense of crisis."

Busujima Saeko: "Mitsuha-san, how do you feel right now?"

Busujima Saeko: "Besides fear, were there any details that felt unusually real?"

Busujima Saeko: "And for something this big—an entire region's survival—you might want to ask Rei Ao."

The chat went quiet.

That name carried special weight. He rarely appeared, but when he did, he went straight to the heart of the problem—and sometimes offered solutions that defied belief, though they came at a price.

Miyamizu Mitsuha's heartbeat quickened. She remembered the group owner, Rei Ao: few words, every message concise, with an authority that was hard to describe.

Just then, a minimalist ID lit up.

Rei Ao: "@Miyamizu Mitsuha, I've seen everything."

Only a few words, yet they seemed to exert a strange gravity, pulling Mitsuha's scattered thoughts together.

Miyamizu Mitsuha: "Rei Ao-san…?"

Rei Ao: "Your dream is exactly what you said—a prophetic dream. The disaster will strike Itomori. You and everyone else will die."

Rei Ao: "Miyamizu Mitsuha, this wasn't a random dream born of daytime thoughts. In a real sense, it was precognition."

Rei Ao: "I don't know the exact cause, but the content basically matches what's about to occur."

Cold lines of text appeared one after another, slamming into her eyes—and into her heart.

Rei Ao: "Itomori will be struck around 8:42 p.m. tomorrow by fragments from a comet that breaks apart."

Rei Ao: "Itomori—and the surrounding area—will be erased from the map. There will be no survivors."

…

Silence.

Her mind went blank.

Miyamizu Mitsuha stared at those lines. She knew every word, but together they refused to make sense—or rather, she refused to let them make sense.

Destroyed?

Erased?

No survivors?

Tomorrow night at 8:42?

You've got to be kidding me?!

How could that be…

Her home, the shrine, her school, her friends, the snack-shop owner who always cracked jokes, and… that little airhead Yotsuha…

All of it… gone?