The last, saccharine notes of the slow song faded into polite applause and the general hubbub of a crowd anticipating dispersal. Chaperones began to look more pointedly at their watches. The ugly institutional clock on the gymnasium wall showed its minute hand finally, mercifully, clicking onto the twelve.

Midnight.

"Right on schedule," I said from the shadows, as a silent vibration of pure, unadulterated anticipation. "Let the cheap imitation of revelry cease. Silence the noise. Dim the lights. Time for the real master of ceremonies to make his entrance."

As if cued by my very thought – and who’s to say it wasn’t? – a deep, sonorous CHIME echoed through the gymnasium. It wasn’t the tinny bell of the school clock, nor any sound from the DJ’s equipment. This was a resonant, almost mournful tone, like that of a distant clock tower tolling out the witching hour. One. Two. Three… all the way to twelve.

With the final chime, the thumping pop music that had resumed after the slow dance abruptly cut out, not with a fade, but with a sudden, sharp silence that was almost painful. In the same instant, the swirling colored lights of the dance floor sputtered, flickered violently – once, twice – and then died, plunging the entire gymnasium into a profound, disorienting darkness.

A collective gasp went up, followed by a wave of confused murmurs. "Hey, what happened?" "Power outage?" Someone giggled nervously. "Did Shirou trip over the main breaker this time?"

Only the faint, eerie green glow of the emergency exit signs and the pale moonlight filtering through the high, grimy gymnasium windows offered any illumination, casting long, distorted shadows and turning familiar faces into unsettling masks.

And then, a sudden, unnatural chill dropped the temperature in the room by several degrees, sharp enough to raise goosebumps on exposed arms and make breath plume faintly in the dim light.

"Feel that chill, humans?" I whispered to the darkness, savoring the shift in atmosphere. "That's not faulty heating. That's reality, getting ready to bite."

The confused chatter grew louder, tinged now with a definite edge of unease. The fun, it seemed, was definitely over. At least for them. Hahahaha.

The confused, uneasy chatter of the students filled the sudden, chilling darkness of the gymnasium. Their nervous laughter echoed strangely, punctuated by the occasional, "Is this part of the dance?" or "Someone fix the lights!" They were still clinging to the mundane, Humanity, to the idea that this was merely a technical fault, a poorly executed prank.

"Patience, little morsels," I whispered from the void, a thrill coursing through me. "The overture of darkness is merely to cleanse your palate before the true spectacle begins."

And then, with a silent command from myself, it happened.

CRACK! A single, intensely bright spotlight, whiter than bone, hotter than desert suns, sliced through the oppressive blackness. It didn't illuminate the stage from the front, oh no. It blazed downwards from the very apex of the gymnasium's vaulted ceiling, a pillar of pure, unforgiving light striking the exact center of the wide, empty dance floor. Dust motes, previously invisible, now danced like frantic stars in its beam.

And suspended within that stark, brilliant column, floating about ten feet above the polished wood, was a figure. Me. "The Great I."

My form was as they (or rather, as Shirou) had last seen it, yet amplified by the dramatic reveal. My crow-black silken robes, finer than any earthly weave, seemed to drink the darkness around the spotlight's edge, flowing and swirling as if with a life of their own despite the stillness of the air. My hair, black as the deepest abyss, framed a face hidden by that elegant, featureless white mask – the one with the single, knowing slit for my right eye, and the diagonal silver line that bisected the smooth, porcelain-like expanse where the left should be. An emblem of eternal nothingness, with just a hint of a silver lining... for me, at least.

A collective gasp, sharp and sudden, sucked the air from the room, followed by a split second of stunned silence. Then, predictably, a thundering of applause, quickly growing louder as the students, your ever-impressionable progeny, Humanity, decided this must be the grand finale they hadn't been expecting. "Whoa!" "Awesome entrance!" "How's he doing that?" "Is that a magician? Cool costume!"

"Magician?" I almost laughed aloud, the sound a dry rustle in my throat. "Comparing my transcendent presence to some charlatan pulling rabbits from hats and guiding misdirection? The sheer, unadulterated ignorance! Still, let them have their delusions for a moment longer. It makes the eventual shattering of their reality all the more… piquant."