They're not wrong

The portal yawned below me and its breath stank worse than I remembered.

The back of my robes billowed outwards as my heel reached the edge of the canyon behind me. Several meters ahead, Tatsuya had somehow managed to hold our enemies back but his shoulders sagged lower with every swing of his sword.

Kohaku yelled and slammed her fist into the ground, piercing several of her combatants with iron spikes at the same time, but it was clearly getting harder for her to take them all down without killing them. Washi was the closest to me, his eyes wide as he watched fight, and I couldn't look at the body lying a few steps away from him any more than he could.

We had run out of all options except one.

As if I had spoken my decision aloud, Tatsuya shoved his latest opponent away from him and looked at me. I smiled at him and he shook his head, slowly at first and then more frantic. His lips moved to howl a silent yet somehow resounding no that reached me like a fist to the mouth, his blue eyes desperately holding onto mine. A couple of soft pink cherry blossom petals clung to his shoulders and hair, and I understood their reluctance to part with him.

I turned away from his pain and placed a palm against the tree that somehow managed to come back to life after being dead for so many years, its bark bright brown instead of the usual ashy grey. The ground in the portal was too far for me to pick out many details but the colours were still dull and soul-crushing. There was no knowing what would happen once I leapt down and passed into the world where my body had already died once.

But it was the only way.

Several voices called my name and I stepped off the edge before any of them could truly reach me.