Kira's grip on his sleeve tightened.
"That's a Cape Fox, they're not- they're not supposed to be here."
"Don't listen to them," Hoshimi said.
"The parakeet," she whispered. "I can't—they're in my head. They're in my—"
Kira was crying.
She'd curled into a ball at some point, her arms wrapped around her knees, her face buried against her thighs. The grass had grown around her, weaving through her hair, her clothes, the spaces between her fingers. It pulsed with the same rhythm as her breathing, faster and faster, panic finding echo in the world around her.
The fish appeared at the edge of the river she hadn't noticed before.
Dead. Dozens of them. Their silver scales dull, their eyes milky. They were flopping. Their mouths opened and closed, gasping for water that wasn't there, for air that wouldn't sustain them.
"Stop," she whispered. "Stop, stop, stop—"
The fish kept flopping.
One of them managed to flip itself closer, its scales scraping against the grass, its eye fixed on her face. Its mouth opened, and a sound came out. Not words. Something worse. Something that sounded almost like screaming.
Kira pressed her hands over her ears.
The screaming continued.
Kira screamed.
"Get them off! Get them off me!"
She couldn't.
The fish were closer now. Their bodies were rotting as they flopped, flesh sloughing off in wet strips, eyes clouding over with the white film of death. But they kept moving. Kept screaming. Kept dying and dying and dying.
"Kira."
"I can't-I can't make them stop-"
Hoshimi looked down. There were no fish. Just grass. Just dirt. Just the impossible, pulsing light of this place that was trying to tear their minds apart.
"Kira. Look at me."
She couldn't. Her eyes were fixed on the ground, on the fish that weren't there, on the death that she kept seeing everywhere she looked.
"Kira."
Hoshimi grabbed her face, his hands pressing against her cheeks, forcing her to meet his eyes. Her pupils were dilated, her breathing rapid, her whole body trembling.
"There are no fish," he said. "You're hallucinating. This place is making you hallucinate. You have to focus. You have to-"
"I can smell them." Tears streamed down her cheeks. "I can smell them rotting. I can feel them flopping against my legs. I can-"
"Breathe."
"I can't."
"You can."
She tried. Her chest hitched, stuttered, found a rhythm. Her eyes, those clouded lapis eyes, slowly focused on his face.
"There," he said. "There you are."
Neila watched the animals with an expression of mild annoyance.
"Are you quite finished?" she asked.
The rabbit paused mid-laugh, its head tilting toward her with that too-aware curiosity. "You're not affected."
"Obviously." Neila brushed a piece of imaginary dust from her shoulder. "My mind isn't fragile enough for any of you."
"You're lying," the fox said. "We can see it. The cracks. The places where you've broken and been glued back together."
Neila's smile was sharp. "But at least I'm interesting. You're just—" She waved a hand
dismissively. "Animals. I've never liked any of you."
The deer's dark eyes fixed on her face. "You're not as strong as you pretend to be."
"Your stupid little tricks in trying to make me question myself isn't going to work."
Hoshimi looked at the river.
The water was still impossibly clear, reflecting the too-blue sky. But beneath the surface, shadows moved. Fish.
But they weren't swimming.
They were standing.
Upright. Their fins pressed against the invisible barrier of the water's surface like hands pressed against glass. Watching.
"The tree," Jiyeon said.
Her voice was different now. Thinner. More distant.
Hoshimi turned.
She was staring at the center of the lake.
A tree stood there.
It was massive, its trunk wider than any building Hoshimi had ever seen, its branches reaching toward the too-blue sky like grasping fingers. The bark was white, bone-white, pulsing with veins of gold that matched the light of his sword. Its leaves were the color of blood, rustling in a wind that didn't exist.
And at its base, something waited.
Hoshimi couldn't see it clearly. Couldn't focus on it. Every time he tried, his vision blurred, his head throbbed, his thoughts scattered like startled birds.
But he could feel it.
Watching.
The animals were gone.
Not vanished, simply elsewhere, watching from the edges of perception, their too-bright eyes fixed on the group with expressions that ranged from curiosity to hunger. The rabbit sat on a rock, grooming its ears. The fox paced along the tree line, its amber eyes tracking movement. The deer stood at the edge of the river, its dark eyes reflecting the impossible sky.
Kira's hands were bleeding.
She'd been picking at her skin again. The backs of her hands were raw, red, the nails bitten down to the quick. Her blue eyes were fixed on the river, on the water that seemed to flow in two directions at once.
"Kira-"
"The fish are dying," she said. Her voice was flat. Empty. "They're dying, and I can't—I can't help them. I can't help them."
"They're not real."
"Everything is real here." She looked up at him, and her eyes were wet, her cheeks streaked with tears he hadn't noticed. "That's the problem, isn't it? Everything is real."
A fish flopped closer.
"Help me," it gasped. "Help me, help me, help me-"
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry-"
"Shh." Neila's voice cut through the chaos. She was standing over the fish, her white coat pristine, her blue eyes cold. "You're being dramatic."
"It's-it's dying, I can't save it."
"Everything dies." She nudged the fish with the toe of her shoe, and it flipped onto its back, its gills flaring, its mouth still opening and closing. "Eventually. Usually less dramatically than this."
"You're not…helping."
Kira stared at her.
Neila stared back.
The fish stopped flopping.
The grass was growing again.
Hoshimi noticed it first, the way the blades were lengthening, thickening, reaching toward them like hands. The rabbit had stopped grooming its ears. The fox had stopped pacing. The crow had stopped preening. The deer stood at the edge of the river, its dark eyes fixed on the group with an expression that was almost expectant.
Jiyeon was bleeding from her eyes.
Crimson tears streamed down her cheeks, tracing paths through the flour dust and grime, dripping from her jaw onto the impossible grass. She didn't seem to notice. Her gray eyes were fixed on the tree, on the thing at its base, on something only she could see.
[How...]
Hoshimi was entranced as well, his knees collapsed to the ground.
[I can't-I can't take my eyes off of it]
Beams of light shot out.
Lasers that left holes scattered throughout his body.
Crimson.
Calus had been following them.
He emerged from the tree line, his body battered, his face pale, his eyes wide with something that might have been fear or might have been desperation. His left arm hung at his side, useless, the hand swollen and discolored.
"Miss Reina…."
{How annoying….It's you isn't it, Wei? Still a dog to beauty.}
{Miss Reina….}
{Calus. Give up your arm}
{As you wish, my lady}
The air split.
Not with sound. With light. Golden and blinding, erupting from a point behind them like a second sun. The animals screamed, the rabbit, the fox, the birds, their voices layering into a discordant chorus of pain and terror.
She stood at the center of the light, her ginger hair wild around her face, her gold eyes blazing. Her hand was raised, palm forward, and the beam of pure mana that erupted from it struck the tree in the center of the lake with the force of a collapsing star.
The world shuddered.
Calus collapsed at her feet.
His body was shaking, his breath coming in ragged gasps, his face the color of old paper. The arm he'd sacrificed was gone, the sleeve hanging empty, the shoulder ending in a neat, cauterized stump.
"Please," he gasped. "Please, I-I need-"
"Shh." Reina knelt beside him, her movements fluid, graceful. She gathered him into her arms, cradling his head against her chest, stroking his hair with fingers that were almost gentle. "You did well, Calus. You brought me here. You did everything I asked."
"I-I don't-I can't-"
"I know." Her voice was soft, almost tender. "You're tired. You've given so much. More than anyone had the right to ask."
"Just a little more," she whispered. "Just a little more, and then you can rest."
His eyes fluttered closed.
His breathing slowed.
"Thank you." Her voice was warm, almost like a mother comforting her child. "You made an Oath to teleport me here, an influx of mana, Sacrificing the mass of your arm to turn it into magical energy." She shook her head slowly. "Your noble sacrifice won't be forgotten."
Reina looked up.
Her gold eyes met the tree, then Neila.
"Take care of Hoshimi."
"Isn't that what my task is? Miss Vice President."
"Of course."
Reina turned to Calus.
"Calus." Her voice was soft, almost gentle. "Give me the rest of it. Give me everything."
Calus's eyes opened.
They were glassy, unfocused, but something flickered behind them. Something that might have been understanding.
"Please," he whispered.
Reina smiled.
She pressed her palm against his chest, against his heart, and the light that emanated from her was not gold, not white, but something older. Something that belonged to the space between moments, the breath between words, the silence between heartbeats.
Calus's body convulsed.
His back arched. His mouth opened. Light poured from him in a torrent, a flood, a river of mana that flowed into Reina's waiting hands.
Then he was still.
His eyes stared at nothing.
His chest didn't rise.
Reina held him for a moment longer, her expression unreadable. Then she gently lowered his body to the grass, rose to her feet, and turned to face the tree.
She raised her hand.
The light that gathered in her palm was different from before. Cleaner. Brighter. A beam of pure, condensed mana that seemed to burn the air itself as it formed.
The beam fired.
It struck the tree at its center, where the trunk met the water, where the bark was darkest, where the heartbeat pulsed strongest. The impact was silent, a contradiction that made Hoshimi's ears ache. Light exploded outward in concentric rings, washing over the hills, the river, the animals.
The rabbit screamed.
The fox dissolved into shadow.
The crow fell from its branch, its body crumbling to ash before it hit the ground.
The deer stood at the edge of the lake, watching, waiting, its dark eyes reflecting the destruction.
The tree cracked.
Not the trunk, that held, impossibly strong, impossibly ancient. But something beneath it. Something deeper. The ground itself began to split, fissures radiating outward from the lake's edge, swallowing grass and soil and the bodies of the dying animals.
She didn't answer. Her hand was still raised, the beam still firing, her face illuminated by the light of her own destruction.
The sky was falling.
Not metaphorically. Literally. Chunks of that impossible blue were breaking off, shattering against the hills, dissolving into mist. The sun flickered, dimmed, died. The clouds writhed like wounded things.
Cracks spread across the sky, across the hills, across the river and the trees and the impossible, pulsing grass. The light dimmed, flickered, died. The animals fell silent. The fish stopped watching.
And the tree... the tree began to bleed.
Golden sap poured from the wound Reina's beam had carved, running down the bone-white bark in rivers of light. The thing at its base stirred, shifted, began to rise—
Then stopped.
The world dissolved.
Hoshimi's feet hit solid ground.
The alley. The grimy walls. The gray afternoon light filtering through smoke-filled skies. The distant wail of sirens and the closer sound of someone vomiting, Kira, he realized, on her hands and knees, her body heaving.
Neila was leaning against the brick wall, her face pale, her hands shaking. Jiyeon was gone, ran off somewhere else.
And Reina.
She stood at the alley's entrance, her hand still raised, her gold eyes still blazing. Her chest heaved. Her breathing was ragged. But her face was calm.
She didn't look at him. Didn't acknowledge him. Just stepped over his body and walked toward Hoshimi's bloodied body.
Her hand found his face.
"Are you hurt?"
"I'm fine."
"Liar." Her thumb traced the blood on his cheek. "You're bleeding. Injuries around your body."
"I said I'm fine."
"You're so much prettier when you're injured."
She smiled. It was a real smile, warm and tired and almost sad.
The city was still burning.
"Fifty-seven confirmed dead," Reina said, her gold eyes fixed on the destruction. "The government is calling it a terrorist attack. They're blaming rogue witches."
The sirens wailed. The smoke rose. The city burned.
Wei stood at the far end of the alley.
His silk suit was pristine, untouched by ash or dust. His dark hair was perfectly slicked back. His golden eyes gleamed with something that might have been triumph or might have been hunger.
"Reina Albert," he said. "You're protecting him." His lips curved. "I don't know why you care about him so much."
Hoshimi's hand went to his sword.
Wei raised an eyebrow. "But I am surprised that you're still mentally stable after my Zenith."
Reina smiled, pulling Hoshimi into her arms.
"Let me show you why he's mine."
She ran her fingers across his chest, slowly, slowly.
"Vitae Core."