Screams echoed around the cabin as its structural integrity began to crumble beneath the weight of its assailants. Despite Ryu’s best efforts, his dagger hardly left a scratch against the rugged skin of the dark limbs that swiped at him from above. “Damn it!” Ryu shouted as he narrowly evaded the swinging claws. “Aiko, if you’ve got any ideas, now would be the time to share ‘em.”

  Aiko jumped back, avoiding a burning wooden shingle that fell from the rapidly deteriorating roof. “The hell do you think I’m doing?” She truly was doing her best to think amidst the chaos; The crackling flames as the ceiling crumbled to bits around them were just drowning out her thoughts.

  Sensing that it might be his only option, Ryu readied the palm of his hand to summon Midas. “Fuck… I really don’t wanna do this…” He looked over his shoulder towards Aiko. “What’re the odds this’ll kill us?”

  “Hopefully lower than those hands killing us instead,” Aiko cried out. “Are you really sure about-”

  “Get down!” Ryu shouted as another arm swung down at Aiko, grabbing her and tackling her down to the floor in the only way he knew how to get her out of the way. “Midas…” he whispered to himself, protecting Aiko with his entire body. “Get us the hell out of here.”

  Ryu struck his temple, calling in his facade with the bellowing sound of thunder as Midas removed his arms from his chest and slung a bolt of lightning directly through the roof of the cabin. The monster with the myriad of arms shrieked out in agony as it retreated, its many limbs slithering back through the ceiling from whence they came. Unfortunately for Ryu and Aiko, however, the dozens of holes left in the smoldering ceiling were less than ideal for its structural integrity. Combined with the immense force applied from Midas’ strike, fragments of burning lumber came raining down from above.

  “Protect us, Sarah!” From beneath Ryu’s body, Aiko slammed her fist directly against the floor, desperately calling out for the guidance of her own power. A flash of green sparks shot out from below her fist as Sarah appeared and hastily constructed a spherical barrier of wind all around her master and Ryu in just enough time to deflect the rain of fire that was mere moments from crushing them alive. Aiko tried her hardest to maintain the shield for as long as she could, but the mental toll it took on her eventually caused her fist to lose its strength, dispelling the barrier in a tremendous outward blast as the high air pressure from within rapidly returned to equilibrium with the outside world. All of the flaming remnants of the cabin around the duo were expelled away from them and into the forest, lighting the trees ablaze in their stead.

  It took the pair a moment to process the fact that they were still alive, let alone that there was little ash to dust off of themselves. “Holy smokes…” Aiko muttered at the sight of the debris around her.

  “Excellent choice of words, Aiko.” Ryu’s gaze was fixed upon the sky, watching as it became blanketed in smog by the forest fire that was rapidly gaining around them. “Quite fitting.”

  “Ugh. You know what I mean…” Aiko clutched her handbag tightly. “Wait… If there really are phantoms here…” She quickly rummaged through her handbag for her cell phone. “Shit, is Genjo alright?”

  Ryu was already dozens of steps down the trail leading back to the hotel before she even finished that thought. “Way ahead of you,” he yelled over the deafening noise created by the burning forest. “I’m more worried about Suits. He doesn’t seem like the phantom hunting-type.”

  Aiko fumbled around with her cell phone as she chased after Ryu, her attempts to call Genjo’s cell resulting only in horrifically high-pitched static. “Why isn’t this darned thing working?” She smacked her phone against the palm of her hand to no avail. “Ryu, I can’t reach him.”

  “Shit,” he grumbled. “Exactly what I was afraid of.”

  After several failed text messages, Aiko’s phone black-screened from the searing heat enveloping the forest. “Oh, Heavens to Betsy!” Aiko furiously shoved her phone back into her handbag. “Don’t tell me he’s-”

  Aiko let out a hideous scream as a bloody arm erupted from the ground and viciously snagged her by the ankle.

  Ryu’s heels dragged their way into the dirt trail as he immediately came to a halt and turned back towards Aiko. At the sight of the hoard of limbs clawing away at her, Ryu swiftly drew his knife and charged into action. “I’m coming, Aiko! Just hold-”

  All four of Ryu’s limbs were imprisoned by another set of blood-soaked arms, stopping him dead in his tracks. “Ngh… Let me go, you sick fucks…” Ryu shouted through gritted teeth as the arms squeezed and pulled on his wrists and ankles, wringing his dagger from his grasp.

  Even if Aiko wanted to cry out for help, there were already three different grotesque, rotting hands muffling anything that her vocal chords could’ve produced. The look in her eyes was one of pure, unadulterated fear as the creature dragged her down into the pool of darkened blood that was oozing out of the ground.

  Sparks crackled from Ryu’s fists as he fought for control over the arms that held him captive. “Argh…” Energy began flowing through him once again as the monster’s hold slowly weakened from the electrical current emanating from Ryu’s body.

  All that remained visible of Aiko’s body was the dazzling blue shade of her eyes, giving her one final moment in time before sinking beneath the dreck to witness the helpless boy that she would be leaving behind to be swallowed up by a great wall of fire. Blood crept up her spine as dozens of unseen hands pulled her deep below the surface until she lost consciousness.

  By the time that Ryu had broken free, he was far too late. Without a hand to latch onto, Ryu’s palms simply laid in the pool of blood that was slowly draining back into the earth. He clenched his fists and beat them against the dirt, his gut twisting into a knot from the inner feeling of blood on his hands. His forehead sunk to the ground as he dug his fingernails into the dirt while whispering, “...This is why I don’t make promises.”

  Ryu gradually found the strength within himself to stand, no doubt due in part to the blazing heat against his skin; But what truly motivated Ryu to continue his trek down the path was an undeniable feeling deep within his soul: There still had to be a chance to save Aiko. Midas tore his way through any multi-armed phantoms that dared to cross Ryu’s path, quickly cutting open a path back to the hotel.

  Smoke filled the air around Ryu, making it increasingly more difficult to breathe. Collapsing trees and falling leaves covered him from head to toe in soot and ash as he struggled to keep himself moving. “G-God… damn it…” Succumbing to the nausea from the inhalation of various toxic byproducts, Ryu stumbled forward and collided against a hefty steel door labeled ‘σ’

  “Ngh… the hell is that supposed to mean?” Ryu hacked out between coughs. He ran his finger along the symbol, discovering that the black paint had slowly started to melt from the heat of the encroaching forest fire. ‘What even is this building, anyway? This doesn’t look like any part of the hotel that I remember,’ Ryu thought as he examined the bizarre, cracked concrete exterior. Although he certainly had his concerns, the searing temperature of the air outside didn’t leave him with many options.

  The mysterious steel door refused to open, so Ryu reached for his pocket to pull out his dagger to pry the door open, but found nothing. In his haste to escape the burning forest, Ryu must’ve left his dagger behind somewhere. “Shit,” he grumbled as he swung his fist directly at the door, enlisting Midas’ strength to blast clean through it. “...that was my favorite pen.”

~

  Surprising no one, my insomnia was rearing its ugly head once again. “For the love of god,” I grumbled as I rolled over in bed and covered my ear with the palm of my hand. “Shiraki, how long does it take to shine some damn shoes?”

  “True artisans of their craft are known to take up to two hours to achieve the perfect shine,” Shiraki replied eloquently over the scratching of brush bristles against his already-shiny dress shoes. “But anyone can try it themselves at home in no more than five minutes. I have several recommendations for high-quality boot polish if you’re interested?”

  I pulled my hood over my head. “Thanks, but I don’t think boot polish really fits into my budget.” Unable to stand the noise of Shiraki slapping his hands all over the leather shoes, I tugged tightly on the strings to scrunch up my hood even more. “...or boots, for that matter.”

  Shiraki put his brush away into a large wooden case and slammed it shut. “Nothing wrong about setting financial goals, my friend.”

  “Whatever you say, man,” I replied in a much more brooding tone than usual, clutching my MP3 player in my right hand despite not currently playing any music. “Ugh, I hate not being able to fall asleep…”

  Across the room, Shiraki shook his head. “Most unfortunate… Might I recommend some-”

  “I’m good, thank you.” As I laid on my side, I studied the scar that rested directly in front of my face. The discolored, light pink scar tissue showed no signs of fading.

  “Quite the conspicuous scar, there. Not easy to cover up, I’d imagine,” Shiraki surmised from the other side of the bed.

  “You could say that.” I immediately shoved my hand back into my pocket where it belonged. “…it’s from the last time we saw the phantoms.” Even though I said that a bit unprompted, I had an itching feeling in my brain that told me Shiraki would’ve asked what the scar was from anyway.

  Shiraki was predictably intrigued. “Ha! For such otherworldly creatures, they don’t seem capable of leaving anything more than corporeal wounds.”

  I stayed silent for a few seconds, not feeling like correcting any assumptions on his end. A part of me was afraid that he would find that suspicious - that he would press the issue further and realize something was off.

  Shiraki, of course, did not pick up on this. “While we have the time, Genjo…” He leaned against the edge of the mattress, sinking his side down and causing just enough discomfort that it forced me to sit up straight. “Do you mind sharing some tactical advice for dealing with the phantoms for when the time comes?”

  “There’s nothing ‘tactical’ about it,” I replied as I took off my hood and stretched out my back, letting out an involuntary groan as several of my thoracic vertebrae popped into place simultaneously. “It’s just a matter of staying on your toes in case something attacks you.”

  “Oh, I was picturing something more akin to full-scale warfare,” Shiraki said with a twinkle in his eye. “But I suppose I had let my imagination roam wild again.”

I couldn’t help but burst out laughing. “Pfft… Dude, and you thought you were gonna survive that? What metal are your balls made out of?”

  “Those of the Shiraki bloodline are not to be trifled with, comrade.” He might not have meant to, but I could totally see him puffing out his chest. “Now, I must know as much as there is to know about these phantoms. Unpreparedness is the bane of all victory.”

  Caving in to Shiraki’s determination, I recounted to him the events of both of my prior encounters with the phantoms at Nakanishi-Bennett and the Byrne Center in just enough painstaking detail for his satisfaction, leaving out any and all moments that resulted in me passing out or getting smacked with a handbag.

  “…That’s quite the memory you’ve got there, Genjo.” Shiraki’s expression seemed perplexed, like he was lost in thought or getting caught up on some specific detail. “These false body doubles that you mention… By your account, it sounds like they appear rather frequently.”

  “Like I said, it’s a lot less brute strength than you’d think. They like to fuck with you more than anything. As long as we don’t go off anywhere on our own tomorrow, we should be-” I covered my eye as a twinge of pain surged directly through my head. “Shit!” I yelped out as I hunched over the edge of the bed.

  Shiraki quickly leapt to my aid, putting his shoe polish-coated hand directly on my shoulder. “Genjo, what’s going on?”

  The bright blue lights painted on the backside of my eyelids were becoming more hyperrealistic by the second, staring deep into my mind in a desperate plea for help as they were swallowed up by a sea of red light. My ribcage felt like it was about to shatter into pieces as my heart pounded against it. A voice inside my head was calling out for me to, “Tear your hand back open and join me…” My fingers slowly curled inward, pressing my nails up against my palm, grazing the pathetic, weak flesh in its path and-

  “Dear God, Genjo!” Shiraki howled as he tore my hand away from my face. “Snap out of it, damn it!” The instant that the contact had been severed, the seething pain in my eye had ceased.

  Air rushed into my lungs as the tightness in my chest vanished. Had I forgotten to breathe that whole time? “Shiraki, I…”

  “Never mind that,” he muttered as he reattached his earpiece and powered it on. When he pressed two fingers against the veins in my wrist, the screen in front of his eye displayed various charts that I could only assume represented my vitals. “What in blazes just happened?”

  “I-I’m not sure…” I whispered back while holding my eyes shut, trying to get another glimpse at the bright blue lights again. An unshakeable anguish in my gut told me that I recognized it from somewhere else. “There was a pool of blood… something sinking… Come on, Genjo, don’t forget now…” I repeated to myself quietly.

  Shiraki let out a sigh of relief as he watched my heart rate somewhat stabilize. “I’m not sure I follow… What’s this about a pool of blood? Don’t tell me you’re experiencing hallu-”

  The cardiograph displayed on Shiraki’s lens quickly turned erratic again as our hotel room began to quake, sending his suit jacket tumbling to the ground from the coat rack. Dust trickled down from the ceiling from the ancient cracks in the drywall. The tremors were getting worse by the second, showing no signs of letting up. ‘We’re not on the San Andreas fault line,’ I thought. ‘So where the hell is this coming from?’

  I jumped up to my feet as I made a frightening realization. “Shiraki, we need to find Ryu and Aiko! Something’s not right.”

  “Took the words right out of my mouth,” Shiraki replied pompously as he tightened the cuffs on his sleeves. “Let us make haste, Genjo - The dreaded night is upon us.” Shiraki wasted not a second as he practically ran straight through the door.

  I hurriedly reached for my drumsticks and wallet and followed Shiraki down the hall towards the elevator. “Dude, what the hell are you doing?” Geez… didn’t anyone ever teach him that you’re only supposed to use the stairs in an emergency?

  “If you’d like to try the stairs, be my guest,” Shiraki pried the metal door open with his bare hands. Apparently, the elevator mechanism was ancient enough that it was fairly easy to override by the power of ‘just yanking on it’. As he stepped inside the elevator cabin, he pointed at the swarm of shadowy limbs forming a barrier in front of the door to the stairwell. “I’ll be taking the safe route, if you’d care to join me.” I was aware that Shiraki had no means of dealing with that problem himself, but I wasn’t sure if any circumstances would justify referring to riding an elevator during an earthquake as the ‘safe route’.

  “Just wait a second,” I called out, sticking out a hand towards him as I readied my flame in the other. “I’ll blast through them, and you follow me. Just don’t-”

  Dozens of phantoms busted through the doors to each of the rooms in the hallway, all stumbling towards Shiraki and I in pairs, covered in scratches and gaping wounds as they howled and shrieked in pitches I could barely even hear properly. “Get in, Genjo,” Shiraki shouted. “We must stick together, no matter what.”

  As they limped towards us, the phantoms’ bodies continuously conjoined and detached at will, their physical connections only lasting for mere seconds at a time. “I know, but I can’t just-”

  A dark barrier suddenly engulfed the door to the elevator cabin as another massive tremor shook the hotel. Shiraki's eyes widened as he banged against the barrier with his fists to no avail. “Good God! Why’s this-”

  “Shiraki, get back!” I hollered as I drew my falchion and attempted to pierce directly through the force field, only succeeding in creating sweltering red sparks from the force that the barrier exerted back on me. “Damn it, why the hell isn’t this working?”

  “Behind you, Genjo!” Shiraki shouted from the other side.

  His voice was incredibly muffled by the impenetrable wall, but it was just loud enough for me to react to the phantom swiping its claws directly at my neck in time. I effortlessly dodged its sneak attack and snapped my fingers as I swung my arm out, sending out a horizontal ray of energy that tore through the phantom and its friends behind it like butter, their decaying and evaporating corpses writhing on the floor. “Heh, I can’t believe I used to be scared of these things,” I whispered to myself. “Not bad, huh-”

  I suddenly heard a loud *snap* behind me followed by the sounds of scraping metal quickly growing quieter by the millisecond.

  Shit. I turned around hurriedly, but it was ultimately pointless - The elevator had already fallen all the way down the shaft without even a sliver of a chance that I could’ve stopped it. “Shiraki??” I called out, hoping that my words would somehow echo far enough down the shaft for him to hear me. Hearing no sounds echo their way back up, I frustratedly dislodged my sword from the barrier and swung it straight through the nearest phantom, slicing its conjoined halves apart completely. “Excuse me, please.” I cut apart the phantom to my right and elbowed the one to my left, stepping directly over their dissipating remains while commanding Petrov to cast a radial blast of energy to knock all of the remaining phantoms back, opening up my path directly to the stairwell.

  The wall of hands slithering all over the door leaked a dark red ooze that dripped all over the carpet. “Let’s see how impenetrable you are,” I muttered with a grin, setting my left hand ablaze and plunging my falchion directly into the door with both hands planted firmly around the hilt. Jets of purple flame shot out through the cracks that slowly formed as the hands took hold of my blade and furiously pulled on it from all sides, making it difficult to hold onto even with both hands keeping it steady. “Graah!!” I shouted with my chest as I drove the sword further into the door, the wound in my left palm throbbing in pain, forcing me to let go of the sword’s hilt. The falchion shattered into pieces as it slipped out of my grasp, leaving a small weak point in the center where the remainder of the blade was still lodged inside.

  “You want it?” I asked arrogantly while readying my hand for another strike. “Then you can have it!” With a vortex of energy swirling around my wrist, I dug my hand back into the door and grabbed onto the piece of the blade, channeling Petrov’s power to convert the steel inside of the broken blade into pure arsenic, a significantly toxic metalloid. The tighter that the hands held onto the arsenic sword, the more that their structure deteriorated, melting and congealing into a nonsensical mass that Petrov had no issues blasting right through. Unable to recover the remains of my sword, I steeled myself for whatever might lie ahead and prayed I wouldn’t need it, heading straight up the stairwell to the fourth floor.

  Immediately after making my way up the spiral staircase, I swung open the door and spotted Ryu’s room at the end of the hallway with no phantoms in sight. Strangely, the door was left wide open. “Hey!” I shouted down the hall, running as fast as possible while the corridor twisted and rotated around me. “Ryu! Aiko! Can you hear me?” The hallway started to oscillate like a spring, stretching and compressing and tossing me back and forth as I did the best I could to maintain my footing. “Come on, guys, say something, damn it!”

  Without warning, the corridor immediately reverted to normal, slinging me directly into the ground right beneath their doorway. “Gah… fucking hell…” I grunted while rubbing the scrape on my cheek that resulted from the carpet burn. Despite my hopes, no one from the room came to my aid. I couldn’t focus on the scrape for very long - The twitch in my eye was acting up again. I slowly lifted myself up from the floor and peeped into the empty hotel room. “...Guys?”

  Suddenly, I felt the wind get knocked out of me as a massive phantom the size of a professional bodybuilder leapt out from the room, lunging directly at me and taking me by the throat. The resulting velocity from the surprise attack sent us several meters down the hallway, my back dragging against the rough, fungus-ridden carpet. I stared up in terror at its contorting face that twisted into an evil smile made of sharp, dagger like teeth. The phantom reared its other arm back, turning it into a razor-sharp point as it readied to plunge directly into me. Before I became a living needle holder, I gripped its wrist hard with my left hand, swiftly converted it into graphite and crushed it, freeing me in just enough time to roll over, dodging its attack.

  The phantom wasted little time standing back up and thrusting its arm forward to hit me once again, this time barely missing me and getting stuck in the ice maker, spilling water and chunks of ice that had been filled with mold from years of going unused all over the floor. Seizing the opportunity, I reached for my other drumstick and swung it straight down, severing the phantom’s forearm from its body. “Ha!” I scoffed. “Still feelin’ tough, big guy?”

  A heavy blow to the back of my head shut me up rather quickly. “Ack!” I yelped as the hit sent me careening back towards the larger phantom, who sent me flying backwards again with a well-timed punch to the gut. Before I even processed the strike, I got kicked from behind again, followed by yet another smack to the gut, knocking me between both phantoms like a pinball. Horrifying sounds echoed around the walls as if this was the phantoms’ equivalent of laughter. Each phantom took turns tossing me back and forth before pinning me up against the boarded up windows, staring me down like a tasty snack and licking their sore-crusted lips. “Funny… Dad always yelled at me for playing with my food.” The dark, stalwart phantom and its slender white counterpart conjoined at the hip and inched their faces closer and closer to mine, their bleeding tongues connecting at the tips and sharpening like a blade the closer they got to my neck. My hands were pressed tight against the wood, preventing me from snapping my fingers, but they had just enough wiggle room to touch the wood. Caught in a bind with no conventional way out, I had to think of something, and fast. I pressed all ten of my fingertips against the wooden board, digging my nails into them and begged Petrov to lend me enough power for another high-risk plot.

  “...Anything to drink with that?”

  With Petrov’s assistance, the pool of moldy water swirled all the way around my body and into my fingers, seeping directly into the wooden boards and giving the plethora of pathogens growing inside all that they needed to chew through that wood like breakfast. I fell back as the rotting wood crumbled under the pressure of the phantoms’ chokehold, sending us plummeting four stories down into a stone courtyard. As we tumbled, the conjoined phantoms hit the ground first, breaking my fall and leaving me nearly completely unscathed. The twitch in my eye disappeared again - They had died on impact.

  After taking a pause to catch my breath, I laid on my back, gazing up at the night sky that glowed off in the distance. The reeking scent of smoke was pungent, even down here in the courtyard. Where was that fire coming from? The forest? The hotel? I cursed myself for failing to keep Shiraki safe, knowing that he was completely defenseless against the phantoms even if he had managed to survive that elevator failure. It was anyone’s guess as to where Ryu and Aiko had ended up amongst all this chaos - Were they strong enough on their own to fight alone? I barely had the strength to handle that pair of phantoms all by myself, for Christ’s sake. I want to have faith in my friends, but what good would that do when I struggle to even have that faith in myself?

  “Because they have faith in you.” A voice spoke softly to me from somewhere else in the world. “You can’t teach others what you don’t know yet yourself, right?”

  I pushed myself up off the ground and pulled my sword out of the bonsai tree it had gotten stuck in during the fall. “Trust me, everyone,” I muttered to myself as I gently traced my finger along the wound in the bonsai tree. “...We’ll find each other soon. I promise.”

  Walking slowly to conserve energy, I followed the only path out of the courtyard that I could find in the darkness. As I spent more time away from the phantoms, I felt energy slowly returning to my body. Whatever these things truly were, they really knew how to suck the life right out of you. It probably wasn’t in my best interest to stay here any longer than necessary - Whatever needed to be done here, it needed to happen tonight.

  At the end of the dark, narrow passageway, there was a locked steel door with a large ‘Σ’ spray-painted on the front. “...Sigma?” I pondered aloud, examining the rust that built up on the door’s hinges. “Summation… What’s this written on a door for?” Before I had a chance to question any further, I heard a frighteningly loud, metal crash coming from the other side, as if an identical door had just been busted down.

  I planted my palm against the door, letting Petrov oxidize the steel until the rust spread out from my hand like a spider web. I lifted my falchion high above my head, ready to cut right through…

~

  “No… not here…” Shiraki held onto the railing for dear life, his feet planted firmly against the ground and his knees bent to brace for impact. “I mustn’t fall here!” His shouts were powerful, unable to be drowned out by the blaring emergency alarm on the interior of the elevator. “Nay, I declare in the presence of death… Nay, I will not-”

  The elevator politely chimed as it came to a sudden halt, narrowly avoiding crashing into the bottom of the shaft by a fraction of a second. A perfectly intact lobby awaited through the open door that hadn’t a chance to shut all the way during the fall.

  Shiraki slowly strutted through the door and adjusted his tie with a smirk. “Haha! It appears that the universe has harked my resolve,” he bellowed pompously. “Tonight, this wretched House shall fall… Gone are the days of abandonment and decay, and in its place, we will erect-”

  He was abruptly cut off by the sound of the elevator cabin smashing against the concrete at the base of the shaft. When Shiraki looked over his shoulder, he spotted a slender, shadowy hand waving at him before slithering back up the shaft from whence it came. “Impossible…” he muttered to himself as he dashed towards the exit. “...that elevator absolutely should’ve been up to code.” Shiraki let the racket created by the elevator echo through his head, paying little mind to the entity that seemingly bought him enough time to avoid falling victim to it himself.

  Outside of the hotel, the grass had started to encroach on the natural trail leading back to the lodge. “Horrid… What kind of money would it take for someone to cut this, for heaven’s sake?” In a brief flash of sight and word association, Shiraki immediately made for the lodge, hollering out, “Ms. Xavier!” at any chance he could. Maybe he’d be able to alert her in time before she found herself in any danger. Speaking of danger, none of it appeared to be imminent for Shiraki on his journey down the trail. Perhaps the phantoms were still only localized to the hotel as of now.

  Shiraki’s slender body slipped right through the open crack in the automatic doorway. He banged his fist repeatedly against the door to the staff quarters. “Ms. Xavier? This is Shiraki! It’s urgent! Please, open the door!”

  A sleepy and weary Ellen sluggishly unfastened the lock to her door and peered through the gap between the doorframe. “Um… Mr. Shiraki…?” Ellen wiped her fists over her eyes as she looked up at his face. She was still in her uniform, likely because she rarely even took it off. “What seems to be the problem?”

  “No time to explain,” Shiraki replied sternly, taking Ellen’s hand and dragging her towards the front entrance. “I need to get you out of here.”

  “W-Woah, what are you-” Ellen yelped as Shiraki pulled her along behind him. If she wasn’t awake already, she sure as well was now. “Where are you taking me?”

  “Somewhere safe, I promise.” Shiraki didn’t have time to look back at her. “It’s too dangerous for people like us to stay here.”

  Ellen’s eyes widened. “People like… us?”

  “I’m sorry, I wish I could-”

  Both Shiraki and Ellen were knocked to the ground by a massive shockwave emanating from the entrance. Several creatures began busting into the lodge through the windows, howling and snarling at the pair with an almost feral cadence. Despite his limited encounters with them before, Shiraki knew it almost immediately - These were most certainly phantoms.

  “Ellen…” Shiraki whispered as he picked her up off the floor. “...no matter what you do, stay close to me. There’s no telling what these things might do.”

  “G-Got it,” she murmured back. “What’s our next move?”

  The analytical side of Shiraki’s brain immediately shifted into high gear, trying not to think about whether or not his brand new car was still intact. “The back door; We’ll lose them in the forest.”

  Ellen’s eyes were fixated on the wolf-like monsters lethargically crawling towards her. “Are you sure? What if there are more of them out there?”

  “Then we’ll have to resort to Plan K,” he responded as he clenched his fist.

  “Plan K?” Ellen clutched Shiraki’s other hand tightly. “What about Plan B?”

  “Plans A through J went out the window as soon as those things showed up.” Shiraki shook his head as he and Ellen made a break for the back door. “Don’t underestimate a master strategist, Ms.-”

  “AHH!!” Ellen screamed at such a high pitch that it was unclear whether the glass door was shattered by her voice or by the swarm of tall, slender phantoms bearing sharp, white fangs that continuously dripped endless streams of blood onto the carpet.

  For some reason, Shiraki was less fazed by these phantoms than the wolven phantoms that were slowly gaining on them. “Werewolves… and now vampires? This is getting outrageous… Ms. Xavier, it’s time for Plan - Woah!!” Shiraki wailed as Ellen snatched him by the arm and dragged him back into the staff quarters. “Ms. Xavier, are you out of your mind?”

  Ellen locked the door behind them and barricaded it with her sturdy wardrobe that she shoved across the floor. “I-I’m sorry, it was the only option we had left…”

  “The only option?” Shiraki inquired with a hint of irritation in his voice. “Do you consider waiting to die in a locked room to be an ‘option’?”

  “You said it yourself, Mr. Shiraki,” Ellen shouted back. “People like us… aren’t meant to take those things on.” She ripped off a newspaper clipping that was thumb-tacked to the wall next to her sink and mirror. It read:

  ‘Through our investigation into the hauntings at the House for Heavy Hearts, we found that few details are consistent among all 38 cases that we researched. That being said, each and every case reported to our staff shared the following characteristics:

* Every victim reported experiencing paranormal effects starting on the third night of their stay.

* All accounts recall visual, auditory, and tactile hallucinations. While these differ between reports, common hallucinations include seeing (and feeling the resounding heat from) forest fires, vampire/werewolf-like creatures wandering the trails, and the halls of the hotel not resembling the actual layout on the floor plan.

* Each report claims to have seen symbols ‘unlike anything they’ve ever seen before’, but none were able to reproduce such symbols of that description when handed a pen and paper.

  Take all of this information with a grain of salt; We would never make a slanderous claim suggesting that any business is haunted, or that they must be shut down because of it. However, our job at Pacific Northwest Paranormal is to inform our readers of the potential dangers lurking in the shadows. Unless you’re just looking for a remote location for a quick stay after a nice date, be aware of the risks when booking your stay at the House for Heavy Hearts.’

  Ellen pinned the clipping back on the wall. “The owner of this property abandoned the project after this was published; Said it would tarnish his reputation to keep it under his brand.” She glanced down to the bathroom sink beside Shiraki - It was filled to the brim with soapy water and the utensils Shiraki and his colleagues had used during breakfast. “...and now I’m the only one left to look after this place.”

  Shiraki put a hand on her shoulder. “Listen to me, Ellen. You need to leave this place… for good.”

  “But, I…” Ellen’s back was turned to the wardrobe as she looked Shiraki head on. “I just can’t.”

  “Even after finally seeing these things for yourself?” Shiraki was nothing short of perplexed. “There’s nothing left here. This place is a shell of its former self. Why continue to look after something that should be left to rot?”

  “Isn’t that why you’re here?” Ellen asked, her words making Shiraki feel a bit lightheaded.

  “...I don’t believe I comprehend-” Shiraki nervously sputtered out, unable to stop the twitch in his eye.

  “You had a reason to stay here, didn’t you?” Ellen inquired, this time sounding a bit more curious rather than accusatory. “Why else would four Japanese kids stay at a one-night stand hotel in Tahoe City for an entire weekend?”

  Shiraki wasn’t quite sure what pieces she was attempting to put together, but he’d rather she stop trying. “I wanted to help out some classmates of mine, that’s all there is to it.”

  “And you went through all this effort expecting nothing in return?” Ellen asked, seemingly unaware of the small, dark hand silently creeping out of the wardrobe behind her.

  “That’s right,” Shiraki declared sternly and proudly. “My father… taught me the importance of doing favors earnestly, and how that builds trust with the people around you.” His voice began to falter towards the end, as if a part of him didn’t trust what the other part of him was saying.

  “But what if-” Ellen barely had a chance to respond before the dark hand wrapped itself around her throat, holding her high in the air as the vampire-esque shadow it belonged to emerged from the wardrobe. The color drained from Ellen’s face as the phantom squeezed her neck tighter and bore its saber-like fangs. Blood trickled down the sides of Ellen’s uniform as it dribbled from the phantom’s mouth.

  Shiraki’s heart nearly burst straight out his chest as the heart rate monitor displayed on his eyeglass skyrocketed for him, nearly flat-lining for Ellen as she started undergoing asphyxiation. “Ms. Xavier!” In a panic, Shiraki reached for the nearest item within his reach: one of the knives floating in the sink. With both of his hands gripped around the handle, he swung it at the phantom, whose fangs were centimeters away from nipping her in the neck. “Hyah!!” Shiraki cut directly into the phantom’s fangs with the oddly dagger-like blade as close to the root as possible, preventing them from getting any closer to Ellen’s neck. With another overhead swing of the knife, Shiraki sliced straight through the vampire phantom’s arm, severing it from its body at the elbow and releasing its grip on Ellen’s throat. He reached down and immediately began checking her pulse and oxygen levels with his eyeglass - They were slowly returning to normal. “You’re not hurt too badly, are you?”

  Ellen gasped for breath between words, barely audible over the sound of the phantom’s hissing in pain as it retreated back into the wardrobe. “M…Maybe?” She didn’t seem to mind the bloodstains on her uniform, even as the blood dripped onto the carpet beneath her. “Mr… Shiraki… Thank you…”

  “No need to thank me,” he responded softly. “I assure you, Ms. Xavier - No matter what happens, you won’t be in harm’s way. I shall stay by your side - I swear by that.” Shiraki slid the dagger into his back pocket and slowly helped her sit up straight.

  “I… seriously can’t… thank you enough…” Ellen leaned into Shiraki’s arms. “That was quite brave… Without your help, I might’ve-”

  “Perish the thought, Ms. Xavier,” Shiraki whispered, pulling her away from the wardrobe as a viscous, black liquid began pouring out of the closet. “...It appears that this is far from over.”

  For a liquid as thick as molasses, it climbed up the walls at a much higher speed than should’ve been possible. The murky substance coated every little speck of the floor, walls, and ceiling of the staff quarters until Ellen and Shiraki found themselves trapped in an entirely black space devoid of any life. Time seemed to be at a standstill with no matter around to provide any frame of reference.

  Before either of them had the opportunity to get back up, Ellen let out a bloodcurdling scream as a knife fell from the dark, black sky above, landing a mere two centimeters away from her face before getting stuck in the ground by the tip of its blade. She reached out to touch the hilt at the revelation that, “This… looks just like the knives I left in the sink this morning.” Shiraki wasn’t exactly sure why that was so surprising to her, as he had just grabbed one of the knives out of the sink himself to attack the phantom that was strangling her. But upon reaching his hand towards his back pocket, it suddenly hit him that the hilt of the knife he’d taken didn’t feel like it resembled the shape of the kitchen knife that his eyes beheld right in front of him whatsoever.

  Several more identical kitchen knives started to rain from above, forming a near-perfect circle around the pair. “Ellen, we need to move. Now!”

  Ellen’s hand was about to take hold of the knife directly beside her. “But, what if we need something to protect ourselves with-”

  “We don’t have enough time!” Shiraki shouted, taking Ellen by the hand and pulling her out of the circle before a myriad of blades quickly filled the remainder of the ring behind them. “There isn’t any sense in arming ourselves for protection if we meet our demise in the process,” he elaborated as they kept running aimlessly into a void with no exit.

  “Mr. Shiraki, where are we going?” Ellen cried out while doing her best to follow behind him.

  Shiraki came to a halt as a wall of gargantuanly oversized swords fell directly in front of his path. He stuck his arm out behind him to stop Ellen before she could reach him. “Break left!” he hollered back, quickly pivoting on his feet towards a tall, steel door. “Whatever you do, stay close behind me,” Shiraki ordered Ellen as their path started to become interrupted more and more frequently, forcing them to constantly change direction. Each and every time their route was cut off, another door would appear off in the distance, only for their hope for escape to be snuffed out like a candle in the wind.

  “Wait, this way!” Without any other warning, Ellen split off from Shiraki, taking a harsh right turn when Shiraki was about to take a left.

  “Ms. Xavier, what on earth are you doing?” Shiraki yelled, sprinting much faster in an attempt to catch up with Ellen before she could get into any danger.

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  Ellen shouted back, not looking over her shoulder. “I can see a weird looking door at the end of this path!”

  Shiraki’s palm smacked against his forehead. “There’s been a door at the end of every path!”

  “Yes, but this one looks different!” Ellen pointed straight ahead at the door, which bore a ‘ς’ in the center. “Quick! Before it can get blocked off again!”

  As more and more knives began falling directly in the middle of Shiraki’s way, he had no choice but to accept this as his only possible move, praying that he and Ellen weren’t about to walk straight into the enemy’s trap.

  It was time to jump out of the frying pan and into the fire.

~

  Beyond the steel door lay a barren, empty rooftop with practically zero distinct qualities beyond the short excuse for railing that ran along the three edges of the building. An unsettling reddish-orange sky draped over me while the sounds of crackling and collapsing wood emanated from the raging forest fire around me. A triangular building in the middle of the forest… was this the amenities center?

  I immediately found Ryu hunched over a body in the center of the rooftop. The shattered remains of a familiar metal door were scattered across the floor behind him. I squinted my eyes to get a clearer picture of the body that was lying beneath him - Their dark blue nightgown and bright pink hair were unmistakable.

  “Aiko!” I shouted at the top of my lungs, sprinting towards the center of the rooftop as swiftly as possible. “Ryu, what’s happening? Is she going to be alright?”

  “More likely than not,” Ryu muttered. “Aiko’s still got a pretty steady pulse. It would take a lot more than this to take her out.”

  Before I had the chance to interrogate any further, a third door on the last remaining edge of the rooftop swung open. Out came two familiar faces bearing unrecognizably fearful expressions.

  “Genjo!” Shiraki’s shirt was covered in lacerations and splotches of blood. “Our paths… cross again, it seems…” Ellen, who appeared to be equally blood-soaked, was bent over by his side to catch her breath.

  “Holy shit, you’re okay!” I nearly jumped up to run towards him, but I couldn’t bring myself to leave Aiko’s side. “What the hell happened to you two?”

  Shiraki’s thumb quickly wiped a drop of blood across one of the rips in his shirt. “Oh, this? Haha, those phantoms were nothing short of a cakewalk!” God, even now, he still had the energy left in him to gloat?

  “Don’t get ahead of yourself, Suits,” Ryu retorted. “We haven’t even encountered the leader of these phantoms yet, let alone killed it.”

  Aiko suddenly sprung back to life, coughing up an amalgamation of dirt and blood. “Ack!” Her coughs slowly moved up an octave as she expunged more of the foreign matter from her airways. “I-I’m fine!” she hacked out despite obviously clutching her arm around her chest. “A little… gunk never hurt anyone…”

  I gently lifted her up and patted her on the back firmly until she was done coughing. “Nothing a little bit of healing magic can’t fix, right?”

  Aiko gave me a quick look that must’ve meant, ‘That’s not how it works, idiot,’ but the glowing green aura that flowed from her fingertips as she pressed them up against her chest seemed to be doing more than enough for her lungs. “Genjo… Ryu…” she spoke without any semblance of hoarseness to her voice. “...thanks a bunch.”

  Ryu’s eyes were fixated on the pile of dirt that Aiko had expelled from her body. “No need to thank me… It’s all my fault anyway.”

  “Hey, don’t say that…” she said in an attempt to console Ryu. “It’s nobody’s fault we’re in this mess.”

  “Precisely!” Shiraki butted in with an oddly proud declaration considering he was the one who dragged us out to this hotel in the first place. “As of now, the only pressing matter at hand is why exactly we all crossed paths at this exact moment.”

  “You’re right.” I stood back up on my feet, my eyes scanning our surroundings - More specifically, the three metal doors caught my eye. “Sigma…” I muttered to myself.

  Ryu scratched at the lightning bolt pattern in his hair. “Sigma? Come on, is now really the time to be thinking about our calculus homework, Genjo?”

  Sigma… meaning summation - The total of all things.

  “This isn’t a coincidence…” I mentally pieced together the remains of the door that Ryu had busted his way through, forming a lowercase sigma from its fragments. Lo and behold… another variation of the lowercase sigma was painted on the door behind Shiraki and Ellen as well. “...the phantom that controls this hotel - It brought all of us to the same place… at the same time.”

  Shiraki leisurely stepped closer towards the center of the rooftop, with Ellen staying close behind. “Why do you suppose it would do such a thing? Wouldn’t it be in the opponent’s best interest to keep us isolated?”

  “Yeah, he’s got a point.” Ryu glanced down at Aiko. “It doesn’t make sense for them to take Aiko away, only to lead us straight back to her.” I couldn’t deny Ryu’s assertion. After all, I was similarly confused about why they would separate me from Shiraki for such a brief period of time.

  My skin started to feel hot as the fire spread even closer to the amenities center. “...maybe it’s a trap.”

  “Not the most effective trap in the book, if you ask me.” Shiraki’s arms were crossed as he stood a few arm’s lengths away from us. “How cowardly… Leaving us to burn alive rather than coming to finish the job themselves.”

  Ryu’s hair stuck up on end. “Dude, shut up… Are you saying you want them to attack us?”

  I racked my brain for any memory of our previous encounters that might give us any clues. “He’s not wrong. Both Paramélisi and Prodosía confronted us directly. We have little reason to assume that anything different should happen this time.”

  “U-Um, sorry to i-interrupt, but…” Ellen spoke up from behind Shiraki, very noticeably shaken up and struggling to pull herself together. “...who’s to s-say that… we haven’t-”

  “That we haven’t encountered this mastermind already?” Shiraki pondered at Ellen’s suggestion. “It’s certainly possible… These phantoms are known for playing their tricks on us, are they not?”

  Aiko tapped her finger against her cheek. “That’s right… Jouto and Ellen weren’t with us last time. All they have to go off of is what you’ve told him, right, Genjo?”

  “Mhm. Although I think it’s pretty unlikely for us to encounter any doppelgangers two times in a-” Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed that Shiraki looked much more… apprehensive than usual. “Huh? Shiraki, what’s wrong?”

  His eye twitched erratically behind his eyeglass. “T-That name…” Shiraki’s finger shook as he pointed it directly at Aiko. “...where did you hear that?”

  Aiko’s eyelids fluttered in utter bewilderment. “Um… Was it something I said?”

  Shiraki gritted his teeth and stood in front of Ellen, blocking her body with his own. “Stay back, Ms. Xavier… I’m afraid your assertion may be correct.”

  Ellen’s teeth chattered in fear as she peered over Shiraki’s shoulder. “Wait… are you saying that your three friends are-”

  “Like hell we are!” Ryu cracked his knuckles, guarding Aiko with his body like Shiraki had guarded Ellen’s. “The fuck’s gotten into you, man? You’re just gonna accuse us of being phantoms over nothing?”

  “Nothing, you say?” Shiraki howled back. “Belliting my skepticism over how that name descended upon your tongue?”

  “Wait, I can explain!” Aiko inched closer to Shiraki. “I read it in the guest registry in the lobby… I’m sorry, I didn’t think much of it-”

  “Don’t come any closer!” There was seemingly no chance of convincing Shiraki anymore.

  I warmed up the flame in my hand, ready to summon Petrov as the only way I knew how to prove it was truly the real us. “Shiraki, just calm down. I can show you that we’re not-”

  “You believe me to be so foolish?” Shiraki’s hand slowly reached for his back pocket. “Begone, foul phantoms of the night-”

  Shiraki froze in place as his hand swung at and missed an empty pocket.

  “So close…” A sinister voice whispered from behind his ear. “Unlucky guess, Mr. Shiraki…”

  A sharp pain pierced through Shiraki’s chest, followed by an intense electrical shock in his nervous system as the dagger scraped against his ribcage. A drop of blood splashed against the inside of his eyeglass lens while he watched helplessly as his vital signs began showing countless emergency alerts all across the screen. Shiraki attempted to reach his arm back and take hold of the assailant’s wrist while he still could, but they had already pulled the knife back out of his upper body before he could reach them. Clutching the exit wound in the center of his chest, Shiraki fell to his knees without a sound, revealing an even more blood-soaked concierge girl standing behind him.

  Ellen wiped Shiraki’s blood off the blade of the dagger with her bare hands, immune to the damage it should’ve inflicted on her skin. “Goodness… He was much easier to manipulate than I could’ve imagined.” She happily smiled at her reflection in the dagger’s metal edge. “Planting all those ideas in his head as if they were his own… Ah, how I missed this…”

  The three of us could only stare at Shiraki’s body in terror as he grimaced intensely through the pain, holding back as much blood loss as he could muster. My hand began to shake, sensing Petrov was practically begging to be set loose. “You were the one who suggested that the mastermind was already with us, not Shiraki…”

  With a wave of her hand, Ellen erased all of the metal doors from reality. “For somebody so cold and calculated, it was rather simple to get him all riled up over something so ridiculous.” She tossed the dagger onto the ground in front of us and walked towards one of the three points of the rooftop where the walls converged, taking her time to relish in the explanation of her own master plan. “Made it rather trivial to turn him against the three of you. I was hoping to drag this part out for a little bit longer, to be completely honest.”

  Ryu looked down as the knife slid across the rooftop directly to his feet. There was no mistaking it - It was Ryu’s dagger. Before any of us had a chance to blink, Ryu had already snatched the dagger off the ground and dashed towards Ellen in a fit of unbridled fury, shouting, “I’m gonna fucking kill you, you rancid witch!”

  Another nonchalant wave of Ellen’s hand summoned a massive, shadowy hand from the ground that backhanded Ryu mid-flight before he could even reach her, sending him flying across the rooftop and into the railing. “You really should learn how to let people finish speaking, Mr. Kase.”

  “Don’t call yourself a ‘person’, you monster,” Aiko retaliated, running over to Shiraki and pressing her hand firmly over his wound. Green light radiated from underneath Shiraki’s bloody, white shirt as she tried her hardest to undo the nearly fatal damage that Ellen had inflicted on him.

  “She’s right.” I summoned Petrov to my side, being the last of us to call upon our facade’s power. “You don’t deserve to wear such a human name on that uniform.”

  “Oh, you mean this?” Ellen tore the name tag that read, ‘Ellen X.’ off her uniform and tossed it over the railing behind her. “Thank god, I was getting sick of that name anyway. Such a poor substitute for a name like… Élenchos… Wouldn’t you say so?”

  I brandished my sword and pointed it directly at Élenchos. “I’ve met my fair share of villains over the past few weeks, but you…” The purple light emanating from my eye started to glow even brighter than before. “...None of them are anywhere close to as despicable as you.”

  “Ha! Was that supposed to be an insult, Sazama?” Élenchos cackled as she walked up a staircase of hands that actively grew taller as she proceeded to sit atop a massive throne made of arms and skulls. “To exert control over humanity is what we desire more than anything… And to think, all of my little pawns hadn’t a clue they were playing right into my hands, hahaha!”

  Aiko held her eyes shut as she attempted to channel all of Sarah’s healing energy into Shiraki’s gaping wound. “Is this all just a game to you? Toying with and destroying so many lives… is there really no other reason other than it just being a game?”

  “All the world’s a game, Matsuura!” As Élenchos sat on her throne, her physical body started to fuse directly to the throne, revealing that they were all a single entity. “It will become apparent to you the more that you detach yourself from the intangible results of your actions.”

  I charged directly at Élenchos from the center of the rooftop. “That’s not how humanity works, Élenchos.”

  “That is precisely what humanity has yet to truly comprehend!” Élenchos shouted as she effortlessly summoned a wave of feral, werewolf-like phantoms to form a wall in between us. “The most successful of your kind don’t reach those heights without sacrificing a few pawns in their game.”

  Petrov fired a blast of energy directly into the horde of phantoms in front of us. “We’re more than just pawns. Just because you see us that way, that doesn’t mean-”

  “I wouldn’t be so certain about that…” Élenchos sent a mob of phantoms towards Aiko, who was entirely defenseless as she slowly returned the color to Shiraki’s face. “That Shiraki… He’s been playing all of you for fools, has he not? Do you even know the true reason he called you out here in the first place?”

  I swung my falchion through one of the phantoms as I ran past, decapitating them in a single, clean blow. “The… true reason?” Élenchos was right - Just when I had gotten the chance to ask him about that earlier tonight, we had gotten cut off before he could answer.

  Aiko leapt up and launched a blade of wind with a spin-kick, knocking the phantoms back away from her. “Stop trying to get in our heads! Genjo, don’t listen to her!”

  Élenchos’ smile only grew wider. “Weren’t you the most skeptical of all, Matsuura? You already have proof that he’s lied to you before… Why stop suspecting him now?”

  “Because he’s not the one trying to kill me right now!!” Aiko sent the ensuing phantoms flying with a gust of wind from her palm while she used the remaining healing power she had on Shiraki, whose condition was slowly becoming less catatonic.

  “Exactly!” I shouted as I struck down another foe. “No matter what, I’ll never trust him any less than I trust you-”

  Élenchos’ voice distorted severely as she screamed, “No playing out of turn, Sazama…” at a much lower pitch than before. A small hand burst out of the ground beneath me and snagged me by the ankle, pulling me straight to the ground. “In my House, you play by my rules.”

  As I attempted to wrestle myself free from Élenchos’ control, I called out, “Aiko! Ryu! A little backup would be really helpful right now!”

  “Working on it!” Aiko yelled back, forced to leave Shiraki behind as she felt herself run out of healing energy. As she stood up, she took the black king out of her handbag and placed it in Shiraki’s hand, closing his fist around it before quickly lifting herself off the ground and hovering into action.

  Ryu slowly dragged himself out of the rubble from his unceremonious crash into the railing, grabbed his dagger and charged back towards Élenchos. “Rules, my ass…” he grumbled at the sight of Élenchos conjuring a band of shadowy knights in suits of armor that wielded flaming halberds to take him on. “Leave it to a phantom to make shit up as they go…”

  Each of us were stuck fighting our own groups of phantoms as we pressed on towards the throne. At seemingly random moments, Élenchos would reprimand us for “breaking the rules,” forcibly restraining us in place for just enough time to get struck by a heavy blow from the phantoms around us. “Ugh, this is hopeless…” Élenchos said with a snarl in her voice. “How many times must I reiterate-”

  Shiraki jolted awake, gasping for breath as he clutched at the hole in his chest that had mysteriously healed back up. He wiped the blood off the inside of his eyeglass - His vital signs were returning to normal, although he could tell he was far from being back at peak performance. “H-How am I… This is… impossible…” Shiraki wasn’t sure what his eyes saw before him, nor how his chess piece had returned to his possession. But he knew one thing for certain: He had cheated death. “Ellen!” He bellowed out, attempting to stand up but failing due to the pain that still throbbed in his chest.

  “There is no ‘Ellen’, Shiraki!” I called back after getting over the initial shock that he was even still alive. “There never was!”

  Shiraki clenched his fist around the king. The woman that he had just been told didn’t exist was right in front of him, sitting atop a throne most horrifying. “I… Ms. Xavier… How could you-”

  “Listen to us, Shiraki…” Ryu could barely get in a word in between the continuous blows that kept knocking him to the ground as he swiftly dashed from target to target. “You need to let it go- Gah!” His face collided directly with the heel of the knight’s halberd, pinning him to the ground.

  “I…” Shiraki could feel the king cracking under the force of his own grip.

  “Snap out of it!” Aiko shouted as a long arm shot out of the ground and snatched her out of the air. “Ngh… A little help here?”

  “Coming!” I answered, attempting to find an opening to escape. The wolves had me completely surrounded. There was no way I’d be able to make it to her in time.

  A vortex of black smog and dark, red blood swirled around Élenchos. “This game is getting rather dull… How about a change of pace?”

  I had Aiko in my sights as I made a last ditch effort to run towards her, my senses pounding away in my head as I left myself wide open for attack. Time seemed to slow down to a crawl. ‘No,’ I thought. ‘This can’t be how it ends…’

~

  With the snap of her fingers, the world around Élenchos froze in time. Genjo, Ryu and Aiko were completely still, stuck in place mere moments before inevitable demise. “There.” Élenchos dispelled the dark aura surrounding her. “Isn’t something like this more… your speed?”

  Somehow, Shiraki was the only human being that remained in control of his body. He charged towards Genjo, lunging his arm out to pull him away to safety. “Genjo!”

  Before Shiraki could reach him, several large appendages erupted from the ground and took hold of Shiraki, pushing him backwards until he collided with the railing. Élenchos smiled eloquently. “Still acting out of turn, are we?”

  Shiraki persevered through the pain searing throughout his upper abdomen, struggling to fight back against the arms that Élenchos had used to pin him to the railing. “Everyone…” He shouted from behind the grotesque hand that covered his mouth. His voice was muffled but, through sheer willpower, it was still audible beyond the phantom’s palm. “Hold strong! Don’t give up! I’ll-”

  The hand suctioned to Shiraki’s face, silencing any remaining semblance of speech. “You’ll what?” Élenchos cackled from atop her throne. “What do you seriously hope to accomplish? Haven’t you realized that you’re nothing but deadweight to your ‘friends’?”

  He wrestled desperately against Élenchos’ grasp and screamed as hard as his lungs could muster, but it was all for naught. Nothing he attempted was strong enough to resist her control. Shiraki’s view of Élenchos, his friends, and the rest of the battlefield were hard to make out.

  “You just don’t give up, do you?” Élenchos started to wring Shiraki’s arms like towels, cutting off the circulation to his hands. “Quit this charade and just submit to your uselessness.”

  Shiraki refused. His voice barely escaped through a small gap in the phantom’s fingers. “I… will never… admit defeat…” He could feel his hands start to go numb. “…not to the likes of you.”

  “Then go ahead - Release yourself from my grasp,” Élenchos beckoned from across the battlefield. Her face came apart at a vertical seam down the center of her cranium, revealing a dark chasm overflowing with deep red eyes. “But you can’t. Do you know why? Because life moves faster than you know how to handle it.”

  The world started to revert to a state of motion, with everything moving incredibly slowly. A sharp claw was about to tear right into Genjo’s skull.

  “You find comfort in games because they move in turns. You have complete, utter control over every little action. You have all the time in the world to think, prepare, and act.”

  Everything gradually accelerated towards normal speed before slowing back to a crawl only a second later. Aiko was being forcefully dragged against the ground by a hand that was nearly the size of her entire body.

  “But you’re afraid of reality… because you can’t control any of it - Or anyone.”

  Élenchos spawned another long, slimy arm and delicately dragged its finger in a circle around Ryu, who had been pinned in place surrounded by a horde of knights.

  “People are so confusing to you, aren’t they?” Élenchos rhetorically pondered aloud. “You can’t tell them where to go or what to do… Even though they seem to be able to do so back to you.”

  Time reversed until everyone was right where they started.

  “Because real life isn’t a game that you ever learned how to play.”

  The world around Shiraki fluctuated in speed as it moved backwards and forwards through time seemingly at random. It taunted him with the vision of watching his friends meet their ends, forced to standby without being able to save them, because they possessed a power that he didn’t.

  “In fact, you were never even assigned a role in this game to begin with.” The dark aura surrounded Élenchos once again. “Forces beyond your mortal comprehension have orchestrated each and every piece of this game - And you are not one of them.”

  Suddenly, a voice suppressed by the forces of darkness rang out once again.

  “...Silence.”

  With all his remaining strength and will, Shiraki clenched his fists, fighting back against the loss of feeling throughout his body. “I’ve had enough of this drivel - Lies spit from the jaws of a charlatan in a saint’s robe…” The arms holding Shiraki in place trembled as he slowly began to free himself from their grasp.

  “Impossible.” Élenchos clenched her fists in an unsuccessful attempt to wrestle back control over him. “You shouldn’t be able to-”

  “Stop telling me what I can and cannot do.” Shiraki broke free from the arms that had been shackling him where he had stood helpless and weak. “I won’t let anyone tell me what to do any longer…” He tore off the hand that covered his mouth and roared out loud enough for the entire world to hear. “Not you! Not my father! Not anyone else!”

  Élenchos could only look on in terror as her victim had completely shattered her control over him. A burning sensation emanated from the palm of her hand as the arms started to dissolve back into dark, red blood.

  “There was no role assigned to me in this game?” An ominous, demonic indigo light flowed around Shiraki as he stuck out his fist in front of him, crushing the king in his hand to pieces. “Fine! Then I’ll make my own!”

  A deep, bellowing voice called out to Shiraki from another plane of reality. “How interesting… a non-compatible who wishes to be bestowed a power they were never destined for…”

  Shiraki’s hand became enveloped in an indigo flame. “I don’t believe there is even such a thing as destiny - If this power is what I need to save my friends, I shall take it. That is my choice, and my choice alone.”

  “You’re willingly choosing to shackle yourself to their fates?” The voice’s question wasn’t asked rhetorically. “Do you realize what you’re doing?”

  “No - Far from it.” Shiraki tightly clenched his fist as the flame raged on. “But that’s a gambit that I’m willing to take.”

  “This chain that you’re intertwining yourself with will not end at just Sazama, nor will it end at you - Once you’ve entered this game, you will not be allowed an opportunity to concede.”

  Shiraki flashed a confident smile. “I’m flattered that you even considered the possibility of concession.”

  The voice was unamused, yet intrigued by Shiraki’s bold display of resolve. “Hold out your palm, Jouto.”

  He did as the voice asked, and the fragments of the chess piece disintegrated into a swirl of indigo light that culminated into a small coin in the palm of his hand. One side depicted the Roman numeral I - on the other, six wands in the shapes of each of the six different chess pieces, all set ablaze and arranged in a circle.

  “The game will now resume.” The deep voice gave in to Shiraki’s resolve. “Place your bet, Gambler.”

  Indigo sparks flew through the air as Shiraki’s thumb flicked the coin up into the air. “Perhaps there are rules to this game that are yet to be learnt by its participants…”

  The voice had nothing left to say to Shiraki.

“...which is precisely why it needs a champion like me!!”

~

  Shiraki caught the coin as it fell right before his chest, sending out a shockwave of immense power across the rooftop. He clutched his wrist tightly with his other hand, struggling to contain the sheer force exuding from his fist. A bright light flashed on the display of Shiraki’s eyeglass, creating a grid-like pattern across the battlefield. His mind was suddenly bombarded with an extraordinary volume of information, all of which flickered rapidly all across the eyeglass.

  A live feed of my body, still frozen in place, appeared in Shiraki’s vision. “Genjo…?”

  “S-Shiraki?” His voice rattled inside of my head. “What’s going on? How can I hear you when you’re-”

  “Never mind that,” Shiraki replied sternly into the earpiece, my voice somehow coming through on his end. The display on his lens was examining the claws of the monsters surrounding me and rapidly calculating the angles and ranges of motion, determining the most likely odds of escape across the grid. “Listen to me very carefully; Bend your knees, tuck your head down and move Bxf5-” He stopped and cleared his throat. “...diagonally to your right. Swing your blade at the phantom’s ankle, and don’t be afraid to let your momentum carry you through the rest of the roll. If you’re lucky, you should be able to land back on your feet successfully without much injury.”

  “If I’m lucky??” I felt the air passing by my skin as time began to unfreeze. “Shiraki, what the hell are you saying?”

  Shiraki started to speak faster through the earpiece. “Alright, that’s step one. Given that you stick the landing, fire a shot at…” Ryu’s feed popped up on his display as well. “...nine o’clock.”

  I pinched my eyes shut as I prepared to swing my falchion. “My nine o’clock or yours?”

  “What do you think?” he answered, sounding mildly irritated.

  “Got it.” The momentum of my upper body as I swung my blade to the right carried me forward, narrowly dodging the swiping claws of one phantom and crippling another at the ankle as I rolled across my left shoulder blade down to my right hip. To my surprise, the plan had gone just as Shiraki had crafted it - I was back on my feet in the blink of an eye, thrusting my left arm out directly parallel to my body and sending a blast of nuclear energy towards Ryu’s captor.

  Shiraki put a finger up to his earpiece as his camera feed switched to only display Ryu stuck underneath the end of a long spear held by a towering knight. “Ryu Kase, this is Shiraki.” Time somehow seemed to slow down again. “Do you copy?”

  Ryu was struggling to breath as the halberd exerted a significant amount of pressure right up against his sternum. “Sure, I guess… Wait, are you-”

  “I’ll explain later,” Shiraki cut him off as he estimated the time of flight of Petrov’s energy shot. “Don’t fret; Once time reverts to normal, you’ll be freed in approximately… 3.05 seconds.”

  “Cool shit,” Ryu grunted as he focused Midas’ electric power into his dagger. “Just three seconds until I can kick this guy’s ass-”

  “Not just yet.”

  “Huh? But it’s the perfect time to-”

  “Your objective is to rescue Ms. Aiko.” Shiraki’s display began to pick up a live feed of Aiko getting dragged across the ground. “Once free, you must make your way to her posthaste-”

  “Alright, don’t gotta tell me twice,” Ryu acknowledged Shiraki’s words as Midas’ energy transferred from Ryu’s hands to his sneakers. When reality sped back up, Ryu counted to three in his head and timed an upward kick as soon as the energy blast severed the shaft of the halberd in two. “Hey, you dropped this!” Ryu punted the broken shaft directly into the knight’s helmet before seizing the opportunity to break straight for Aiko, slicing the hand that was holding her captive in two and grabbing hold of her wrist, leaving a long black streak behind him as he dug his sneakers into the ground, braking sharply to avoid sliding directly past me.

  Élenchos slammed one of her various fists against the rooftop in a fit of rage. “What? Preposterous! How did you escape my trap in a matter of seconds? What trickery are you playing at?”

  “Oh, there’s no trickery here,” Shiraki declared haughtily as he stepped forward. “You said it yourself… Élenchos.”

  Behind Shiraki stood a facade of his very own, donning a silver samurai helmet, a gaudy red uniform and a flowing gold cape. A mask made out of a flickering LED screen covered its eyes, veiled in a constant storm of text in countless languages that made my head spin just looking at it. The facade kept a hand permanently fixed around the hilt of a rapier that hung at the hip opposite its shoulder. Most eerie, though, was the edge of a lengthy blade sticking out of its chest in addition to the eagle-shaped crest that was smudged across the front of the uniform that diverged from the blade’s exit point.

  “I don’t possess control over anything… or anyone.” Shiraki’s eyeglass began flashing wildly as it gathered intel at a frighteningly high speed. “The universe seeks to paint me as the ‘control freak’ who spends every waking moment tossing and turning over the thought of how to manipulate every little thing to my desires…”

  The flames around the building grew higher.

  “And all this time, I’ve believed it…” he growled as he clutched the side of his face behind his bangs. “...I’ve accepted myself as the control freak…” Shiraki’s other hand glided across the gaping hole in this shirt, tracing the scar underneath. “...But you!” he roared across the rooftop at Élenchos. “Your manipulation knows no bounds… It sickens me, the lengths that you will go to, all for a game with no prize.”

  Élenchos tapped her fingers against the arms of the throne. “All the world’s a game, Shiraki… You all live just to die. Life has no prize.”

  “That’s where you’re just plain wrong!” Aiko shouted.

  “Is it, though?” There was a hint of elation in Élenchos’ voice. “Without a prize, why strive to win the game at all? Where is the purpose in-”

  “Hahaha…” Shiraki hunched over as a guttural laugh began to overtake him, getting progressively more intense until it turned pure-blown maniacal. “HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!” He pointed a finger directly at the phantom, causing his facade to follow suit. “Such closed-minded conjecture from such a closed-minded creature… Wherefore, you ask?” Shiraki raised his finger to the sky. “For the luscious taste of victory, of course!”

  Élenchos readied her soldiers for attack. “...A taste that shall never befall your tongue.”

  “Genjo! Aiko! Ryu! Steel yourselves!” Shiraki struck a dramatic pose with his hand covering half of his face like a character from an action manga. “If all the world’s a game… Then I shall win it all! Aznable, my loyal servant…” His facade shone brighter than the walls of fire around us. “Together… Let us blaze a trail towards unattainable glory!”

  Ryu immediately charged into battle, Aiko and I following behind but unable to keep up with his lightning speed.

  “Careful, everyone!” Shiraki warned us from afar. “This is Élenchos’ game. If we don’t play by her rules, we’re as good as dead.”

  Aiko swerved a bit as she hovered alongside me. “Jeez! What the hell was that just now?”

  Shiraki continued to speak to all three of us simultaneously. “It appears that Aznable possesses some form of communicative proficiency that your facades simply lacked before. However, the fact that I can hear you as well is an excellent sign.”

  I wiped a bit of blood off the scrape on my cheek. “Man, where the hell was this when we needed it two weeks ago?”

  Another order from Shiraki came rather quickly. “Ryu, pull back, now!”

  “Dude, you don’t let me do shit…” he grumbled as he followed his order. “Alright, Suits, I’m back. Now what?”

  “Aznable’s intel suggests that Élenchos herself will only strike directly if we act out of turn.” Shiraki attempted to get a bird’s eye view of the rooftop. “It’s dangerous for us to make too many actions in rapid succession. We must carefully plan out each and every move.”

  “So what you’re saying is,” I pondered, relieved that I was still able to hear Shiraki while listening to my music without any issues. “Take out as many of her lackeys as possible per attack?”

  “Precisely.” An idea popped into Shiraki’s head. “Listen up; Which of your facades is best oriented to deal with massive groups of enemies?”

  “Easy - That’d be Sarah!~” Aiko smugly twirled her finger, creating a tiny gust of wind in her hand. “Just one little breeze and they’ll be lookin’ for their ruby slippers!” Aiko got up on the tips of her toes and spun a rather impressive number of times until a small whirlwind appeared around her. “Out of the way, ya freaks!” With a smooth mid-air kick, Aiko launched the twister towards the horde of werewolf-like phantoms, dragging them up into the air before blasting them all off into the forest fire.

  “Nice work, Aiko.” Shiraki’s radar began picking up a new group of enemies as Aznable scanned further beyond Aiko. “Tread lightly - This next group is considerably larger in number.”

  Ryu narrowly sidestepped out of the way as a knight lunged its flaming spear directly at him. “Don’t forget that we can see them too, genius.” He took a quick stab at the knight’s armor, dealing absolutely no damage to the phantom itself and prompting it to take its turn, swinging the halberd horizontally back at Ryu. With a swift leap into the air above the sweeping halberd, Ryu once again dodged it by a hair and landed behind the knight.

  My hand trembled, struggling to hold onto the energy blast that I was prepared to cast at a moment’s notice. “Shiraki, are there any properties to their armor that I can take advantage of?”

  “As expected from pure metal, its electrical conductivity is quite high,” Shiraki repeated back into his earpiece. “Midas’ electric attacks will be effective, but we cannot strike in rapid succession. Otherwise, we’ll be breaking Élenchos’ rules. Genjo, can you try expanding the size of the electric field?”

  “That’ll only weaken the field’s strength, though. Unless…” I attempted to speak directly with Ryu through Aznable’s communication network. “Ryu, be ready to attack with Midas; I have an idea.”

  “Finally, a plan that lets me attack something…” Ryu dashed away from the group of knights and raised his fist up high, the sky above him flashing violently. “Your turn, Genjo!”

  I held my palm out towards the group of phantoms, stabilizing my wrist using my other hand while I visualized the atoms that comprised their bodies. If I used enough of Petrov’s strength to excite their nuclei, I could induce any form of radiation to damage them without needing to penetrate their armor. Atoms began to vibrate as I drew energy into them from the environment, but it wasn’t quite enough yet. “Ryu, now!”

  Ryu swung his hand straight down, calling a bolt of lightning directly from the sky above and struck the phantom to thunderous applause, letting the electrons jump between each of the metal knights in the horde. The air around the knights hummed as the electricity crackled throughout their armor, allowing Petrov to transfer the new energy into the unstable nuclei and forcing them to decay rapidly. A chain reaction of alpha particles, beta radiation and gamma photons quickly tore the phantoms apart from inside their armor, letting out loud crashes as they clattered against the ground.

  “Woohoo!” Aiko hollered, hovering over to meet Ryu and I. “We’re swatting through them like bugs!”

  “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Shiraki commented from afar. “Élenchos still has her frontline soldiers guarding the throne. We take the throne…”

  Élenchos stared at us with her deep red eyes from atop her throne, stationed behind two rows of phantoms as her last bastion of defense.

  Shiraki chuckled quietly. “...that’s the game.”

  “Why don’t we play a simple game of arithmetic?” Élenchos hissed back, gesturing to her pawns. “I count dozens of us… and only three of you. Following my rules, you’re simply out of options. You’re outnumbered, Shiraki. You’ve lost - I’ve won.”

  “Hohohoho…” Shiraki sneered at Élenchos with his hand gently covering his mouth. “Are you aware of who you’re speaking to? Can your inhuman mind even comprehend who has graced you with his presence?”

  Élenchos hadn’t moved an inch, nor had she made a sound.

  “Someone who calls themselves a ‘winner’ is able to recognize when they’ve lost…” Shiraki flourished his hand forward heroically. Aznable followed suit, his cape flowing in the wind and brandishing his rapier. The ground beneath them began glowing in a grid-like pattern that quickly spread across the entire rooftop, turning our battlefield into a real life chessboard. “But a true champion will always forge a path to victory, even when he’s down to a single piece!”

  “Ngh…” Élenchos clenched several of her countless fists. “Don’t tell me…” she muttered to herself.

  Thanks to the grid forming beneath us, I had finally realized what Élenchos had been dreading that we discovered. “Shiraki, are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

  Shiraki and Aznable had already mapped out the plan on his eyeglass. With a beaming smile on his face, he answered, “...I thought you’d never ask.”

  Aiko and Ryu both looked at me simultaneously. “Alright, Genjo, what’s the plan?”

  “Don’t ask me,” I declared confidently. “...ask him.”

  “Genjo! Aiko! Ryu!” Shiraki shouted with an air of authority. “Convene for a Scholar’s Mate!”

  Ryu’s eyebrow rose in confusion. “Hey, we never went over-”

  “Just follow my instructions.” Using Aznable’s power, Shiraki lit some of the tiles beneath us in a dark shade of red. “Aiko, e4!”

  Although the words meant nothing to her, the two glowing red tiles directly in front of her did enough explaining themselves. “Gotcha! What next?”

  Shiraki swept his bangs out of the way of his eyes. “I need you to stay put.”

  “What??” Aiko blurted back as she watched a bloody-fanged phantom heading straight for her. “Why the hell would I-”

  “Genjo!” Shiraki shouted, completely ignoring Aiko in favor of giving the rest of us further instruction. “Bc4!”

  Recalling the night that Shiraki had executed this exact strategy on me, I didn’t even need to follow the visual cue of the tiles, instead moving out in the open diagonally to my left based on my own intuition. “Shiraki, you’re sure this is gonna work, right?”

  “Élenchos is an entity of control…” Shiraki murmured through the earpiece. “Do not fret now - We’ve got her right where we want her.” As a phantom from the rear line of defenses charged up to face me in combat, Shiraki was more certain than ever that his plan would be enacted flawlessly. “Ryu!”

  “On it, boss.” Ryu didn’t even wait to hear Shiraki call out to him in chess notation before following the red tiles, dashing out slightly ahead of me on the opposite end of the battlefield. “Alright, next move?”

  “Yeah, I think… that’d be pretty helpful right about now…” Aiko grunted through clenched teeth as she held off an attack from the phantom’s sharp fangs with a shield of Sarah’s making.

  Shiraki carefully awaited Élenchos’ next move. “Aiko, you are to serve as a decoy.”

  “Aw, what?” she cried out in despair. “Are you serious?”

  “Élenchos has no choice left other than to leave herself wide open,” Shiraki explained. “Ryu, once she’s completed her next move, beeline straight for the one guarding the throne. That’ll leave her with only one option.”

  “...to come for me herself, huh?” Ryu muttered, wiping off a small drop of Shiraki’s blood that remained on his dagger with his thumb. “Sounds good to me.”

  “Then, what do I do?” I asked Shiraki, standing in direct line of sight with the guard that Ryu was directed to attack.

  “...Stand by.” Shiraki sighed, cutting his communication from Aiko and Ryu so only I would hear him. “In case… you need to step in for Ryu.”

  I gripped the hilt of my falchion harder at the thought. “Have more faith in him.”

  Once our turn to advance had come, Ryu did just as Shiraki ordered, taking out the guard in a few swift strikes before it even knew what hit it. With the guard’s corpse lying at his feet, Ryu stared down Élenchos and her newly exposed throne. He held up the dagger in front of him, displaying the blade to its thief. “...Tell me what you see, Élenchos.”

  She apathetically arose from her throne, unfusing her body from it. “An ordinary knife. Why? Is there something you’d like to share about it?”

  Ryu’s blood began to boil inside of his veins. Static electricity flickered behind his eyes. “...it doesn’t have your blood on it yet.”

  Élenchos gave him little more than a smirk in return. “...cute.”

  It was now Élenchos’ turn.

  She leapt from her throne in the blink of an eye, lunging for Ryu’s throat. Élenchos’ many arms had already taken hold of him before he could react, tugging at his limbs like they were trying to pull him apart. The gaping wide chasm that existed where she had formerly worn a face opened wide, ready to swallow him whole. Her many eyes peered into Ryu’s soul, forcing a shriek of terror that existed deep within him that he had hoped no one would ever hear.

  I couldn’t bear to see Ryu like this any longer - Something had to be done. ‘Ditch the plan!” I hollered out, sending out simultaneous blasts of energy towards both Ryu and Aiko. One blast took out the phantom that was attacking Aiko’s shield in a clean hit - The other blast struck Élenchos and her wretched body before she could devour Ryu, knocking her to the ground briefly.

  Shiraki was scrambling for another strategy. “Genjo, what are you doing? Our plan was about to-”

  “Our plan was going to get Ryu killed, Shiraki.” I ran straight for Ryu, my sword in one hand and a raging purple flame in the other. Aiko, now free from the relentless assault from the front, began slicing Ryu’s shackles apart with Sarah’s wind blades. As Ryu fell to the ground, I picked up his dagger and handed it back to him. “If you drop this a third time, I might have to glue it to you, man.”

  Ryu wasted no time getting back into action. “I’ll ask that MP3 player for advice on how to not get lost, then.”

  “Fascinating…” Shiraki mumbled to himself as he continued analyzing our battle, now slowly closing the distance between him and the rest of us. “Everyone, I must inform you of a new development in my intel-”

  “Oh, for crying out loud,” Aiko groaned, weaving blades of wind in between elegant aerial dodges as she hovered through the air. “Spit it out!”

  Shiraki rolled his eyes as he straightened his tie. “Élenchos is no longer physically bound to her throne. That is to say… she’s lost all control over the remainder of her subordinates.” While we continued to fight through the horde of phantoms, I started to realize exactly what Shiraki meant - They no longer moved in coordination.

  Midas was haphazardly flinging around bolts of lightning while Ryu focused on his own close-quarters combat. “Which means…”

  “No more turns…” The wires had finally connected in my brain. “No more punishments.”

  All four of us immediately shifted our focus to Élenchos, who was still reeling from the force of Petrov’s energy blast, surrounded by minions who no longer followed her orders. Sarah blew away the weak fodder with powerful gusts of wind, Midas stunned and electrocuted the bulkier ones, and Petrov destroyed whatever remained.

  Now completely surrounded, Élenchos attempted to back away frantically. “H-Hey! This goes against the rules! You…” She reverted her face back to that of “Ellen” and changed her voice to match. “Just what do you think you’re doing?”

  “Your rules are null and void, Élenchos…” Shiraki stepped towards her slowly, pointing Aznable’s rapier down at her chest. “They lost all weight the moment you stepped off that… repugnant throne - God, I don’t even think it can be called as such.”

  Élenchos continued her fruitless attempts to scurry away from us. “Oh yeah? Then where’s your throne, Shiraki?” Her fake coastal accent was no longer able to hide the sinister undertones to her words. “That’s right! You don’t have one! None of you! And do you know why?” Her speech became just as quick and frantic as her movements. “Because YOU lose! I win!”

  I let the purple flame continuously burn in my hand as I kept pursuing Élenchos. “Congratulations, then. You’ve won a game with no prize.”

  “S-Shut up! How dare you use my words against me?” The panicked expression on her face spread like wildfire.

  Aiko’s dark blue nightgown fluttered in the wind. “Because your words are full o’ snot, that’s why.”

  Élenchos dug her fingernails into the concrete, still crawling away on her back. “Stupid kids… There’s no prize for-”

  “How’s this for a prize?” Ryu grabbed ahold of Élenchos’ hair as her head bumped into the tip of his shoe while trying to escape. He held his dagger up to her throat from behind, restraining her tightly so she couldn’t break free.

  “Okay, fine… Kill me…” Élenchos sputtered out, afraid to move her neck too close to the edge of the blade out of fear of doing the deed for him. “But there’s no prize beyond that… is there?”

  Shiraki stood an arm’s length from Élenchos, getting one last look into her eyes to confirm that he no longer saw any humanity in her. “Getting to save a part of our world that was stolen from your kind is a prize in itself.”

  Élenchos winced at Shiraki’s words. “So… you still won’t reveal your true intentions… will you… Jouto Shiraki?”

  He turned away. “I have nothing left to say.”

  Ryu slowly slid the edge of the blade closer to her neck. “Any last words, witch?”

  “Oh, I thought you’d never ask…” Élenchos turned her eyes to me and, in a politely wicked tone, uttered, “It was a pleasure serving you all. Hope you enjoyed your stay.~”

  With a clean, painless cut from Ryu’s dagger, Élenchos crumbled to dust, her remains quickly scattering into the night sky.