Footsteps.

She stiffened. With a great, laborious effort, Everie turned her newly shrunken head to face the source of the noise.

It was her Nanny.

She was young: an old teenager at most. Her dress was, at least for a maid uniform, clear-cut and practical, with very few bits of lace and fluff; really, it was more a dress-suit rather than an actual dress. Where there was filigree, her dress had little accents of purple and violet and what appeared to be Everie’s family’s Crest, but no sign of anything more ostentatious than that.

Everie had seen her quite regularly these past two weeks. She was the one that changed Everie’s rags when she... soiled them, after all.

I should salute her for that, Everie thought, seriously. What a terrifying responsibility for such a young girl to have.

She hurried to Everie’s bedside, muttering something to herself. Like her prim appearance, the girl’s voice was uncharacteristically saccharine - only warped by the frustration coloring her words.

Everie blinked. What was going on? Every moment before this, the girl had attended to her with an unwavering diligence. But now, Everie could not observe even a hint of that same effervescence; there were dark circles around her eyes, much in a similar fashion to Everie’s new mother’s, that betrayed a weariness that Everie would never have expected to see in a teenage girl.

Well, Everie coughed. Weariness of that sort was something that shouldn’t ever be present in a teenage girl.

Everie would know.

The weight of the world is a tiresome burden to bear.

The girl had come ‘round a few hours before to deliver Everie to her mother, bassinet and all. She hadn’t looked this troubled then. But now, she was...

She slumped over the side of Everie’s bassinet. Her golden bangs rustled, covering her face, but Everie knew the tell-tale sound of crying well enough to discern what the girl was going through.

Has something happened? Everie thought to herself.

She felt a pang of something like uncertainty flare in her heart. Everie still didn’t really know this girl, but she had grown fond of her over these last few days. She was about the same age Everie had been when she’d perished in her first life; that might have factored into it.

Everie frowned. I’m growing sentimental, aren’t I?

The girl was saying something, but she was speaking that same blasted language Everie still couldn’t understand. She stifled a sob, before turning away and wiping her eyes. She muttered something under her breath, before facing Everie and giving her a weak smile. Everie realized she had been venting to her, trusting that Everie wouldn’t be able to understand her.

Ah. I know that feeling, Everie thought. You wanted someone to talk to, but no-one here accepts you. So you came to me.

It was an odd privilege to have, but one that Everie respected the girl for trusting her with. She herself had talked her sorrow away to a sleeping Sister, or sometimes even a corpse.

I wish I could help you, thought Everie, sadly.

The girl stood, preparing to wheel the bassinet out of her room. Her face was still slightly pink, and her blue eyes waterlogged, but Everie thought the girl was doing an admirable job - for an amateur - of hiding her feelings. She had a job to do, after all; Everie could understand that, even if it was a profession very different from what Everie was used to.

But then, instead of simply pushing, the girl seemed to pause for thought. Everie blinked. What was she doing?

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Then instead, the girl waved her hand, and something like a- a crest appeared on her hand. It was only visible for a half-second, but from what she could discern, it was a complex series of matrices in some form of numbered script Everie didn’t recognize. They rotated both counterclockwise and clockwise at the ends of her fingers, warping the air in-

-in the exact same way that being in the void had.

A white-ish glow overtook the girl, and Everie felt something flare in her abdomen - it was that warm, pulsating orb of energy, only it was different this time. It felt weaker, and less pure in sensation - almost dirtier, although that was an oversimplification. But Everie didn’t concentrate on that, because she was preoccupied by the act of staring, and being frozen in her crib.

The glow faded, like the fleeting mischief of wind - like the... magic she had just seen had pilfered something from reality itself.

For a few seconds, nothing happened. But Everie still didn’t relax; she was still trying to process what had just happened - what her nanny had just done.

Then her crib... lifted off from the ground.

It was subtle. Everie suspected the bassinet was barely a foot off from the ground, but the girl’s control of whatever forces she had applied - to defy even gravity itself - kept it at that level consistently. There was only a slight bob in the floatation of the crib, as her nanny cast another... spell, accompanied by another brief flicker of that unfamiliar runic script, upon which the crib completely stabilized.

Magic existed in this world.

To be fair, Everie thought to herself, if Demons existed, and one had literally ripped out her soul and thrown it into a glowing river that contained honest-to-god souls, then the fact that humans in this other world would be able to use magic too wasn’t that big of a stretch.

That didn’t mean it wasn’t a jarring sight, though.

Everie frowned. What was the point of... whatever this was, anyway? She hadn’t seen a single hint of any sort of this magic for the past two weeks. Her nanny was using her power casually now, in a fashion that indicated she probably used her magic for mundane tasks on the regular. So why would she start only now, at least in front of her?

The girl muttered something to herself. She cast a glance at Everie, before walking tentatively out of the room. Huh. Well, I guess that’s something I’ll have to find out later.

The bassinet was following her. Everie’s eyes widened; not because of that, but as a reaction to the strange sensation roiling in her abdomen.

Then she felt it.

It was everywhere, but also not there, at the same time. Like reality itself was but a thin veneer that covered the energy now being channeled - through a little aperture. A tiny crack in existence itself, from which the spell binding her bassinet drew energy. All caused by this fragile, tired-looking girl, no less.

Everie couldn’t see it. But she could at least feel it.

And it felt amazing; the area around her core thrummed in bliss. What is this? Everie gasped. Her abdomen felt hot, unlike anything

she’d ever felt before. Her nanny glanced back at her, frowning.

She felt... something try to enter that area in her abdomen. Everie let it; and though it almost felt rigid, at first, a little flex of her consciousness, and a tiny push - it felt similar to the strategy she’d used to test that fragment the Crying-Demon had given her - allowed it to enter.

Then her abdomen ripped itself apart.

In hindsight, Everie might have been a little too cavalier with her experimentation. As she choked blood, she thought, right. So there was a reason she didn’t use magic around me for those two weeks, after all.

Everie gasped. Her nanny had whirled around, the bassinet clattering to the floor. Her eyes were wide, full of panic. She was casting some other spell; Everie didn’t get the chance to see it, but she felt that same energy gathering around her. But the thing in her abdomen was hungry, and it drew in that too, until there was none left for the spell’s original purpose.

Red-stained spittle trickled down her cheeks. The energy was coalescing around- around that fragment the Crying-Demon had given her, as well as that other thing, directly in the center of her core. Everie had no idea why; she was a little too preoccupied with trying to guide the power flowing through her so that it didn’t explode and blow her to bits.

How she knew that might happen, Everie didn’t know. All intuition, I guess-! She thought, gritting her teeth.

Then it all stopped. The last mote, or particle, or energy, clinked off of a... shell, of sorts, that had formed somewhere inside her abdomen. Everie rolled to her side, tiny chest heaving.

Her nanny was babbling something she couldn’t understand. Her ears rang in her head. Blood trickled from her mouth.

But at least she was safe.

Then the shell exploded.

It was like a vortex; it drew everything in, dissolving the energy from the maid into something that felt... cooler. Purer. That fragment, too, collapsed, falling into the eye of the maelstrom. But unlike the energy she’d absorbed from her Nanny, it just clicked into place.

And the thing that had started it all; that object that demon, the behemoths, and those two beings, had been chasing after, was in the very center of it.

Everie was barely cognizant of that fact, though, because she was too busy trying not to die.

Crap, she thought, trembling. I...

Everie slumped, eyes rolling back into her head.