“Stupid Brother!”

The noise startled Sara from her desk. She pushed back her chair, leaving the computer running. Shadows danced in its blue glow, following her all the way to the door.

“Stupid brother, open up!”

The curtains were drawn and shook from the force of the banging. Sara reached for the doorknob, passing the cork board of names and string. It was such a silly thing. How could anyone ever think such a simple thing could solve decades worth of missing cases?

“Stupid brother!”

Finally, she got to the door. She threw it open and stood staring down at her five-year-old self.

“It’s nearly 11,” she heard herself say in Yuzuru’s voice. “Good kids like you should be in bed, or at least pretending to be.”

Light tumbled in around little-Sara, washing her crop of golden hair in hues of orange.

“I can’t sleep,” she declared.

“And so… you decide I shouldn’t either?”

Little-Sara squeezed her stuffed puppy and harrumphed. “I just miss you.”

The door closed.

A second later, the knocking started again. This time, the Sara on the other side was ten. Her hair was shorter, almost like a boy’s, and she was holding out a notebook.

“I need help with this.”

The Yuzuru who was Sara shook his head. “Can’t help you. I’m going out with Honoka tonight. We’re seeing the new Weathering film.”

Kid-Sara pouted, her eyes staring at the doorframe. She said nothing, and turned to go.

“Wait.” A hand reached out, a combination of Sara’s and Yuzuru’s. “I’ll tell Honoka to just meet me at the theater.”

Kid-Sara turned, beaming, just as the door closed once more.

The third time she knocked, the Sara in the hallway was sixteen, and the hand she held out was empty.

“Where did you hide my cue cards?”

Yuzuru sighed. “I don’t know if you know this, but I’m not going to school. The last thing on this planet I need are cue cards with covalent bonds drawn on the back.”

“So you admit you saw them!”

The door closed for the last time, and the room disappeared.

Sara blinked the light away. She was standing on the other side of the wooden door now, the soles of her feet cold against the floorboards.

The familiar hallway pinched at her chest, but it wasn’t her hallway. The stairs on her left descended into nothing, and to her right was a wall of white. Her room, the window at the end of the hallway, none of those were here.

She turned back to Yuzuru’s door. The surface was pockmarked and cracks ran along the seams.

How many times had she broken it? How many fists landed across this wooden barrier?

Sarar raised her hand, knuckles forward, and knocked.

There was no sound. Her heart lifted into her throat. She waited, and waited.

Finally, she heard the squeak of her brother’s leather chair. Footsteps followed, then the click of the doorknob turning.

She stood back, letting the door open.

Yuzuru stood in a dark room, his eyes scanning over her head before settling on her.

“What did I do this time?” he asked.

Sara opened her mouth to speak, but only tears came out. She ran into Yuzuru’s chest and wrapped her arms around him, not caring if that freaked him out.

She felt him hesitate a second before returning her hug. “Hey. It’s alright.”

Sara shook her head, wiping her tears all over Yuzuru’s shirt. “I’m sorry,” she said into his chest. “I’m sorry for being an asshole to you.”

She heard his response echoing inside him. “You don’t have to apologize.”

“I just wanted your attention.”

“I know. You just have a thing with doing things the easy way.”

Sara chuckled. She pulled away and looked up into Yuzuru’s eyes. So dark, they were like mirrors in which the entire world was reflected back to Sara. She didn’t trust herself to speak. Even though it was all an illusion, she didn’t want to have it end just yet.

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Yuzuru stroked the top of her head. “We’re alright,” he whispered. “We’ll always be alright.”

Sara closed her eyes, feeling the warmth of her brother’s hand. “Thanks, bro,” she whispered. “For everything.”

She waited for him to reply, but nothing came. Sara stayed absolutely still, praying to god or goddess or whatever the Calamity Dragon was that when she opened her eyes, Yuzuru would still be there, smiling at her like everything was okay.

Cold crept back around her. The pressure on her hand disappeared.

Sara opened her eyes, and stared into the marbled face of a dragon.

“You have come.”

Curled with its tail around the mountain tops, the dragon’s voice shook through the faint blue skies.

Sara stood in the snow. Surrounded by clouds, she could see nothing below but a vast expanse of mist. She wasn’t in her school uniform anymore, and moving an inch was agony. A quick check revealed the broken wakizashi was still stuck in her back.

“You must get pretty lonely up here,” she said, lowering onto her knees. Fresh blood trickled down the opened wound in her chest, staining her blackened shirt in a new coat of red.

The dragon loomed over her, eyes bearing down with the force of stars. Then, stretching its neck downward, the dragon’s body evaporated into a fountain of steam. From within, a woman stepped out, her toes hovering above the snow.

“It is lonely,” she said in a voice fermented with age and wisdom. “But that is the price a god must pay for her power.”

The woman didn’t wear a shred of clothing but the way she moved suggested she didn’t care. Her hair was white, though it wasn’t an ordinary shade and more like the color of all the lights on the spectrum combined.

The woman hovered closer. Reaching down, she cupped Sara cheek. Her fingers were long and cold.

“You’ve grown,” she said softly. “It seems unbelievable that only three years have passed.”

Sara shook her head, breaking the contact. “You’re Honoka,” she breathed. “You’re the White Witch. But you’re… also the masked girl and the Dragon.” She pushed to her feet, ignoring the pain shooting down her back. “What the flying hell are you?”

Honoka’s laugh was a breathy, fleeting thing. The mist parted around her, revealing massive leathery wings. They were dark and studded with crystals, some sticking out between the feathers like shrapnel.

“I am all of those things,” she answered. “Calamity, Hope, Betrayal. God of Arcadia. What you saw on the battlefield was a shard of my former self. She was who I was before I became the Dragon. She was the part of me who did not want to ascend to Divinity. I cut her out and cast her back into the world.”

“You must’ve given her all of your asshole parts too,” Sara said. “Because she was pretty terrible.”

A corner of Honoka’s lips lifted. With a swipe of her finger, snowflakes swirled around Sara’s chest. Coldness flooded into her wound, making Sara gasp. She felt the wakizashi being pushed out from her back, but the pain was replaced by a tickling sensation as her flesh knitting together.

It wasn’t just the sword wound, but every crack in her bone, every broken patch of skin, was healed instantly.

Sara looked down at her renewed self, pressing curious fingers at the pink scar between her breasts.

“Stand,” said Honoka. “And speak to me like an equal.”

Sara stayed where she was, kneeling in the red snow. “How do I know you really are - or were - Honoka? This could be an illusion.”

The smile faded from Honoka’s lips. “A god needs not employ the trickery of mankind. I have chosen you and your brother because you could be worthy for my throne. If I wanted either of you dead before that, I could have done so with a mere thought.”

The mist grew. It wrapped around Sara waist, hiding everything but Honoka from view. The woman stood aside and a path opened up. Stairs emerged, leading to a throne of obsidian. It was the same metal, in color and consistency, as the cube Sara found in Yuzuru’s room.

“You’re the one who took us?” Sara asked. “Why… Why the fuck would you do this?”

Honoka turned her head to the side as if she was confused about the question. “Because I am the one who takes.”

A wisp of her white hair fluttered over her eyes, but the god made no attempt to tuck it behind her ear. It was wrong. She was wrong. She might look like an aged-up version of Yuzuru’s childhood sweetheart, the same girl who proofread Sara’s essays and came over on the weekends to help her study, but the woman standing before Sara wasn’t that.

And it seemed she hadn’t been for a long time now.

“Do not feel overwhelmed,” she said. “You have been preparing for this day since the moment you came. Everything that happened to you, everyone you met, was to help you grow to become who you are now.”

Sara reached behind her, fingers raking the snow until she felt the hardness of the wakizashi’s handle. “I supposed me being here means Yuzuru didn’t make it.”

“He does not matter anymore,” Honoka answered, holding out her arms as if to embrace Sara. “Come, now. Fulfill your destiny.”

The moment she touched the leather grip, Sara exploded. Launching herself across the snow, her aimed the broken blade at Honoka’s chest.

My sword cuts through obsidian…

Sara stopped, feet throwing a flurry of snow. The blade pushed against Honoka’s belly but did not pierce the skin.

The god looked down as a thin line of blood trickled down her stomach, disappearing into ash as it fell.

Sara stepped back. Blood roared inside her ears but she fought to keep her voice calm. “I’ve wanted to kill you for a long time now. But if I do, what happens next?”

“You will become the greatest version of yourself,” Honoka answered. Her expression remained impassive, but the mist around her began to twist and churn, growing thick like milk. “You will sit upon that throne as I do, and you shall continue the cycle of Arcadia as the new god.”

Sara lowered her blade.

Honoka frowned. “You would turn down being a god?”

The mist congealed over Sara’s toes, clawing up her legs and around her torso. Above her, the steps vanished as haze covered the black throne.

Obsidian.

“Honoka, I think…” Sara swallowed the emotions threatening to spill. “Do you remember that time you took care of me when I had the flu? Or that time my brother took you to the amusement park, and you won a stuffed corgi and gave it to me? I still have it in my room.”

Honoka chuckled, a low, rumble that wavered through the mountaintops. “A god does not need to remember. A god only needs to be.”

Sara hung her head, watching splatters of rain drop onto the bloody snow.

She knew what she had to do, but it was so hard. She was so cold, and there was no one else with her.

It was always like this, though, wasn’t it?

Honoka took a step forward, and Sara sprang into action, darting around her and making for the stairs. The mist surged, pale hands churning within the waves to grasp her. Sara leaped over them onto the steps, cutting her feet on the edge of the steel. She stumbled, hit her knee, then began sprinting upward.

“NO.”

Behind, Honoka let out a tremendous roar, filling the sky with her thunderous. Sara sliced away tendrils of mist blocking her as darkness covered over her path. She heard the sound of flesh tearing but by then she was in the air, plunging the blade into the black throne.

Cuts through obsidian…

Sparks soared. Steel squealed. Sara pushed with all her weight, forcing the wakazaki hilt-deep into the dark metal.

Everything went still. Then, an ivory claw tore out of Sara’s body, splattering her blood against the throne.

“You fool!” the Calamity Dragon howled. “You’ve doomed an entire world!”

Sara’s hands slipped away from the blade. Her legs gave out from under her but she remained pinned by the dragon’s claws.

But still, when she opened her mouth, she managed to chuckle.

“Being a god is overrated,” she said, and then slowly, everything went dark.