I had to step out into the hallway for several minutes of focused breathing to steel myself and regain whatever salvageable debris remained of my composure. I didn’t even know if deep breathing had any calming effects on my changing physiology, but it was an old habit, and that’s why it helped.

Lopé's words were like barbed wire tied around my chest. They rasped at me. Their thorns pulled my aches to the surface and flipped them upside down and clawed.

You need pain to know what love is.

Those words hurt. They were unbearable. Unutterable. It mocked my medical oath to do no harm. It spat upon it. And yet… it was brilliant. It was penetrating. There was sense to it. People didn’t appreciate what they had until they lost it, or if they finally received it after a lifetime spent without it.

You need pain to know what love is.

It felt wrong, and yet…

Oh God…

Was the boy right? What if that was the answer to evil? To all the questions I’d ever asked?

Everything was different, now. Knowing that the Green Death consigned people to Hell.

Had I been acting in sin and selfishness, out of the vindictive desire to tear him down? Would that send me to Hell?—no, scratch that. I was definitely going to Hell, and for so many different reasons. For lying to my colleagues about my condition.

For getting Rale killed.

I looked up to see the door to the operating room where Rayph had died. The last door he would ever pass through.

Holy Angel, please… no…

I waved my hand through the unwanted hyperphantasia. It dissolved like a whirl of mist.

I felt like a grain of rice drifting in the sea.

Could pain be loving? Was it futile to have hope in kindness? Maybe kindness really was just another hollow abstraction, mere electrochemical signals in the brain, and nothing more.

Maybe Hell really was filled to bursting.

The ground started to quiver, like water in an earthquake.

If ever there was a time I needed Andalon by my side, now was certainly it.

Taking a deep breath, I made the Bondsign and muttered a prayer. I wrapped my arms around myself, shuddering in terror.

I willed the floor to be still—as stiff as rock. In a moment, it turned into rock; smooth, mountain stone.

Once again, my emotional state was causing my hyperphantasia to act out.

“Andalon, please…” I burbled in half-coherent moans, “where are you?”

But I was only met with silence.

I couldn’t let myself wallow around like this.

Focus. Focus.

Desperate, I focused on my memories. Scenes flashed through the air in front of me like projected panoramas. And then, I landed the one I needed.

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“You’re not in Hell, Miss Leen! I know what Hell is like, and this isn’t it. This is the opposite of Hell! That’s why you’re safe! Safe inside Mr. Genneth’s head!”

Was that it? Was that good enough news for me? If Ileene really was safe from Hell inside my head, wouldn’t that mean that I was safe from Hell? Or—

“—Oh God…” I mumbled.

Maybe that’s what the wyrms were for. Fortresses. Ships to house the dead; ships sturdy enough to weather Hell and all its horrors.

Maybe we really were turning into demons…

Was that something to look forward to? Something to feel thankful about? I didn’t know. Did it justify eating people? I didn’t know. I don’t think I could know.

I ran my hands over my head, pressing down on the hairnet. This couldn’t go on.

“I have to get back to work,” I muttered. I squeezed my fists.

I have to get back to work.

Fidgeting with my bowtie, I took one last deep breath and then turned my bum around and walked back into Room 268. But, after only a couple of steps, I gravitated toward Valentine’s corpse where it lay beneath the sheets. I sat on the nearest empty bed, looking over the boy’s corpse. Tears welled up inside me all over again. I didn’t have the strength to take the body out myself—in every sense of the word. As I made the Bond-sign over the body, I gazed up at the ceiling and the unknown sky beyond and muttered a prayer under my breath. It was as much a requiem for my own doomed soul as it was for Valentine’s.

“—Doc?”

I breathed in sharply, knocked out of my contemplation. I lowered my head to see Kurt lurking beside me, staring at Valentine’s corpse in pensive solemnity. Seeing me, and—no doubt—the tears in my eyes, Kurt lowered his head momentarily before he met my gaze.

I cleared my throat. “What’s wrong?”

“I’m seeing ghosts now, just like you said.” He stared at me, slack-jawed, and then shook his head. “You really are an expert at this stuff,” he muttered. “Sorry for ever doubting you.”

Kurt had been a bit alarmed when I’d started talking about souls of the dead.

“You don’t need to apologize for anything, Kurt. Even I’ve been having trouble wrapping my head around all this.”

Kurt reached up to scratch at his hair, forgetting the obsidian claws at his fingertips. They sliced furrows in his scalp, making him wince. Several clumps of his hair were shredded away. The cuts didn’t bleed.

His tail rustled nervously on the floor behind him. “So, I’m not losing my mind?”

“No.” I shook my head. “If anything, you’re gaining them.”

I tried to smile.

Kurt closed his eyes and groaned. “That’s not funny.”

I lowered my head. “Sorry,” I muttered.

“Beast’s teeth…” Kurt said. “This just keeps making less and less sense. It’s dream logic.”

I sighed. “Since when has reality ever made sense?” I looked over Valentine’s death shroud. “It’s a play, written by a madman, filled with injustice and agony. All the while, we reach in desperation to find some greater meaning in it, as if to grasp the Sun from the sky.”

Kurt’s gaze wandered over to the body beneath the sheets, and from there, back to his own, transforming hands.

“It’s tough to argue with that,” he said. “It’s almost unfair.”

I lowered my head, averting my eyes. “Just like everything else,” I mumbled.

For a moment, both of us waited in silence, but then Kurt posed another question.

“Do you know anything about the girl?” he said.

I looked Kurt in the eyes. The sight of the two noseless holes above his lips on his burgeoning snout had long since ceased to unnerve me.

“What girl?”

“The blue-haired girl,” Kurt said.

The blue-haired girl…

If I was a character in an isekai, Kurt’s words would have been Truck-kun. They slammed into me with the force of a bullet train. I pulled at my lucky bowtie so strongly, I feared I’d break it; that was the best I could do to maintain my deportment. I leaned back on the bed and then overcorrected, leaning forward with a wince as my teetering posture pinched my tail beneath my thigh.

“She’s—” but Kurt cut himself off. He craned his lengthened neck toward me. “Doc… is everything okay?”

“The bl…” I stammered, looking him dead in the eyes. “The blue-haired girl?”

Kurt nodded. “Ever since this… transformation started, I’ve been catching glimpses of her. They were so brief, like flashes. I used to think I was just imagining things.”

“Used to?” I asked, leaning in close without even thinking about it.

“Yeah. But…” Kurt’s head quivered as he rolled his shoulders. “I’ve been seeing her more ever since the ghosts started appearing. She brings them to me. She holds their hands, and she never says anything, she just… stares. I try to talk to her, but it’s like I’m not even there, and she disappears whenever she gets too close.”

“Dr. Howle!”

My back went stiff.

Unable to lift his hands—trapped on his knees with his palms on the floor—Nathan pointed one of his mammoth fingers at me.

Kurt’s eyes widened. “Doc!” He rushed over—

—I turned—

I shouted in horror. “—Cry the Lassedites!”

Valentine’s body was moving—spasming, beneath the sheet.