Something dripped in the dark.
Ren stood in liquid up to his ankles. At first, he thought it was water, but the texture was different. It was thicker. When he looked down, the surface moved, rippling in slow, heavy waves. It was dark red, almost black.
Across from him, someone was kneeling. It was a boy with his head bowed and hands resting in his lap. Blood ran slowly from his fingertips and into the pool below. His face was... not there... just a smooth surface where features should have been.
Ren stepped forward, but the sound of it through the liquid was louder than Ren expected it to be.
The boy reacted to the noise and looked in his direction. He knew it was his brother, and that stirred an old pain inside of him.
"Haruki..." Ren whispered, and his voice echoed into nothingness.
In an instant, the skin split, burning away like paper, and something else took its place. The shape underneath twisted like the Hollow he had fought that day. Talismans burned along its limbs, holding it together as its body cracked and reformed endlessly.
"No..." Ren's voice slipped out.
Suddenly, the talismans burst into one single flame, devouring everything in their path. Ren's hands burned first, then his legs, then the rest of his body. He tried to scream, but there was no sound to it.
In that darkness, a pair of golden eyes opened. They locked onto him like a target, widening their pupils in recognition... of something.
Right then, he gasped awake, still feeling the weight of that gaze cling to him.
"Welcome back to the land of the living," Kagami's voice echoed through the room. "Took you long enough to come back to us."
Ren stayed still for a moment, listening to the sound of his own breath. He looked to his left, then to his right, trying to get a sense of where he was.
The room was lit by a mix of neon light and the soft orange glow of an oil lamp set on a small placard on the floor. The walls were lined with all sorts of cabinets filled with jars and containers. Each had been marked with symbols Ren couldn't understand. Two monitors stood next to him, one showing what looked like a scan, the other pulsing with a strange set of glowing symbols. Paper notes covered one wall in layers, some handwritten, others torn from older medical files, displaying images of human parts.
Kagami observed from an upper wooden frame, slowly curling her tail around, with a lazy air about her.
Ren pushed himself against the bed to sit up.
"You're at some clinic," she explained, not bothering to look his way. Her eyes were fixed on the window, watching something outside that was clearly far more important than Ren was. "The guy running this place is smarter than he looks. You're lucky he found you out there."
The memories from everything that had happened in the last few hours poured in. He leaned forward, rubbing his face, then glanced up at her.
"You know what helped me burn that thing down?" Ren asked almost whispering it.
Kagami moved, turning to face him without saying a word.
"It was hate. I hated everything and everyone."
He paused for a few moments as if reliving the event scene by scene.
"I saw you on that wall, watching, not giving a damn, and I thought... yeah... that's what this goddamn place was always like for us. Cruel. There's no meaning here, there never was."
He pushed the blanket aside and lowered his feet, trying to stand. The bruises along his ribs and feet ached, but it was manageable now. As the wave of it diminished, he stayed there for a few moments, with his eyes fixed on the floor. Or more like through it, somewhere deep inside himself.
"When I lived with Haruki… they treated us like that too. We didn't count."
Kagami's tail curled slightly.
"Pain has always been part of this world," she replied. "People just give it too much credit."
Ren looked at her, trying to make sense of her cold logic through everything he still felt.
"And what... You think that's what Pacts run on? Hate?"
"You tell me," Ren replied, looking directly into her eyes, almost as if he already knew his answer, but hoped another one would be given instead.
She jumped down, landing on the stool beside the bed. Her voice was as calm as ever, but there was a faint trace of amusement beneath it.
"You felt strong because you were at the edge, and it's easy to make the pact respond when you're burning through all that rage. But if you think you can keep pulling on that thread without understanding it, it will eat you alive before you ever see what it really is."
She then studied him for a few moments.
"So no. It's not about hate. But you'll get your chance to understand that soon enough."
"Then I want that chance to come sooner," Ren replied, challenging her.
Kagami tilted her head a bit and perked her ears. "Hmm..?"
Ren was still thinking about the dream he'd just woken up from when he said it. Haruki's faceless presence clung to his thoughts in ways he couldn't shake, like an old reminder of something once important. A memory he hadn't lived up to yet.
"I've spent most of my life afraid. When Haruki was alive, we were afraid down here. After he was gone, I was afraid of the Hounds up there. There was always someone coming for us."
Ren's fists clenched slightly, condensing all those thoughts into fractions of seconds.
"I'm done living like that."
Kagami rotated lazily on the stool before hopping up onto the bed beside him.
"Now you're talking," she purred.
"This pact, whatever it is, I'm going to use it for myself as well," Ren continued, finally looking her in the eyes.
Suddenly, a door opened, and then a curtain beyond it shifted.
Mika walked in carrying a small tray on top of which he had placed a fresh wrap of bandages and a small bottle filled with a blue liquid that balanced to each side as he walked. He kept quiet through it, but he was methodical in his gestures, like he had done patchings like this many times before.
Ren could study him properly now. Without the mask, Mika looked more human somehow. Warmer. Like someone who didn't belong in a place like the underworld. The golden traces in his irises gave him a distinct look, too, one that probably made dealing with patients harder. Many of them probably asked difficult questions.
Mika set the tray near one of the screens, then pulled the stool closer to the bed, next to where Ren was sitting.
Kagami leapt away to her preferred spot up the wooden frame, back to watching the world outside the window.
"How's the pain?" Mika asked.
Ren hesitated for a fraction of a second. "Manageable."
He gently pressed a few fingers along Ren's ribs. "There was little internal bleeding. You were lucky."
He then began unwrapping the bandage around one of Ren's arms. "I was more concerned about the burns, to be honest," he said, examining the skin beneath. "But it looks like they'll heal just fine."
Then, Mika decided to change the conversation to a more difficult subject. "How long has she been bound to you?" Mika went on asking with the same gentle tone in his voice.
Ren tensed slightly. "Not long."
"Yeah, it still looks in the early stages. There are no visible signs on you."
"Signs?"
"Marks. Witches end up marking their humans sooner or later," Mika explained, just as he was cutting the last piece of folded bandage. "A lot of people expect a Pact to work like an enhancement, without any side effects, and they are always surprised when reality proves them otherwise."
"Humans are just weak. That's the actual problem," Kagami's voice cut in from the top frame.
Mika's hands paused for a fraction of a second. "I've seen witches break, too, just in different ways."
Ren glanced up at Mika. "You had one too, didn't you?"
Mika leaned back and removed his gloves. "I did."
Ren waited, but there was no continuation to that story. He did remember him saying the witch had died, so whatever the story was, he didn't feel like it was his place to intrude.
Kagami studied him in silence, with her tail slowly moving sideways.
"There's a rumor going around the underworld that a boy with golden eyes took down three Hounds recently", Mika said, apparently unfazed by the subject." You wouldn't happen to know anything about that, would you?"
Ren stiffened, but said nothing.
Mika smiled faintly. "It doesn't matter anyway. I'm not here to judge. You can stay as long as you need."