Queen of Severance

They continued their journey after Mukoku interrogated the Lilims about the things that happened in her absence.

Now they continued their walk through the desolate landscape of Naraku. Whispers calling out to them, soul scintillas twinkling around them.

The souls of the damned, Ran remembered from the Book of Calidation—which he read when he was younger. It took seven times the years a soul spent alive in Kurana for it to become dead in Naraku and then it would be reduced to a little sparkle in the sky, expressing emotions through colors

As they walked they began to hear unnerving sounds: wails, gurgles, growls, splashes, sizzles, and several more.

"Would you like for us to call upon the Wraithwagon, Queen of the Lilims?" The Lilims said as one.

Ran was startled and turned to stare at the horned figure of Mukoku who began to speak to her servants.

He faced Soran Haru, and whispered in wonder. "Your sister is the Queen of the Lilims?"

Haru nodded, keeping pace with young Kaito Ran as they followed behind Mukoku and her Lilims servants who were in the middle of convincing the proclaimed queen of the need for transport.

"You will only find another, Tetara," Haru spoke gently, telling Ran of the state of things in hell. "Demon Queen Tetara is the reason why female Lilims are rare amongst Mukoku's people. She took almost all of them to form her sorority society."

Ran found himself occupied thinking about what Haru just said, so occupied that he missed the conversation Mukoku and the other Lilims had.

He was only made aware of the decision they had come to when a whistle rent the air of Naraku, making all their ears ring.

Then he heard it. Fast, vibrating, approaching, loud and getting even louder.

It sounded like a stampede. And he was glad he heard them before he saw them else he may have been struck by a heart attack.

Still, he was struck speechless as a carriage made of obsidian crystals headed towards them, pulled by five wraith horses.

They looked wispy and transparent, their hair floating in the hot air of Naraku like foggy clouds.

The Wraithwagon came to a stop before Mukoku. It was as long as a pickup truck one could easily find on the streets of Kurana.

Mukoku got in on the coach's seat, her Lilims climbing in after her.

Soran Haru waved for Ran to follow him into it, which the younger boy did with trepidation.

It was surprisingly comfortable inside, and somehow the whispers had gone silent.

There were no barriers he could see, no windows, and yet it seemed like something inside or outside the carriage was blocking them from the despair that clung to the very fabric of reality in Naraku.

Looking at Soran Haru, Ran forced out a request. "I have a question."

"Okay," the acolyte urged him on.

Ran bit his lips in uncertainty, fearing to propose his question. "I don't know how you may feel about it."

Haru smiled gently at him. "Ask. If I can't answer I will tell you, but there is no reason why you should not ask."

"It's a bit insensitive, at least I think it is," Ran insisted, still unsure if he should ask.

Haru just gave him a look he interpreted as a command to just get in with it.

"Okay," Ran said, "I'm curious to know how you and Mukoku came to be brothers and sisters."

"The Soran family is a kin family," Haru began, earning a gasp from Ran.

In the normal world, Kurana, only those with Assarian blood can use kin, the great power of magic. Assarians were the mythical beings of reality: the divines, devils, sprites, feys, and all their kinds.

That the Soran family was a kin family meant that they had an ancestor who had been the hybrid child of an Assarian and a human, for only those with Assarian blood could use kin.

"This meant that kin is important to my family, most of my ancestors were monks, they took the path I'm on now. Others became questers, warmages, seeking different career paths," Haru continued, gazing far into space. "My mother was one of the latter. She was a warmage for one of the seven princes of hell. For him she gave birth to Mukoku. For over five thousand years she lived in hell. Two decades ago she returned to Kurana, found a husband and retired from war, some years later I was born."

Ran stared at the boy in obvious shock. Mukoku was five thousand years old? Was that in Naraku years or Kurana years?

Did it even matter? How did one differ from the other? 

He had no answer to these questions, but whatever the answer was, five thousand years was still too much to wrap his mind around.

But then how old did that make Haru's mother?

Ran was so distracted trying to wrap his mind around people living so long that he missed their approach towards a city on the horizon.

He was going over how he knew from mythical tales that people could live so long, but had never really seen anyone who had done so, when Haru called out to him.

"Look ahead, here comes the city of the Queen of Severance. Kaito Ran, welcome to Mukoku's abode," Haru announced, his voice deep. "The City of Severance."

By the time Ran had abandoned his head to take a look, the Wraithwagon which had been moving at incredible speed, was already slowing down as it galloped through the gate of the city. 

The city stretched like a wound carved into the underbelly of the universe, jagged and unending. 

Large obsidian crystals jutted from the ground like claws frozen mid-reach, reflecting dim gleams of light that pulsed from the very stones beneath. 

They were smoke-solid bricks that shimmered like dying embers trapped in black glass. The air felt like crushed velvet soaked in brimstone. There was no sky, no stars, only the dense smog of endless night pressing down, coiling like a serpent over rooftops made of shadow and ash.

And yet, there was life. If it could be called that.

Demons of every unspeakable shape moved through the streets—horned and feathered, scaled and molten, skeletal and bloated. Some crawled. Some hovered. Some galloped on legs that didn't bend the right way. They snarled and whispered, bartered with claws instead of coin, and fought in alleys paved with bone dust. Laughter like shattering mirrors echoed from upper balconies of the blackened towers, where lean-winged sentries perched, eyes flickering with inner fire.

At the heart of the abyssal city rose a Palace.

It was not built—it had grown, like a parasite feeding on the land's hate. A gaunt cathedral of bone-like pillars and ribbed arches, its towers curled like horns into the choking black sky. The walls shimmered with obsidian so dark they swallowed light whole, while smoke-glass veins glowed faintly with internal fire—red, violet, and sickly white. 

Spires stabbed the air like bony fingers in prayer, and bridges crossed between them like the spines of some massive, sleeping beast.

The palace went on for miles, sprawling like a dead god's skeleton turned to architecture. Its main gates were twin jaws, fossilized mid-scream, and the approach was a causeway of molten glass and smoke tendrils, shifting beneath the feet of all who dared tread upon it.

Inside, the light grew dimmer still, save for the throbbing veins in the floor and walls. Statues of ancient demon lords loomed over the halls—some with three eyes, some with none, all with fanged grins etched in agony. The air was dry and humming with invisible tension, like a blade pressed to a throat but never drawing blood.

Outside, in the streets below, a procession passed—a warband of ironclad brutes, dragging a cart of weeping flame-caged prisoners through the smoke-lit lanes. Their wails rose, soft and lost beneath the roar of a hundred different horrors unfolding across the city.

This was not chaos. This was order, as Hell understood it.

And above it all, the palace stood—watching.

Waiting.