Spell 12 - Where the Past Waits

Even at that early hour, the streets outside were soaked in the same neon glow of ads and signs displayed on buildings. It was hard to tell what time it really was down there, in the underworld. Up in the city above, Ren had managed to get a sense of day and night, but down here, time didn't seem to move at all. It just seemed to stay fixed, trapped in the same loop forever.

Ren's footsteps echoed against the wet pavement as he followed the trail toward his next clue.

Kagami followed close behind, sometimes leaping effortlessly over obstacles she found on her path, but her paws made no sound as they touched down. As if there was absolutely no effort at all in her gracefulness.

Ren stayed quiet at first, but the conversation from the clinic still lingered in his mind. After a moment, without looking at her, he decided to push the question anyway.

"You never told me about any of that."

Kagami leaped in front of him from an open balcony, somewhere from the second floor.

"It doesn't really matter what happened back then," she replied. "The past is the past, and there's no point digging through it."

Ren frowned at that idea. She was starting to be all cryptic again, like she knew how much it bothered him.

"All that matters," Kagami added, "are the eyes."

But in his mind, this was still a responsibility too vague to comprehend. Back in the outskirts of the city, at least he understood the dangers he faced. The Hounds were unavoidable, yes, but predictable. He understood their kind of threat. He knew what it meant to run, to hide, to survive. But whatever this was, it was giving him too little.

Ren exhaled softly as they walked beneath the scaffolded streets.

"What… exactly am I looking for?" he asked while trying to picture it in his mind. "Are they really… eyes?"

The thought of finding something mummified or worse made his skin crawl.

"Or maybe it's just an artifact," he added, almost hopeful. "Some metaphor, maybe?"

Kagami walked ahead, not looking back once, but she seemed amused by how Ren struggled to make sense of it. It tickled at older instincts inside of her she didn't bother supressing.

"I can't tell you," she said, blunt as ever. "Even if I wanted to, I couldn't. The Pact doesn't allow it." She kept walking, moving her tail lazily behind her as she added, "And no, I don't know where they are or what shape they've taken now. I lost the right to look for them myself a long time ago."

Ren's irritation grew sharper in that instant.

"Even if you wanted to, huh?" he replied, visibly annoyed with her attitude.

But Ren was left without a real answer. Again. He knew by now he should stop expecting one, but every time she dodged his questions, it left something uneasy sitting in his chest. He kept watching her as they walked, part of him frustrated, part of him still trying to figure her out, searching for something in her that might help him work with her, if not actually understand her.

----

Ren stopped at the edge of the ruins where the old Clan residences once stood. Now they were all just carcasses made of stone and wire, basically left to be forgotten.

Shrine gates lay fallen against walls, while wires hung like dead vines, tangling the ruins in a large web. Paper charms clung to every corner, but looking closely, one could see they were untouched by the wind as it blew. It seemed as though they belonged to another world that didn't follow the same rules.

He studied the floor as he walked. He occasionally noticed faint sigils carved into the stone, most of them hidden beneath layers of dust and debris. They were hard to see at first, but if one looked closely, they were there, glowing with the same energy he felt in the tunnel where he first met Kagami.

Their symbols were strange to him. He couldn't read them, but there was a familiarity to the patterns he saw in them, and that's what he used to try and learn from them.

Ren followed Iori's instructions, watching for the marks she had warned him about.

"Damn this place," Ren mumbled as he stepped over a broken wall that lay split into several pieces, "It never does anything the easy way. Why should it?..."

Kagami moved from behind him, calm and amused.

"Are we whining again?" she said, slowly making her way through the rubble.

Suddenly, a path opened ahead. In the middle stood a tall and strange gate. It had the shape of a torii larger than any torii Ren had ever seen. Its old wooden beams had darkened, but they were reinforced by thick metal braces that kept the structure steady. The metal was fused to the wood itself through patterns and symbols that glowed as if the gate was alive.

Old lanterns hung from the poles and hooks, still lit by some ancient self-sustaining witchcraft, giving the whole area a strange, mystic atmosphere.

Around it, everywhere, was the aura of corrupted magic. Kagami could feel it immediately, making her senses sharpen as she looked at the structure. It was familiar to her and yet, at the same time, unwanted.

"Beyond the gate, this place will test you," Kagami said with an unsteady way about her. "It tests everyone. That's how it was made. But now… after all these centuries left to rot, there's no telling how it will respond."

Ren certainly didn't like hearing that, but he had come this far. It wouldn't be for nothing. He looked forward and just kept walking. Then, when he glanced back for just a moment, he saw that the gate behind him had transformed into a rippling screen of murky water, revealing nothing beyond it.