Spell 16 - Before the Pact Grows Tired

The storm forced them to seek shelter before nightfall.

Ren followed Kagami through the empty streets winding along uneven ground. Here and there, plants had broken through the pavement, like hidden forces that could no longer be contained. The wind had also started to bite hard, moving dust and particles around.

They walked through it all without speaking.

Kagami led them to an old house where the heavy roof had fallen to one side, bending the entire structure along with it. The side leading to the street had sunk on its edge, and the only reason the other side of it was still standing was due to its thick walls, which had somehow managed to endure the passage of time.

Old symbols were carved into stone above the doorway, but Ren didn't understand their meaning.

Kagami slipped through the shattered doorway first, leaving him to follow behind.

Inside, as expected, everything was coated in a thick layer of dust that lifted slightly in the air as they passed near objects and old furniture. There were a few beds lined up against one of the walls. Their frames were broken in places, but other than that, they remained mostly intact. Near the beds, old scrolls were hung on the walls depicting old calligraphy. The symbols were carefully paired at times with simple, stylized illustrations of god-like figures, half-human, half-animal in shape.

The place itself looked as though it had once held some religious purpose, or perhaps mystic, but it didn't matter all that much to Ren. All he cared about at that point was to have a roof over his head, walls around, and some place where to lie down and rest.

Kagami leaped onto a wooden piece of furniture that looked like nothing in particular. She settled there with her tail curling around her.

For a moment, her eyes widened and glowed as she stared at the old fireplace. In normal circumstances, it would have been challenging to light anything there, seeing as how damp it was, but Kagami was no ordinary being. A symbol rotated for a few seconds at its center, and from it a flame sparked that eventually turned into fire. There was no wood to keep it running, just her witchcraft.

Ren would have been startled by that in the past, but not anymore. He cleared some of the space for himself to sit, shoving aside pieces of broken chairs, furniture, and all sorts of other scraps.

Outside, the wind howled through the streets and the building groaned with it, but inside, the fire seemed to wrap everything into a tiny shelter. Like a small, different universe altogether. A warmer and safer one.

Ren sat by it, letting the warmth seep in.

Kagami remained motionless in her place of choice, while the firelight reflected in her eyes.

As minutes passed, Ren's head leaned against the side of an old armchair and he couldn't resist the pull of sleep dragging him in.

----

In the dream, there was only ash.

Ren found himself standing in a vast, endless field, gray and lifeless, where the ground was covered with fine white dust. The sky had an unnatural color and looked as though it had been painted in patterns that might have been clouds, but ones that resembled fire.

There was no wind, and everything around seemed to have been muted.

Then, there she was. Kagami. But this time, she looked a lot different than what he knew: she was human. A beautiful woman with fiery eyes and long black hair. Her body was different, but the eyes were unmistakably hers.

She stood in the middle of the scorched landscape, draped in dark, silky robes. Her long, black hair moved like smoke around her pale, white, unveiled shoulders.

She walked forward with bare feet, leaving no mark on the ground where she stepped. And there was no expression on her face either. No sorrow or anger of any kind, just calm, untouched by anything around her.

She kept walking, endlessly into the horizon where nothing seemed to be waiting.

----

Ren then woke without a sound. His eyes opened slowly, adjusting to the dark.

Kagami was sitting by the window now. She had her tail coiled neatly around her paws, while her gaze was locked beyond the glass, watching the dead streets below. And there was something in that gaze, almost human, that reminded Ren of loneliness, though he couldn't explain why.

He kept still, not moving a muscle, careful not to disturb her. He watched her in silence, in hopes that she wouldn't notice. But the more he watched, the more something strange began to twist inside him. It was unsettling to him the way she seemed so human despite everything about her appearance saying otherwise.

He wondered what she saw when she looked out there. Did she see ruins? Or memories? Did she remember the city the way it had once been?

Then, as if hearing his thoughts, Kagami spoke in a way that it seemed she was addressing the room itself, and somehow, the room was listening.

"This place was a lot different back then."

Ren listened without letting his startle disrupt her.

"They built these walls to keep the mystic system under control," she continued. "And then they placed me to watch over it. I was the keeper of their strength."

She paused for a while, reminiscing, as her tail curled tighter.

"And I did watch over it for a long time before they decided they didn't need me anymore."

Her voice was sharp, but not yielding to bitterness.

"When they betrayed and exiled me, in their pitiful and ignorant minds, they thought they were doing it for their own survival. That I had grown too powerful for their own comfort and decided they wanted to be free of it."

She scoffed before continuing the trail of thoughts.

"Freedom... They have no idea. Even to this day..."

Her eyes glowed slightly, as if anger had seeped through her physical shape as well, not just her thoughts and feelings.

"I lost everything here," she continued, never looking at anything inside the room, only outside of it, where Naraku rested in ruins.

Ren couldn't explain why her words struck him the way they did. Maybe it was the way she portrayed it all, how losing everything wasn't a tragedy to her, but a reality that needed to be understood and overcome. Like an equation.

"They have taken almost everything from me," Kagami continued. "Most of my magic is gone, so I can't do anything without the help of a pact barer."

Ah, this is where he came into play, of course.

"But it doesn't matter," she said flatly. "I'll take it back. All of it. That's the only reason I'm still here."

He let out a long, deep breath, the first sound he had made since she had started speaking.

"Can't you just… settle down somewhere quiet?" His voice was gentle as he asked. "Maybe find a nice corner to live in peace? Wouldn't it be easier?"

For a moment, she said nothing. Then, slowly, she turned her head towards where he sat, with a sharp and cold air about her.

"You don't understand."

There was a faint note of disgust beneath her reply too, like the very idea had even offended her.

"But you don't need to," she explained further, turning back to the window, as if the conversation was already beneath her. "Understanding isn't a requirement for doing something."

"Excus..."

"You will find my eyes," she interrupted, and there was no room for argument. "Before the Pact grows tired of you."

Her gaze returned to him, glowing in the darkness.

"Because once it does… there's no reversing it. Nothing stands above the Pact."