Spell 27 - Anchor

The last particles of the platform's glyph floated gently into the air, forming a beautiful pattern. Ren found himself admiring it even then, when things pressed inside his chest for entirely different reasons. But then, the ground beneath him crackled. Just a bit. And then one bit more.

Ren's eyes widened as he realized what was going on.

The surface started to split with a crack that extended from one side to the other, until the entire platform began to break apart.

He tried to stand, but the sudden movement knocked him off balance. He fell to his knees once again just as the main piece gave way beneath his feet. And for a moment, there was no platform at all, nothing to set his feet on or to readjust to. Just the endless dark below pulling him inside like it had been waiting for this moment for quite a while.

But then Ren's arm reached out instinctively. He caught the edge of what was still left of the floating platform, somehow still resistant to the pull below. The rest of it kept falling, dropping into the void until it finally disappeared entirely into the darkness.

Far above and to the right, Kagami jumped across the narrow stone ledge that bordered the corridor until she got as close as possible to where Ren was.

Ren held on as best he could to what remained of the platform. His fingers ached from the pressure, and his body was still shaking from the flashback he was forcefully pushed in and out of. It had been too real, like it had just happened all over again. And the nurse's gentle voice still screamed in his mind even then, while he clung from a falling platform's edge, just one slip away from letting go and finally being free of it.

And Haruki... the memory of his brother was just another weight pulling him down into that abyss.

"Ren!" Kagami's voice cut in.

But he barely heard it.

She shouted again with more firmness. "If you can't find your anchor, then use me. Use my voice!"

She waited for a bit, watching closely, until she realized Ren's eyes were starting to fill with a pale shade of violet. Then she fully understood what was actually going on. It was this place trying to swallow him up just for the sake of it.

"Oh no you don't!" she said to herself. "Do you hear me?"

Ren's mouth opened, whispering something barely heard. "Use you… you say…"

And then his fingers slipped slightly from the ledge. He wasn't going to hold on much longer.

Suddenly, Kagami's eyes flared in golden patterns. She then screamed, or rather, she commanded until her sound, which was both human and feline at the same time, struck Ren in the chest like a wave. His whole body jerked in response, while his eyes turned golden, just as hers. That's when the violet shade she had seen spreading in them moments earlier started to fade until the golden one replaced it entirely.

As her scream ran through him, Ren felt Kagami's presence differently than he had on other occasions. It was grounding him more deeply than the pain or the fear. His mind instinctively tried to understand it, but there was no time. The stone beneath his hand cracked and then gave out entirely.

He jumped again, without giving it much thought, towards whatever lay in front of him the closest. And the closest thing to him in that moment happened to be another of the platforms. Ren threw himself toward it as the only salvation he could see.

The landing was harsh. He slammed into the platform hard, scraping his palms and knees against the rough stone. Still, the thing held, amazingly enough, Ren thought. But the moment his weight touched the glyph, it glowed brighter, and he had no time to cover his eyes at all before the familiar light engulfed him within. Again.

He was fifteen.

He was crouched behind the hallway wall of the house he once shared with his aunt and uncle. He hadn't stayed there long before running away, just like every place before, but the moment he was reliving was before he ran away. His aunt's voice echoed from the next room as she spoke over the phone.

"He's too rebellious to take care of," she was saying. "He's a smart kid, but unstable. We can't keep him here."

Ren clenched his fists inside the memory, but so did the real him, the one watching now. Anger pushed out through both versions of himself, and neither could let it go this time.

"Get the hell out of my head!" Ren shouted.

The voice echoed through the flashback itself, and the world inside it seemed to respond to it, because the corridor suddenly shattered. Walls fell like glass, glowing brightly in the light. Even the voice on the phone cut off without ever finishing the sentence.

Ren was back on the platform. He stayed there as he was, breathing heavily with his fists pressing hard against the stone.

Across from him, Kagami kept silent on the upper ledge, observing him. She followed his breathing for a while, assessing the state of his body and giving him time to regain his composure.

Then she turned her head toward the path still left to cross. The corridor, which had previously been shrouded in darkness, now revealed the final set of floating platforms. There weren't that many left, and beyond them, the solid ground was visible at last.

"Just a few more, and you're done," she then said.

Ren's fingers grabbed tighter a few of the stones scattered around. He raised his head slowly, then he looked past the platforms ahead, past whatever hope Kagami was trying to give him.

"No," he said firmly.