Published at 4th of December 2019 10:36 am

Volume 2, Part V: Spiral Paradox - Chapter 11

This chapter is updated by NovelFree.ml

The man stands unmoving in the exit of the hallway, blocking the one narrow corridor into the central lobby. The black long coat he wears wraps him in a shadow that casts aside the moonlight, making him look darker than the night sky. He only watches mutely as the girl in white dances and swirls to eliminate the opposition. As if feeling the gaze affixed on her, Shiki Ryōgi stops dead in her tracks the moment she cuts down the last of the corpses, the distance between the man and Shiki when she finally notices him less than five wide steps. That she allowed herself to close to that distance to someone without her even being aware of it makes her lose concentration, if only for a few moments.

But that’s not the only thing about him Shiki notices. He gives away nothing, leaves nothing to be read on his face or any small movements, which are either so minute as to be unnoticeable, or else not present entirely. And it is this fact that troubles Shiki. A bead of sweat pours trickles down her brow, a chink in her otherwise calm façade.

“Ironic. By all rights this should have taken place after all of this was completed.” The weight of his voice is overwhelming, almost enough to force submission with just a word. He advances a step toward Shiki, a step that left him vulnerable with an opening that Shiki could have exploited, but finds that she can’t. She knows this man means hostile intent, and at worst intends to kill both her and Tomoe Enjō, and yet her feet seem trapped in place, unable to will them to move. The reason is quite simple: Though Shiki hides it quite well, she is in fact quite worried when she realizes that her Arcane Eyes of Death Perception finds a line on everything… except the man; no trace of the lines of death, the mark of entropic finality that everything and everyone carried, and she could will into vision any time she wished.

Shiki focuses on the man, just as Tōko taught her, trying to envision the lines harder than she’d ever willed before. Though her mind strains and groans at the force of will, for a moment she finally sees…something else. Square in the man’s chest is a mark, a line swirling outwards like a child’s drawing to form what seems like a hollow, empty hole.

“I know you,” she says, the venom in her voice clearer than anything. Because for an instant when she sees the strange mark on him, she remembers a fragment of an old memory. A vision that takes her back to that rain drenched night of two years ago, if only for less than a second. The man replies.

“Yes. Two years is far too long a time.” The heaviness of his voice forces its way into Shiki’s ears as he gently taps his temple with a finger. There, stretching from the forehead to above his left ear, is the scar from a cut, the same wound that Shiki had inflicted on him two years ago.

“You’re—”

“Sōren Alaya. It is the name of the one who will kill you,” the man declares, his face still a picture of stoic calm.

The greatcoat that hangs down from his shoulders has the unusual effect of making him look like some archaic sorcerer. The sleeves move as he slowly raises his arm, pointing it towards Shiki in a motion that makes her think that he would attempt to seize her neck, though he is still well enough away for that. She adjusts her stance in response, widening the spacing between her legs just so, and she readies her off-hand below her knife’s pommel, ready to add any additional thrusting force when needed.

“Your welcome is in poor taste,” Shiki mocks. “What the hell is this apartment all about?” She shouts this, in part perhaps to contain the first genuine fear that she has ever felt in her life. In a rumbling tone that is more indulgent than acquiescent, Alaya answers.

“You will not find any grand designs or vast-reaching conspiracies, if that is what you are looking for. It is what it is: a product of my own will.”

“Then I take it this business of recurring lives is all just a harmless hobby of yours, right?” Her gaze at the man is as unmoving as he is as they exchange words.

“Though at present incomplete, I have created a world that lasts for only a day. However, life and death alone is not enough to describe a ryōgi, and composed as it is with people of different lives and deaths, it is certainly not enough to contain you within it, not yet at any rate. The cycle of death and rebirth is incomplete. It is, however, descriptive of the spiral of conflict, for to the Yin, I offered death, and to Yang, life.”

“So that’s why the west building is full of death, while the opposite end is normal. You mages sure do bother with the weirdest, most meaningless rituals.”

“As I have said, this is no grand design.” Alaya offers a glance at the boy still standing dumbfounded behind Shiki. No words well up from inside Tomoe Enjō, and he can only look at the shadowy figure staring at him. “For there is naught but one state of being for any man. Dead and living cannot exist together. This place is a paradox where none can find themselves saved by the comfort of the consensus.” Mentally casting aside Enjō, he returns his attention to Shiki. “This is but a simple experiment. I only wished to see if men meet their end the same way in every iteration. All men die, but the origin also tells us that the death is predestined. Whether the result is a burnt lump of flesh, or complete incineration, a man that dies by fire does so; whether his struggle is hard or he surrenders, a man killed by family does so. Perhaps he avoids the first, or the second opportunity that death attempts. But in time, it will occur, and only our tenacity determines how long we live. But a man who dies a thousand times…well, perhaps there a deviation, however slight, can occur in the hidden law of chance. But it seems it is not so, at least not through two hundred repetitions.”

He recounts it with all the clinical dryness of a doctor. Shiki doesn’t know how he does it, nor does she particularly care, but all she knows is that this man is making the Enjō’s family needlessly kill each other every day in an “experiment” he doesn’t even seem to be too excited about. Something inside her is telling her to kill him right here, and the thought comforts her somewhat.

“So they start the morning the same way, and play out a sick drama of their last day on Earth the rest of the way? An interesting, if sick, hobby. And I don’t think the greater scientific community is on the edge of their seat for the result.”

“Do not make the mistake in assuming that the choosing of these families were in any way random. They were chosen because they were already fallen, broken. Their pitiful lives would have come to the same conclusion given time. I merely fabricated a hastier end that they would have acted out in a long span of pain, suffering, and misunderstanding, whether that be months or years.” There is no pride, nor any resigned sadness, in what he says. Only the curiosity of an observer.

“Call me crazy, but something tells me they wouldn’t agree with you, though. Look at this place. Floors bent slightly enough to not be seen, but enough to fuck with your perception of balance; illumination that’s just dark enough coupled with a paint job with patterns that drill their way into your head. Anyone’s bound to go slowly insane inside of this funhouse, even without the magic.”

“Fine praise, but lain at the wrong feet. It is to Aozaki that you must direct your words at, though she crafted it unknowing of its purpose.” He chances another step forward. Shiki aligns her knife toward the base of Alaya’s neck, and before the time to talk is dispensed, she asks him the one final question hanging on her mind.

“Why do you want to kill me, Alaya?” At first he seems to have no intent to answer. But in a moment, he mouths an entirely unexpected sentence.

“Kirie Fujō and Fujino Asagami performed quite poorly.”

“What did you say?” Taken aback by names she did not expect, Shiki is at a momentary loss for words. In that moment of hesitation that Shiki let slip, Alaya closes the distance with another hostile step.

“I hold the cracked mirror up to you, and you see Kirie Fujō, a woman who thrived on death only to cling to life.” He says the name of the woman who was once consumed by debilitating disease, not knowing when she would die. An individual who lived through a longing for death. She held the trait of having one soul, yet two bodies, inseparably twinned.

And then, there is Shiki Ryōgi, the name of the girl who can feel alive only through facing death, holding it close to her like a beloved trinket, but never letting it consume her. She held the trait of having two souls, yet one body, their link now definitively broken.

“The image in the mirror shifts, and you see Fujino Asagami, the woman that pleasures herself through the medium of death.” He says the name of the girl who felt nothing, and because of it, was stunted in her understanding of the emanations of the world beyond her. Only through the extremes of murder could she hope to gain the pleasure of dominion and the joy of life. Her dangerous abilities were sealed by the same dynasty through which she inherited it.

And then, there is Shiki Ryōgi, the name of the girl could only empathize with others through the act of mutual murder, risking death, and fighting it. Her honed skills are granted to her by the same dynasty through which she inherited it.

“On the precipice of death, Kirie Fujō chose the end, while you chose life. In the taking of lives, Fujino Asagami took pleasure, while you gave it weight and meaning. Surely your similarities and your differences as murderers have not escaped your attention.” Shocked into inaction, Shiki can only look as the darkness of the man approaches her. “Two years ago, I failed. I did not realize that what I needed were different individuals with the same origin. Rejoice, Shiki Ryōgi, for both of Kirie and Fujino were sacrifices made for you.”

His voice contains the first indication of passion, a voice that can barely contain the joy he thinks he deserves. In contrast, the willworker’s face is still as solid as a stone, seemingly suffering from an invisible burden on his shoulders.

“There is but one last piece to play, though there is little I can do should Aozaki read the move. Enjō Tomoe is an unexpected blessing, having stumbled back here from where my spells could not compel you to return.”

“I’ve had enough. It’s clear you’re the one responsible for all this. Only one thing left on the agenda now,” Shiki murmurs, excitement keen in her voice. She tightens her grip on the knife’s handle. The man holds his advance and points a finger behind Shiki, where the corpses of the dolls that confronted her lie. For a fraction of a second in this act, the shadows seem to draw closer to Alaya in an illusion that throws Shiki off just a bit.

“The void itself is your base impulse, your origin.

Cast your gaze into that abyss, and find yourself.” Within that declaration resides an emanation of truth, a lacing of magic. Though it buries itself deep inside Shiki, she nevertheless readies herself, and shouts,

“Out of the way or die!”

Then like an arrow drawn back and loosed, she leaps forth with an animalistic burst of speed and murder the only thing on her mind.

The distance separating them cannot be more than three meters, and there is little room to run in any direction other than forwards and backwards in the narrow hallway, which is why both of them are not even considering any sort of retreat. With the speed of Shiki’s leap, it won’t take more than a second for her to close the distance. She holds the knife beside her hip, aiming to thrust it inside the man’s guts.

But the mage has other plans. He need only speak the words.

“Fugu.” The air around him ripples, and Shiki is stopped dead in her tracks.

“Kongō.” He holds a hand out. Shiki sees a distinct line begin to form on the floor below.

“Dakatsu.” At the uttering of the word, Shiki feels even the very air around her halt.

Shiki staggers at her sudden halt, as if her body had just been filled with lead. The line that her Arcane Eyes allowed her to see being formed moments earlier is now complete, shaping itself as three thin circles spaced apart from one another, radiating outwardly from him like the orbit of heavenly bodies around the sun. The outermost circle, being wider than the hallway, instead begins to cling to the walls as a crude design would. Shiki realized the trap she had fallen in, her movement having stopped the moment she stepped into the boundary of the outermost circle. Now she is as a white butterfly trapped helplessly in a web.

“I shall take your body.” The mage advances, the ghostly dark smoothness of his movement a juxtaposition against Shiki’s earlier white blur of a charge. Now facing Shiki squarely at her front, she stands helpless as the man’s greatcoat rustles in the wind. In the speed of events, it is only now that her mind catches up and truly begins to grasp the notion of Alaya as a dangerous enemy. He extends his left hand toward Shiki, palm open as if meaning to crush Shiki’s face in a vise grip.

“Don’t come any closer!” Shiki shouts, the words coming out in staggered breaths borne out of some unseen labor. But the same force that had paralyzed her now only galvanizes her force of will. When Alaya’s fingertips begin to touch her face, she recoils to avoid them, and through an amount of effort that even she does not realize she can display, she momentarily breaks free from the invisible chains that bind her and manages to move her knife hand in a violent swing downwards. Alaya’s left hand is cut from the wrist—

“Taiten,” he says, and the hand that was falling for a fraction of a second does not complete its descent. Shiki saw the entire thing, saw the blade cut clean through the wrist like a hot knife through butter, but now she also sees no trace of a wound on that very same wrist.

“Chōgyō.” Now it is his right hand that moves, and it moves unexpectedly fast, almost as if he was anticipating what Shiki just did. And this time, it succeeds in grabbing her face, and with that purchase he lifts her up in the air. Shiki tries to speak, but her voice is strained again by the same force that made it difficult for her to speak earlier, and it comes out only in muffled and choked noises. From that hand, Shiki feels an indescribably cold sensation that goes under her skin toward the depths of her mind before slipping through her spine and spreading to each pore in her body. And for the first time in her life, she feels the last, desperate stirrings of one who knows in a moment that she is about to die.

“There is much yet for you to learn. Within my left hand are sarira, and not even the Arcane Eyes of Death Perception can see its weak links. A simple cut will not wound me,” he explains as his hand continues to press upon Shiki’s face like a machine, not slacking for a moment, nails digging deeper and deeper. He studies her with a look almost akin to scholarly curiosity. She knows that any rash action and his hand will force what strength he is holding back to crush her head.

“I will not die,” he continues, “for I have awakened to my origin of quiescence. It rules me. How would you kill what is already at rest?” Shiki’s eyes dart around frantically, making use of the minute field of vision still afforded her by trying to find anything…just one of the lines of death on his body, however faint. Desperately trying to will away both the cold fear moving within her, as well as the pain of the continuous pressure applied to her face, she searches for an opening. But before that happens, the mage comes to a conclusion.

“I would take your body. But perhaps I do not need the head.” Suddenly, Alaya channels a decisive, crushing force through his hand. Shiki can hear the groan of her skull and jaw starting to break. Her eyes widen as she looks and looks. There! Faint, but it is there in his right arm. Acting fast, Shiki pours all of her remaining strength to cutting that line, and it works. The arm is cut.

Alaya only grunts, but does retreat a few steps. The cut arm, from elbow to hand, still stuck to Shiki’s face, but she throws it to the side and leaps back to withdraw. She takes a knee when she determines the distance between her and Alaya’s orbiting rings to be generous enough. She looks down on the ground and gasps for air violently, both the pain and the effort of maintaining her faint vision of the lines becoming a strain too much to bear. After a pause, Alaya speaks.

“It is possible I underestimated those Eyes. The scene you made in the hospital should have given me all the information I needed. Entropy. Whether something is alive or dead makes no difference if those Eyes and the lines act on entropy. Even for someone of my origin, something still binds me to back to the spiral. And I wonder…how long until you even see the lines on my left hand, and it becomes vulnerable?” Seemingly paying no mind to his severed arm, he continues. “Those Eyes are wasted and a liability on you. You will be restrained before I can destroy them.”

He renews his advance with one step forward, but Shiki has long been staring at the three circles surrounding him, trying to divine a key to victory there.

“You would have been better served backing off when you had the chance,” Shiki warns, shifting her knife into a reverse edge-out grip. “Don’t think I haven’t learned a thing or six about wards. See, the thing about wards is they’re arbitrary boundaries, like the one those Shugendō weirdos supposedly slap on Mount Ōmine to keep out the womenfolk and their temptations. Can’t do shit about something inside it, ‘cause it’s the wards that keep something out. In other words, if the line is gone, it loses its meaning.”

At that, Shiki takes her knife and plunges the knife downwards to the ground, striking fugu, the outermost circle of Alaya’s quickly approaching protective wards, whereupon it fades and disappears, “killed” by Shiki.

“A foolish observation,” the mage says in rebuke, but even so, he quickens his steps. But this time, having reduced Alaya’s barriers to two, Shiki is ready. And the mage hadn’t considered that totality to which Shiki’s Arcane Eyes can apply. To think that it could even kill something formless and lifeless like a ward formed by the Art is something beyond even his most pessimistic predictions. And so now, even his movement is hurried. “However, there are two wards left.”

“Slow on the uptake, aren’t we? Weren’t you listening? Your gimmick is done.” Still in a kneeling position, Shiki places her free hand behind her back to withdraw something tucked within her kimono’s sash. It is the second knife she had taken with her. As soon as she draws it, she flicks it with surprising speed towards Alaya. Like a stone skipping above the waterline, it flies just above the floor, singing through the air and piercing the second circular ward, then the third and final one, bouncing just once over the floor just once to gain altitude as it goes after the mage’s head.

Alaya’s surprising alacrity manages to save him from a direct hit, but Shiki’s violence and speed of action surprises even him. The blade travels further down the hallway before settling on the floor. Despite his timely evasion, the knife still seems to have passed through an ear, cutting it clean, whereupon blood and meat and other non-descript fluids are visible.

The mage grunts in pain, not from the injury in his ear, but from the shock of impact of something hitting his body full on, a white mass that his attention can’t quite yet parse after the suddenness of the knife. By the time he realizes it is Shiki who hit him, the duel is already decided.

Shiki had delivered a shoulder tackle with all the speed and brutality she could muster—enough to break at least a few bones—before she deftly maneuvers her knife in a thrust towards Alaya’s center of mass.

The mage coughs blood in little droplets, grains of sand pouring out of his mouth to stain the floor and Shiki’s white kimono. Shiki draws the knife out, red blood tarnishing its otherwise silver shimmer in the moonlight. Sparing no time, she immediately puts her free hand behind the pommel of the weapon to augment the strength of her next blow, and then brings the blade up to stab Alaya’s neck as hard as she can in a final coup de grace, though the victor is clear. The reason is simple—

“You’re persistence will not serve you well in hell, Shiki.” —Her enemy isn’t dead yet.

“Fuck! Why—” she shouts, though only finishes in her thoughts. Why? Why aren’t you dead? The mage maintains his characteristic dour face, with the notable exception of his eyes, gleaming with satisfaction. If eyes could smile, his are certainly doing so.

“I have lived for two hundred years on this Earth, and not even the Arcane Eyes of Death Perception will lay that span low so instantly. Entropy already acts on me, faster than you might know, but if that is the price that must be paid to capture you, then it will be so.”

The duel is already decided. His left hand, fist clenched, flies toward Shiki, impacting her midsection with a force that she is sure can crack concrete. She is knocked clean off the ground a few inches, coughing up as much blood as she had caused Alaya to earlier. Shiki hears herself retching, violent and miserable, and realizes that a number of her ribs are broken, and at least some of the organs it protected are damaged, before losing consciousness. In the end, though possessing the power of the Arcane Eyes and an affinity for combat bred into her, her body remains as fragile as any average girl. She would have fainted with even half the strength of Alaya’s punch.

The mage seizes Shiki by the midsection with the one hand he has left and throws her against the wall of the hallway in an act that is probably sufficient to break all of her major bones. But that doesn’t happen. Instead, the wall seems to swallow Shiki, letting her sink and drown into it as if it were water.

It is only then, after Shiki vanishes wholly, that the mage deems it fit to lower his outstretched arm. Shiki’s knife is still stuck to his neck, and his eyes seem to lose their fearful intimidation. Seconds pass, but the black greatcoat does not move.

The mage’s body is dead.

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