Ren stepped carefully between the rows of statues. As he inspected them, he noticed how each of the figures was molded in a distinct pose, most bearing expressions of authority. Still, he couldn’t shake the feeling that they were being watched sohow.
Suddenly, one of the statues caught his eye. It bore the sa golden irises as the rest, except the black swirls inside them moved this ti. That startled Ren and made him question whether what he was seeing was actually real.
He stepped closer.
"Wait," Kagami called behind him. "I think that one is different."
But before Ren could return his gaze toward the statue, it exhaled. Sothing like a whisper escaped its mouth, and Ren froze in place the mont he heard the word coming out of it.
"Haruki."
It whispered his brother’s na. Why?... Sothing tore at Ren’s chest as he heard the na. He wasn’t prepared for it.
Then, the statue’s stone eyelids cracked open fully. The black swirls inside its golden irises spread further, revealing even more of the awkward pattern underneath.
Then, all around them, the other statues began to stir as well. One by one, their joints started moving, breaking through decades of stillness. Their outer layers of rock fell off in chunks, revealing pale bodies underneath. They still looked like any other person except for their ceremonial garnts, which hung in tatters.
They were Kagemonos. Dozens of them. Each one bore the sa golden stare streaked with black swirls of dark fluid. And now every single one of them was looking at Ren.
Kagami moved swiftly with her claws out.
"We need to get out of here. Now."
Of course, Ren agreed without hesitation. He had encountered Kagemonos before and knew exactly what a swarm like that could do. They turned and fled across the open space toward the nearest archway. But behind them, the Kagemonos followed.
They passed through the nearest exit, but the mont they crossed its threshold, a deep chanical bang shook them from beneath their feet.
Kagami slowed and glanced back with her fur lifted along her spine. She had sensed the trigger but couldn’t yet tell what it was.
Ren turned as well, overseeing the corridor behind them. The Kagemonos did not hesitate at all. They sward in uncoordinated patterns toward them. The familiar organic vines began to show from within their limbs, twisting along the walls in pursuit.
They soon reached the outer extensions of the structure, where the fake sky was visible once more. But just as the space opened, stone walls slowly revealed themselves from sowhere underneath, flanking the path around them. Thin sections rotated upward like a chanism being exposed from within the architecture itself. They were being enclosed in a contained area.
"Kagami..."
"I see it."
As they passed into another junction, two sliding walls erged from hidden slots and sealed the path behind them, cutting off the swarm of Kagemonos. But as they did, they also cut Ren and Kagami away from any path that might have been a way out of that place.
A few of the vines had reached through, twitching for several monts before finally falling still.
Ren kept running through the changing paths for a while longer, like he was trapped in a vast maze, until he finally stopped and braced himself against one of the walls. His breathing was heavy, and his thoughts unfocused.
Kagami stood beside him, sweeping with her gaze the new area they had been forced into.
This was still part of the atrium they had entered earlier, but the destruction here was more extensive. Cracked tiles and fractured pillars lined the edges, and scattered among them stood more statues. Ren felt uneasy seeing them, expecting perhaps another swarm of Kagemonos to erge. But then he noticed how most of the statues were headless, so maybe the risk of that happening wasn’t as high as he initially thought.
And in the center of the area, quiet and composed, stood the girl again. Shiori. Ren still rembered hearing that na earlier.
Her full-grown form stood beneath a row of paper lanterns, wearing the sa white mask on one side of her face just as before. The golden pattern in her eyes burned brighter than in any of the Kagemonos’.
She just stood there watching both of them.
Then a new sound echoed across the space, pulling Ren’s focus away. He had been watching Shiori the entire ti, trying to make sense of her actual role in all of this, so when it ca, the voice startled him.
"Her na is Shiori," Reiji said, echoing in waves through the space around them.
Ren stiffened as he recognized the voice. It sounded just as deep and heavy as it had on other occasions during the trials.
Kagami raised her head while her ears tipped a bit in recognition of danger. And a powerful one at that.
"She’s not as magnificent as you once were, Kagami. But she is still useful. She listens... and obeys. And she can control Naraku to its core, just as you once did."
Kagami’s eyes darkened as she listened. It wasn’t the dismissal of her person or even of what she once represented that really bothered her, but the fact that soone who once was as close to her as Reiji had been could speak of control so easily in a place ant to transcend all of that.
"Reiji..." she said in a low voice. And that was all her thoughts amounted to.
Shiori remained silent through it all, as if it made no difference whether she accepted or rejected any of it.
Kagami narrowed her eyes as she analyzed Shiori’s presence.
"Look at her magic," she murmured toward Ren.
The glow in Shiori’s eyes pulsed in waves, intensifying, then fading, then rising again in powerful bursts of energy. Each ti the hue grew brighter, it was really the blackness that stood out most. The swirls kept distorting the iris patterns in erratic ways.
Ren studied it as well. He was still learning the deeper chanics of magic, but even to him it was obvious that there was corruption in the magic this witch wielded.
"She’s not like the Kagemonos we have seen outside, although I do think she is the one mastering them," Kagami added. "There’s sothing twisted in her, and if it’s true she has such a deep control over Naraku, then that sothing is what’s twisting everything around. These Kagemonos... they shouldn’t be aggressive at all. That’s not how they’re ant to behave."
"Is she really the one controlling the Kagemonos?" Ren asked, trying to piece together how a single being could manipulate so many others, even ones as mindless as Kagemonos.
Kagami nodded.
"She’s the puppetteer."
As she said it, a dark smile pulled faintly at her lips. This was all wrong, deeply wrong, and although part of her resonated with the power of it, there was also a part of her that didn’t want whatever corruption was taking over Naraku to last. She had turned her back on her old way of life long ago, but now, maybe part of it was resurfacing through this new energy that she felt flowing through the Pact. Maybe it was him. Maybe it was Ren doing all of it.
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