Shiori hadn’t moved since the mont they had all co face to face. She remained beneath the row of paper lanterns, as if the events unfolding around her had nothing to do with her at all. For a mont, she didn’t even seem like a person, more like another elent of the background.
But then, she lifted one hand, with a slow, almost delicate gesture.
What followed was a loud sound in complete opposition to her apparent fragility. From all sides, chanisms unlocked hidden doors and hatches, opening them all at once with a sudden force.
The Kagemonos were free again to access the newly opened space, pushing one another in disorganized clusters. But despite their lack of coordination, their bodies still moved with the unnatural speed Ren had already seen before.
Kagami dropped low with her claws drawn.
Ren didn’t hesitate this ti around either. The Pact glyph surged behind his shoulder as he invoked it. From its complicated pattern, threads of energy twisted down his left arm, as if completing it into sothing more. The glow then solidified at his wrist, and the Pact Blade took shape as a curve of golden tal.
When the first Kagemono reached him, Ren moved quickly to the side and cut through its arm cleanly.
Kagami moved through her side of the fight. Her claws tore through necks and tendons with ease, keeping the Kagemonos contained in a narrow area she had already mapped in her mind.
As she moved through them, slashing and disorientating them, a thought kept bothering her. She found herself in an uncomfortable position. Again. She was not supposed to interfere with a Pact Bearer’s fight. A witch’s role was to channel and to support, not fight alongside them. She was only supposed to be a passive light in the darkness, but now she was getting careless. She also knew the Pact would sense that eventually.
Both Ren and Kagami moved in one single rhythm until the floor changed shape again.
Several sections of the wall started to displace once again. They slid both outward and inward, reshaping the open space into several more corridors. It was a constantly changing maze.
"She is toying with us," Kagami said, sowhat annoyed at the entire situation.
Suddenly, a new wave of Kagemonos lunged toward them.
"Move!" Ren snapped at her, seeing as how she was wasting too much ti analyzing unimportant things in such a crucial mont.
They rushed inside a passage that had just appeared in front of them. It could have been another trap, Ren knew this, but their options were limited at that point.
The chase drove them into a new series of corridors that, at first glance, all looked the sa. Behind them, the Kagemonos followed without pause, showing no sign of exhaustion or hesitation.
But as he rushed through the pathways, Ren noticed sothing unusual. One of the Kagemonos passed near where Kagami was, yet made no move to strike, as if it couldn’t know she was actually there. This hadn’t happened before.
Ren stopped for a fraction of a second as he realized it. The pattern was different here.
"I think they react to movent," he said. "Not sight."
He paused at the corner of a junction and let a Kagemono run past him. It didn’t sense him at all until he reached for his blade again. The mont Ren moved and created noise, the Kagemono turned toward him.
"You can only hear , you little bastard..." Ren mumbled to himself.
As the Kagemono closed in, Ren hooked his foot behind its leg, causing it to lose balance and fall. In the sa motion, he drove the Pact Blade down through its back, cutting deep until it stilled completely.
Then Ren turned to check on Kagami’s position.
But Kagami had already changed her focus to Shiori. The Kagemonos were only puppets. The real target was her. How powerful was her magic? How much of Naraku did she truly command? Reiji had already said it, and even though he now stood as their enemy, Kagami knew he hadn’t lied about that. He possessed no magic of his own, so even in his corrupted state, a Pact Bearer depended entirely on the witch bound to him.
So was that truly the case? Was there a Pact at all?
And then, as if she had sohow heard her thoughts, Shiori smiled at the entire unfolding of events. She moved both of her arms toward her chest, like pulling on invisible threads.
And right then, the ground split beneath Ren and Kagami.
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