Chapter 72: Death’s Eternity

“What should I do?” Sakunae Mashiro cupped the tiny gem like a sparrow’s egg of winter light. Inside it, the one whose name she’d just learned yet loved for years slept, like moonlight trapped in ice. Decades ago she’d come for her, yet her own weakness froze fate shut like a sealed tomb. Now someone offered atonement, a single bridge over a black river; she had to decide if this was the only crossing she’d ever get.

“It’s a little complicated. We need a roomier spot to paint a rune array, so we’ll have to mess this place up first.” Litt pointed at shelves stacked like dusty cliffs.

“Then I’ll draw an array the way Sister remembers it. You step on it, and we move to the next step.” She tapped the floor, smooth as a stone lake.

“Last, we need a big-power feeder to juice this resurrection spell.” Litt’s voice dipped. “That’s the hard part.” It fell like a pebble into deep water.

“Clearing this area’s easy. I can handle it alone.” Nidhogg’s tone was calm, like iron under velvet. The cramped storeroom brimmed like a beehive, yet the Black Dragon could use Word Spirit Magic to set every trinket flying like iron sparrows, then toss them into Abaddon’s other-space.

“Step one’s done, then.” Litt nodded. She slipped to a nearby rack and fished out an old pen, aged like a twig in snow. She poked her fingertip with the nib; it didn’t pierce that tender skin. With a sigh like air leaving a reed, she tossed the pen back. “I’ll handle step two. We just need something that spreads easy on the floor, like paint.”

“I’ll help,” the little Demon said, raising a hand like a sprouting shoot. He looked at Litt—now nearly his height—and hurried to her side.

“Then I’ll solve the power problem.” Sakunae Mashiro tucked the gem against her chest like a coal she dared not drop. The fox’s eyes steadied, a lantern in fog. “Please leave it to me.”

“Mm. It’s yours.” Litt clapped, sunlight-bright, then shooed them. “Don’t freeze up. Move.”

“Got it.” Nidhogg answered, and a single spell rippled like wind through reeds. Cabinets floated up as if the room had turned to sea and they to driftwood. Abaddon raised a vast void vortex, a black whirl like an eye opening, and Nidhogg fed the clutter into it.

Sakunae Mashiro stepped out. For a power source, one name rose like a star over night snow. She was perfect.

Lilith had already linked every Undead in the cells to her Taint, a web like ink in water. Flesh clung to the Little White Dragon, wrapping her into a pulsing sphere, a heart made outward. From that orb shot dozens of tendon-thick tendrils, stiff as rebar, latching to the Undead and siphoning the Moonswallow Mist like tide drawn by a hidden moon.

“Miss Mashiro.” Lilith saw the fox approach. The White Dragon parted the Taint around her like silk curtains and poked her head out, smiling with crescent eyes. “What brings you?”

“Here’s the situation…” Sakunae Mashiro laid it out, words like stones set in a path.

“I see. You want to free the Undead princess’s soul from the gem, but Litt’s array needs a lot of power. So you came to me.” The Little White Dragon rose from the black like a brushstroke of pure white rising from ink. She patted her snow-pale dress, light as ash. Behind her, the Taint gathered into a small floating meat-clump, hovering like an extra pair of wings—unnerving and strangely radiant.

“I’ll provide the energy.” Lilith stepped to Mashiro’s side, gentle as rain. The tendrils behind her trembled in the air like plucked strings, humming with life.

“Thank you.” It was all Sakunae Mashiro could force past her throat, a warm breath in winter. She led Lilith to the third room from the back.

Nidhogg and Litt worked with frightening speed, like blades across silk. By the time Lilith entered, a space lay cleared, clean as a new page. Litt was already belly-down, absorbed, painting the array on the floor, lines weaving like frost ferns.

“Ah—Mom?” Litt felt Lilith’s presence like a bell struck. She popped up, face bright with spring. “Mom, what brought you?”

“You said you needed a power source, didn’t you?” Lilith muttered, cheeks tinting like dawn. Being called Mom by a girl who looked exactly like her felt too much like holding a mirror, but she shoved the feeling aside like a curtain and focused.

“Yes. My runes are almost done. Mom, just pour energy in when I say.” Litt pointed at the incomplete lattice, the geometry taut as a snare.

“Alright.” Lilith took her place behind Litt, still as a candle before lighting.

Litt’s hand flew. The White Dragon thought she’d be waiting a while, but in under two minutes Litt nudged her to the array’s edge and pointed at a bold sigil, obvious as a keyhole.

“This is the charging port. Mom, you just flood energy into here.” Lilith followed the point, slid a tendril into the sign like a blade into a sheath, and let the Moonswallow Mist stream. Her mist poured like moonmilk into the lines. The array woke and shimmered with a ghost-blue glow, like foxfire on old graves.

“Then, Miss Mashiro. Stand at the center with the gem, and repeat after me.”

Sakunae Mashiro obeyed, stepping into the heart of the pattern like a seed into furrow. She gripped the gem, knuckles pale as snow berries.

“Death endures.”

“Death endures.”

“Life has not yet arrived.”

“Life has not yet arrived.”

“The soul has not yet departed.”

“The soul has not yet departed.”

“The traveler of time and space shall linger here.”

“The traveler of—” Heat stabbed her palm. The gem, once cool as night jade, turned furnace-hot, searing like a brand. Pain surged first, a wave breaking, and her body flinched after.

“The traveler of time and space shall linger here.” Miss Mashiro forced the words through gritted teeth. The gem kicked in her hand like a trapped heart.

“Death is the answer to all.”

“Death… is… the answer… to all!” She hammered each word like a nail. A wisp of gray smoke leaked from the gem, thin as a breath on glass.

The gray thickened. It coiled and gathered, a storm-bird forming from mist, and sketched the outline of a person.

Sakunae Mashiro stared, stunned to stillness. This was the silhouette she’d chased across decades like a lantern across winter fields. She was as beautiful as memory, the same ache made form. It felt like she was again the adventurer newly arrived at the Grand Mausoleum, and the other still the princess who had not yet taken up her mantle.

“It’s been… far too long, my dear.” Gillian Kerry hovered beside her, voice soft as dusk. She cupped the fox’s face with hands cool as river shade.

“I kept you waiting.”