Chapter 31: Spell 31 - Glass Monoliths
They left the Respite in the morning. There were no windows inside to confirm it, but Ren could tell as soon as they returned to the maze of hallways. Some of them were lined with windows and even though most of them were covered by slim sheets of textured material, a few scattered rays of light still passed through.
He kept his pace steady as they walked, still cautious about things they might encounter. Kagami moved just ahead of him, making no sound on the pavement.
The tension between them from earlier was still there, bearing the weight of new truths yet to be processed and catalogued in Ren’s library of thoughts. However, this peculiar tension had become part of their routine now.
They passed beneath a rusted arch wrapped in loose wires, where charms fluttered faintly in the air. That’s when the ring Ren had taken from the Izanami statue at the Sanctum’s entrance, now resting carefully on his finger, flared once more. Violet smoke began to rise from it, just like before, while tiny particles detached from it, drifting ahead down the hallway.
Ren then raised his hand slightly to inspect it.
"It’s doing it again," he murmured, as if confirming it to himself more than anyone else.
Kagami stopped beside him and studied the trail of light as it was unfolding.
"It’s called Akariwake," she said. "The ring of diverging light."
Ren turned his hand slowly, and the smoke reacted, readjusting its trail to the original direction. It was pointing somewhere down the hallways, following a path that was still unknown to them.
"It shows the path it thinks you need," she added. "Or rather, the path it deems aligned with your current state of self."
Ren lowered his arm slightly but didn’t take his eyes off the trail.
"So it is some kind of guide."
"To an extent, yes. But it’s limited to Naraku. It was created to serve its purpose here, it has no use anywhere else."
He looked ahead at the trail, where the hallway split into separate directions. The trail seemed to know precisely which one they were supposed to take.
"Useful, I guess."
"And dangerous if overused."
He turned to her with a raised brow.
"How so?"
"That ring is meant for Pact-bearers. And strong ones at that. It forces resonance... or magic if you will... directly through the link between us. But your mind as it is now can barely handle a thread of it right now."
Ren kept silent for a moment. But then, he still had to ask.
"And what happens if I use it too much?"
"It overloads our sync," she explained. "It will be harder for me to reach you, and the same will be true for you. What that means for the situations ahead, only time will tell."
"You really do know a lot about these things," he then aknoledged.
Kagami’s ears flicked once, unimpressed.
"You people are obsessed with always rushing towards something. You’re all so quick to act. Strike first, ask questions later. But knowledge is the only true weapon."
Ren looked forward down the pathway, following the gentle trail of particles through the air, making sure they were still on track.
"You people..." he repeated, echoing her words with a trace of irony. "Someday, we people... and especially me... will prove we’re still worth more than you seem to think."
"Challenge accepted," Kagami replied, smiling.
They followed the trail in silence for a while after that. The corridor changed again, then bent sharply to the left until it opened into a spiraling stairwell.
Ren adjusted his footing and began to climb. The smoke still led the way, curling up and ahead through each turn.
At the top, the stairwell opened abruptly into a chamber unlike any other space they had encountered in Naraku. The room was vast, so much so that there wasn’t a clear ceiling overhead. Glass monoliths were scattered throughout the place bearing glyphs that glowed across their surfaces. They kept vanishing and reappearing in a pattern that resembled breathing. The floor was dark and smooth, reflecting the shapes of the structures hovering above.
Ren took one step forward, but Kagami didn’t follow.
He turned towards her, asking without words.
"This one is for you. I’m not allowed past the threshold," she explained.
Ren looked into the chamber again, scanning the glass structures.
"...Alright," he said quietly.
And then he walked in.
The moment Ren stepped into the chamber, something clunked somewhere, like that first step had set in motion some sort of old mechanism that had been waiting to complete a task.
He moved slowly across the room. The glass monoliths surrounding him reached up toward the unseen ceiling, evenly spaced in a perfect circle. Up close, he could see the glyphs embedded in their surface more clearly. They were lines and symbols formed through micro wiring that pulsed beneath the glass like veins.
But then, there was also something else.
At first, he thought the movement inside the glass was some sort of optical illusion or light distortion. But then, as he drew closer, the shapes became clearer. They were human forms, and even more than that, they were his own reflections.
He stopped walking and stared at them closely.
One version was seated on the floor. Another had his Pact blade reversed in his right hand. A third had golden eyes and markings up both arms that glowed faintly in the darkness.
They were silhouettes resembling him, but behaving independently.
Suddenly, all the glyphs around the room glowed brighter, until they dimmed back to their original state.
Then something moved from deep within the monolith standing in front of Ren. The mirrored surface morphed into unnatural shapes as if something was trying to break through from the other side of it.
Ren took a step back, bracing himself for whatever was about to emerge.
Then, the mirror returned to its original shape, but as it did, something had already stepped through.