Collapsing—
The cathedral was collapsing.
Stone walls piled as high as the eye could see were falling as if hit by an avalanche; the impact was making the man-made ground shudder fiercely. Scattered fragments of dust and rock were blinding; the interior of the building had been rendered a chaotic darkness. The destructive spectacle could make one think the world was ending.
Kojou had been unable to respond to the all-too-abrupt collapse.
At this rate, he’d soon be buried under an enormous mass of stone; there was little doubt he would perish. What saved Kojou came with a strange, floating feeling resembling dizziness. It was a side effect from being teleported.
Someone had bent space to carry Kojou and the others out of the crumbling cathedral.
With the dazzling rays of the setting sun suddenly shining on him, Kojou instantly averted his eyes.
“Ugh…”
Yukina, silver spear in hand, landed right beside him. They weren’t particularly far from the cathedral. The teleport jump had only been maybe a couple hundred meters. It was far enough that they’d escaped the effects of the cathedral’s collapse, but only barely.
It was probably the most the caster could do.
Yukina let out a short shriek.
“Yuuma?!”
Behind Kojou, it sounded like something squishy fell to the ground. It was a young woman dressed in a Halloween witch costume. She was too cute to be called boyish, with a perfectly symmetrical face.
However, her entire body was stained with blood; she was a pale shadow of her normal liveliness.
She—Yuuma Tokoyogi—seemed in agony as Kojou bit his lip and rushed to her side.
“Yuuma…! Why’d you do something so reckless…?!”
Her chest bore a deep sword wound. When Kojou touched her arm, it felt as cold as ice.
Yuuma was a witch. She was a human who’d been granted tremendous magical power via a pact with a demon. She’d used her power to warp space and save Kojou and the others from the collapsing cathedral.
However, the reckless teleport had put Yuuma’s body under immense strain.
In the battle that had ended just moments before, she’d expended magical power beyond her limits, her body incurring deep wounds in the process. A normal person might well have died at any moment in the state she was currently in.
Even so, Yuuma rose up and forced a smile onto her face.
“You’re wrong, Kojou… It wasn’t my power alone. The Witch of the Void lent me hers, too…”
Yuuma’s unexpected words made Kojou stare at both of his arms in shock.
“Natsuki? Then where…is she…?!”
Yukina’s expression hardened as well.
Having been run through by the Guardian’s sword, Natsuki Minamiya had surely been wounded even worse than Yuuma. Could she have really lent her power to Yuuma to save Kojou and the others in that state?
However, though Kojou had been carrying her in his arms, she was nowhere to be found. If Natsuki had sent Kojou and the rest outside, yet she herself remained in the cathedral even now—
Dumbfounded, Yukina looked up at the place where the cathedral should have been standing.
It was a military fortress with thick steel walls rimmed with barbed wire—no, a prison.
Kojou looked up at the oppressive fortress in bewilderment.
“That’s…the real prison barrier…? Then what was the building that was there till now?!”
Compared to Natsuki’s old-fashioned, solemn cathedral, that fortress was filled with malevolence that far better suited the word prison. However, the entire facility wavered, half-materialized, within the dust; it seemed to still be repelling all intruders.
What then reached the confused Kojou’s ears were metallic echoes and an eerie female voice. It was the malicious voice of a witch more advanced in her years.
“It is…the same…thing, Fourth Primogenitor.”
The speaker stood atop the giant gate of the fortress.
Her hair was so long that it reached her feet. She wore a noblewoman’s ceremonial robe that looked like it came from the Heian period. The outfit was highly ornamental, but the way it was dyed only in white and black made her look like she was wearing a Grim Reaper costume. Her visage was young and beautiful, but her eyes were the color of flames—of fire. That gaze, part of a gentle smile, boded ill, indicating that she was far beyond the boundaries of humanity.
“—While dreaming, there is no firm dividing line between man and butterfly. That empty cathedral is the form the prison barrier takes when it is part of Natsuki Minamiya’s dream.”
The prison barrier was a virtual world that was constructed inside Natsuki’s dream via magic. The viewer of the dream could freely alter its form with a thought. The convicts held within, existing in another being’s dream, had absolutely no means of escape. That was why it was a feared prison used to seal away only sorcerous criminals of the highest class.
“However,” the fire-eyed witch continued, “the Witch of the Void awoke from her eternal dream, and the prison barrier has emerged into reality. Now that it is in real space, escaping from here is no large feat at…all. For me, at least…”
This said, she laughed in apparent delight.
That voice was the same one they’d heard from Yuuma’s Guardian—the voice of the sorcerous criminal Aya Tokoyogi, who’d sacrificed her own daughter to plunge her sword into Natsuki Minamiya. But—
A despairing voice came from Yuuma’s blood-drenched lips.
“Mo…ther…?”
That’s insane, shouted Kojou in his mind. “That’s Yuuma’s mother…?!”
He didn’t want to accept it, but anyone there would have instantly understood that the fire-eyed witch was connected to Yuuma by blood. After all, the two were the spitting image of each other.
Except for the length of their hair and the color of their eyes, it was hard to tell them apart. Even their dauntless faces and apparent age were identical…
“She’s got…the same face as Yuuma…,” said Kojou.
As if to mock the shaken boy and the others, Aya pointed to the wounded Yuuma and stated, “Of…course. That girl is a copy produced from me through parthenogenesis. She is no more than my shadow, built for the sole purpose of breaching the prison barrier’s seal. She and I are the same being—that is why I can do…this.”
That moment, blood gushed out of Yuuma’s throat as she screamed.
“U…a…aaaaaaaaaaa…!”
Behind her, a human-shaped shadow, materialized via magical power, floated up. It was a faceless knight clad in armor. It was a devil familiar granted as part of a pact—in other words, a witch’s Guardian.
The blue knight’s entire body seemed to be being eaten alive by ghoulish symbols that looked like black arteries. It was as if Yuuma’s right of command over her Guardian was being stripped from her by force—
Kojou and Yukina were dumbfounded, their voices shaking.
“Yuuma?!”
“…It can’t be…stealing a witch’s Guardian…?”
Through enormous magical power and a blood bond more powerful than any spell, Aya Tokoyogi was interfering with Yuuma’s Guardian…and neither Kojou nor Yukina had any way to stop it.
If Kojou attacked Aya Tokoyogi with his Beast Vassal, or Yukina with her spear, the damage would surely rebound upon Yuuma. Yet even with Yuuma moaning in agony before their very eyes, there was simply nothing they could do.
Yuuma pleaded in a feeble voice, “No…Mother… Stop…!”
The woman with eyes of fire simply gazed upon her with a cruel smile.
“I am taking back the power I lent to you…daughter.”
Aya Tokoyogi raised her left hand. That instant, an ear-splitting sound like that of a tree being snapped echoed around them; as Yuuma bent backward, something was torn right out of her—
“Noooooooooooooooooooo!”
The magical energy that flowed from her severed spiritual pathways gushed out like fresh blood.
The blue armor of Yuuma’s guardian was now completely dyed in black.
The faceless knight roared like a beast released from its chain. Its form wavered like a mirage as it moved behind Aya Tokoyogi. She had completely stolen Yuuma’s Guardian from her.
“Yuuma!” Kojou cried.
Yuuma’s body rolled across the ground, discarded like a broken doll. When Kojou picked up her fallen, limp form, his breath caught in shock. She might have been barely breathing, but Yuuma’s open eyes were completely unfocused. The way she quivered like a frightened, powerless child was completely unlike the Yuuma that Kojou knew.
Yukina raised her spear in visible anger.
“How…could you…!”
Its silver tip was pointed straight at Aya Tokoyogi, who was calmly looking down at them from her position atop the prison gate.
To a witch like Yuuma, a Guardian was no mere familiar or weapon; it was what a devil granted in exchange for the soul. In exchange for abandoning one’s humanity, it became a part of one’s own flesh and blood.
And yet, Aya Tokoyogi had stolen even this from Yuuma. She apparently held not even a single shred of affection for her own daughter, whom she regarded as nothing more than a tool for her own escape.
The fire-eyed woman had what seemed to be serious doubt upon her face.
“Fourth Primogenitor, Sword Shaman of the Lion King Agency…of what do you take offense? That girl is a doll of my own…creation. Am I not free to make use of her as I please?”
Kojou clenched his teeth and seethed behind them, seized by anger that made it seem like every drop of blood in his body was flowing backward. He seemed to burn with an incredible surge of demonic energy that accompanied the hostility emanating from within him.