That night, Aina’s fever spikes.
Sayuri wakes when the hand resting against her wrist begins to tremble.
The bedside clock reads 2:18 a.m.
Aina lies beneath the blanket with her knees drawn inward.
Sweat has dampened her crimson hair and darkened the collar of her sleep shirt, yet her body shivers as though the frost from the tournament corridor still surrounds her.
“Aina.” Sayuri touches her cheek.
The heat frightens her.
She reaches for the thermometer on the bedside table and takes Aina’s temperature again.
The reading is higher than it was an hour ago.
“Aina, open your eyes.”
Aina does not respond.
Her breathing remains steady, but her eyes move rapidly beneath their lids.
When Sayuri touches the cool cloth to her forehead, Aina turns faintly toward the contact.
She is not unconscious.
She is somewhere Sayuri cannot reach.
Sayuri retrieves her phone and opens the medical article she has already read twice.
It instructs her to remove heavy bedding and excess clothing, keep the room comfortably cool, and avoid ice or anything that could worsen the shivering.
Nothing recommends what Sayuri is considering.
That conclusion comes from the corridor.
Aina’s light awakened when their hands joined.
It moved through both of them.
If the fever is another effect of the Hollow reaching into Aina’s soul, ordinary cooling may not be enough.
Sayuri sets the phone down.
Her hand remains suspended above the first button of Aina’s sleep shirt.
“Aina.”
There is no answer.
Sayuri’s fingers tighten.
“I’m sorry.”
She hesitates once.
Then she moves quickly.
She removes Aina’s damp sleep shirt and drawstring pants, leaving her in her undergarments.
Every phantom scar has darkened beneath her skin.
Faint blue light pulses through them, appearing and disappearing beneath the fever’s heat.
Aina shivers harder.
Sayuri removes her own clothes.
The cool air reaches her skin, but she ignores it.
She lifts the blanket, climbs into the bed, and draws Aina against her.
Aina’s body is painfully hot.
Sayuri closes both arms around her.
One hand settles over the scars along Aina’s right side.
The other holds Aina’s hand against her chest.
“I’m here,” Sayuri whispers.
“Whatever it left inside you, give it to me.”
Aina does not wake.
Sayuri presses her cheek against Aina’s damp hair.
“If I can take any part of it, I will.”
Blue light gathers beneath their joined hands.
It is faint at first.
Then warmth moves into Sayuri’s palm.
Not the ordinary heat of a fever.
Something deeper.
The same energy that crossed between them in the corridor passes beneath her skin and spreads slowly through her arms.
Aina’s trembling begins to ease.
Sayuri holds her more tightly.
She does not release her when the heat becomes uncomfortable.
She does not release her when sweat gathers along her own neck.
She remains around Aina, taking everything their connection allows.
✦ ✦ ✦
Aina stands beneath a white sky.
Towers rise around her, joined by bridges of pale stone and arches carved with constellations.
Blue fire moves above the city without producing smoke.
No wind reaches the streets.
No voices fill them.
A girl waits beneath the nearest archway.
Aina stops walking.
For one disorienting second, she thinks she is looking at herself.
Not exactly.
The girl appears no more than two years older than Aina, but the resemblance reaches beyond age.
The shape of her face.
The set of her mouth.
The way her eyes hold still before deciding what to reveal.
Even the angle of her shoulders feel familiar in a way Aina cannot explain.
Only the colors are wrong.
Her crimson hair falls past her waist.
Blue light rests beneath her skin, tracing lines Aina recognized as earlier forms of her phantom scars.
Aina lifts one hand toward her own face before realizing she has done it.
The girl watches the movement.
The Star of the Sol-Azure.
Her first self.
The thought should feel impossible.
It feels like recognition arriving before memory.
“You found me,” Aina says.
“No.
You remembered where to look.”
The older girl looks toward a tower at the center of the city.
Its upper levels had been broken open.
Darkness moves within the exposed stone.
“The Hollow tried to take these memories.”
“It tried to take the path leading to them.”
“The names.”
“The names are the path.”
Shiori.
Towa.
Setsu.
Chiyo.
Mayumi.
Kana.
Yui.
Mio.
Each life forms one point along a line stretching toward this place.
“Do not let the Hollows remove them,” the girl says.
“Every name carries you closer to the first.”
“Your name?”
“Our names.”
Aina looks toward the central tower.
“What am I supposed to find?”
“The first margin.”
“Where?”
“Beneath the final binding.
Where the Chronicle conceals its beginning.”
The answer creates more questions than it resolves.
Aina takes one step closer.
“What is written there?”
“What they could not allow the Star to remember.”
“Who are they?”
The older girl looks toward the darkness inside the tower.
“Those who opened the door through us.
Those who survived by teaching every world that we opened it willingly.”
The lie inside the Chronicle.
Aina organizes each statement despite the fever pulling at the edges of the fragment.
“The remnants are beneath Tokui’s kyudojo.”
“Yes.”
“What do I do with them?”
“Wake the Mirror first.
It will reveal the true threshold.”
“Saki-kun.”
At the far end of the avenue, the air folds like glass seen through water.
A midnight-black-haired girl stands beyond the distortion.
Her back is turned.
One hand presses against empty space, braced as though keeping an unseen door closed.
Aina recognizes her by the midnight-black hair: the distant girl she saw beyond the archway.
Her face remains hidden.
“The Veil must hold until the Mirror names the threshold,” the first self says.
Aina looks toward the distant girl.
“The Veil?”
“The boundary that hides the door and prevents what waits beyond it from looking back.”
The girl does not turn.
The distortion closes over her, leaving Aina with the unreasonable pain of being watched and abandoned at once.
“The Crest must hold what the Mirror exposes.”
“Ryosuke.”
The girl turns toward her.
“Then the Bow must call the Star forward.”
“Sayuri.”
Blue fire brightens across the sky.
Something passes across the girl’s face.
Small.
Immediate.
Her eyes sharpen as though the name has struck against an older one she almost expected to hear.
The girl’s features soften again.
“You have always known her.”
“What happens after she awakens the light?”
“You close the door.”
“How?”
The city trembles.
A fracture travels through the archway above them.
“Not alone.”
“I know all four of us are required.”
“That is not what I mean.”
Aina keeps her eyes on the older girl.
She approaches and places one hand over Aina’s heart.
“The Star possesses the light.
The Bow gives it form.
Neither can complete the seal while they remain divided from each other.”
Aina remembers Sayuri reaching her inside the frozen corridor.
Their fingers closing.
Blue light passing through both of them until Aina could no longer determine where it began.
“What does the Chronicle mean by becoming one with the Bow?”
The girl’s hand grows warmer.
“You will know when you are whole with her.”
“That is not sufficiently specific.”
A trace of familiarity enters the girl’s face.
Even their impatience is the same.
“The answer cannot be explained before it is understood.”
“That is deliberately unhelpful.”
“It was unhelpful when I was told as well.”
The first distant sound enters the city.
A heartbeat.
Not Aina’s.
Sayuri’s.
The older girl looks beyond Aina toward something the fragment cannot show.
“The Bow is calling you back.”
Aina feels warmth surrounding her body.
Arms holding her.
A hand closed firmly around hers.
“What should I do until I understand?”
The girl begins fading into blue light.
“Find the first margin.” The towers disappear behind her.
“Protect the names.” The white sky dissolves.
“And when the final door opens, do not reach for your light until you are whole with the Bow.”
✦ ✦ ✦
Aina opens her eyes.
The room remains dark.
Her body no longer shakes.
The fever has receded enough for the air against her skin to feel cool rather than painful.
Sayuri sleeps beside her.
One arm remains around Aina’s waist.
The other holds Aina’s hand against her chest.
Their legs are tangled beneath the thin blanket, and neither of them is wearing more than their undergarments.
Under ordinary circumstances, the situation would require several immediate questions.
Aina cannot gather enough strength to ask one.
The open medical article remains visible on Sayuri’s phone.
A damp sleep shirt lies folded near the edge of the bed.
The thermometer rests beside it.
Aina understands enough.
Sayuri’s skin is warm against hers.
Not feverish.
Only warm.
A faint blue line fades beneath their joined hands.
Aina looks at Sayuri’s sleeping face.
Even in sleep, Sayuri holds her as though loosening her arms might allow something to take Aina away.
Aina moves closer by the small amount her strength permits.
Sayuri responds without waking, drawing her securely against her chest.
The questions can wait until morning.
Aina closes her eyes.
This time, no Hollow enters her sleep.
No tower burns.
She dreams of white stone beneath a clear sky and Sayuri’s hand holding hers before an unopened door.