The corridor was very long.
Allen was held up by the two women, one on each side, and they walked for a long time. He didn't know how far he'd gone or where he'd ended up. The castle was too big, so big it seemed to have no end. Every few steps there was a window along either side of the corridor, and outside them was always that dark purple sky, as dead as could be. His bare foot had long since gone numb with cold, and stepping on the stone floor was like stepping on a block of ice. His right shoulder was still wrapped in cloth, and every step tugged at it faintly, a dull ache.
He wanted to memorize the way, but there was no hope of it. All the turns looked too alike. The same high walls, the same candle flames, the same black stone pillars carved with the same indecipherable lines. It was like going in circles at the bottom of a well; however he walked, it felt like circling in place. Eventually he simply stopped looking. Looking was no use. He couldn't even picture what the castle looked like.
At last they stopped in front of a very low door.
It was called a door, but it was more like an opening set into the stone wall at the end of the corridor. The door was black, with no carvings and no knocker, only a dark red stone set in its center, like a half-closed eye. Vera reached out and pressed the stone. It lit up for an instant, as if kindled, then slowly dimmed again. The door opened without a sound, as though someone inside had blown a soft breath.
A very cool draft flowed out of the doorway. Not cold, just cool. Like the damp air of a deep well, creeping along the floor toward Allen's feet. He instinctively took a small step back, and Vivian steadied him with a hand on his back.
"Don't be scared," she said quietly.
Allen said nothing. Being scared wouldn't help. Vera had already walked in ahead of them. Allen was helped in after her, and the moment his foot touched the floor, he felt something was off. The floor wasn't the hard stone slabs from before, but something very smooth and very fine, like jade polished for hundreds of years, giving off a very faint cold glow. The room wasn't big, much smaller than his lodging. All four walls were dark. No lamps were lit; the light seeped out of lines in the floor and the corners of the walls, so dim it was just enough to make out shapes. In the middle of the room stood a table. Very long, very narrow, as high as a person's waist. It was black too, its surface bare of any carving, as if it were a single block of stone that had grown up out of the ground.
Allen's feet stopped. He stared at the table, and a layer of cold sweat slowly broke out on the back of his neck. He'd guessed what it was for. Even if they hadn't said anything, he could guess. That stone table looked too much like it. Like a sacrificial altar out of a story, like the cleanest chopping block in a slaughterhouse. He refused to take another step. His legs seemed to have grown into the floor, and no matter how gently Vivian nudged him, he didn't move.
"Allen." Vera turned around up ahead and called him by name. It was the first time she had ever said his name. Her voice was calm, as though calling the name of an acquaintance she hadn't seen in a long time, yet her tone carried a certainty that allowed no argument. "You need to get up there."
Allen shook his head. He shook it very slowly, his teeth chattering. "I won't."
"You agreed," Vera said.
"I didn't agree." Allen's voice suddenly went a little shrill. "From start to finish, not one of you asked whether I was willing or not. That Demon King said I couldn't refuse, so how was I supposed to choose? Does that even count as agreeing?"
"It does," Vera said. She looked at Allen without blinking, as if she meant to see straight through him. "You can choose. If you can walk out of that door right now, we will not follow."
Allen glanced back. The door was still open, the corridor beyond it long and dark, and the wind blowing in from outside made the hem of his robe sway gently. It seemed he really could walk away. Walk back to that room, lie down, close his eyes, and pretend nothing had happened. But he knew that was impossible. And after he left, what then? Would that man let him go? Would those two women really not follow? Or was Vera simply so sure he wouldn't dare run that she could afford to put it so nicely?
His shoulders slumped. Just once, like a bone that had been holding up too long finally snapping. He stood where he was, saying nothing, and didn't move forward again. Vivian gave a soft sigh, slipped her arm through his, and, like leading a child who didn't want to go into the hospital, drew him toward the table little by little.
"It'll be okay," she said as they walked. "Your big sisters will be watching over you. Count a few numbers and you'll be asleep."
"Stop lying to me," Allen said quietly.
Vivian didn't argue. She brought Allen up to the table. Vera held out a hand to him, gesturing for him to climb up. Allen looked at that hand, white and slender, like something carved from jade in the cold light. He closed his eyes, slowly let out a breath, and then, bracing his left hand on the tabletop, eased himself up onto it by himself. The surface was very cold; he could feel it right through his trousers, a chill seeping out of the stone and drilling straight into his bones. He lay down flat and saw that the ceiling above him was carved with those same dimly glowing lines too, circling around and around, like a huge eye.
"Your right shoulder..." Vera said. Allen didn't move. So she bent down herself and unwound the cloth strips from his right shoulder. Her movements were gentle, but Allen still frowned in pain. He turned his head and saw his shoulder exposed from his clothes, the skin beneath it a blackish blue, as if someone had stained it with ink. Vera pressed on it lightly with her fingers a few times, and it hurt so much Allen clenched his back teeth.
"The bone isn't broken. It's just bruising from the dislocation," Vera said, as if explaining to him, or as if talking to herself. Then she straightened and said to Vivian, "Begin."
Vivian nodded. Allen, his head turned to the side, saw her draw something out of her sleeve. It was very thin, like an extremely short hairpin, deep purple all over, with a faint glint of light at its tip. She walked to the right side of the stone slab, rolled up her sleeve, and bared her wrist. Before Allen could understand what she was going to do, he saw her draw the thing across her own wrist.
Very lightly. Like scratching a line on the skin with a fingernail.
But the blood welled up at once. It was very dark, red shading into purple, like a string of beads sliding out from her wrist in the dim light. Allen's heart began to race. He wanted to move, but his body felt as if the stone slab had sucked it down, his upper body terribly heavy. It wasn't magic; it was the table doing it. His back, his waist, his legs, all felt pinned down from below, unable to budge. All he could do was stare wide-eyed as Vivian's blood floated up drop by drop, not falling but following some invisible path, slowly drifting up above her palm and gathering into a small ball. The ball of blood hung there, pulsing faintly, as if alive.
"Don't be scared." Vivian smiled at him. The cut on her wrist had already stopped bleeding, as if it had never been made. Her face was a little paler than before, but her expression was as easygoing as ever, as if she'd just done some trivial little thing.
On the other side, Vera raised her hand too. She used no tool; she simply drew a fingertip across her left palm, as if tearing open an invisible cut. Blood seeped from her palm, also deep red, but colder in color than Vivian's, more as if it had a layer of frost over it. Her blood floated up too, gathering into a single drop that hung in midair beside Vivian's ball of blood. Two beads of blood, one cold and one warm, a little distance apart, trembling faintly, as if testing each other.
Allen opened his mouth, but his throat felt as if someone were choking it. He saw Vera and Vivian step back half a pace at the same time, and between them, the two beads of blood slowly rose, rising until they were above his chest, and stopped. The air began to grow heavy, as if the entire room were contracting toward those two beads of blood. The dark lines on the walls grew brighter and brighter, and the light in the floor came alive, crawling toward the stone slab streak after streak. Allen felt as if he had lain down inside a blood vessel that was waking up, surrounded on all sides by a slow, rhythmic pulse.
He heard the door open again.
It was that man. He had come... There were no footsteps; it was as if he had grown out of the darkness. Allen didn't turn his head, and he didn't need to. He could smell that cold scent: old wood, cold iron, and a faint something he couldn't name, like snow and ash mixed together. The Demon King walked up beside him and looked down at him. The weight of that gaze nearly left Allen unable to breathe.
"Quite obedient," the Demon King said. His voice was very low, as if ground out from deep in his throat. He raised his left hand and drew his index finger through the air, and a drop of blood condensed at his fingertip. That blood was dark purple, deeper than either Vera's or Vivian's, like night ground to powder and kneaded into a single drop. The moment it appeared, every light in the room trembled. Vivian's ball of blood shrank off to one side, and Vera's blood drew back slightly as well, as if making way for something older.
Three drops of blood. Three colors. They touched in midair, soundlessly, and slowly melted into one larger bead of blood that kept changing color. Every time the bead changed color, Allen's heart twitched along with it, as if a thread tied his heart to the thing. He felt his chest growing hotter and hotter, as if something were pushing outward from inside his body.
"You lied to me..." Allen said suddenly. His voice was very faint, as if leaking out between his teeth. He looked at the Demon King, his eyes shot through with red. "You said it wouldn't hurt, but you won't even tell me what I'm going to turn into..."
"I did not lie to you," the Demon King said. He bent down, bringing himself a little closer to Allen, his red pupils startlingly bright in the dim light. "You do not need to know much... You only need to accept... and then become the form you were meant to have."
He straightened up... The bead of blood slowly descended, falling toward Allen's chest.
Allen closed his eyes. In his last moment of awareness, there was only time to do one thing.
In his heart, he called out his own original name... as if afraid that once he woke, he would never be able to remember it again.