I stood over the guardian's remains, examining the nexus point in its chest. A dense knot of corrupted mana that served as the dungeon's central processing unit. Its brain.
I reached down.
My fingers, coated in grime and black oil, traced over the guardian's chest. It was a construct like the one that had been warped by my memories earlier in the dungeon.
And then I extended my claws from my knuckles. With an unceremonious twist and a yank, I tore the mana core from its chest.
The core in my hand was no bigger than a grapefruit, yet it pulsed with the same oppressive energy as the entire dungeon. The labyrinth, the monsters, the very air around me — all existed to protect this one thing.
I brought it to my lips.
A single sharp bite.
Crunch.
The core shattered in my teeth. The taste was strange — like a ball of nothing — but the energy was… satisfying. It filled the void in my stomach, silencing the gnawing hunger that had been my constant companion since I'd arrived in this world.
[Total Enemies Eliminated: 171]
[Estimated Dungeon Threat Level: D — Elevated to C.]
[Core Absorbed. Mana Regeneration Boost: +240% for 24 hours.]
[Threat to Civilian Population: Neutralized.]
[Achievement Unlocked: One-Woman Army!]
[Points Obtained: 2,987]
And then, nothing.
A hum, a flicker, and the oppressive presence of the dungeon simply vanished.
I could hear voices. Muffled, distant.
Maya. Linda. Althea. Valentina.
They were shouting my name.
"Reimi!"
"She finished already?"
"Reimi, where are you?!"
I didn't answer.
I just started walking.
I pushed past a fallen train car, and I saw them.
They were standing in the middle of the main floor of a ruined open warehouse — a dusty abandoned space lit by the dim light of the setting sun streaming through grimy skylights.
The railyard. It was… normal.
The floating train cars were gone. The veins were gone. The oily copper-smelling fog was gone. The rusted metal was just rusted metal, bathed in the soft orange glow of the setting sun.
It was just a railyard.
I looked down.
I was drenched from head to toe. Black oil. Green ichor. Blue coolant. Flakes of rusted metal. A smear of something that looked vaguely like blood. The remains of the last hour of my life.
I was a walking biohazard.
I looked at my hands. They were stained, the dirt ground into my cuticles and under my nails.
It was a familiar sight. The sight of a job well done.
They hadn't noticed me yet. They were standing around the dark crystal block containing their friend. Their very stupid, very stubborn friend.
Who was, I noted with a grim sense of satisfaction, still frozen.
They were arguing. Linda was scanning the empty space where the dungeon's entrance had been with her Sapphire Lens. Valentina was pacing, arms crossed. Althea had Julian draped over her shoulders, face pale.
And Maya was staring at the place where I was standing.
She saw me. Somehow. Despite my best efforts to blend in with the shadows.
"Reimi!" she shouted, face breaking into a relieved grin. "You did it! You cleared the whole dungeon! You… whoa."
Her grin faded as she got a closer look. Her eyes, wide and full of sparkle and sunshine, took in my appearance.
The grime. The gore. The general sense of having just bathed in the blood of my enemies.
"You're… messy," she said, stating the obvious with her usual cheerful bluntness.
"I got creative," I said, voice flat.
I scowled.
"I don't," I said, clipped and cold.
Valentina stopped bouncing on her heels. Her smile faltered. "What? You don't? What do you mean?"
"Leveling up is just not a thing for me. More importantly —"
I stared at the teenager who had stupidly followed us into the rift. The kid who had been a problem from the moment I'd met him. The liability.
"His dumb ass is going to die if he stays in that magical cryo-sleep I put him in. The Miasma was rotting him from the inside out. My stasis spell is just putting a band-aid on a sucking chest wound. Do the healers in this world know what Entropic Saturation is?"
The words hung in the dusty evening air.
The girls just stared at me. Their faces were a perfect portrait of blank uncomprehending confusion. Like I'd just started speaking fluent Sumerian.
All four of them shook their heads in unison, a sea of glittery hair and bewildered expressions.
"Great. I forgot. This world is sanitized," I sighed, the anger draining out of me, replaced by a cold weary frustration. "So. Brief lesson — it's not a poison or a curse. It's worse. It's reality or unreality deciding you're a mistake and trying to unmake you."
I looked at the purple-tinged crystal block. "He's already dead. He just doesn't know it yet. The damage is done. The best you could have hoped for would have been for him to… dissolve. Quickly. Relatively painlessly. I slowed it down. Which was a mistake. Now he gets to feel it."
Star Topaz gasped, hands flying to her mouth. "Dissolve? Reimi, what are you talking about?! We just need to get him to the clinic! The Association healers can fix anything! They can regrow limbs!"
I shook my head, a bitter humorless laugh escaping my lips. "They can't regrow a soul chart, Topaz. They can't knit reality back together. They don't have the right kind of magic. Nobody in this world does. You think your Association knows about this?"
My words hit her like I'd punched her. Althea staggered back, face turning a sickly shade of green. Linda and Valentina stood frozen, their cheerful matching dresses suddenly feeling like paper-thin costumes in the face of a true monster.
But it was Maya's reaction that shattered the quiet.
"No," she whispered.
The word was so small, so fragile, it was almost lost in the evening breeze. She shook her head, pigtails flying.
"I've seen it a hundred times," I said, flat, devoid of emotion. "I've watched it happen. First the headaches. Then the hallucinations. Then the blue veins, like a river of poison running under his skin. Then he starts seeing things as his eyes turn blue. Hearing things. Then the screaming starts. And then… then he's just gone."
I looked at the block. "He shouldn't have followed us. He chose this."
"SHUT UP!"
The scream tore from Maya's throat, raw and ragged.
"What the hell is wrong with you? You just said he'd be fine in your creepy popsicle box!"
I scowled.
I… knew I was being very unreasonable. This was petty.
I'd been acting like a brat. I was angry, and I was taking it out on them. I'd been angry since I woke up in this world, and I didn't know how to stop.
It wasn't fair to them. But I couldn't stop myself. The words just… came out.
"No, I didn't," I snapped, anger flaring. "I said he'd be stable. There's a difference. Stable means he's not getting any worse. It doesn't mean he's not already a million miles past screwed."
"Then why did you do it?!" she shouted, hands balled into fists at her sides. "Why didn't you just — I don't know, do something else?!"
"Like what?!" I shot back, taking a step toward her. "What was I supposed to do, Star Morganite? Hug him better? Sing him a little song? I'm not you! I don't have a magic wand that shoots rainbows and happy thoughts! My magic is for killing things! That's it! That's all I've ever been good for!"
Her wand, the Star Scepter, clattered to the dusty ground. Her hands flew to her hair, fingers tangling in her pigtails, whole body shaking.
"He's my best friend," she sobbed, voice cracking. "He's been my best friend since we were five years old! He gave me half of his sandwich on the first day of kindergarten because I forgot mine! He taught me how to ride a bike! He —"
She trailed off, breath hitching in a series of ragged painful sobs.
"He's the one person who's always been there," she whispered, barely audible.
"He's the one who knows that I'm scared of the dark, even though I'm a Magical Girl now. He's the one who knows that I hate spiders, even though I can blast them into space. I… I —"
"How can you be so cruel?" Star Topaz whispered, face pale. "She's right. This is… it's beyond cruel. Even for you."
"She needs to hear it," I snarled. "All of you do. This isn't a game. This isn't a cartoon. This is real. And people die. And sometimes, there's nothing you can do about it. Sometimes you just have to watch."
Maya looked at me, eyes wide, face streaked with tears.
"You're wrong," she said, voice shaking with a fury I hadn't seen from her before. "There's always something you can do. There's always hope. That's what it means to be a Magical Girl. That's what it means to be a hero. We don't give up like that."
"'We,' huh? A hero?" I laughed, harsh and bitter. "Honey, I'm not a hero. I'm a weapon. And weapons don't have hope. They just have a trigger."
Maya's sobs stopped. She stared at me, eyes wide, a new dangerous light in them.
She looked… angry.
Star Sapphire narrowed her eyes.
"This is a lesson, isn't it? If so, it's a fucked-up one," Linda said, hands on her hips.
Star Ruby, who had been uncharacteristically silent, finally spoke.
"Okay. Let's say you're right. Let's say he's a goner. Let's say he's a ticking clock of goo," she said, voice tight. "What's the plan? Are you just going to stand there and watch him melt? Or are you going to do something about it?"
I looked at the four of them.
They were a mess. Crying or glaring at me, angry, scared.
But they were looking at me. Waiting for me to guide them. Looking at me like they saw right through me.
And it was just… annoying. They were so fragile, so hopeful, so naive.
They were like a bouquet of freshly picked flowers, and I was a boot stomping through a mud puddle.
"You're pathetic and useless," I said, voice dripping with contempt. "Almost as much as him."
I turned my back.
Star Ruby and Sapphire weren't wrong.
I sighed, but didn't respond. I grumbled, thinking about how much this would cost me.
Then I began to use the mana I'd regained from this trip to start an incantation.
"O timeless being of the Valley. Where the Shadow Lilies bloom. Where the sun never rises, and the moon never sets."
My words were quiet, but they cut through the dusty silence of the railyard, each syllable a drop of ink in a glass of water.
"He of the Silent Steps. The Wanderer. The Keeper of the Lost. The Guardian of the Threshold between what was and what will be."
The light was fading. The orange glow of the sunset was giving way to the deep purple of twilight. The girls were frozen, attention riveted on me.
I wasn't looking at them. I was looking at the sky.
I took a deep breath. The air was cold. It tasted of rust and regret.
"I call upon he who walks in the spaces between worlds. The one who sees the threads that connect all things. The one who weaves the tapestry of fate with hands of starlight and shadow."
I could feel the energy building.
The air around me grew heavy, thick with the smell of old earth, dried herbs, and something else… something ancient.
"Awaken from thy slumber, Majalis of the Valley."
A single black feather materialized in the air in front of me.
It hung there for a moment — a perfect silent silhouette against the darkening sky.
Then it began to unravel.
It didn't fall apart. It… bloomed.
A thousand threads of pure black energy, woven from nothing, erupted from the feather's quill. They shot out in every direction, a dizzying complex web of light and shadow that filled the entire open area we were in.
It was a loom. An abstract one.
And the threads were weaving themselves into a shape.
From the shadows at my feet, it began to rise.
Black roots, thick as my arm, erupted from the cracked concrete, twisting and coiling around each other like the skeletal fingers of a buried giant. They wove together, forming a framework. A foundation.
From the roots, the wood grew. Dark, rich, almost black, polished to a deep lustrous sheen. It was inlaid with intricate silver filigree, the patterns sharp and angular. It was beautiful and terrible.
It rose until it was a full-sized sarcophagus, hovering a few inches off the ground, its surface humming with a quiet oppressive energy. A single silver latch, shaped like a closed eye, held it shut.
The girls stared, their tears momentarily forgotten.
"Isn't that… your magic armory box?" Althea whispered. "It looks… different."
Then the silver eye-latch on the sarcophagus clicked, opening to reveal a fleshy pulsating human eye. It spun around — first staring at me, then at the four teenagers surrounding me.
Then the box opened.
It unfurled, the metal petals of the iris-like mechanism retracting silently into the frame. A soft internal light emanated from within, illuminating the interior. Lined not with cloth but with a deep moss-like substance that pulsed with a gentle green light.
And then a deep baritone voice filled the air.
Ahem… Service has been requested. How may I be of assistance, Master Reimi?
Maya flinched, looking wildly around. "Who — who said that?"
"The box," I said, gesturing with my head. "It talks. Don't get used to it."