Heart Devil [OP Yandere Schizo Ramble LitRPG XD]

Cashmere and the Fate Devil slipped into a hidden service corridor, a passage most blueprints pretended didn't exist. The air was cool and still, the singular sound of footfalls was the only noise making low echoes throughout the silent path.

A hundred paces in, Cashmere's pulse finally slowed enough for his curiosity to shine through the dark hall. "Businessman," he asked the devil ahead of him, "how long has this tunnel been under the temple?"

The devil's chuckle bounced off the stone. "You can call me Venture. Venture 66th Avaritia." He glanced back with an easy grin that didn't match the cataclysm happening above. "Ven for short, fellow debtor."

Cashmere filed the name. The devil was… odd. Fate devils tended to split into two families: those crushed flat by what they'd seen, and those emboldened by the certainty of what they knew. Ven wore the second like a finely tailored suit.

His appearance however…

He looked like every alleyway charlatan he'd ever had the displeasure of dealing with, lean and wirey, a scarf dangling from his neck, bangles stacked up his forearms, too many rings on his fingers, and a gold tooth shone when he grinned. He smelled faintly of candle smoke and harsh polish typically used on counterfeit medallions. The blue vest he wore was patched, and his boots were the kind people wore that were prepped to retreat after a scam. His eyes however, bright and ledger-sharp, were the only thing about him that felt honest.

"Pleasure, Seer Ven." Cashmere said, professional and measured.

"The tunnel?" Ven continued, hand skimming the rough walls as if greeting an old friend. "Laid when the first cornerstone was set. Discreet access for shareholders to consult with our department without alerting lower investors or enemies." He paused, then added offhandedly, "Even Father god himself used it. Quite regularly. Came down for investment advice between temple sermons."

Cashmere blinked in surprise. He had expected secrets, but he hadn't expected… that. "So the upper echelon weren't just closing deals on salesman charm and ledger tricks," he muttered, more to himself than to Ven. "They were… hedging with fate."

Ven's grin widened, sympathetic and infuriated all at once. "The market always rewards those who diversify."

"And now?"

"And now all the Fate devils they conveniently 'retained' are now dead or escaped." He patted his own chest. "Present company included."

They walked in silence for a while, the idea that he had bled for quotas while someone above him quietly peeked at tomorrow's prices, insider trading. It crawled under Cashmere's skin like ants.

Ven must have read that on his face, or already seen it five hours ago. He clapped Cashmere on the shoulder. "Don't be so sour over it. You were never getting a seat in that room. You've been targeted too long."

"Targeted?" The word landed like a ledger stamp. "By whom?"

They reached a rusted ladder and climbed. Ven's answer floated up the shaft. "Different hands at different seasons. Some inside, some out. All profitable. Damn people really don't like you."

The hatch gave way into a cramped storeroom smelling of oil and coin wax. A minute later, they stepped into light, the sky colored with gray smoke and swirling sand. From here, next to Greed's palace, the city looked wrong in every direction. Where the Grand Temple stood there was now a perfect black sphere, smooth as obsidian and pulsing faintly; Avaritia's [Deep Pocket] sealed around a battlefield they couldn't afford to watch. Outside its perimeter, mountain-sized teeth chewed at dented golden walls. The only sound nearby was the distant grind of fangs on metal.

Cashmere turned back to Ven. "Targeted by who, specifically?"

Ven didn't answer.

He folded like a lawn chair instead, one hand clawing the air, the other clutching his stomach. A wet heave ripped out of him, his dinner from the night before meeting the ground. He collapsed to his knees, then to his hands, shaking like a leaf.

"Ven!" Cashmere crossed the two steps between them and dropped, catching the devil's shoulder as his body seized. "What is it?"

Incoherent words spilled from the fate devil's mouth, sentences broken by violent tremors. "N-not supposed…urk…checkpoint…path break. Path break…push should have-"

"Look at me." Cashmere's voice cut steady through the babbling. "Venture. Focus."

For a moment, the devil's gaze cleared. He looked up, eyes wide and horrified. His voice dropped to a whisper that somehow felt louder than a shout.

"We're still on the same path. We're still on the same path. We're still on the same path…"

He said it again and again. Each repetition sounded like a verdict being stamped on a form that refused to tear.

Then he went limp.

Cashmere held him there, checking the drum of the devil's heart as it continued its work. He exhaled in exhaustion, and hauled Ven up and over his shoulder in a practiced deadlift. Debtor or not, he wasn't leaving a fate devil on the floor for scavengers to capitalize on.

The streets were eerie with their absence. Shutters lowered, curtains closed. The only motion was the rolling shadow of the black sphere cast and the subtle drift of ash mixed with sand. Every few blocks a tremor ran underfoot, a reminder and warning.

Ven stirred once against his back, letting out a feverish mumble. "G-go… tower…"

"Which tower?" Cashmere muttered, ducking into an alley. "We own nine."

Venture didn't answer. He just continued to jolt from the backlash. Fate had rules. A clean break or a smooth path, anything else collected with interest.

He cut through a narrow way and followed the tight lanes to a small back exit gate of Greed's territory. The gilding on it was scuffed and rusted from disuse, but the wards still hummed under the surface, loyal and tired.

Then, someone spoke his name.

"Cashmere."

He spun to the whisper, already reaching for a hidden coin at his cuff. The mana sparked as a shimmer in the air condensed into a woman, black hair cascading down, the black cloak swallowing color around her. The invisibility spell peeled away from her shoulders and down her form as she looked to Cashmere with urgent confusion.

Abigail.

He exhaled through his nose, not quite relief, but not quite annoyance. "Oh," he said, letting his hand fall and the mana die. "That tower…"

~~~

Gold dust hung in the air through the vault light when the fighting finally stopped.

Across from Avaritia, Gula's avatar stood skewered on a disk the size of a carriage wheel. A perfect, gleaming coin driven through her midsection and half-burying her in a dune of sand. From the cut at her waist down, her body had already become sand; above, her shoulders and head melted grain by grain, the black particles paling to tan as it fell.

Avaritia didn't look much better. Whole beast sized bites were missing from his arms and side, the edges of the wounds rimmed in a hungry violet chi that tried to eat him further. No stream of coins spilled from his suit anymore. He was empty enough that the vault itself felt the sting.

In his hand, he held a slick, fist-sized globe the color of bad omens and vicious fates, Gula's buried curse core, the Wither-curse seed Dollar had dragged from the ground and pressed into his palm with a shaking "Father". The thing pulsed weakly, the black aura grabbing the air for purchase and finding none beneath his grip.

Behind him, Dollar stood with one hand placed on Avaritia's back, his face was drained and his lips pale. Sheets of notes, vouchers, and receipts whirled around the broader field in a controlled storm, each page a promise that re-routed value, Dollar's special ability. Light ran from his core down his arm and into Avaritia in a thin, steady pour. The wounds on the Wealth Devil's body repaired a fraction, then a fraction more.

Gula watched it with a lazy, spiteful sort of delight. "Kakaka!" she cackled, her voice grating as sand drifted from her throat. Her golden eyes slid past Avaritia to Dollar. "You baked a useful one on this side…"

She grinned through the cracking of her cheeks. "But do you think it will matter when the gates open?"

Her laugh turned softer, almost fond. The papers sweeping the field answered her for Avaritia, each page that passed over the black liquid mixed with the grains, made the sand turn ordinary, its corruption stripped and fed elsewhere. The Essence of Desire that had been seeping upward to stabilize her avatar cut off by the area of effect. The grains falling from her hips went tan on contact.

Avaritia's eyes turned cold. "Do you think you get a second chance after today?" he asked, voice low and lethal. "After the earnings you cost me?"

He straightened up, swiped two fingers to set his tie flat against his chest, grooming his image as his face hardened. "You'll pay this debt," he said. "With interest. Great Interest."

"Father…" Dollar rasped, the pages around the battlefield flickering. "We're… reaching the credit limit."

"I know." Avaritia didn't turn. He rolled the curse-core in his palm. "It's fine now. She's out of Essence. She'll disappear. We'll assess damages after."

Gula's smile widened at his reassurance, as if he'd just told a joke she liked. "What a wonderful little business family you've got now," she murmured. "You finally learned to take care of things."

Her gaze sharpened and locked to his. "Until next time, Profit. Keep the feast warm for me and Hans. Kakaka!"

Her head came apart in a dry cascade. Her shoulders and arms reducing to dunes. The coin held a heartbeat longer, then the last of her slid off it and was gone, now just a harmless castle of sand.

Dollar sagged like a wet blanket and collapsed to his knees, breathing hard. The circle of paper scattering and disappearing. "We… did it," he said up at Avaritia, a breathless laugh cutting through his words. "Minimized losses… on tax day too."

Avaritia didn't smile at that. He let himself breathe once, deep and deliberate, as the trickle of wealth essence from Dollar's hand stitched his flesh over the worst of the glutton tipped bites.

With his other hand, he squeezed the curse-core; cracking it like cheap glass. It bled the shadow-like aura then dissolved into motes of light. He ground the dust into a coin and flicked it into a river of gold nearby where it vanished with a final hiss.

"[Deep Pocket]." he said, and the vault obeyed.

The horizon folded. The golden mountains blurred and the vault reopened like a register and rang when it shut behind them. The ruined Grand Temple and his remaining shareholders snapped back into Neel, right where the black sphere had hung. The gold barrier and mountain of teeth already gone.

Avaritia drew in a second breath… and frowned.

Something in the weave of his jurisdiction felt… light. Not bled, paid, or spent.

Missing.

His brow furrowed, slowly morphing into a scowl. He stamped his heel down hard.

The ground, a flawless slab of minted perfection, spider webbed into long, clean cracks from the force.

Dollar flinched at the action. "Father?" he asked, startled. "What's wrong?"

Avaritia turned his head just enough that Dollar saw how empty his eyes had gotten. "Someone," he said, each syllable precisely invoiced, "cut a hole in my pocket."

Dollar blinked at the words. "In… the vault?" His mind went through the list of assets, cores, caches-

"They've taken something dangerous." Avaritia finished, voice going grim.

Dollar's stomach dropped as understanding chased the words. This wasn't the vault they'd just left, nothing 'dangerous' sat there. This was… the other one. The first [Deep Pocket], the one he couldn't recall to Neel, the one anchored deep in Hellnia, housing the inconvenient guest.

The Wealth Devil adjusted his tie again, a small ritual during his widening fury. Somewhere far away, but not far enough, a golden pendant glinted where it should not have, and the balance sheet of a plane shifted by a fraction that would matter later.

"Find the leak," Avaritia said, his voice flat, suppressing his anger. "And bring me the bill."

The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

~~~

The procession reached the mouth of the valley just as the last light slipped from the rim of the plane, and the mist woke up to greet its mistress.

Ragescar had been a wound once: burnt stone, thorn-snag ridges, a cleft carved by something that behaved like anger. Now the valley breathed with a different kind of life. Dark gray dream-mist pooled along the basin and lifted in rolling veils, drawing back in elegant swaths to let Hannya's royal sedan pass. Sigils stitched into the stone ridges and inlaid along the cliffs pulsed faintly, lines of black and pink answering the markers threaded through the acolytes' sleeves. Where the script recognized the procession's steps, the mist softened, parted, and fell behind them like a curtain returning to its rails.

To most outsiders, the mist was a hostile theater. The first minute, vague phantoms at the periphery; five minutes, voices on the edge of familiarity; ten, the certainty your own hands meant you harm. With the right word, it could seize the spine and make it forget how to command the legs. Hannya's sigils were patient, not dramatic, and terribly efficient. Intruders became audiences to their own private opera and execution.

Inside the perimeter, everything contradicted the dread. Lantern trees lined the main avenue. Tall, black-barked trunks cradling globes of soft pinkish white fire. Terraced gardens climbed the valley walls in geometric mosaics. Smoothened earth, silver-veined stone paths, pools like cut obsidian with lilies white as teeth drifting within. Houses wore dark wood and pale paper screens, curved roofs trimmed in black lacquer finish. In the exact center rose the new temple, all matte black surfaces and soft angles, its supports steep, its doors tall and bare of any ornament save a single, austere sigil over its center.

The sedan swayed on broad shoulders. The acolytes moved in the unison of the devout and the well-trained. The carrier squad cut through the mist like a knife. Behind them walked the inner attendants, the two commanders, and then the guards.

Shela and Rose kept to the right side of the palanquin. Shela's eyes slid again and again toward the figure inside, her silhouette straight-backed beneath the canopy, veiled, hands folded neat in her lap, sleeves drawn to their proper places instead of low and revealing. No blood, no angry posture, no giddy glow either. Just… sealed. Rose didn't look; she kept her gaze forward, a hand lightly touching the hilt at her hip the way a musician rests fingers on strings between songs.

Hannya had said exactly nine words since leaving the abyss, and none of them were about victory.

"We are heading back." she had said, her voice flat enough to be a decision carved into any acolyte's soul.

Rose had tried as they crossed the ward-lines, soft and practiced. "Did you get what you needed, My Lady?"

A pause long enough to register as a no, even before the reply came.

"Yes and No." Hannya had said, and dropped the topic into a pit where topics went to die.

Now the mist rolled back from the long, low pavilion that fronted the temple. Its black pillars wore ring-sigils at their bases and the shafts were scribed with red script that only glowed if you angered it. The palanquin eased into the shade. Acolytes knelt with a reverence they hadn't had before the pilgrimage; the sedan's frame dipped as a result and the curtain stirred.

Hannya stood and stepped down without a hand offered or taken. Veiled, composed, her kimono wound and tied properly again; her collar back up to her throat. She looked like a portrait of perfect propriety and zero mystery. She looked at the courtyard, at the temple doors, at the shallow reflecting pool to her left where lilies turned in the mist light. She did not look at Shela or Rose at first.

"Leave me." she said, and her voice was still cold as ice.

The acolytes bowed and vanished to their posts. The guards rotated to the outer line. Shela and Rose remained where they were.

Hannya's head turned. "You two," she added. "Double the drills. Warriors and casters both." Her hand flicked toward the practice fields on the south terrace. "Rotate in the trainees that passed assessment last week. No leniency."

Rose bowed before the sentence finished. "Understood."

Shela nodded, "Yes, Han-" and stopped at Hannya's slight tilt of the head. "-My Lady…"

Hannya took one step toward the pavilion. Then she stopped and turned fully, veil lifting a fraction as she regarded them. "One more thing," she said, as if it were trivial. "In one year… we'll need to be prepared for war."

Shela's eyes widened a fraction, heartbeat hammering once in her throat.

Warlord?

The word arrived the instant Hannya's words landed. Not just a faction head at the council now. She was a devil now seeking greater dominion already. Where did this come from?

For a half-moment, Shela felt Salitha's name knock against her mind, begging to be said. 'Salitha will say-' or 'Salitha would want-' but Shela clamped the thought down for now. Hannya's eyes were on her. Those eyes did not tolerate the second-guessing of loyalty in the middle of a command, not today.

Rose didn't flinch. She bowed deeper until her veil almost brushed the ground. "It will be done." she said. Not a single waver, Not a thought of a question. Her loyalty was a sharp edge, not a swaying drape.

Hannya's chin lowered a degree in acceptance. "Good."

She crossed the threshold of the pavilion and went inside.

The door slid shut behind her and the sound of it closing felt like a held breath finally let go. Shela exhaled. Rose's hands flexed once.

"Well, she's… back," Shela murmured, as if to convince the mist around them. "At least we're back here for now." She didn't like the number of events rapidly happening while standing outside the loop, part of her decision to leave the love faction was because of that.

"And working," Rose said. "A Queen should be working diligently. It seems a Dominator is needed for her future plans this time around." Her voice carrying the submission of a being led by pure faith and confidence alone.

Shela glanced at Rose but said nothing. Her zealotry was doing nothing to quell shela's nerves. A secret mission, the six star reveal, and the banners of war being raised. She shook her head, emptying her mind and pinning the issues for another time. She would consult Salitha later.

They turned and began issuing orders. The courtyard filled with motion. Runners dispatched, bells chimed once for gathering, the training grounds up the terrace lit with low lanterns as night drills etched themselves into the small city's new rhythm.

Inside, Hannya walked through the serene geometry of her quarters, a low table with a tea set unused, a stack of scripts on a stand, a cushion, a red couch. The room's wood was black; the mats a pale charcoal; the side screens a devilish pink. She could taste the quiet; it currently tasted like the thin layer of frost on a brittle spine.

She reached the inner room and stopped.

A shamisen purred a sad, mischievous melody near the window. The cork of a bottle popped at an angle that sounded practiced and celebratory.

Noh sat seiza on a cushion, her face painted and shut eyes, slender fingers walking the shamisen strings with the kind of grace that could be kind or cruel at any moment. Baku sprawled like a small mountain of boredom on the long couch, his bulk claiming two-thirds of it by nature and intent. He wore travel leathers wrong, a sash too loose, and the contented face of a man who had hunted, eaten, and then remembered he had manners afterward.

"Welcome back, Meiko." Noh said with a humble smile, ignoring the question yet to be asked.

Baku didn't even pretend to be subtle. He lifted his head eagerly, grinning as he peered past Hannya's shoulder as if there might be a ghost there, and frowned when the air disappointed him. "Hm? You back alone?"

Hannya's expression didn't change. But a small, precise darkness passed over it.

Noh's fan snapped open.

Whack

It kissed Baku's arm with soft reprimand. "We weren't expecting anyone else," she lied smoothly, meaningfully to baku, eyes still closed and smile almost audible in the string-stroke. "Just you."

"Yeah," Baku coughed, recovering with the finesse of a boulder learning ballet. He sat up enough to look around and gesture grandly at pillars and rafters. "No other reason. Dread Valley, huh? Nice name. Has a good ring."

Hannya rolled her eyes, the veil making it somehow dignified. "Later," she said. "Not now. I'm tired."

Devils her age didn't tire, not without an empty core. What she meant was: I will not perform for you tonight.

Noh and Baku heard it in her voice and took the hint. Noh slid the shamisen into its case with a soft click; Baku swung a leg down and found the floor. They decided to look around the city a bit more.

"Sure you take a rest, we'll go eat at that restaurant you built for your little chef." They nodded and headed to the door.

At the door, Baku paused, scratched the back of his neck like he was trying to sand down a jagged stone, and kept his gaze a degree to the left of her face. "Listen, kid," he said, and the word kid only sounded insulting to people who didn't know what it meant in a bumpkin's mouth like his. "Since the temple is done, you aren't banned from the mountain anymore."

It came out offhand. It wasn't. They had asked her not to return until her territory was finished, but in truth, they had enough pieces to suspect her current goal. To them, it was practically an open secret now. So, they thought it better for a Luxuria, especially an aggressive one like her, to house her dungeon-...pavilion elsewhere.

At least for a while, until they got all the information they needed from their 'guests' locked below the mountain.

"There's still some training left we gotta do," he added, gruff but strangely soft. "And the fissure… right, when the haze thins. It needs clearing. So…"

Noh's smile tilted in approval at his attempt at gentleness.

Hannya's snort was half laugh, half exhale. Something in her loosened by a fraction, a stitch taken out with care. "It's fine," she said. "I have a few things to do first. But I'll visit the mountain soon."

Noh and Baku traded a look of agreement, then acceptance. "We'll be around," Noh said, opening the door. "Congratulations on the territory."

Baku lifted the bottle in salute like he meant it, then set it down with a restraint that surprised the trembling bottle. With that, they left, closing the door.

Hannya stood there and took a long breath and let the quiet press down on her shoulders. Then she moved, sighing long and low, as if there were a whole city in her ribs and it needed the space more than she did.

She thought of the abyss whether she wanted to or not. The darkness. The shackles. His eyes like ringed instruments measuring the world around them.

"He's still in there…" she muttered, and the phrase wasn't loud. But it was the truth she held onto, pulled tight enough to fly away the second her certainty loosened.

She crossed to the mirror standing near the dressing stand. The room's light took its time deciding which angle of her it favored. She removed the sash of the kimono with a clean motion, let the robe slide down to her hips, and turned to look over her shoulder.

Her back, pale under the vibrant pink hair. The circle where her six black stars had been was empty in five slots. Only one remained, no, half now, dark and bright, the sixth bullet in the chamber.

"More like a blank." She said.

She frowned. Devil blood had a language, it swayed and spoke to her. It muttered that the missing stars weren't wasted, just spent in a place she couldn't reach with hands yet. The memory around the abyss had the texture of a dream at points. Hazy at the edges, details bright in patches but untrustworthy where certain scenes mattered most. She could smell the scheme but didn't get the trick.

And the scheme laughed at her at the corner of her vision.

The Quantifier, the panel hidden behind her eyes, sat with a darkened tile on its grid, standing in the first slot of her skill list.

…[Blocked by Auditor](Sealed)...

Not greyed from lack of requirement, but caged, sealed. Like a wild animal double-bound and blinded for its previous trouble. She tried to access the details on the way back, and the system offered a polite refusal and nothing else.

"Fine." she told it. The panel ignored her and blinked itself away.

She would deal with the stars later.

She tugged the kimono up again, tied it, and dropped on the edge of the bed. She buried her face in her hands and let the groan come from somewhere honest.

"I fucking choked..."

There it was. An honest assessment. Not theatrics. Not martyrdom.

She had swaggered into the abyss with a script. The heavy, lofty entrance. The saving act. The head held high like a beacon. The hand outstretched in salvation. She had rehearsed telling him the name she would give him and watched the imagined gratitude soften the corners of his mouth. She had practiced it all…

Then she heard the name, had seen the pendant, gotten triggered and let her emotions get the better of her. She had drawn steel because she was afraid. She had treated him like a man already stolen instead of the one she had come to untie. She had let the worst version of herself, the jealous, righteous, possessive side have the microphone at such a delicate time.

It was obvious he now thought she was too unhinged to rely on. Men needed that reassurance of safety and trust first and foremost. And she had botched it, nearly scaring him to death deep down. She was sure.

It was easier to fight an entire plane than to apologize correctly. She hated that about herself… and grinned at it too. Hell, she was a devil. What else had she expected?

The grin faded. The thought she'd snapped off earlier flickered again.

The pendant. Piety's blessing, and her failsafe. Made from Meddler metals and given to her god like a virgin's promise ring. She clenched her fists.

"She dares corrupt his purity…" her eyes darkened and spun.

The story she carried told her a version of events where he was found later in a dungeon, his soul fractured, and body breathing because the universe hadn't decided what to do with a will like his. She had always chalked that fracture up to the cruelty of the prison, the torture,the mutilation, the experiments later. But now, the chain of things clicked in a way that rang perfectly in her mind.

"Someone tried to take it off him," she said aloud to the quiet, as if the room needed to know. "And the Order inside it took offense."

If the angel's gift was a leash, it was the kind with a blade built around the collar. You didn't remove it, you negotiated with it. If you were stupid, it killed the dog and then asked the corpse to sit after.

And the worse part was, the blessing had been attached centuries ago, by a 7-ring Angel no less. At this point, Vainglory was the only one that could remove it. Any outside interference she knew of would only trigger the damned item.

Hannya threw herself back on the bed and covered her eyes with one forearm. The other hand found her stomach and pressed there, where something ugly and pleased had coiled when she'd seen the pendant. Her mouth made a shape between a snarl and a laugh.

"Lofty hero approach: botched," she said to the ceiling. "Fine."

She stared at the thin crack in the wood of the far beam that no one but her would ever notice. The calm came on like a tide deciding how much land to take. When it reached her eyes, it changed how they reflected the room.

"Then we try the misunderstood villain," she whispered, and the word didn't feel like surrender. It felt like choosing a different knife in the drawer.

The plan unfolded like a fan. It was ugly, tender and practical all in one. Become a warlord. Not a banner-under in the council, not a client, not a patient petitioner, fuck all that. A center of gravity you couldn't move without moving the map. Make Neel say her name when they meant trouble. Hurt the right places to make the right men gather their courage and their armies and come. Carve a path to the Spire with their outrage. Take the heart back. Show him how the world demanded a man like him. Crush the core if she had to in the end, force the platforms to look at each other and ask if they were ready for someone new to set terms.

And at the line where his blessing fought her curse, keep pushing. Push with threat, with kindness, with craftyness, with intimacy when he let her, with absence when he refused, with spectacle when he needed story, with silence when he needed shame. Keep pushing until the blessing of Piety found itself outside his sacred house.

He would wake. He would remember what he was, who he was, not what a hallowed voice brainwashed him into thinking these past 600 years.

"He's still in there, though." she said, and her own voice was a comfort to her dark thoughts.

She sat up and waved her hand. Her spatial ring returned a sheath, it slid into her hand, the black so deep it almost swallowed the room. She drew the blade half an inch and let the light find the edge. Vanity caught the glow and gave nothing back, it was not for her so it would stay silent for now. She set the flat against her forearm. Cool, hungry, familiar in a way that had nothing to do with memory and everything to do with intention.

"Don't worry, my darling," she murmured to a man who was not in the room. "I'll bring out the best in you."

The mirror watched her, the sword and the blood red petals in her eyes. The petals turned slowly once, twice, then sped a fraction and took on a deeper hue.

Hannya laid Vanity across her knees and smiled up at the ceiling.

"One year," she told the wood, the mist, the people who would soon call her enemy, the man who didn't know he was the anchor of it all, and the angel with perfect posture who would soon lose her spine. "Train, fortify, build a story so loud even the platforms hear it."

She closed her eyes and let the picture of him settle in behind them. The one where his mouth didn't curl in tolerance but in hunger. The one where the ringed eyes measured not whether to hurt her or spare her but whether to help her. The one where the pendant lay on a table between them, meaning nothing. She let the picture sharpen until the ache made it almost too much to bear.

Then she laughed, soft and indecent.

"Kikiki," she breathed. "He's still in there."

Her eyes opened, the red in them was not temper. It was focus.

"I can fix him," she said, and to the room it might have sounded like madness, but in her mouth it was simply logistics. "My perfect man. I just need to love him a bit harder next time."

The mist at the rim of the valley thickened; the sigils along the outer wall warmed a shade.

Hannya slid Vanity back into its sheath and placed it beside the bed within reach.

She stood, lifted her veil, let the air hit her face, then lowered it again, hiding the red and containing the smile.

"At the end of the day," she said to the empty room and the listening world, "Love conquers all."