The Soul’s Radiance

Unsteady, her voice worn from the effort, Mizuki moved on to the Rex Tremendae, her voice rising solemn and vibrant, a spiritual bulwark erected in the heart of the confrontation. Each word echoed through the temple walls, charged with ancient supplication and sacred terror. Her chant, carried through the centuries, seemed to open a breach between two worlds.

In unison, Ume Kagura drew a slow breath and began her own incantation — guttural, nearly whispered — in a forgotten dialect from northern Japan. Her raspy voice slithered beneath Mizuki’s lyrical chant like a root coiling around stone. It wasn’t simply an accompaniment. It was an echo from another time, drawn from the deep memories of the archipelago — summoning the spirits, calling them as witnesses, imploring them to preserve the ritual’s fragile thread.

The two voices didn’t clash. They searched for each other, brushed against each other, responded in turn. One rose to the sky, the other sank into the earth. Together, they wove a mirrored prayer.

A dark mist crept between the old wooden floorboards, slithering like a beast lying in wait.

"YOU THINK YOU CAN STEAL HER FROM ME ?" Adrien bellowed, his voice exploding into the space, omnipresent, as if the temple itself were screaming his rage. "I locked her away out of LOVE. And you... you only want to capture her!"

His words ricocheted through the temple, building into a rising cacophony. Every mirror vibrated with the echo of his fury, distorting the light, warping shapes, as if the ritual itself were buckling beneath Adrien’s wrath.

Isao felt a sharp pain stab through his skull, like shards of glass piercing his eyes. The world around him lost its clarity, the contours blurring, colors bleeding like watercolor in rain.

Adrien let out a scream of pure rage. In the Victorian mirror, a silent but fierce battle seemed to be playing out between Lucille and him, their silhouettes superimposed in a macabre dance.

Each passing second intensified Isao’s pain until it became unbearable. His vision blurred, gradually tinged red. A warm liquid streamed from his eyes — tears of blood.

"Isao," Lucille whispered, her lips forming the words with painful clarity. "You don’t have to... Let me go. I don’t want you to suffer." She reached toward the surface. Her fingers, brushing the invisible boundary, left behind a glowing trail — a scar of light between two worlds.

A laugh rang out — harsh, metallic — a blade scraping glass.

"Look at her, so noble. So ready to sacrifice herself. But you — what do you truly see ? It’s not her you love. It’s her reflection. Your muse. Your frozen fantasy. Without your gaze, she’ll be nothing but a woman... A shadow. Nothing at all."

Isao closed his eyes. A cold question crept into his pain.

What if Adrien was right ?

What if what he loved wasn’t her... but the idea of her ? A figure of light and shadow, framed and unreachable, perfect because she was untouchable.

Isao prepared his sixth plate, then the seventh, exposing them frantically in the growing chaos. Each flash seemed to weaken Adrien momentarily, but he returned stronger each time, more furious, more relentless.

On the eighth exposure, something gave way. A sinister crack echoed. A fissure across Lucille’s prison stretched like a frozen bolt of lightning, forming a complex pattern — a shattered mandala. Each new line seemed to tear further into the veil between worlds.

The cracks now spread across the mirror’s entire surface, forming an ever-denser spiderweb. Through this chaotic lattice, Lucille’s face flickered in and out, like a signal struggling to reach its destination.

A frigid breath suddenly swept through the room, carrying whispers warped by rage.

Frozen in place, Isao thought he saw Lucille’s face dissolve into the mesh of fractures. Was this the end — or the threshold to another world ?

"The prison is breaking!" the shaman cried. "Keep going!"

The mirrors vibrated violently, threatening to shatter at any moment.

Isao felt sweat run down his back. The photographic process demanded complete focus, yet Adrien’s manifestations grew ever more violent, more destabilizing.

Ume quickened her incantations, her frail body shaken by the energy she channeled, her hands tracing complex symbols in the air. A radiant aura suddenly lit up the salt on the floor, drawing geometric shapes that linked each seal to the central circle. Mizuki, on the brink of collapse, clutched the rosary, her lips still shaping the sacred words.

"The balance is broken," the old woman panted between chants. "The passage is opening..."

Mizuki staggered, breathless, black spots dancing before her eyes. Then, on her knees, she gathered her strength and began the Lacrimosa, becoming the spiritual anchor, the boundary between their world and Adrien’s. Her pure voice fought back against Adrien’s increasingly inhuman shrieks. The rosary, clutched in her tense fingers, pulsed with a golden light.

In the mirror, Lucille struggled visibly. She now appeared with disturbing clarity, more present than in any previous photograph. Her hands pressed against the invisible surface separating her from the living world, as if she were trying to break through. She seemed to scream, but no sound reached them.

The itako pressed her hands to the ground, and the salt burst into white flame, tracing a path toward the central mirror. The cracks lit up one by one, forming a network of glowing veins.

Mizuki, blood beading at her lips, began the final verse of the Lacrimosa, her voice nearly breaking from the effort, yet carried by unshakable conviction. All the mirrors trembled violently, cracking under pressure.

And Isao, in a final effort, prepared the ninth plate — the last, the one that would decide everything.

Adrien’s face appeared one final time in the fractured mirror, distorted by a mix of fury and fear.

"If you free her, you’ll lose your soul. You’ll be nothing!" hissed Adrien in a last desperate attempt, ready to leap from the mirror.

Isao hesitated a second. Adrien’s words echoed within him, reviving the doubts planted back in Paris.

"Don’t look at her as an image!" cried Ume, breaking her incantation for a moment. "See her soul!"

Isao closed his eyes, trying to focus on Lucille’s essence. Beyond her beauty, he saw her strength, her resilience after decades of imprisonment. He saw her curiosity, her courage in facing an unknown world. He saw her vulnerability — and her determination.

The old woman, eyes rolled back, body trembling, clapped her hands three times. Each strike rang out with supernatural force.

And suddenly, everything stopped. Silence fell like a veil. Even Adrien froze. Then, in a hoarse voice, the itako shouted:

"Kaihō! Liberation!"

Isao uncovered the photographic plate. The exposure time was critical — too short, and the image would be too faint to serve as a bridge; too long, and Adrien’s energy could corrupt the process.

It all happened in an instant.

The final flash was different — more intense, almost tangible. The light seemed to crystallize around the mirror, forming a blinding cocoon. Adrien’s reflections twisted in silent agony, then shattered into thousands of luminous fragments.

A surge of pure energy swept through the room. Mizuki’s voice was cut off as she was hurled against the wall. Kagura-sama, filled with ancestral force, let out a guttural cry, raising her arms as if to repel an invisible power.

"NO!" Adrien roared, his face contorted in a grimace of fury.

His voice became a bestial roar that made the temple walls tremble.

His silhouette disintegrated into shadow fragments, trying to flee from the mirrors.

A blinding flare erupted from the heart of Lucille’s cracked prison. So intense it felt solid, tangible. So brilliant it seemed to pierce through the very walls of the temple.

The ritual mirrors exploded simultaneously, casting a rain of suspended, crystalline shards, swirling like ephemeral constellations before they dispersed. Each shard reflected a fragment of Lucille, a fragment of Adrien, a fragment of reality itself.

Ume continued her incantation, her ancient words weaving a protective net around the circle.

At the center of the silent storm of suspended mirror fragments, two forces clashed: Isao’s resolve and Adrien’s possessive rage.

Time seemed to freeze. Then, as suddenly as it had come, the light vanished. Silence fell, thick and muffled, broken only by the ragged breaths of the participants.

In that suspended instant, something tore inside him. Isao felt his artistic gaze fade, ripped away in a dull ache. That gift which made him a witness to the invisible world faded slowly — like a vital part of his being slipping away.