The Price of Sacrifice

Outside, dawn was timidly breaking, bathing the scene in a golden, almost unreal light.

A silhouette, hidden in the shadows, watched them one last time before vanishing with a sigh — like a farewell whispered to the world.

The last candles of Sai no Kawara were flickering out one by one, their smoke carrying the final breaths of wandering souls.

First translucent, then growing steadily more opaque, Lucille finally appeared in the physical world. Her bare feet touched the temple’s old wooden floor with delicate grace. Her eyes, filled with wonder and awe, scanned the space around her.

Kneeling, Isao lifted his burning gaze toward the Victorian mirror. She was there. Her blue dress was torn in places, her hair disheveled, but her face radiated a newfound freedom.

Unsteady, she clung to the frame of the prison that had held her captive for nearly two centuries. Now broken into a constellation of silver cracks, its surface no longer reflected anything but the ordinary room around them.

The world around her had lost its magic. Isao no longer saw the subtle gradients of her skin, the way the light played in her hair, the infinite hues of her irises. He saw a woman — beautiful, yes — but that vision struck him with unexpected violence. He no longer knew how to look at her.

She leaned on Mizuki, who limped beside her, her face etched with exhaustion but lit by profound relief. Lucille approached with hesitant steps, as though relearning how to walk. Her trembling fingers brushed Isao’s face, wiping the blood streaks from his cheeks. Her eyes searched his, worried.

"Thank you, Isao," Lucille whispered, kneeling before him, her voice strangely material after having been nothing more than an echo for so long.

She took his hands in hers and held them tightly. A suspended silence. He nodded, unable to speak, as though language itself had been torn from him along with his vision. A tear — an ordinary one this time — slid down his cheek. She could read him, even without words.

He stood with difficulty, every movement pulling a grimace from him, and made his way to his camera. Despite the ritual’s turmoil, it was still in place, the ground glass half open. By instinct, he wanted to capture the three women in this soft light. He leaned in to peer through the ground glass.

The image forming was blurred. Not the artistic blur he mastered so well, but a dull, soulless haze. A wave of panic surged through him. He adjusted the focus, turning the familiar dial gently. Nothing changed. The outlines remained fuzzy, the details melted into one another.

"No," he murmured. "No, no, no…"

"If you free her, you’ll lose your soul. You’ll be nothing !"

Adrien’s words echoed in his mind with terrifying clarity. It hadn’t been an empty threat. It was the truth of the ritual — the price for Lucille’s freedom.

Isao hastily grabbed his gear to take another photo. He had to check, be sure. With movements he’d repeated a thousand times, he prepared a glass plate, coated it with collodion, sensitized it in the silver nitrate bath. His fingers knew the dance — but his eye…

The exposed and developed plate revealed only a flat image, devoid of contrast or depth. He tried again, once, twice, three times. Each attempt more desperate than the last. By the fourth plate, his hands trembled so much that he spilled the fixer across the temple floor.

The world around him had lost its nuance. Colors had faded, shadows flattened, without depth or mystery. His eye, once attuned to the subtle play between light and matter, had become blind to everyday miracles. Everything was still there, visible — but void of the extra dimension he had always been able to capture.

Isao collapsed, hands clenched on his knees. Silent tears streamed down his cheeks. It wasn’t just a technical skill he had lost — it was a part of his soul. The way he perceived the world, the way he communicated with it. His most intimate language.

He had never photographed to show. He photographed to feel. To reveal that invisible tension between the world and the soul. Today, that thread was severed. He looked without seeing, captured without touching. Like a painter stripped of color, a musician gone deaf.

"I’ve lost everything," he murmured, mesmerized by the failed plates drying in front of him.

Concerned, Mizuki approached her brother, her face weary but relieved.

"Isao ?" she called softly.

He looked up at her with vacant eyes.

"I can’t see anymore. The beauty, the nuances, the light — it’s all… flat. Ordinary."

"The ritual… you knew its price," she whispered, taking his hands gently in hers.

Isao nodded slowly. He had accepted the sacrifice to free her, but he hadn’t grasped the depth of the loss. How could he have imagined this void, this absence now digging a chasm inside him ?

Mizuki picked up one of the photographic plates he had just developed and studied it for a moment. She wished she could tell him she understood, but no words could ease that kind of loss. It wasn’t just a sister witnessing her brother’s suffering — it was an artist recognizing the mourning of a calling.

"It’s not as bad as you think, Isao. Your technique is flawless. Maybe it’s just not as — "

"Extraordinary ?" he cut in bitterly. "No. It’s not extraordinary anymore. It’s just… a flat image. Soulless. Like something anyone could make."

"Isao…"

He stood abruptly, nearly knocking over his camera. Mizuki caught it just in time.

"You don’t understand !" he shouted, his voice cracking on the last word. "I’ve lost what made me special ! What gave my life meaning !"

The silence that followed was broken by the sharp sound of Mizuki’s palm against his cheek. A firm, precise gesture. A thunderclap of tenderness and pain combined. Her eyes glistened, but she didn’t cry.

"What defines you was never just your eye," she said, facing him. "It’s your heart, Isao. Your will to save someone you love."

Shattered, he collapsed again, crumpled on the worn wooden floor of the temple, surrounded by his failed glass plates, his face ravaged by tears. She held him in her arms without a word, rocking him gently as she had when they were children.

"How can I go on ?" he sobbed against her shoulder. "How can I live like this, knowing what I’ve lost ?"

A silent presence made itself known. Lucille stood there, leaning on the old woman’s shoulders, her eyes gleaming with unspilled tears. She slowly stepped forward and knelt beside them.

"Isao," she whispered, placing a trembling hand on his arm.

He lifted devastated eyes to her. Lucille was there — real, alive, breathing the same air as him. Her pale skin had taken on a slight flush, her curls framing her face in soft waves. She was no longer a spectral vision, no longer a reflection in a mirror, but a woman of flesh and blood.

"Forgive me," he murmured. "I did what had to be done, but I can’t help..."

"Regretting it ?" she finished gently.

He turned away, ashamed. How could he admit that part of him regretted his sacrifice ? That he felt mutilated, diminished, incomplete ?

Lucille took his face in her hands, forcing him to look at her.

"You gave me life, Isao. A second chance. A freedom I believed forever lost."

"But at what cost ?" he murmured.

"A price I never would have asked you to pay," she replied, her voice trembling. "But now that you have… let me be your eyes."

She took his hand and placed it against her cheek.

"I promise I will see for both of us. Every ray of light, every shadow’s nuance — I will be your gaze upon the world, just as you were my doorway to freedom."

Isao felt something stir within him. Not his former vision — that was irretrievably gone. But maybe, he thought, feeling the warmth of Lucille’s skin beneath his fingers, maybe a new way of seeing was possible.

He slowly raised his eyes to her. In Lucille’s gaze, he saw reflected a world he could no longer perceive himself. A world of beauty, depth, and light. A world she now promised to share with him.

And for the first time since his awakening, a fleeting peace mingled with his despair. The price had been immense, but perhaps — just perhaps — what he had gained was worth what he had lost.

Lucille was returning to the light, while Isao sank into a dull gray. And yet, he smiled. Because in that sacrifice, there was something right.