The Hearld of a New, Quiet Darkness

 A short time passed as we navigated the melted tunnel. Marissa walked with the confidence of someone who knew these passages, assuring us we were close to rejoining the main path. Xiao Ru found moments of levity even here, making faces at her reflection in the chromatic mirrors and giggling at the distorted images, but I remained on edge, every reflection potentially concealing threats.

Then I saw it—a black kitten… with eyes like two pools of liquid mercury holding a cold, internal shimmer, and fur whose surface was a paradox, possessing a texture that was both infinitely deep and yet offered no purchase to the eye, a blackness that the gaze simply slid off of, finding nothing to hold. The same creature that had guided me through Hong Kong's alleys to that fateful ritual. The pressure in the air had thickened like syrup, and the cat simply stared. Was it real, or merely a reflection of something elsewhere?

I turned to ask Yoko's opinion and found empty space.

Marissa's leer confirmed my growing dread. "It would seem your friend has been taken."

"By what?" My hand found my pistol's grip.

Her smile offered no comfort as she continued forward. I chose to follow the cat instead, which veered right to Marissa’s left in the funhouse maze… Xiao Ru close behind, her hands on my shoulders.

"It seems familiar," she murmured, echoing my own thoughts.

The cat led us deeper through passages carved by flame, its persistent meowing almost conversational. Around a corner, we found ourselves at the heart of everything—the core.

Breathing became a struggle as pressure crushed down like deep ocean depths. The roots spread before us in a web of corrupted energy, and there, crystallized near their base, were Ami, Remi, and Yoko—trapped in amber-like prison pods.

The cat turned to us, meowing frantically, trying to communicate something urgent.

"Ruru, can you—"

"Yes, it would just take a little ki—"

The kick that sent Xiao Ru flying across the cavern came without warning, stealing her breath as she struck the far wall. I looked up to see the source of the attack, and my world shattered.

"Mary."

The name escaped my lips before her fist cracked against my jaw, sending me staggering backward, blood warming my split lip.

"What the hell—"

"Oh, Detective Mei-Ling," Mary said, adjusting her red… blazer with casual precision. It looked identical—had she gone to my office at some point? "You were never meant for this world."

She looked exactly as I remembered—professional attire slightly disheveled, blonde hair perfectly styled despite everything. But her eyes held something cold and alien.

"Mary, what happened? Are you—"

"You were supposed to be our sacrifice, little detective. Your residual ki from that Taoist background was exactly what we needed."

The revelation hit like the first, unmistakable symptom of a fatal disease. "That scene… it was all a trap?"

Her laughter was sharp as breaking glass. "The look on your face! Aren’t you just pathetic. You really thought they captured me!" She gestured to herself with mock pride. "Our organization was mostly male, you see. The journey to this realm would have incinerated them. We needed a female sacrifice coated in lamb's blood. I played my part perfectly."

My legs felt unsteady beneath me.

"The existence of the Makai is well known to the Earth’s governments, from presidents and dictators, to bureaucrats and sleeper agents like moi—this has been centuries in the making little Ling… Xiao Ling… ha… ha… haa…"

For a moment, I thought the pressure had taken hold, and I had emerged into a fantastical dream world. Yet, the bite into my inner cheek did naught to resolve my fears. "Mary," I began. "What are you? How did you…" I looked to Xiao Ru’s crumpled form. Physically, she was anything but weak.

"But something interfered," she continued, ignoring my question, pacing like a lecturer. "The sigil activated prematurely, sending us all here. No matter—I was able to facilitate our dark lord's birth anyway. You delivered everything we needed—negative emotions, spilled blood, sacrifices! You came here to stop armageddon but you accelerated it!”

How strange it was to hear her familiar voice in Cantonese… which I still understood so vividly.

I tackled her, pressing my pistol against her ribs. "It's over, Mary."

"Much too late for that. Nothing can stop it now." Her smile was serene as a saint's. "But you can try. Kill me, free them… if their life remains yet, shatter the roots—if you can pull the trigger."

My hand trembled. The woman I'd worked beside, argued with, secretly resented… how could I end her life, even knowing what she'd become?

"Why?" The word came out as a broken whisper.

"You were simply the right person at the right time. Why darkness? So we may bask in our lord's eternal glory."

Xiao Ru's arrow split Mary's knee before I could react, sending her crumbling like a gunshot through crackers. Another arrow through her other leg left her immobilized on the cavern floor, this time Mary’s shriek echoing loudly all around.

"There has to be a way!" I called out, but Xiao Ru's arrows only chipped at the crystalline prisons—they were too thick, already regenerating.

Something struck me from behind, sending me tumbling into the wall. My ribs screamed in protestation as I looked up to see Marissa standing over us, who had also just sent Xiao Ru flying off in another direction.

"You traitor!"

"I never said our goals completely aligned," she replied with casual indifference. "I want to fight this Marvalyn creature myself—to see who is truly more powerful."

Mary's laughter echoed through the cavern as she produced her own pistol, staggering to stand, aiming it at my prone form. "You fool. This is it, detective. The end of your pathetic story."

I closed my eyes, waiting for the shot that would end everything, wondering if death would finally grant me peace from this nightmare of betrayal.

A struggle, then. Not of grand design, but a desperate, intimate violence. My eyes opened to the phantasm of Ashley, her own shadow elongated into grasping, sentient tendrils that pinned Mary to the mirrored floor. Mary’s weapon clattered away, and a thin, strangled yelp escaped her as Ashley’s hand, wreathed in darkness, closed upon the place where her heart beat. But Marissa’s speed was a thing of impossible physics. A blur of motion, a blow of such force that Ashley did not fly back but simply vanished, as if she had been struck so hard as to be knocked through the very skin of reality. A cold dread washed through me; a fear that she might never return from such a passage.

Staggering to my feet, my own breath a ragged tear in the silence, I saw a new figure stumble from a corridor of reflections. It was Mana, her steps weak, her spiritual pressure a guttering candle flame. Marissa’s amusement was a low, musical thing. "Ho? Still clinging to life, are we?"

Mana’s reply was a strained whisper. "I… will finish these pests and donate their life’s blood to our lordess of the darkness…"

Marissa scoffed, a gesture of aristocratic dismissal. "I suppose vermin are of little consequence." But as Mana approached, a bow of pure energy bloomed in her hands. In a silent, fluid motion, an arrow was loosed. It did not fly so much as it simply arrived, piercing Marissa through the gut and sending her tumbling back. Then the face of the archer dissolved—the illusion melting away to reveal a clone of Ruru, who offered a silly, triumphant expression before dissipating into motes of light.

The real Ruru appeared from the hallway, one arm clutching her ribs, her face pale with pain. "A few broken ribs, I think. Damn." I lunged to her side, and we held each other upright, a brace of mutual ruin.

Xiao Ru spoke, her explanation a breathless, urgent thing. She had sent the clone to Ashley, who had then rushed to our aid; from there, she had cast the illusion glamour of Mana over her own remote creation. From beneath our feet, the cat offered a soft meow.

Then, the very support of the hall began to groan. The light did not flicker; it sickened, pulsing from a lurid glow to a sickly dimness. I looked to our friends—their forms sickly and weakened… dying. The pods were draining their energy. Had I missed my chance? Had I dallied too long, and in my hesitation to kill Mary, doomed us all? A wave of bitter resignation washed over me.

Xiao Ru knelt and proffered a hand to the tiny creature, a stream of ki flowing from her fingertips. The cat’s fur bristled, but the energy seemed insufficient. "Strange," she murmured. "Mei, might you try?"

I raised an eyebrow, my mouth dry. "I have no ki."

"You must," Ruru protested, her voice strained. "Otherwise, why would that woman have required you for her sacrifice?"

My gaze fell to the small creature. I placed a hand upon its back and concentrated, drawing upon a wellspring I did not know I possessed. The world dissolved into a searing, sightless white, then a silent, abyssal black. In that void, I saw the black roots and the great monument at the heart of this realm crack, splinter, and then shatter into dust without a sound.

From the point of my touch, the cat began to glow. There was no explosion I could hear, only a profound, internal bursting of light. Time itself seemed to slow to a crawl, the air thickening into a swirling sea of aether. Where the cat had been, a human form now coalesced, her ears long and vulpine, her black hair spilling over the wavering, ethereal robes of a priestess.

"Lalika!" Ruru cried, her voice stretched thin by the temporal distortion.

"Your sister… is a cat?" I managed.

"No! A hybrid! But…" Ruru’s expression was a mixture of ecstasy and foolishness.

"How did you not mention such when the doppelganger—"

"I forgot… I was so caught up in seeing her again…" She began to move in that strange, dreamlike slow motion, reaching for her sister. My Ruru could sometimes, truly, be the fool of fools…

Lalika returned the embrace. I saw her clearly now—the purple, hakama-like trousers of a miko, the startling green of her eyes. She spoke, her voice calm and clear despite the chaos. "The creature, Marvalyn, has been released. We may yet be doomed. This mirror world contracts; it will implode upon itself, the full force of an infinite space, before bursting forth in a new genesis."

"What can we do?" I asked, my own words thick as tar.

"There is no time to escape," Lalika said, her gaze sweeping over us. "The ki you both gave me was only enough to shield us from the revival. Marvalyn has been in the temple, here, this entire time."

Time, which had held its breath, exhaled in a sudden, brutal rush.