Chapter 24: The Heart in the Deep

The light from the manhole vanishes.

It is not a gradual dimming. It is a sudden, oppressive snuffing, as if a giant velvet cloth is thrown over the world. The darkness that replaces it is absolute, a physical weight that presses against the skin and fills the lungs. It is a primordial blackness, untouched by sun or moon, and it smells of ancient rust, forgotten decay, and something else-something metallic and sour, like old blood.

The raft-our flimsy, desperate island of steel-glides silently on the sluggish, unseen water. The only sound is the rhythmic, hollow drip... drip... drip... of unseen condensation falling from the impossibly high ceiling, each drop echoing like a hammer blow in the suffocating silence.

We are all frozen, statues of tension on this makeshift ferry. I can feel Kizawa's presence at my back, a solid, unwavering warmth that is the only anchor in this void. He is not moving, but his spiritual energy is coiled tight, a pair of blades already drawn in his mind.

Erima is at the front, a shadow against shadows. She is perfectly still, her head tilted, listening to things I cannot. Her bow is in her hand-I know this without seeing-but it is useless here. An arrow needs a target, and this entire world is a target, and none of it.

Yogawa is a knot of pure, vibrating misery. His magical aura, usually a prickly, aggressive heat, is now a flickering, pale blue flame, chilled and defensive. He is the one who senses it first, long before the rest of us.

"It is here," he whispers, and his voice is not his own. It is a dry, cracked thing, stripped of all its usual arrogance.

"What is here?" Hachiro's voice, usually a booming laugh, is a nervous squeak. "I see nothing! I cannot even see my own hand!"

"Fools! Do you think sight matters in the deep?" Yogawa's whisper is sharp, slicing through the dark. "Do not look. Feel."

I close my eyes, which is a useless gesture, as the darkness is just as profound behind my eyelids. I push my senses outward, past the smell of rot and rust, past the chill of the air. I search for the familiar, venomous signature of a demon.

There is nothing.

And then, there is everything.

It is not a signature. It is the page. It is the air we are breathing, the water we are floating on. A vast, sleepy, malevolent presence that does not live in the sewer but is the sewer.

And it has a heartbeat.

Thrum. ... Thrum. ... Thrum.

It is not a sound. It is a vibration. It travels through the water, up through the steel of the raft, into the soles of my feet, and straight into my bones. It is a slow, methodical pulse, like that of a sleeping giant.

"The heart," I breathe, the words stolen by the oppressive dark. "Yogawa... that is the heart you felt."

"It is... massive," Kizawa states. His voice is flat, analytical. It is his combat-focus voice. "Bigger than the shrine. Bigger than the school."

"It is not a creature," Yogawa hisses, and I can hear the frantic scratching of his fingers on the cover of his grimoire, as if he is trying to draw comfort from the leather. "It is a process. A... an 'engine'. It is not a soldier. It is a factory."

The thrum grows louder, closer. The air becomes thick, harder to breathe, saturated with a spiritual poison that makes my skin crawl. It is an aura of pure, unadulterated sloth.

I feel it wash over me-a wave of crushing, debilitating despair. A deep, profound weariness that settles in my very marrow.

What is the point?

The thought appears in my mind, unbidden, whispered in a voice that sounds like my own.

It is so hard. Fighting. Always fighting. Why not... just... rest? The water is so dark. So peaceful. It would be so easy to just... lie down. To let go.

My knees buckle. The red-and-black kimono, my battle-skin, suddenly feels impossibly heavy, like it is woven from lead. My daggers, strapped to my hips, are anchors pulling me down.

"No," I grunt, forcing the word out.

"Mizuki!" Kizawa's voice is a whip-crack. His hand seizes my arm, his fingers digging in painfully, a sharp, grounding shock against the encroaching numbness.

"Stand up! This is not you! It is an attack!"

I look around. Hachiro is sitting, his head in his hands, his broad shoulders slumped in defeat. "I cannot... I cannot hit it," he mutters. "It is too big... We are too small... It does not even matter..."

Erima is leaning on her bow, her breath coming in ragged gasps. "The air... it is poison... Every shot... is useless..."

Only Kizawa and Yogawa seem to be resisting, and they are paying a price. Kizawa is visibly shaking, his face a mask of pale sweat as he pours his own will into acting as a shield for me.

Yogawa is chanting, his words a desperate, sharp staccato that cuts against the slow thrum of the Heart.

"Ignis... mentis... revelare!"

A small, sputtering ball of white-blue fire ignites in his palm. It is not a weapon. It is a light.

And it shows us the truth.

We are no longer in a tunnel. We are in a vast, circular cistern, a cavern of brick and stone so large that the far walls are lost to the shadows. The water here is still, black, and oily.

And in the center... is the Heart.

It is a pulsating, tumorous mountain of pale, grey-white flesh. It is fused with the very architecture of the room-pipes, rebar, and concrete are embedded in its mass, throbbing in time with its slow pulse. It is a grotesque hybrid of biology and industry.

Dozens of smaller, throbbing veins, thick as my body, spread from its base, disappearing into tunnels that line the chamber. It is pumping its filth, its aura, its very essence, into the water, into the ground, poisoning the entire city from below.

This is the source. The real source. The Generals are the muscle, but this is the poison that weakens the prey.

"A Miasma Core," Yogawa pants, the magical light flickering wildly as his concentration wavers under the psychic assault. "Advance-tier. It is... it is birthing the lesser demons... feeding the whole... damn... network..."

It is beautiful, is it not? The voice is in my head again, a thousand whispers coiling around my thoughts. The peace of non-existence. The comfort of giving up. Why... fight? Join us. Sleep.

The thrum intensifies, and the psychic pressure becomes a physical force. It is not an attack. It is an invitation to die.

"Yogawa! Shield us!" Kizawa roars. He shoves me behind him, his twin blades snapping out, though he has nothing to cut. "Hachiro! Erima! On me! We are the wall! Mizuki...!"

He does not need to finish. I know what he means.

I cannot fight this thing. Not with steel. My daggers are useless against a mountain of despair. My fighting style is about precision, speed, and lethality. This... this is a force of nature.

But so am I.

The anger that saved me from the bullies, the rage that burned the Black Fog General, it is not here. This thing does not inspire anger. It inspires nothing.

So I have to find something else.

I close my eyes. I ignore the whispers. I ignore the cold. I ignore the thrum.

I go deep, past the fear, past the exhaustion. I find the tiny, banked ember inside my chest. The spark my grandmother taught me to nurture. The Phoenix-light.

It is not a fire of rage. It is a fire of will. The will to live. The will to stand. The will to protect the idiots on this raft with me.

You want me to sleep? I think at the monstrous, pulsating heart. You first.

"Kizawa!" I yell, my voice clear and sharp, cutting through the miasma. "Get me to its center! Yogawa, light the way! Hachiro! Paddle!"

"Paddle?!" Hachiro blinks, the fog in his mind receding just a fraction at the sheer absurdity of the command.

"Yes, you idiot! With your hands! Your fists! Whatever! Move this raft! Now!"

The command, the sheer energy of it, breaks the spell. Hachiro roars, not in anger, but in defiance, and slams his massive hands into the water, propelling the raft forward with violent, messy strokes.

"You... you are insane!" Yogawa screams, but he is already complying. The ball of fire in his hand brightens, detaches, and floats ahead of us, a guiding star in this personal hell.

"Erima! Watch the water!" Kizawa commands, taking his place at the prow, his blades ready.

The raft surges forward. The thrum becomes a deafening, bone-jarring THROB. The psychic pressure is so intense I can barely breathe.

Sleep... sleep...

"No," I whisper. I draw my daggers. The steel is cold.

I focus the tiny ember inside me. I feed it my will. I pour every ounce of my stubbornness, my memories of my grandparents, my loyalty to Kizawa, into that spark.

The silver in my hair ignites.

It is not the wild, explosive gold of my rage. It is a pure, clean, white light. It flares to life, and the whispers in my head scream.

The light flows from my hair, down my arms, and into the daggers. The metal, cold a second ago, is now blazing hot, glowing with a white-hot, spiritual fire.

"Kizawa! Now!"

We are close. The "flesh" of the Heart is ten feet away, a pale, pulsating cliff face.

"Yogawa! Barrier! Now!" I shout.

"I... I cannot! The pressure... it is too... much!"

"You will!"

With a scream of pure, agonizing effort, Yogawa slams his grimoire. "Aegis... Fortis!"

A translucent, shimmering blue dome snaps into existence around the raft, just as a wave of black, oily water rises from the base of the Heart. The wave crashes against the shield, and the barrier cracks, but it holds.

"It is... breaking!" Yogawa gasps, blood trickling from his nose.

We are close enough.

"Kizawa! Throw me!"

He does not question. He does not hesitate. He sheathes one sword, grabs my waist, and hurls me with all his warrior's strength.

I fly through the air, over the black water, clearing the distance between the raft and the monster. I am a streak of white light and black kimono.

I land hard.

My feet sink into the soft, yielding flesh of the Miasma Core. It is like landing on a waterbed made of cold fat. The psychic assault is deafening, a storm of pure entropy trying to unmake my mind.

YOU. DO. NOT. BELONG.

"Neither... do... you!" I roar.

I raise my glowing daggers high above my head. They are not steel anymore. They are blades of pure, concentrated life.

I plunge them deep into the Heart.

There is no sound.

There is only a flash of brilliant, cleansing, white light that obliterates the darkness, the cistern, the shadows, everything.

It is a silent, holy explosion.

The mountain of flesh shrivels under the assault. It is not burning; it is un-knitting. The unholy magic binding it is dissolving. The pale flesh turns grey, then black, then to ash, which dissolves into the water.

The THROB stutters. Fails. Stops.

The psychic pressure vanishes, sucked out of the world like air from a vacuum.

Silence. True silence.

Then, the world groans.

The Heart is gone, but the infrastructure it was fused with is now unsupported. The cavern begins to collapse.

"MIZUKI!" Kizawa's voice is a lifeline.

The raft is surging toward me, Hachiro paddling like a madman.

"The tunnel! It is... collapsing!" Erima screams, pointing.

The Heart's death has consequences. The water, no longer held back by the creature's mass, is now moving. A powerful current forms, pulling us... somewhere.

"Grab my hand!" Kizawa is there, leaning impossibly far off the raft, his hand outstretched.

I leap from the dissolving remains of the Core, my legs weak, the Phoenix-light fading. My fingers brush his.

He catches my wrist in a grip of iron. He yanks me aboard, and I collapse onto the steel, wet, shaking, and utterly drained.

"Yogawa!" Kizawa barks. "Which way?"

"I do not... I do not know!" the magician wails, looking at the chaos of the collapsing cistern. "The flow... it is just... going!"

A new tunnel, one that was hidden behind the Heart, is now exposed. The water is funneling into it, creating a violent, sucking whirlpool.

"Then we go with it!" Kizawa yells, taking a stand at the prow. "Hachiro, stop paddling! Erima, hold on! Yogawa, shield! Mizuki... rest. Just rest."

The raft hits the current. It spins wildly, like a leaf in a storm drain. We are thrown together in a heap as the raft is sucked, stern-first, into the new, unexplored, and utterly black tunnel.

We are alive. We are victorious.

And we are more lost than we have ever been.