The ancient witch turned her hollow, translucent gaze toward the corner of the room, her vaporous fingers trailing through the freezing air as she looked directly at Rein.
"And you," the ghost hissed, her voice dropping into a frequency which made the windowpanes vibrate.
"Why do you walk these grounds without the Death Bringer as a shadow? Why is the weapon absent from your side?"
The question hit Rein like a physical blow, different wave of emotions swarmed her, some of confusion, terrified, and suddenly lucid under the spirit's piercing stare, she could only press her back harder against the wall. Her mind spun in chaotic loops; she had no answer to give, the very title sending a cold wave of dread through her chest.
The ghost's features twisted into a grumpy, impatient scowl at the girl's silence. "A mute vessel," the spirit mocked, turning back to Lira with a sneer.
"Very well. I shall not waste the breath of the abyss. I will place a spell upon this metal ring, forging it into a daylight ring that will shield the fledgling for exactly half a month. But the scales must balance, everything has a price."
The translucent figure leaned down, her face inches from Lira's pale, sweat-drenched forehead. "In return, you will find the dying lamb trapped within the pit. That is the price. If you disagree, or if you fail to meet the ledger, you will lose your vision for half a month—a fair consequence for sprinkling the dirt of your dead blood upon the sanctuary door."
Lira, her physical strength already fainting and her pulse hammering weakly against her ribs, could only nod. "Agreed," she rasped through her fangs.
The ghost let out a maniacal, laugh that shattered the acoustic block devices at the four corners of the room. The sound tore through the plaster, cascading downward through the structural foundations of the building.
Deep within the basement of the female dorms, the old iron water pipes groaned under the supernatural pressure and suddenly burst, spewing scalding steam and rusty water into the dark.
The metal ring in Lira's hand glowed with a blinding, violet brilliance before fading back into its bland, ordinary silver form. With a final, echoing screech, the ghost vanished into the chalk lines, the violent gale dying instantly.
Molly's levitating body dropped toward the ground, hitting the linoleum hard, still completely unconscious under her heavy woolen blanket.
Exhausted to her absolute limit, Rein let go of her power. The heavy pine bed bunks she had been holding suspended in the air crashed down to the floor with a deafening splintering of wood.
Lira collapsed onto her hands and knees, retching violently over the chalk circle; her stomach twisted in dry, painful spasms, but only a hollow cough came out in place of vomit, her face badly drenched in sweat.
"Why..." Lira whispered, her voice cracking as she stared at her trembling palms. "Why did I even attempt to help her?"
Alas, it was her own unyielding curiosity that had driven her to test the runes and trigrams she had studied, and now that curiosity had placed her in a binding, horrific deal with the other world. Before her eyes, the skin on the back of her right hand began to blister and darken.
A stark, black tattoo of a scale materialized into her flesh, containing exactly fifteen neat calibrations with the silhouette of a shallow bowl etched underneath the iron plates.
A cold whisper vibrated in her ear, reminding her of the agreement: "Half a month to find and rescue the lamb."
As the binding mark settled, the psychic feedback rippled outward through the dormitory block. Down the corridor, the deep compulsion Lira had placed over the rest of the cheerleading squad instantly snapped, returning them all to their full free will in a single heartbeat. But that reality didn't even bother Lira at the moment; she was too busy staring at the scales on her skin.
Rein, on the other hand, couldn't stop trembling in the corner. The words "Death Bringer" had completely shattered her composure, making her unable to think straight or even understand the architecture of the nightmare they had just unlocked.
Outside, the chaos in the central plaza had reached a frantic peak. The sudden tremor and the roaring sound of the bursting pipes had sent the crowd into a panic.
Quive Stephenson stood by the yellow tape line, surrounded by shouting journalists and state police officers, his voice loud as he requested the emergency relief service for the state of Ohio, reporting that a localized landslide had likely disrupted the campus grid.
Turning away from the cameras, Quive walked back to his black department vehicle. He reached into the glove compartment and pulled out a heavy, specialized digital pad—a tracking device specifically built to log and analyze the high-frequency signatures of superhumans. His unit was a severe downgrade compared to the original military-grade scanners used to track the Lancelot siblings during the initial border breach, but it was all the precinct had left.
He activated the sweeping array, holding the pad out toward the trembling ridge. The screen blinked twice, running the geometric algorithms through the sector, but the scanner showed absolutely no response.
The supernatural feedback had been completely clouded by the witch's wind.
Quive let out a long breath, sighing as he closed the interface and logged the data, officially deeming the entire disturbance as a natural, geological occurrence.