Those Who Would Cheat Death

Chapter 8: Stagnation


Moving was agony. Hence, Tojiko didn't move.

There was nothing to think about. The puzzle had been solved. Nothing remained but the cold stone and the deathly silence and time frozen in place.

She tried summoning Miko's face before her eyes, but the image was warped and distorted. Thinking about the Crown Prince no longer made her feel anything.

She tried imagining Futo instead. If love couldn't fuel her, hatred surely could. But even the memory of Futo barely stirred her. The dull annoyance she felt was more out of habit than any real sentiment.

She tried very hard not to think of her last meeting with Seiga, until it was all that remained and she had no choice. After that, she grappled with what the wicked hermit had said for what might have been anything from hours to years, the one anchor to reality and sanity she had left.

She had accepted her fate. She was dead and would wait for her saviour to awaken until the end of time, and she no longer knew for sure if there had been anything but this mausoleum and the musty air she could not breath, if all her life was a mere fabrication she had come up with the alleviate her boredom, if Miko and Futo and even Seiga were nothing more than figments of her imagination.

She thought of checking on the bodies, to see evidence they actually existed, but the best she could do was roll onto her other side. Remembering she had a body, even one as strange and spectral as hers, was the only thing that still stirred her, but in such an unpleasant way she preferred the bleak purgatory her existence otherwise was.

Perhaps she was actually in Hell, being punished for all her sins by being consigned into a world that didn't exist.

There was no reason to cry. No-one would see, anyway. There was no reason to call for help. No-one would hear, either. She could carve her entire life story into the walls of the mausoleum, and it would make no difference: one way or another, she'd be long gone before a single person would read it.

It was only her and the void.



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