Chapter Text
It was wrong. The color was all wrong.
Purple wisps, dancing across the stage – the wrong shade (not her) the wrong movements (not her) mercilessly swallowed up by flares of magenta. What a hideous color.
I think his voice is still there, echoing the same words over and over. I tuned him out a while ago. It’s nothing I haven’t heard before.
It was like any other hunt. Use the honmoon, cover each other’s backs, kill demons quickly. A routine so trained into our bodies and brains it was like breathing. Like instinct. Like dancing to a song that’s in harmony with your soul.
That’s how it felt to me. And that’s where I failed us. That’s where I got careless.
Didn’t see beyond the clouds of demons swarming me from all sides, pale writhing masses singularly focused on one goal. Unthinking, unfeeling (that’s not right) monsters (just like you).
Didn’t see her near me but I didn’t need to. She was always there. Always leading the charge, always clearing a path, always covering our blind spots. That’s how we work. That’s how it’s always worked. We trust that we’re all always there.
So, even after everything, I found myself trusting her despite because of it all.
Because she was trying to do what was right. Because everything was stacked against her and she kept fighting anyway. Because she came back (when she should have left you to rot.) She came back, voice roaring, blade singing against the still magenta air, soul blazing among the fires of ruin around us. Fierce. Defiant. Untouchable.
In that moment, she looked invincible to me.
Why am I so bad at reading people?
That’s why I didn’t need to know where she was.
Until I did.
Until my soul knew, by some instinct or magical connection or pure chance and intuition.
It wasn’t like any other hunt. We had never hunted with the honmoon in that state. We had never hunted the demon king himself, his full-fledged form bathing the battlefield in fire and hordes of hunger.
She had never had to hunt after someone she trusted raised a blade at her.
I will never understand why she came back. (You’re too cruel to understand true goodness.) I wish she didn’t. I wish Zoey had run and Rumi had stayed away and none of this had happened.
Wish I could forget the pull of dread in my chest, the desperation flooding my senses at the sight of magenta hatred relentlessly bearing down on her. Wish I could forget the selfish fear of losing her without getting to atone. Wish I could take a blade to my memories and scratch out every frame of every moment of her final struggle, seeing her suffer and knowing Zoey and I couldn’t get to her in time.
The sounds were the worst part. The sounds are what I want to forget most.
It was still her. Her screams. Her pleas. Her human voice. Sounds we’d never heard and hoped she had never made before.
I knew we tried to get her but everything was a blur, all fangs and jagged patterns and Zoey’s cries, a few steps ahead of me, moving in a blur. Body numb, legs pounding double time against the floor as I sprinted mindlessly through the stings of bloodied claws.
She held out for so long, but it was so much and we were so slow and (none of this would have happened if you loved her right.)
And then it was just fire. That goddamn magenta surrounding her, snaking down her purple braid, grabbing at her, consuming her, killing her.
Killing her…
Why is she gone?
Her saingeom marking the spot where she stood. That sadistic smile looming over us like it always knew things would end this way.
I heard Zoey collapse next to me, sobs wracking her body.
Why is Zoey crying? She’s not gone. She can’t be gone.
I remembered I believed in cruelty when the demon king’s voice rang out.
“Your leader is where she belongs. She tried to hide my mark from the world, but she was always fated to rot in my realm.”
Lies, all of it. Patterns be damned, Rumi was never his. Would never be his. Rumi was ours-
You don’t get to think that about her after what you did.
Her saingeom stood solemnly between me and him, one last piece of her lingering in defiance. I stepped forward, hand hovering near the hilt, its iridescent glow painting my palm amidst the magenta blaze. (You don’t deserve to lay a finger on her weapon.) I wrapped my hand around the hilt, heart seizing with grief at the sensation. (It’s supposed to be her holding it.) It dislodged from the ground with a hollow clank, so balanced and light from the weapon I’m used to holding, yet the weight of it was almost too much to bear.
I let it anchor me.
“Take me instead.”
I heard Zoey beside me. The hitch in her sobs. Her yelling my name. Her arm wrapping around mine, begging me to stay. (Why?) My grip on the saingeom tightened.
“Rumi is noble. She’s someone people can actually love.”
Did she die thinking we didn’t love her?
“I’ve never belonged anywhere, never had any value to anyone. Zoey, and the world… deserve someone better. So make a deal with me. My soul in exchange for Rumi’s.”
Is this what they call poetic irony? Devoting my life to hunting demons and opposing Gwi-Ma, only for it to end with me willingly giving myself to him in exchange for a demon’s life. The one demon I wouldn’t kill. The one demon who deserves to live.
“M-Mira, don’t!” The pain in Zoey’s voice echoed the ache in my chest, but it was too late for this to go any other way. Rumi was gone (because of you) and this was the only way to save her (you’re not her savior)
Why did hurting both of you have to be the last thing I did?
Gwi-Ma’s laugh sent a cold spike down my spine, a sound so wrong, a sound that shouldn’t exist in this time or place.
His voice boomed out to an empty stadium, ghosts of a crowd lingering in its wake.
“Are you ready to bear my colors after slaying so many of mine? Ready to pledge yourself to me for eternity?”
“Yes.”
“Are you willing to become something you despise?”
“I already am.”
Another laugh.
Another sob.
“Then it is done.”
It was wrong seeing that color. Seeing blooms of purple clamber across my skin like vines. Seeing that color touch me, associate with me, become part of me.
Everything burned. The purple patterns clawing their way across my arms to my neck and down my body, the magenta fire climbing my legs, the stretch of bone in my fingers as claws sprouted from skin, the back of my throat as my screams mingled with Zoey’s. I could feel my soul like a tangible weight, clinging to me as it was rended from my chest, my body contorting as if trying futilely to hold it in place.
All at once, it stopped and I collapsed to my knees. Violet clawed hands scraped against the ground. The darkened skin faded into condensed veins of purple running up my arms.
I stood, facing Gwi-Ma, hatred and fury boiling in my gut, hotter than any flames around me. (Is this what it will always feel like now?)
“Now. BRING. HER. BACK.”
My voice was alien, two-toned and harsh and wrong, but there was a familiar feeling to the snarl that snuck its way in.
“Your end of the deal is done,” the demon king chuckled. “But you won’t be here to see the rest.”
A knife, twisting in my heart. Grief I didn’t deserve to feel. (You did this.) Please. I know it’s selfish, but please-
Flames circled my feet as if marking me while an oppressive force dragged my body downward into the dark.
Her eyes blinked open, instinctually squinting at the sudden light after being bathed in darkness. Everything was grey and silent. Empty seats. Empty stage. Stillness.
Rumi sat up, brain frantically scanning her memories and her surroundings, trying to reconcile the two.
They had seen. They knew. She was sure it wasn’t a dream. She was sure they had really turned on her. She was sure she hadn’t imagined their weapons pointed at her heart. She was sure Gwi-Ma had shown up. She was sure that she…
And yet, when she looked down, there were no injuries. No burns to her body or legs or arms from the fire she remembered engulfing her. In fact, there was nothing on her arms.
She checked herself over, and then again, frowning at the absence of the one thing she had wished away for so long. Even the spot on her arm where her patterns originated in her youth. Nothing. Maybe she was dreaming after all.
But the sound beside her was too real for that to be true. A small whimper and sob pulled her attention.
“Zoey?” she called out, cautiously approaching the woman who was curled up a short distance away, arms hugging tightly around herself. At her voice, Zoey looked up and met Rumi’s face with tear-streaked cheeks.
“R-Rumi?” she choked out, her tone a strange blend of relief and terror. More tears immediately spilled down her face. Before Rumi could even respond, the woman leapt into her arms, holding her like she was afraid she’d vanish if she let go. Rumi was stunned for a moment, still trying to piece together the events that led from their horror at seeing her patterns to…this.
“Zoey,” Rumi started, softly. “Can you tell me what’s going on? I remember Gwi-Ma and then I...I thought I died. How…am I here?”
A lump of dread settled in Rumi’s stomach at Zoey’s silence.
“How are my patterns gone?”
Zoey pulled back to look at Rumi, her expression attempting to convey a thousand and one things she couldn’t begin to say. The knot in Rumi’s stomach twisted further.
“…Zoey, where’s Mira?”