Where life sparkles and fades, in a place where two worlds overlap...
Shinku Kurenai finds herself waking up in the ruins of a gothic castle, with no memory of how she arrived there- or of her life prior to awakening. She soon learns she has been sp...
This world was a beautiful darkness. It wasn't an isolating, empty abyss like I felt before. In this place...an overwhelming feeling of solitude washed over me, but I was comforted. I was lying on my back upon smooth sandstone, in what looked like ancient ruins. Immense pillars with spear-like tips that pierced the sky surrounded me. Said sky was a brilliant wash of swirling colors, gradating and coalescing into each other, shifting between every shade in the spectrum. It moved like the ebb and flow of ocean waves. In a way, it resembled a thin, soapy bubble film atop a body of water, reflecting every color of the rainbow.
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Speaking of water, I heard it running nearby, where there rested a shallow pool among the ruins. A slim stream of water flowed from a spout connected to no identifiable source of water. Silence reigned supreme in this strange place.
I sat up, my bones stiff and creaking like old wood. I felt like a wooden doll trying to regain control. Jagged cracks tracked all across my body, from my arms all the way down to my fingertips, my legs to my feet, and my torso. I could feel them on my face, drying out my skin. Bits of flesh broke off like brittle plaster. I pulled off the plague mask and lowered my hood.
"I did it...it's over. Ruki Yushiro...is gone."
"That's right," Morrigan said. "Your journey through the Otherworld has finally reached its end." He had been sitting beside me the whole time. His eyelids drooped, and he looked completely drained. He glanced around at the ancient ruins. "It's incredible...I never imagined I'd ever reach this far. This is the edge of the Otherworld...the place where infinity ends."
I nodded slowly. "I...I guess this is the end then."
A little girl's voice called to us. "Good morning." Campanella appeared before us, spinning her parasol between her fingers. "Welcome to the Mystri Ruins. This is one of many places in the Otherworld where lost souls travel into the next life to reach reincarnation. Of course, I never got to reach this place during my own journey...there are so many who never get to come here.
You should consider yourself very lucky to be here."
I shook my head. "No...it wasn't luck. I worked hard to get here...both Morrigan and I. If he hadn't been by my side, I'd have never made it to this place."
"Ah, that is true," Campanella said. "Watching you travel across the Otherworld, experiencing and encountering so many different things, beautiful and terrifying...it was an incredible sight. Up until now, I had never seen a lost human soul and a spirit of the Otherworld working together. To think that you two first met in a dirty pond, as predator and prey...we've certainly come a long way, haven't we?"
Morrigan didn't look pleased. Sorrow was reflected in his crystal-like azure eyes. "Yes...I suppose so."
I turned to Campanella. "Can't anything be done for him? He worked so hard and did so much, he stayed by my side this whole time and even came to terms with his own death...can't he be reincarnated too? Isn't there anything we can do to save him?"
