CH344

CH343
Ren

I stepped forward, gliding---flying forward and driving my sword straight through his gut.
His breath caught. Eyes went wide.
“I was far past being pissed off before you put me in that stupid dress.”
For a moment, the corridor fell silent except for the rasp of his breath and the soft hiss of steel sliding from his body. He dropped to his knees, blood spreading like ink across the floor and bursting into soft blue flames that engulfed his body, turning it into a glowing blizzard that swept around me as I headed towards the ballroom doors.
I walked through the fading fire towards the rest of the guards. They turned, shouting, trying to form a line, but they were too slow. I dodged a bullet and got in too close for someone else to fire another one without hitting one of their colleagues. I gutted the nearest one, blood gushing warm and slick over my hand. I cut through someone else like paper, marching through them until their blood was splashing on the door.

Morgan
It didn't matter what the contract said. Any more delays would jeopardize everything more than this delay already had. I felt like getting closer, but as long as I pulled this off before she arrived, everything would go to plan, and it would. He had to go through with it.
He had no choice.
Ryuu had always been a man of his word, no matter how coldly he delivered it. And here we were standing together at the altar, the officiant lifting his book with trembling hands, the witnesses seated, the air thick with the fading scent of gunpowder and food.
This was it.
My victory.
I could feel his disdain simmering beside me like a storm under glass, but it didn’t matter. He was mine.
The officiant cleared his throat and opened his mouth when that wench’s voice called out from behind us.
“Tsuneo!”
The name split the air like lightning.
Everything stopped. The room tilted. The ground beneath my heels breathed, like something ancient and slumbering had just woken. The cracks in the universe started to grow and spread through the air, revealing a whole cosmology that was trying to break in.
No. No. No. No!
I whipped my head around just as the doors cracked against the wall and echoed like thunder.
There she was.
Draped in fire and gold. Sword in hand. Her new face as Ren was the only thing differentiating her current life from her past one. She glared at me with a viciousness she had never truly managed in our past lives, one that was all too familiar as her eyes glowed a golden green and slitted
My scream tore out of me before I even realized I was screaming.
The officiant dropped his book. Gasps rose around the room. Light flickered unnaturally from the stained glass, and somewhere overhead, the sound of shattering—like glass or stars—rippled through the space.
The world was unraveling.
And so was I. I dashed down the steps prepared to kill her, prepared to rip her to shreds. She wasn’t supposed to be here. I killed her. He’s supposed to be mine.

Ryuu

The sound of the world faded beneath a rising roar in my ears. A dark wind was rushing through my mind, echoing with that name, bringing emotions rising up from the depths of my soul. Layers upon layers of barriers and walls cracked open inside my chest, crumbling and catching fire like dry, old paper. The world tilted. The lights above swam. I staggered, bracing a hand on the altar, trying to steady the sudden onrush of memories.
I saw my father, my mother, in echoes across time. Haruka as she was now and my mother as she had been then. My hands clenched, reaching for the dark blade that I had once wielded exclusively. I saw Morgan’s face from my previous life, too.
I’ll find you.
Tarofu, who became Tsuneo, who became Ryuu. My eyes tingled, and I could see the rush of flame through the air, celestial, immaterial, and beautiful, eating away at the decorations of the Pearl Palace, replacing turtles with phoenixes as I saw her in my mind’s eye.
Pyra, who became Morgan, who became Ren.
I looked at Morgan, who had once been Anzo. Fury burned so hot through me I thought I would catch fire. The veil lifted, torn free in an instant. And just shook my head, slowly, thinking back to every desperate plea she’d given me, how little respect she seemed to have for herself chasing me all this time. It was pathetic. Anzo’s voice in my memory warped and folded in on itself, condensing down until I could see Anzo just as she had been before, and in Ren’s face, I could see echoes of both Pyra and Morgan’s faces. The shadows of the ballroom shivered, leaning over the room as if waiting to pounce.
I could see it now. All of it.
The vision I’d been chasing all this time. The words on the tip of my tongue that meant so much and Tsuneo hadn’t had a chance to say often enough, the same that Tarofu had whispered, whimpered, and choked on when his loneliness and yearning drove him to insanity and death.
My wife.
My pyra.
The doors flew open with the weight of her presence, the crash like a great gong splitting the heavens.
Flames ignited, heating the room. A column of fire roared in my chest. In my head. In my soul. She stepped into the room like a storm, draped in an exact replica of the robe she used to wear often, sword brandished and glaring up the aisle.
“You forgot an invitation, Anzo.”


Morgan
No.
No.
I shrieked as the fire flared, as the doors slammed open, and she stepped into the room, bearing the sword she’d been given in her past life, draped in the only robe I had saved from that previous life. I had planned to wear it as soon as we were married.
I looked around, noting the way her light burned across the surfaces of the palace, changing them. How was she doing that? How was she here? How could she be so strong even now? The air warped. The world twisted like molten glass, trying to reshape itself around the two of us. I tried to hold on, to keep my grip on the world as I wanted it. But it was slipping through my fingers like sand.
I had to get rid of her. She was ruining everything! I screamed, sprinting down the aisle, heels snapping, vision blurring red as I pushed the roses aside. My arms stretched forward, growing claws as I projected what was left of my shield, channeling my Celestial power into the attack.
“You won’t take him from me again!”
I shifted without meaning to, without realizing. Bones cracked, skin split, and the shape that burst from my body was large and shimmering. A turtle form gliding on astral water. The pain of our last battle when she’d broken my shell remained, but I ignored it.
I had to kill her.
I had to kill her now.