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A soft red light bathed them, accentuating their starved and hollow eyes. I prayed that I hadn’t made a horrible mistake.

They didn’t attack, as they had when Bandur dragged me into the Holy Mountains. They were strangely hesitant.

“Come with us,” they said, their voices reverberating in the hollows of my ears. “We have many more waiting to be freed.”

“No,” Takkan said. “You cannot have her.”

The demons ignored him and extended their light to me. I began to float, and Takkan grabbed my hand, refusing to give me up. Hasho came too, blocking us with his body and swinging his short sword.

The demons snarled.

“Stop!” I rasped. “I’ll go with you…but you aren’t to harm them.”

One of the demons stepped forward. As his shadow fell over me, my pain became a dull ache. My wounds were still there, but the hurt was gone.

My eyes flew up in confusion.

“There is no need for you to feel pain,” the demon said. His voice was neither kind nor cruel. Merely firm. “Come now. We will not harm your company.”

“Let me go,” I whispered to Takkan, twisting my hand away.

His eyes were glassy with pain. He held on. No.

I touched my nose to his cheek, my eyes tracing the peak of his hairline to the dimple in his chin. Then I pressed my forehead to his and, our hands still entwined, reached into my pocket for Raikama’s thread.

It was little more than a tangled clump at this point, but there was still magic in it. It shimmered in my hands, warm with light.

I kissed Takkan wordlessly before I pushed the thread into his hands.

The demons seized me. “We have her!” they shouted. “Return. Return!”

We shot up into the clouds, and all I could see was Takkan cutting through the trees, tracking the slip of my form among the fathomless mass of demons. I kept my eyes on him as long as I could. He shouldered his way forward, swift and relentless, his every muscle focused on the singular goal of finding me. Nothing would stop him, not the flying trees uprooted by the trembling earth, not the violent winds or the sudden fractures in the ground. “Shiori!” he kept shouting. “Shiori!”

“Takkan,” I whispered.

An ache rose to my heart, and I pulled my gaze away. Another voice was calling my name. A little voice that my ears picked up immediately.

Kiki.

She led a wave of paper birds toward the breach. Shiori! You’d better not forget me. I’m coming!

So she was. With the barest of smiles, I closed my eyes and let the darkness consume me.

I awoke in the underbelly of the Holy Mountains. Entrapped in cavernous walls, I lay on an unyielding bed of stone not far from the breach.

The breach was rife with magic, and it had grown in the last few days, stretching crookedly across the slope of the mountain in a thick vein. Even from within, it glowed.

With tremendous effort, I propped myself up onto my elbows. Something rustled against the rocks, and I held my breath.

“Kiki!” I cried weakly as dozens of my paper birds surrounded me. “You’re here.”

Kiki’s wing was broken, pierced by an arrow, and she craned her long neck at the paper birds shuffling behind her, hiding behind the rocks. We couldn’t let you come alone.

I touched her wing, trying to mend it. My thumb brushed against the silvery-gold pattern of feathers, so faint I rarely noticed it. After all these months, I finally understood what it was.

The piece of my soul that connected us.

Don’t bother, said my bird, pulling her wing away. We’re not getting out of here.