Chapter 245: Major Event 3: Night of the Witches (5)

The morning of September 30. Inside the church at the very heart of Terminus Night, deep within the mansion.

A spring of blood lay ringed by cobblestones, the crimson fluid flowing endlessly within as if nourishing the grotesquely shaped altar.

Two massive crosses loomed above the altar. The Doll Witch sat at the peak of the first. She cradled a teddy bear, humming softly as she swung her pale, bare legs.

Beside her, chained to the second cross, the young girl in the gothic dress still had her eyes closed, trapped in a quiet slumber.

The magical girl Ember hung her head. She looked pale and haggard, her eyelids trembling slightly.

In her daze, she fell into a dream. The dream took her back roughly a year, to when she had just started high school. She had transferred to a new school, stepping into a completely unfamiliar environment.

Bound by her identity as a magical girl, Xia Zili generally avoided making friends at school. She didn't want to accidentally drag anyone else into danger.

Choose friends carefully and keep your identity a secret—this was the first social lesson every independent superhero and magical girl had to learn. Who knew how many youths had suffered disastrous consequences because the desire to show off led them to reveal their identities to their classmates.

For instance, walking into the classroom the next morning only to find everyone pointing their phones at your face, jeering, "Holy shit, we've got a superhero in our class."

Meanwhile, that most trusted friend would be hiding in a corner, laughing awkwardly when you looked their way.

Or, for instance, discovering your best friend hanging dead from Leijing Bridge shortly after a villain dug up your true identity.

With words written in blood across the bridge: "You don't deserve friends. You only deserve to be entangled with me for the rest of your life."

That was the rule. Yet, in the autumn of that year, Xia Zili made her very first friend at school.

That friend's name was Xie Lin.

Xie Lin was an incredibly ordinary person. She didn't have any explosively cool superpowers, nor did she possess some mutant gene that could turn a person into a gorilla.

Naturally, she also lacked the ability to transform into a magical girl by striking a cute pose in midair.

But if you didn't measure her against the super-human species, Xie Lin wasn't actually all that ordinary.

She was a rebellious girl. Outside of school, she always dressed with a tomboyish edge. Girls would ask for her number when she was out shopping. She smoked, drank, and loved photography. She was perhaps the textbook definition of a delinquent student that everyone kept their distance from. She also hated forming cliques; she usually just tinkered alone with her camera. She was an absolute weirdo.

Yet someone like that barged into Xia Zili's thoroughly sealed-off life like a home invader. At first, Xia Zili ignored her, but the girl kept clinging to her, annoying Xia Zili to no end.

Xia Zili maintained her principles. She knew she had been alone for so long; wouldn't giving in now mean making a fool of her past self?

The incident that made them friends was actually quite funny.

Once, when it was Xia Zili's turn for classroom cleaning duty, she received an emergency notice from the Magical Girl Company right after school. So, she transformed in the stairwell of the teaching building and went off to wipe out a gang of bank robbers.

By the time she returned to the classroom, it was already five-thirty in the afternoon. Logically, the disciplinary committee should have written her up, but when she walked in, she found the blackboard and the podium completely spotless.

The sun was setting in the west. A short-haired girl was sitting sideways on the podium, head bowed as she quietly fiddled with a camera, a faint smile playing on her lips.

Xia Zili froze.

"Here, I cleaned the classroom for you. Being friends isn't too much to ask, right?" Xie Lin said, looking up. She raised her camera and snapped a picture of Xia Zili's face with a loud click.

Xia Zili looked up, then lowered her eyes again. After a long hesitation, she said in a joking tone, "If you're friends with me, you'll die."

Xie Lin blinked. She thought about it seriously, then shook her head. "That's fine. I'm going to die anyway."

She would drag Xia Zili along to skip class. Xia Zili remembered one time during PE when she and Xie Lin hid out on the rooftop alone, pulling two abandoned desks right up to the railing.

The two sat on the broken desks, watching the twilight sun blanket the entire campus. The track on the field looked as if it were paved with gold, and clouds as flushed as wine drifted slowly across the sky.

Right then, while Xia Zili was spaced out, Xie Lin used the camera to capture her profile.

Xia Zili turned her head and glared at her. Xie Lin just hummed in amusement, set the camera down on the desk, and pointed at the rooftop of another teaching building in the distance.

Holding her stomach, she laughed heartily, saying those two guys were absolute idiots, drinking canned beer to look mature.

Xia Zili turned to look. Only then did she realize one of them was her brother, and the other was Ke Mingqing's best friend—someone named Jiang Qingzi.

She stared at Ke Mingqing's profile, stunned for a moment, then grumbled, "The one mimicking Rain Crow's pose, the one choking on his beer and looking like a total idiot, is my brother."

Xie Lin also froze briefly. Then she grimaced awkwardly, rested one hand on the desk, lifted her juice with the other to take a sip, and turned her head to appraise Ke Mingqing with curiosity.

Only after a long while did she say, "Oh. Your brother actually looks pretty handsome. His vibe's just a bit of a loser."

"I hate him."

"Really?"

"Yeah." Xia Zili nodded, pulling her gaze away from Ke Mingqing's foolish face. "If I don't go to him, he'll never talk to me. Not a single word—"

"You're so weird," Xie Lin said with a smile. "You lock yourself away, yet you're always hoping someone else will find you."

"Isn't that how you met me?"

"If it weren't for me, you'd be lonely for the rest of your life."

"So annoying."

Sometimes Xie Lin would take her for a spin on her motorcycle along the coastal highway, speeding through scattered maple leaves. Xia Zili would cling tightly to her back, listening to the crashing waves, and turn her head to watch the sea illuminated by the autumn sun. Seagulls flew over the glittering water, and the girls' hair danced wildly in the sunlight.

One night, Xia Zili took a walk with her by the sea.

They took off their sandals and walked barefoot, leaving trails of uneven footprints in the sand. Xie Lin dragged her into a wild sprint. Xia Zili stopped, looked at her wrist, and suddenly said she had a secret to tell her.

Fiddling with the camera in one hand and throwing her other arm around Xia Zili's shoulders, Xie Lin laughed merrily and said she would tell a secret too.

"Then we'll say them together?"

"Sure."

"Three—" "I'm a magical girl." "I have cancer."

Once the words were out, both Xia Zili and Xie Lin froze.

After a long while, the two slowly raised their eyes, staring at each other in the clear moonlight.

The ocean waves rustled. Xia Zili looked into her eyes, seeming both angry and heartbroken. She remained silent for a long time before she finally spoke, her voice hoarse, "You first?"

"There's actually not much to say. My family couldn't afford it, so we delayed my cancer treatments for a long time. Now, it's completely incurable."

Xie Lin spoke softly. "I'm sorry for constantly dragging a good student like you into trouble, making you skip class and everything... I just felt like dying alone in a hospital room would be too lonely. So I wanted to come back to school and find someone to go crazy with me."

At this, she looked down at the camera in her hands and chuckled softly. "Taking pictures every day... I just hoped that after I die, someone could look at these photos and remember me. It makes me feel like my life wasn't so tragic after all."

"You never thought to tell me?" Xia Zili asked quietly.

"I did tell you. The day we became friends, you told me, 'If you're friends with me, you'll die.' Didn't I tell you then? I told you I was going to die anyway."

"You're so cruel—"

"Alright, don't give me that look, okay?" Xie Lin said mildly. "Your turn. Let me see what this magical girl thing is all about."

Xia Zili lowered her head and stayed silent for a moment before suddenly taking two steps back. A hazy cocoon of light enveloped her body.

When the cocoon of light shattered, she had transformed into a long-haired girl wearing a gothic dress, holding a pitch-black umbrella.

"No way—" Xie Lin opened her mouth wide.

"What are your thoughts?"

The magical girl Ember tilted her head and asked.

"My thought is—you're so pretty. Can I take a picture?"

"Not allowed."

After saying that, Ember opened her umbrella. She took Xie Lin flying over the sea, soaring above the clouds, before finally landing atop a seaside cliff. It used to be a scenic spot, complete with old wooden public benches.

The two sat on a bench, bathing in the bright moonlight. Xie Lin didn't seem to have processed it yet; she didn't make a sound for a long time.

"I can save you," Ember suddenly said a moment later.

"How are you going to save me?"

"My master is the most powerful magical girl in the world. It's only cancer; she definitely has a way to cure it."

"Really?"

"Of course. She'll be returning to China in a week. I'll take you to see her then."

Xie Lin fell silent for a long time. Her eyes suddenly turned red, and she gently hugged Ember's shoulders. But Ember pushed her away with a look of utter disgust.

"Cancer isn't contagious."

"Wait until you're cured to hug me."

"Damn it, saying something like that is going to kill me from heartbreak right now. Do I even need cancer to finish me off?"

"Who cares about you—"

Back then, Xia Zili secretly believed that this kind of time would last for a very, very long while. Maybe being a magical girl didn't have to be so lonely after all. For the first time, as a magical girl, she was hugged by someone familiar; for the first time, as Xia Zili, she had a friend at school.

Even if she fought criminals to the death every night, even if she went to school in a daze with dark circles under her eyes during the day, always looking listless and unapproachable, she would still have a great friend who tirelessly made her laugh and stayed by her side.

But she was wrong.

Those beautiful days always rushed by like lightning, vanishing in the blink of an eye. In the end, all one could do was stare blankly at a couple of remaining sparks. It was only when even those scattered sparks were cruelly blown away that a person would finally snap back to reality.

That day, a few months ago.

The magical girl Ember held her pitch-black umbrella high, speeding through the torrential rain with an anxious expression. After a while, she saw a man with four arms and dark purple skin standing in the middle of a long street.

Ghost Hand Asura. That was this criminal's title. He was choking a young girl by the throat, hoisting her high into the air. With his other three hands, he ripped out her heart, intestines, and kidneys. Then, he shoved them all into his mouth.

He was chewing. The corners of his mouth were twitching. Red blood flowed continuously down his lips.

Ember stared at this sight, stunned for a very, very long time.

She took one look at the girl's face, then another at the camera lying on the ground. In the next instant, boiling with uncontrollable rage, she plummeted from the sky with a ferocious expression.

She still remembered how that battle ended. Or rather, she wouldn't be able to forget it for the rest of her life. A surging beam of magic tore out from the tip of Cinderella's umbrella, running straight through Ghost Hand Asura's body.

He exploded into a mist of blood. Crimson fluid poured out like a waterfall, staining nearly an entire skyscraper red. Even the heavy rain couldn't wash away that horrifying smear of gore.

The dream shattered.

Inside the pitch-black church, the eyelids of the girl in the gothic dress fluttered. Her lips trembled slightly. After a long moment, she furrowed her brow and slowly opened her eyes, seeing the iron chains binding her body.

Ember was dazed for a moment before she finally realized where she was. She slowly turned her head to look around, her gaze finally landing atop the other cross.

"Hello—" The Doll Witch sat atop that cross, swinging her pale, bare legs as she spoke. "Welcome, our fourth friend."

The girl in the gothic dress tilted her head, staring at her without moving.

She recognized her. It was the Doll Witch, who had appeared in photos before. Her physical features were quite obvious: she looked like a ten-year-old child, dressed in an ill-fitting black miko outfit and wearing a miko hat.

"Not going to speak?" The Doll Witch pouted. "Don't look at me with such cold eyes, okay? You'll make me sad."

Ember said nothing. When kidnapped, never speak carelessly and never reveal any information to the enemy. This was also something Xi Ziyue had taught her.

"Alright then, let's switch to a topic you're interested in." The Doll Witch smiled. "Do you still remember your friend? The one who was killed by that criminal named Ghost Hand Asura."

The girl in the gothic dress furrowed her brow, her eyes as cold as ice.

"How do you know?" she finally spoke.

"Truth is, I've had my eye on you for a long time. Because we all know that the condition to activate Terminus Night is possessing a double-crowned witch, and you happen to have that potential. So, on a whim, I went and found your friend's corpse. That's right. During the funeral, the coffin they burned didn't have her remains in it at all."

The Doll Witch paused. "And then, I turned your friend's corpse into my doll."

Ember suddenly froze. In that moment, her entire body began to tremble. The iron chains binding her rattled wildly, letting out sharp, metallic clangs.

"Having her intestines, kidneys, and heart ripped out all because of her friend must have hurt a lot, right?" The Doll Witch spread her hands. "Who would have thought that even after death, she'd still be dug out of her coffin because of her friend, forever denied a single day of peace."

At this point, under the gothic dress girl's furious glare, the Doll Witch curled her lips upward and said, "Alright, you can start guessing. If your friend saw you again, what do you think she'd want to say to you?"

Right after that, Ember saw a sight she would never forget for as long as she lived.

A short-haired girl wearing a blue and white school uniform walked in from outside the church. She was carrying a camera in her hands.