Memory Reaper's Ascension - Chapter 171: Possesed

Chapter 171: Possesed

Inside Kaori’s skull the blood thread suddenly fragmented into several smaller one’s.

The violet light in her eyes, the defiant fire that had burned since childhood—dimmed and went dark in the span of a single heartbeat.

’Oh,’ she thought, with the strange clarity that sometimes comes in the instant before death. ’I’m dying.’

There were no dramatic final words or profound revelation. Just a simple, undeniable truth that was recognized and accepted in the space between one breath and the next that would never come.

Her knees buckled. The marble rushed up to meet her face. She felt the impact distantly, as if it were happening to someone else’s body.

Kaori’s last conscious perception was of the moon above, cold and distant and absolutely indifferent to her death.

Then darkness claimed her.

Ishiki looked at the scene with wide eyes, horrified and absolutely frozen at place.

“Kaori?!”

Ishiki’s voice cracked on her name. He scrambled forward on hands and knees.

He reached her in seconds that felt like hours, hands hovering over her still form, unsure where to touch, what to do. His fingers finally settled on her shoulder, shaking her with desperate gentleness.

“Kaori, come on. Get up. You know this isn’t the time to joke around.” His breath was heavy.

Her head lolled bonelessly with the motion. Vacant eyes stared past him at nothing, reflecting moonlight but containing no spark of awareness behind them.

No.

No.

Ishiki pressed trembling fingers to her neck, searching for a pulse. Her skin was still warm… but utterly still. No flutter of blood moved through veins.

“You’re okay,” he heard himself whisper, voice breaking. “You’re going to be okay. Yuki can heal you.”

But even as the words tumbled out, he knew they were lies. Yuki’s healing ability worked on the injured, not the dead.

From the shadows where Arthur Sterling’s corpse still slumped against the pillar, a wet, rasping sound emerged that was something between a laugh and a death rattle.

“Missed,” the demon’s voice wheezed through Arthur’s ruined throat. Blood bubbled from cracked lips with every word. “Boy… moved… too far.”

The blind, ruptured eyes rolled toward where Kaori lay in Ishiki’s arms.

“But girl…” Another bubbling laugh, thick with fluid and malice. “Perfect… vessel…”

Ishiki’s head snapped toward the sound. “You—you bastard—!”

He surged to his feet, and summoned the Aether blade. He took three steps toward Arthur’s corpse before his rational mind caught up with his body and forced him to stop.

’He’s dying already. Look at him. That body is finished. Killing him now accomplishes nothing.’

The realization was ash in his mouth.

Arthur’s body convulsed once, twice, then went completely limp.

He activated [Ghost Blade] in his fury in hopes of finding the demon’s actual body. Until he was brought back to his senses by approaching footsteps.

“Ishiki? What happened?”

Yuki emerged from behind a half-collapsed building, pink hair disheveled and pink eyes wide with concern. Behind her… Filch followed too. He was healed and in almost perfect form… at least from outside.

She took in the scene with a single sweeping glance: Ishiki standing rigid, Arthur’s motionless corpse, and—

Her eyes found Kaori’s body.

The color drained from Yuki’s face. “No. That’s… what happened?”

She ran forward, dropping to her knees beside Kaori. Her hands hovered over the body, frost beginning to form around her fingers as her healing ability activated instinctively.

But the mist that usually accompanied her power flickered and died almost immediately. The temperature around Kaori didn’t change. The healing found no purchase, like trying to fill a cup with no bottom.

“She’s…” Yuki’s voice came out strangled. “She’s already…”

“Dead.” Ishiki supplied the word she couldn’t force out. “The demon. It killed her.”

He knelt beside Yuki, gently closing Kaori’s staring eyes with shaking fingers. “She pushed me out of the way and instead of me the demon attacked her.”

Silence stretched between them, broken only by the distant sounds of the dragon’s triumphant march toward the golden gates.

Somewhere in that direction, an ancient evil was trying to claim a throne. But in this moment, the fate of empires and scenarios seemed utterly meaningless compared to the cooling body between them.

“We need to move her,” Yuki finally whispered. “We can’t just leave her here in the…”

Kaori’s eyes opened.

Both Ishiki and Yuki jerked backward with identical gasps of shock.

Then he saw what inhabited those violet eyes.

The eyes moved wrong, tracking them with predatory focus that Kaori had never possessed. When her mouth opened, the voice that emerged carried a feminine quality that didn’t match her face, layered with harmonics that no human throat should produce.

“This… body…” The demon flexed Kaori’s fingers experimentally, watching the digits move with clinical detachment. “Is fine…”

“Get out.” Ishiki’s voice came out flat and cold, utterly devoid of the warmth he usually carried. “Get out of her body. Now.”

The demon turned Kaori’s head toward him and stood up. A smile spread across her features, grotesque in its wrongness.

“Or… what? You’ll… kill her? She’s… already… dead, boy.”

Something inside Ishiki shattered.

He lunged forward, the invisible blade swinging in a horizontal arc aimed at the demon’s neck. Kill the body, kill the vessel and force the demon out.

Yuki caught his wrist mid-swing, ice crystallizing around both their hands. “Wait! If you damage the body too much-”

“It’s not her anymore!” Ishiki screamed, tears streaming freely now. “Don’t you see? Kaori is gone! That thing is just—it’s desecrating her body.”

“Strong… vessel…” the layered voice murmured. “Kinetic… manipulation… useful. But…” The demon frowned, Kaori’s face twisting into an expression of frustration. “Cough… cough. This body has been weakened!”

It raised one of Kaori’s hands, attempting to manifest her kinetic powers. But had no result.

“Tch. Barely functional. I Will need better vessel soon. But first…” The demon turned toward where the dragon had gone. “Must retrieve the Orb to free the Great Lord.”

The demon took one step forward and then broke into a sprint.

Ishiki freed his hand and ran after her. Kaori’s weakened body was not able to run faster than Ishiki.

Ishiki simply bypassed her and stood in her way… It was the perfect moment if he wanted to kill the demon. Kaori’s body was weakened and so was the demon.

But he felt very… very sad. He didn’t want to harm Kaori’s body.