Ash drifted down like dead snow.
Rowena, Isola, Rebecca, Grace, Yui, Naida, Layla—the whole line of them stood amid cracked ground and hanging mist, weapons up, breaths tight. The dead doppelgangers they'd been hacking apart a moment earlier—those uncanny copies with their ominous eyes and borrowed habits—stiffened all at once as if the same string had been yanked inside each of them. Then the copies shattered into gray ash and fell apart in soft, collapsing heaps.
Rebecca exhaled hard and dragged the back of her hand across her brow, smudging soot. "Please tell me those creepy versions of ourselves aren't coming back…"
"I think they are really gone…" Isola mumbled, a relieved look spreading over her face as she lowered her staff. Her shoulders dropped, the tension unwinding from her spine like a pulled blade finally put away.
