Like work of magic, the scene changed without my notice—
the quiet ignorance of one who slips, unknowing, into sleep's embrace.
I woke again to silence that shimmered.
No walls. No books. No aftermath that made sense.
Only my reflection—trembling faintly—on the surface of a moonlit pond.
The air smelled of incense and rain that had fallen long ago.
Every ripple whispered in reverse,
as though the dream was remembering me instead of the other way around.
"Wasn't I just in the library?" I murmured.
"Where… is this place?"
A voice answered—soft, round, and deep—
like a bell struck underwater.
"Ah… the child who touches Death, yet still sleeps like the living."
I turned—too swiftly, too bound by breath—
and found her.
Barefoot. White sleeves brushed the pond's skin.
Her hair was the pale pink of dawn before it breaks.
Nine tails drifted behind her—not fanned, but flowing—
ribbons of light and shadow braided together.
Her eyes—gold rimmed in red—held the unbearable calm
of one who already knows every answer
but speaks anyway, for your sake.
"Who… are you?" I asked, though my sanity begged me not to.
She smiled gently, tilting her head with the grace of one
who knows her reflection is worship.
"I am called Yako-no-Hoshimi—
the one of this land, keeper of the Pool of Reflection.
I speak to those whose dreams still echo after death has touched them…
and to those who live while their souls still sleep."
Her reflection in the water did not match her.
In the pond, she was vast—
a fox the size of an ancient tree,
tails unfurling into a sea of stars.
"You carry the echo of another," she said,
eyes tracing the ripples beneath my hand.
"The man who opened Hell."
Kael.
His name still hurt like a raw nerve wrapped in chains.
"He tried to bring her back," I whispered.
"He thought—if he used me—he could cheat reality."
Yako's fox-ears flicked once,
the sound of silk brushing silk.
"He did more than try," she said.
"He performed a ritual so precise
the Arcana themselves might have paused to watch—
if they cared for such things.
They did not.
But other eyes did."
She crouched beside the pond,
and her reflection's fox-face mirrored mine—
two halves divided by a skin of liquid glass.
"Kael was a Devil contractee. A binder of truths.
Devils do not grant mercy; they sculpt cages.
Their language is command—obey, yield, submit.
Death does not answer such actions."
My throat tightened.
"Then what did he do wrong?
If chains could not bind stillness, what was his mistake?"
Yako's fingers traced a circle on the pond's surface.
It pulsed silver—
a living sigil of light, trembling like a wound that refused to heal.
"He sought to command closure," she said,
"instead of becoming it."
The circle quivered,
its edges distorting the stars reflected within.
"He mixed too many clauses of reality—
the Devil's chain, Death's period, the Moon's reflection.
Each word true, yet their sentence false.
The grammar broke… and the meaning devoured him."
The sigil dimmed.
The pond grew still—too still.
I felt suddenly aware that my body had not moved since I woke.
I had stood the entire time, breathing shallowly,
hands limp at my sides.
As though something—someone—had written my stillness into me.
"Could he have succeeded?" I asked,
my voice sounding as though it came from beneath the surface.
Yako's tails brushed the water, calming the surface
like a mother soothing a fever.
"Perhaps," she said.
"If he had earned the Moon's contract
instead of stealing its essence.
The Moon does not serve command; it serves comprehension.
The High Priestess and the Moon—they are cousins in silence,
both keepers of reflection.
Had he embraced illusion instead of denying it,
he might have reflected her soul back into being—
rather than wrenching her from oblivion.
But Kael loved too absolutely to see
the shape of what he was trying to hold."
Her eyes softened, voice low.
"Love that clings to the dead forgets that death, too, dreams."
I looked down—
and for a moment, I saw his face in the water beside mine.
Then the ripple swallowed him.
My heart drummed—heavy with fears newly born of being.
For it was clear: not only devils go to Hell.
Mist rolled over Yako's face—
stars flickering faintly through it like clouds across a moon.
"Tell me," I said quietly,
"was it really Hell he touched… and not the Underworld?"
A pause.
Then that soft smile again—
one that promised no comfort, only truth.
"Hells are born from intent," she said.
"Not place. Not fire. Not gods.
Only purpose gone too far."
Silence followed, deep and soft as dusk.
Then Yako rose.
Her reflection fractured into nine ripples that spread until nothing remained.
"Enough of sorrow, little one," she said softly.
"You dream too much of endings."
Her smile curved like a crescent blade—
part tenderness, part pity.
"When you wake, breathe.
There's a festival tonight—lanterns, laughter, noise.
Go. Change your scenery.
Bring the bookmark with you… and your questions."
"The bookmark?" I echoed, blinking.
Her eyes glinted—gold and red—
a lunar eclipse crowned in foxfire.
"You'll understand," she whispered,
"when you see what page the world is on."
The pond sighed once—then turned itself inside out.
Water ran backward into glass.
---
The Gavel Falls
I woke to the scent of rain and cool marble.
The Jade Palace was steady now, though it still felt
as if a faint, enormous heart was beating beneath the floor.
Something cool and thin pressed against my palm.
I opened my hand.
The ivory bookmark shimmered.
It was no longer plain.
The surface moved with living light—circles intersecting in impossible geometry.
Scales hung in perfect imbalance—one dripping silver, the other shadow.
At the center, an eye—neither open nor closed—
watching a sword balance upon its own reflection.
The sigil shifted when I wasn't looking—
as though truth only existed when unseen.
Beneath it, faintly branded into the ivory,
were words that burned not on the page but in my mind:
"Justice is not judgment.
It is the silence after the gavel falls."
Foxfire flickered once across the sigil—then vanished.
Outside, laughter drifted from the streets below— evidence of the Festival of lanterns and sakura crown, just as Yako had said.
I stood, uncertain if I was obeying a goddess's will
or merely continuing a sentence I hadn't realized I was still writing.
Either way, a change of perspective seemed fair.
I slipped the Justice bookmark into my robe and turned toward the window.
For once, we could meet eye to eye—
Death's daughter, and the world that still dares to dream.