Mio could feel those delicate girlish hands wrap tighter and tighter around her throat. Nails scraping into her neck, thumbs pinching her jugular veins, palms crushing her trachea, all working together to extinguish the tiny candle that was her life. Mio looked up at her twin sister's loving, twisted, peaceful, sinister, nurturing, and demented face in the cavern torchlight before her vision dissolved into a milky blur. She gradually lost each of her senses as she sank deeper into the icy stone altar originally intended for Mayu. She easily could have pulled Mayu's scrawny arms away from her neck and pushed her small frame off of her lap if she had willed it, but something stopped her from acting. All she could do was utter a single involuntary choked whimper, but even that seemed to say "It's okay, Mayu. It's better this way." Maybe Yae's spirit was preventing her from struggling, silently pleading with her to finally complete the ritual after decades of delays and appease the Repentance in any way she could. Maybe Mio was simply allowing herself to succumb to the fatal embrace. Somehow, in some bizarre way, after years of looking after her frail sister, she took comfort in knowing they had switched places and now her life rested in Mayu's hands.