She wasn't sure how she was able to move, let alone to stand. The pain she was in, both from the wound to her stomach and ... and what had come before all this, was well past what she had ever imagined she could bear. Yet somehow, she had rolled off of the slab, clutching to its edge to hold itself upright, as she gazed through her one open eye at the one who had done all this - and all that - to her.

"Come, Beelzebub, and grant me your powers!" Nami shrieked at the circle of glowing light that was before her. It seemed to pulse, and the robed woman let out a sound somewhere between a laugh and a cry of ecstasy.

Whatever the sound was, it cut off as she stabbed the sword that she'd found on the floor through Nami's back. It had taken more than she had to pick it up, more still to hold it steady enough to do that. It would never have worked if Nami had not dismissed her from her own thoughts as soon as the sacrifice had been made. There was a look of utter disbelief on the face that slowly turned to regard her.

Furiously, she pulled the sword out of the wound in Nami's back, and brought it down in much the same way that she'd vaguely glimpsed Nami bringing it down on her fellow celebrants' heads. The body of her enemy collapsed, and then, really almost at the same time, so did she.

"It hurts," she cried. "It hurts so much." She didn't know why she said that. There was no one left to hear her voice.

Or was there?

For she lifted her head, as a male voice seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once. Girl, said the voice. Do you want to live? Do you wish a contract with me?

Naked and afraid, quivering in pain beyond imagining, covered in her own blood and that of others, grief-stricken ...

"No," she whispered.

What? The voice sounded so surprised.

"No," she said, maybe even a bit more quietly. "All I want is for this to be over."

COWARD! roared the voice, and she could hear the roar of flames beneath it.

"Yeah, fine, I'm a coward," she agreed, letting her head drop forward, sure that the rest of her final collapse was soon to follow.

When the voice issued again, it was quieter but no less angry. Coward and FOOL, the voice declared. Fool to think your assent was required. There is still enough of the first contractor left to serve my purposes. You wish for an ending? I give you instead the knowledge that your suffering shall be prolonged. Weep for your folly, coward.

What, she tried to say, but she was falling, not forward, but backwards, away from the light that hovered before her, down into the darkness. And the last thing she saw before the darkness grew complete was, of all things, Nami's naked form hovering before the light, screaming as her flesh and hair was torn away, and then again as new flesh and hair grew upon her, to make her look like -

Me? thought Kitami Reika, and then the darkness was all-encompassing.

She didn't know how long she had slept. When she woke, all that she could see was darkness, as well as momentary glimpses of a world that made no sense to her, seen through the eyes of the one who owned her body and thought she always had. Understanding brought her no solace, and so she returned to the void, where at least there was the peace of oblivion.

Yet now there was a sensation of motion, a feeling of change come to this unchanging place, and oblivion was denied her. She felt as though all that she was had just been seen, and a sense that she, for whom no one had ever grieved, was the object of someone's pity. But that could not be, for she was alone.

Or was she?

For there was another person present, now, in the twilight state. "Where am I?" the other asked, in a voice that sounded so much like her own that it nearly made her heart break.

So she answered. "In the dark," she said, as the first words she'd uttered since the start of all this.

The other seemed to start at the idea that she wasn't alone. "Who are you?" she asked.

"My name is Reika," she told her.

"But, but that is Reika-sens-" the other started to say, seeming to point up at the dim source of light.

"No," she interrupted. "She only thinks she is me. She isn't. Sometimes she will think she is you, now. But she isn't. She is only ever herself, no matter what she thinks."

"... how are we going to get out of here?" the other asked at last.

Who had she been, to have such mad hope? "We're not," she told the other, as gently as she could.

"No," said the other. "No. We will escape."

All that she could do was shake her head, and wait for the darkness to give them both the only solace it had. Time would show the other her folly.

Or would it?

A strange thought to have, as sleep took her once more, and the other for the first time. And yet ...