Chapter One-Hundred-Three
The hairs on the back of his neck prickled.
Something's wrong, Fai thought, his eye flashing open. In an instant, he sat up, body tensed to defend himself.
The palace was silent. That should've been a good sign, should've meant there were no intruders. Yet Fai could feel it—the taint in the air, the pervasive tendrils of darkness leaking out of the shadows. Something was very, very wrong.
His sheets whispered as he slipped out of them. A moment later, his bedroom door slid open. He peered out, head whipping around as he looked up and down the corridor. His gaze froze on a half-open door down the hall. "Sakura-chan," he whispered, darting across the hallway and into her room.
She was gone.
Impossible, Fai thought. The corners of the room tilted, the walls bulging and warping even as he stared down at the empty bed sheets. Despite her absence, something foul lingered, like ashes in the air, traveling down his windpipe and suffocating him.
Fai took a shaky breath, then doubled back. In half a second, he was at Kurogane's door, almost snapping the frame as he shoved the door aside. At the sound, the ninja's hand flew to his sword. "What—"
"Sakura's missing," Fai said.
"What?" Kurogane demanded.
"She's gone. She's not in her room. She's—She's missing."
The ninja shoved past him and looked into Sakura's room. He turned back. "Go wake up the kid. I have to check on Tomoyo."
Fai blinked, then started for Syaoran's room, moving with supernatural speed across the palace. No matter how fast he ran, he couldn't escape the sheer sense of wrongness that pervaded the air. All he could do was run, just like he'd always done. Running, running . . . But not away. Not this time.
He would not run away when Sakura was in danger.
He reached Syaoran's room and ripped the door open. He'd expected the young vampire to wake immediately, startled by the noise. In fact, he'd half-expected Syaoran to already be awake, roaming the castle in search of the threat.
Syaoran slept undisturbed.
Fai knelt down beside the boy's mattress, prodding his shoulder. "Wake up," he whispered. "Something's happened. Sakura-chan's . . ." He faltered, fingers tightening around Syaoran's shoulder. I can't say it, he thought.
You're weak, some part of his mind accused. He shook Syaoran again. "Something's wrong."
When Syaoran still didn't respond, Fai began to panic. Why isn't he waking up? Has something happened to him, too? He pressed his ear to Syaoran's chest, listening for a heartbeat, breathing, anything. Despite the rapid flutter of the young vampire's heart, a deep sense of dread crept into Fai's thoughts, like poison dripping from the edge of a tainted glass.
Once more, he tried to shake the boy awake.
No response.
Something's wrong here, he thought, lungs contracting as if he'd inhaled water instead of air. Fai choked.
Strangely, it was his own fear that allowed him to piece everything together. Because he'd felt dread like this, once, just before his eye had been ripped out.
He retreated instinctively, unsheathing his claws. When Syaoran didn't stir, he forced himself to approach again, extending his mind to check for dark magic.
Fai's stolen magic lingered around the boy, like a pocket of carbon monoxide. Syaoran wasn't the source of it, but tendrils of magic—his magic, his spells, his unseen runes—were etched deep into this Syaoran's body, immobilizing him.
His clone was trying to keep him from waking up, Fai realized, dissecting the intricate nature of the spells. He laid a hand across Syaoran's forehead, trying to decipher the hidden runes the clone had sown into the boy's body. As he probed deeper and deeper, Fai began to understand the depth of the manipulation.
This was not the result of a single spell. This was not the result of several spells woven together. No, this web of magic had been weaving its way into Syaoran's heart for months, progressing so slowly the boy would never have noticed the threads spreading out, winding their way through him.
Fai started snipping away at the spells, trying to reverse the damage. He cropped the magic ribbons mercilessly, cutting away dozens of spells in minutes. All the while, Syaoran remained motionless, unresponsive.
Half my magic, Fai thought, snapping another bundle of spells. Growing out from his heart like a thousand vines reaching for the sun, squeezing Syaoran tighter and tighter, like an anaconda in the jungle . . . He hacked away at another chain of spells, horrified that his own magic had been abused in such a way.
In the hallway behind him, he heard several pairs of footsteps. One he recognized through sheer familiarity—Kurogane was coming to see why he hadn't reported back yet. Three more followed close behind, one a staccato tapping he guessed to be Princess Tomoyo, and two softer pairs of footfalls likely belonging to her guards.
He turned back to his work, whispering counter-spells to negate the effects of the ones that had already wound around Syaoran's heart. His knowledge far exceeded that of the other Syaoran; he was able to cut away at the ribbons much faster than they wind together again.
It wasn't until his magic brushed against a new spell that he encountered trouble. Without thinking, he shredded the coil of energy, just as he'd done with the lacy blue ribbons. But this spell was more formidable, durable in a way the others hadn't been, and its purpose was entirely different. Before he thought to examine it, his counter-spells scraped across the dark surface of the other spell, activating it.
Fai didn't even have a chance to cry out before he felt himself falling.
The world shivered, blackness pressing down on his body like a blanket. Syaoran flinched away from the strange sensations, trying to make sense of them all.
He'd reached Sakura's room just before the Other had whisked her away. He'd seen how she'd grabbed her sword, moved to attack her kidnapper.
How she'd failed. The Other had gotten hold of her, globs of magic wrapping around them as they moved to another world. Syaoran remembered reaching for them, despite his bodiless form, remembered the dull pain of the warning shout scraping through his throat.
After that, there was only blackness. All-consuming, batting away thoughts of Sakura, of Kurogane and Fai, of the worlds he'd seen. All yielded to the smothering darkness of this world.
It's like the void of sleep when you don't dream, he'd thought, when the blackness had filled in around him, like sand filling a room.
The darkness left him so disoriented, he didn't at first realize he'd fallen into a new world. His eyes remained closed, his breathing stable, almost as if he was waking from a pleasant nap rather than a nightmare. He rolled over, groaning as he acclimated to having a body again. I must've switched dimensions somehow, he thought. Another part of his mind criticized him for being so calm.
The ground beneath him was soft, the air above him warm, but not stifling. For a moment, he wondered if it only felt warm, since he couldn't feel cold the same way he'd used to. But it was separate from the faint discomfort brought on by low temperatures, so it must've been warm after all.
Sunlight filtered through the capillaries in his eyes. I should get up, he thought, but his body wouldn't obey. He felt . . . heavy, somehow. Tired.
Eventually, though, memories of his last few seconds in Nihon drifted through his mind—racing to Sakura's room as he realized the intended target of his clone, watching her disappear the same way he'd disappeared from so many worlds, calling out her name. And then a sudden tug from behind, as if someone was trying to pull him back to his body.
His heart pounded against his ribs, and he forced himself to sit up. A fine, powdery substance tickled the hairs on his body as he moved, falling off his skin. He brushed the particles away from his face, wondering where he'd landed.
When he finally opened his eyes, he found himself sitting in a valley of ashes.