The stone door rolled shut and Thunder took in a long shaky breath. Fire was finally safe. She knew she was in trouble from the way Kilik shouted, but one tearful glare over her shoulder was enough to keep him from coming closer. It was her turn to give something up and she didn't want him or Fire to stop her.

"Kid's magic is rare, right?" She plunged her hand into the tiny window and summoned an electrical charge. Light leaked out of the cracks around her arm. "What about this?"

"You wish to give up your magic?" It asked.

"If I can't turn into a gauntlet, I won't be able to go to school with everyone," she sniffled, "but you can have the rest."

"Are you sure that's what you want?" It collected a tear off her cheek with it's nose. With her head hung low, she nodded. All along her body, the lines that connected her to electricity glowed a bright white draining her from head to toe. The brilliant yellow blond of her hair followed suit, leaving behind a dusky copper. "Thank you, you may exit."

"Thunder no!" Kilik shouted. She didn't dare look back, instead locking her mouth with an invisible key and holding it out to drop for everyone to see. The door rolled open and she stepped through.

"What did she do?" Tsubaki asked.

"You heard her." Kilik took a step forward. "It's a secret." He should have known those two would naively give up too much of themselves to this stupid book. If anyone knew she gave up the magic she'd shared with them, they'd blame others who gave less, or worse feel pressured to do something equally stupid. He approached the door and the seemingly innocent stone window. If what they'd given wasn't enough to save Kid, he'd never forgive himself. "You saw how strong everybody was, right?"

"Indeed."

"In that case," he plunged his hand in the whole, "make me weaker than them."

"You're giving me your strength?" It tilted his head.

"I'm giving you my chance at being the best." He clarified. "Anytime I'm stronger than them, you can have that too."

"Interesting." It hummed as it collected a little strength, a little knowledge, and luck. "Thank you, you may exit." He left the book achy and drained. From Spirit's arms, both his weapons leapt onto the floor and ran for his legs. Thunder babbled her excuses, that she was still able to transform, so it wasn't that big of a deal while Fire grabbed onto both of them with nail and grit. "You shouldn't have done that." He scolded them anyway, gently leading them away from the crowd. As soon as they knew everyone made it out, he'd take them to the apartment to fully calm down. "I'm so fricken proud of you guys, but you shouldn't have done that."

A heavy silence had fallen on the group. With no way to whisper in secret, Black Star motioned for Tsubaki to follow him further down the path toward the statues. He gave a small wave to Maka and Kid, to show they weren't going too far. Once out of ear shot, he bit his lip.

"Can you do something for me?" She waited for him to finish. "Don't give anything up."

"Black Star-"

"You heard Kid. He doesn't want anyone giving shit up for him, but I know between Maka and I it's going to be enough." He shifted away from her so she couldn't see his face. Cool awesome ninjas didn't look sad during times like this. "You've put up with a lot from this stupid book... and me. So please, promise me you won't give anything up this time?" She held a finger up to her lips. "If you already made up your mind then, then go." He needed more time to think on it.

Blair had approached the door by the time Black Star and Tsubaki rejoined the others. She placed her manicured hand in the window with a smug grin. The index swayed with curiosity.

"You can have my extra lives." She preened with her free hand. "You already took one of my souls, why not five more?" Her arm pulsated purple five times as each soul joined the collection.

"Thank you," it dipped it's head and opened the door, "you may exit." Six souls was nothing to sneeze at. If nothing else, it would be enough to guarantee safe passage for the people who followed her. Besides, she didn't need the extra time anymore. She was done waiting.

Tsubaki approached the door next. She could see Black Star still deep in thought and she wanted to buy Soul time in case Maka had come to a rash decision of her own. She gingerly placed her hand through the window.

"What are you giving me?" The index asked. Two people she cared about had asked her to protect herself. Even the recreation of her brother begged her to choose her own happiness despite everything that was going on. There were a few things she had thought of offering, from the length of her hair to the ability to pass down her weapon form. None of them seemed like that much of a sacrifice.

"Nothing." She had to trust that Black Star's offering would be enough for the both of them. Her hand shook as she took it back. She trusted her friends, but it was frightening to think of the consequences.

"Thank you." The doors opened. "You may exit." If everything went well, she'd tell Black Star what she gave. He would get a kick out of being right, but more so, she didn't want him to worry.

Patty stood with her arms crossed. Her and her sister had silently agreed to be the last to leave before Kid. Liz was practically glued to him and she could see Black Star still chewing on scattered thoughts. All that left was Maka and Soul, with Soul squinting at Maka, a rejection ready on his tongue.

"You guys can go ahead." Maka said with feigned innocence.

"I will." Soul nodded sternly. "After you go."

"Come on you guys." Maka stomped her foot, feeling somewhat attacked. "This is ridiculous, I'm not a child. I can go last." Black Star wasn't coming to her defense, and now even Liz was eyeing her with a grim expression. "For the record," she pointed an accusatory finger at all of them, "it was just a plan b. I'm not that stupid."

"GO!" Soul pointed at the round door where the index was waiting. She stormed over, grumbling under her breath the whole way. If this didn't work, it was all their fault. She accidentally punched the back wall of the stone compartment and winced.

"What are you giving me?" It asked.

"My scythe form." She said. It was the only blade she could form that was worth a damn, even if it wasn't the prettiest. She could practically feel the index radiate glee.

"A piece of your very soul?" It circled around her. "It's not impossible, but the process is... Unpleasant."

"Whatever it takes to get Kid out of here." She puffed up her chest with her nose held high. That is, until a sharp hot pain radiated through her. Her lower back spasmed in sympathetic pain as it ripped out the lower most feathers of her grigori wings. Fighting the urge to scream she leaned her forehead against the unforgiving stone.

"If I had a nickel..." The index let the idiom trail off as it admired the golden feathers. Holy weapons were so hard to come by these days. Maybe one day, Greed would finally acquire one in one piece. "Thank you, you may exit." She stumbled out into the light as her support vanished.

Maka's offering hadn't looked promising. Soul had heard Kid cursing under his breath. Memo to him, shake some sense into her savior addicted brain once they were away from prying eyes.

"Alright." Black Star clapped his hands. "Wish me luck." He approached the door with as much bravado as he could.

"Riddle me this douche rag," the index recoiled a bit, "was any of it true?"

"Could you be more specific?" Of course it would beat around the bush. What benefit would it gain from telling him the full truth?

"Being a god or whatever you called it." Black Star said. "Take it."

"The gift of prophecy." The index hummed in approval. "You've relied on it quite a bit up until now. All those declarations of rising above the gods will become nothing more than empty promises. Are you sure that's what you want to give up?"

"Yeah."

"This will take a bit." The index warned. With surgical precision, his soul was poked and prodded at. He had anticipated pain, but not the invasive clawing down to the core. "She hid it in there under your humor and ego, a lot of ego, it's pretty wrapped up in there... Hold still." With one last tug, something snaked out of his soul, like a hair found in someone's food. "Thank you, you may exit." He shuddered and stepped through the door.

It was Soul's turn to leave. He stared at the stone window without an ounce of inspiration. They needed to be strong enough to defeat Asura after this, so it wasn't like he could give up a part of his weapon form. Giving it the black blood might kill him in the process.

"What are you going to give me?" It asked impatiently. He looked up at the faceless rag and briefly reevaluated his stance on burning books before thinking better of it.

"What do you want?" He shook his head with a grimace. "Collecting a bunch of random stuff doesn't seem like it's been getting you anywhere. You've clearly been watching us, trying to get us to do something for you."

"I want knowledge." It said. "Every creature from little beetles to gods learn and know things completely unique to them. I can not properly teach if I have only my own knowledge to rely on."

If it was something he knew that the book didn't, he certainly had something. He just hadn't been ready to let go of it just yet. With a heavy heart, he placed a hand in the stone window. In Sloth it had looked like a crystal dagger, a kind of love that the index had initially brushed off as 'nothing'.

"I don't know what it is." He admitted. "Clearly you don't either." A knotted collection of hopes for the future, a deep attachment to the girl stupid enough to take a chance on him. All he knew was it was there, and real, and he hadn't been able to shape it into anything useful or cool. What mattered was the index seemed intrigued. "Maybe if you had it, you could figure out what it is."

Instead of relief, there was a gapping chasm in his chest where the dagger once sat. Nausea wrecked his insides. He had chosen to relinquish that part of him, and yet he couldn't stop the wave of anxiety that it he'd never feel like that about someone again. Which was utterly ridiculous, Maka was still the same person after all this. Without idle flights of fancy there was nothing to fall back on.

"Thank you." The Index opened the door. "You may exit."

"Liz, can you go on ahead?" Patty hugged Kid tight once more and tried to memorize every sharp joint that resisted her embrace. A cold hand gently rubbed her back.

"He's going to be right behind us this time." Liz insisted, like Patty couldn't feel the apprehensive looks Kid had every time someone stepped through the door. The garden was too bright, too peaceful. Colorful flowers stared at them with perfect posture, not a stray breeze in sight. "Kid..." How could she begin to thank him for what he'd done. His paranoia that drove him to doom prep for every illogical scenario had protected them while he had been trapped. A part of her had still rationalized their partnership as transactional, a spoiled rich kid bending the rules to get his way. "You're such a little freak, you know that?" Ugly tears defanged the insult to an endearment at best. "You're not a disgrace of a shinigami, you're just better at being a human being. So, can you stop treating that like it's the worst thing you could do? Sacrificing yourself for our sake is the worst thing you could have done. So don't do it again, you got that?"

"Your makeup is running." He said, though fixing it at this point would be a fool's errand. The offer to fix it still hung silently in the air.

"When we get back you can mess with it." She dabbed her face on the back of her sleeve. "Alright." She said it again a few times, psyching herself up as she approached the door. Most people who'd stuck their hand in almost immediately started to writhe. Shaking off her remaining doubts she put her hand in.

"What are you giving me?" It asked.

"My memories of Aggie." Their landlord, the lady she suspected was responsible for Patty coming home. She had been the only good thing about growing up in that shitty apartment complex. By the time they were stable enough to reach out to her, she wasn't herself anymore. "You need people to fill up these chapters, right?" Poorly dyed ginger curls, faded slips under moth eaten robes, feasts of dated pudding packets while Patty was rocked to sleep to old sitcoms on tv. One by one, the memories slipped through her fingers.

"Thank you, you may exit." Liz couldn't remember if what she'd given was worth a damn, but the magical gatekeeper seemed satisfied. She braved the unknown and hoped her sister wouldn't be far behind her.

"Alright." Patty forced herself to let Kid go at last. "I know that watching people give stuff up just for you is hard, so you're going to promise me something." She sniffled. "And then, when you make good on that promise we'll be even, okay?" Squeezing his shoulders she looked down at the ground. "We, you and I, we're going to make Liz a death scythe first."

"Patty, if we do that-"

"I know! That's the point." Liz hated fighting, hated every time they had to get dragged around on missions, but she did it because she loved them. "I can hold onto half the souls until then, or whatever I have to, to make this work. Promise me." No more hoping twin witches would pop up and wreck shop in Death City. She needed a real plan to let Liz finally make choices for herself. The only way she could do that was graduating within a reasonable amount of time.

"Yeah." He tilted her head up so she could see he wasn't going to pitch a fit over the idea. Granted, he wasn't sure how feasible that would be in the long term, but he was willing to say what it took to give her some sense of closure. "You know she's asked me to do the same thing for you, right?" With a weary laugh she let him go and stepped away.

"Then it'll just have to be two against one." Almost skipping to the door, she squared her shoulders and stared the index down. From her pocket, she pulled out a folded packet of papers. Soft and worn from being manhandled all week, she put it inside. Nygus had given them to her just in case, but she wouldn't be needing them now.

"What are you giving me?"

"The first dual enrollment papers for EAT students." Patty said. It would have been really cool to be part of the flagship class. She'd worked her butt off all summer just to prove Nygus made the right choice. They would just have to start it without her. "Now that I have a meister, I won't be needing them." She couldn't parse out a tell in the way the Index floated at her. She was the last person that could offer something, if it wasn't enough, she wanted to know.

"Thank you, you may exit."

"He is coming with us, right?"

"Thank you, you may exit." The white light bled out of the archway, washing out her peripheral vision. She wanted to turn and see if Kid was even trying to move toward the door, but Black Star's warning ran in her ears. These things loved tests. Closing her eyes, she stepped through the portal. Kid had to come home no matter what.

The garden was still. Frozen, as there were no more readers to preform for. The index trilled at the new puzzles and conclusions it'd been given. So many hypothesis confirmed, so many others left in shambles. Kid cleared his throat when the index moved to leave.

"May I?" He gestured toward the door.

"May you what?" It twirled like a jellyfish lost in the surf.

"May I offer something?" He asked.

"Oh ho, do you suspect the sum came up short?" The index asked. "Were your friends giving parts of themselves not enough for you?"

"It only seems fair I give something up as well." While part of him did worry, there was something else at stake. He had seen the Eldrich being trapped within the book. To contain such a powerful wavelength that only one poor soul, if you could call it a soul, had fallen to it's madness was impressive. Anything trapped here couldn't come out without help. The book was a perfect prision for gods.

He spent much longer trying to decide which hand to put in the window. Some had gone with left, other's right. It wasn't possible to even out the odds, and the hole wasn't wide enough for both of his arms to fit. Left he finally decided, the right arm had already been damaged, that would lead to some sort of balance.

"What is it you wish to give me?"

"The madness of order." A terrifying power to force people to act as he desired like puppets. Black Star had been able to withstand it thanks to the book, but in the real world it would be too tempting to use. He still couldn't reign in his compulsions enough to leave the house on time, his hands were not the best to leave it in. "Provided it falls into no one's hands."

"That's the same gift your father gave me." The index said. "It's been very handy managing the chapters, as you've experienced first hand, but there is such a thing as too much order. Conflict and chaos are needed in order to create things. Besides, that's not your gift to give dear god of pitfalls." He removed his hand. The little bastard had taken one of his rings instead. "Worry not, so long as your heart still beats, there is chance for rebirth." The stone door rolled open. "Thank you, you may exit."

He ran, leaving the Index to float as the sole author once more. Of all the things it had collected, the ring probably would have been Eibon's favorite. A ring from the god of order was something he'd hoped for, for a long time. He had been an odd fellow to ghost write for. For all his ramblings on the evils of life, he had seemed to be searching for a specific answer. One the Index never could give him.

Living things were not inherently good. They came into the world thoughtlessly, grew in inconvenient directions, and dwelled on unpleasant things they had no control over. The world simply was not wide enough for every living thing to bumble through life taking up as much space as possible.

And yet.

Everything was capable of change. Over and over again, when given the chance, living things chose to help each other, even dolphins. The pattern was hard to deny and it was fascinating.

Try as it might, it couldn't recreate a scenario where Asura would happen again. Everyone turning a blind eye to what he was becoming had all been misguided attempts at helping something begging for help. Even Lord Death's punishment had been an attempt at mercy. Now black blood ravaged what remained of the god's sanity, and he had fled as far away from humanity as possible to minimize the chaos that followed.

It was time for the old gods to allow the next generation to take the mantal. Judging by the heroes the new god of order had chosen, it would turn out just fine. Children, notoriously the most selfish of mankind, gave of themselves with blind hope and open hearts. It would hold onto their gifts until they needed them again. After all, what are books for?