Chapter 220: The Two Orbs

“I refuse!”

Ishiki’s voice bounced off in the throne room a few times and then everything went silent.

“What do you mean you refuse?” Kenji’s voice was a little disappointed. Then he paused and chuckled.

“You can barely move,” He said. “Your left arm is useless. Your right is barely functioning. You are bleeding badly and suffering from backlash of using your skill. You have nothing left to fight with.” He took a single unhurried step forward. “I do not want to hurt you. But I need what is in your hand, and you do not have the means to stop me.”

He took another step.

He reached out with the normal hand and his fingers extended toward Ishiki’s fist.

The Divine Blood moved before Ishiki consciously told it to.

From his wrist, the black indestructible liquid surged and hardened into a spike between Kenji’s reaching fingers and Ishiki’s hand.

Kenji withdrew his hand. He looked at the spike and then at Ishiki.

Ishiki was looking at his own hand. He had not told it to do that. The Divine Blood had simply decided.

He closed his eyes for a moment.

“The paper,” he said subconsciously.

Kenji was still.

“Outside the cathedral.” Ishiki’s voice had gone quiet. “Someone left a note… with my title on it. The thing that started all of this.” He looked at Kenji directly. “That was you.”

The pause lasted just long enough to confirm it.

“Yes,” Kenji said.

Something in Ishiki’s body that had been very tightly controlled became uncontrollably lucid.

It was not loud or explosive. The rage inside his chest had nothing as a fuel for volume, so it simply burned low and absolute, consuming everything it touches down. His hands were shaking, but not from exhaustion now. The remaining spike of Divine Blood at his wrist vibrated with it.

He looked at Kenji and did not speak because there were no words that were equal to the size of what was happening inside him.

Kenji, who had clearly been waiting for the question and had prepared for its weight, exhaled once through his nose and continued.

“It was necessary,” he said. “Everything I did was necessary. You have to understand — at first, I expected only to use you to weaken the dragon. I would have come in afterward and finished it myself.” He looked across the room at the dragon’s still form. “But you proved much better than I estimated. I still cannot – I cannot fully believe you killed that thing… alone.” He shook his head once. “You are extraordinary, Ishiki. You have always been.”

Ishiki said nothing. His jaw was locked shut.

“You are probably thinking about that girl, uh – what was her name! Nina! Right,” Kenji said. “I can bring her back. I will bring her back. I will bring everyone back — everyone who has died in these scenario, anyone you want and then we can leave.” He spread his hands. “That is what I am giving you. That is what all of this has been for.”

Ishiki stopped hearing him.

Not because the words stopped. They continued… Kenji went on about freedom and the dead made living. But somewhere in the middle of it, Ishiki’s mind went somewhere else.

Back to the meeting… he and Kenji had just days ago. The clone that had appeared suddenly in his house sitting alone on the table. During that conversation… Kenji had only told him ’enough’ information.

’Two Orbs. If someone had both, they could bring back the dead.’

He had said that… specifically and made emphasis only on that. He had given Ishiki just the one fact designed to be used later.

Ishiki had not known, at that moment, what was coming for him.

Kenji planted that information in Ishiki’s head as a form of anchor. ’If I have both the orbs, I can bring anyone back to life.’

Ishiki’s mind was already drowning in guilt and anger after Kaori’s death. After that, Kenji planned for him to kill another of his close ones with his own hands… that would make the guilt overflow.

And at that moment, his grief would find an anchor on its own. A piece of information that he already knew.

Kenji… had planned all this and Ishiki had walked straight into it.

But Filch’s entrance and Ishiki finding himself below the Cathedral was a variable that was not already calculated.

Although, the demigod’s text never once mentioned that the orbs could be used to bring someone back to life… proving that it was not the whole truth.

Still, Ishiki could not decline the fact that he still hoped it was true.

He had killed the dragon, with everything he had… with Nina’s name living somewhere in the back of his mind the entire time.

The possibility… the thread connecting the act to the redemption. He hadn’t admitted it consciously… but the thing was, Kenji’s plan had actually worked, either way.

Kenji had given him a lie built from one true fact… the Orbs were real, and they were powerful. He had just wrapped it in the exact shape of everything Ishiki needed to believe.

“—and we can finally—”

“Why.”

Kenji stopped.

Ishiki looked at him from the base of the pillar. His voice had changed again. It was not filled with anger or grief of betrayal anymore.

“Why. Why was this worth any of it.” Ishiki took a breath. “No. It’s already happened. That question doesn’t matter.” He shifted. “Let me ask you something that does.” His eyes didn’t leave Kenji’s face. “You have one Orb. Renji has the other. How exactly do you plan to take it from him?”

Something moved in Kenji’s expression and he smiled with curiosity, as if he was being asked the question he have been waiting for.

And then — inexplicably — he laughed.

It was a short sound and it sat completely wrong in the destroyed throne room.

“That bastard,” Kenji said, “does not have the second Orb.”

He raised his right hand, which was normal.

And in his open palm, from somewhere that had no visible origin, an Orb appeared. It sat in his hand like it belonged there, pulsing with the slow steady rhythm of a second heartbeat.

“I have it,” Kenji said simply. “I have always had it.”

Ishiki stared at the Orb in disbelief.

The two Orbs. One in Ishiki’s grip. One in Kenji’s hand. Both of them were here, in this room, with the dragon dead and the throne empty and the silence pressing in from every wall.

Kenji opened his mouth to continue and suddenly nothing came out of his mouth.

His eyes went wide as he slowly looked down.

The tip of something cold and transparent, was protruding from the center of his chest.

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