The sound of a clock ticking was what woke her; heavy, measured beats resounding through her head as if someone had taken a hammer and chisel to her skull.

“Five more minutes,” she mumbled, rolling over to bury her face into the pillow.

...wait. Something felt off here.

Everything didn’t smell right. Everything didn’t feel right. She hadn’t had her patterned comforter since she was about twelve. Or the doggy pillow she was currently sprawled on.

Yuju sat up abruptly. The world spun, and she winced, clutching her head with one hand. Her other hand was palm up in front of her, resting harmlessly on her lap. Small, stubby, kid hands.

I...what?

Something seemed awfully wrong, but little Yuju wasn’t quite sure what it was. Her legs dangled off the side of her bed as she wriggled out from under the covers, confused.

The room was not dark. A tiny night light glowed at the side, allowing her to take in her surroundings. A cluttered desk with books and data chips lay adjacent to her bed. A half open copy of a children’s storybook lay flipped open next to her pillow, along with a flashlight half rolled under her pillow. The dog-eared paperback was obviously well loved, and a faded illustration of pig with a spider’s web over its head was laid out on its opened page.

Terrific. Memories of the night before were returning, foggy and uncertain, as if travelling across a great distance. She had been hiding her late night reading from her doting mother, who wanted her to sleep early.

“Mom…?” For some reason, tears welled up in her eyes, and little Yuju slid off her bed in a hurry, racing across the not too wide expanse of her childhood room, tiptoeing to reach the access pad set above.

The door slid open into an impersonal hallway, clean and sterile. She had grown up here, known nothing different. The lab was further down. Her mother would be there, busy with the day’s work. She was supposed to study, but she could do that at the lab. She could help.

She could spend time with her mom, and that was all that mattered.

Little feet padded first with caution, then with greater certainty as she remembered her surroundings, details jumping out at her as she passed them, snapping into focus. Down that turn, the pantry where she used to nick treats outside of mealtimes. The laundry chute that served as a makeshift slide for back when she used to fit into it.

The containment chamber for test specimens. Yuju slowed her steps, a nagging uneasiness preying at the back of her mind. Something whispering insistently, but from so far away that she couldn’t quite hear the words, and her head hurt.

Mom would know what to do. Mom was smart. Unlike her dad, who rarely came by anyway because work took him away so often. But he was a tall man who gave her rides on his shoulders whenever he was around, so she could forgive him for his absences. He would even conjure flame with his hands to create little shadow puppets for her entertainment, making her giggle.

Mom never really used her magic the way dad did. It was all study and practical applications and advanced theory, but Yuju got good at it because mom was all she had, and she had never exhibited any signs of Awakening. She was turning twelve soon. She hoped she would Awaken. Mom’s boss always seemed so disappointed when he looked at her. If she could Awaken, things would be better. That was what she believed.

Mom… Yuju shook her head and started moving again. Mom was waiting for her.

She never turned back, and thus never saw how everything faded as she left, rendering down to fragments of nothingness and whispers of memory, trapped in the corridors of her imagination.

“Eunha, we gotta do something about this.” Sowon gestured at the pulsating cocoon that held both the imugi and Yuju. “Can you unravel it somehow?”

“I’m trying. ” Eunha snapped, her focus already shot from her spell slinging. She had already undone the web of flames that had blocked off the ceiling earlier. No one was flying anywhere at the moment, and she needed all the power she had at her command. She was never the best at the subtle arts, preferring to just blast her way through all obstacles.

A few discarded vials lay around her feet, stuff that helped to restore some of her ragged focus, give her an added boost for the task at hand. She would probably feel the aftereffects of it later on, but she didn’t care. Yuju was stuck in there, and every second she wasted was that much more time the blasted imugi had to hurt her.

She didn’t want to think about the possibilities. Would it drive Yuju mad? Break her spirit? Or the worst possible scenario, take over her body? There was so much the imugi could do to Yuju just short of killing her, and none of it was tolerable.

Sowon decided to not piss off the already stressed fire mage and loped over to where SinB stood guard at the stairway outside the chamber. The gunslinger appeared to be fiddling with something when the ex-soldier came up behind her.

It had been barely ten minutes since everything had gone catastrophically wrong. Yuju getting trapped and possibly mindraped by the imugi, Yerin getting thrown off the building… Sowon winced, gritting her teeth. No one could survive that kind of a drop, but none of them had the time to mourn their losses.

The footsteps below were faint, but there was definitely a bunch of people headed up. Fortunately, there were many floors between them and whatever lay below. Unfortunately, it was still only a matter of time before reinforcements reached them. If Eunha couldn’t break through the cocoon in time, they would have their hands full dealing with enemies.

If this had been any other operation, a sane commander would order a retreat right now and save what was left of their forces. But Sowon couldn’t,wouldn’t, do that. She had already lost Yerin in action, she couldn’t possibly leave Yuju behind. Not when there was still a chance of rescuing her.

“What are you doing?” Sowon asked as SinB finally finished doing whatever it was she was messing with. The gunslinger smiled grimly as she stepped back out of stairwell.

“Just a little welcome gift for our soon to be guests. Yerin gave some to me earlier…” SinB’s face fell at that, her lower lip trembling at the thought of her partner in crime. The rush of action earlier hadn’t given her much time to process the idea that Yerin could be gone. A reassuring hand clasped her shoulder, and Sowon pulled her into a rough hug, patting the younger girl on the back. It took some effort, but SinB managed to not cry at that, somehow.

“We’ll blast those bastards to kingdom come.” SinB growled under her breath into Sowon’s shoulder. They were tired, bloody, and low on options. Most of their special ammunition was spent, and they didn’t even have much left of regular ammo. Sowon managed to salvage a bit of usable ammo off their fallen foes from earlier, but SinB was less fortunate in that respect. At least she still had the tiny timed explosives Yerin had slipped her earlier.

Bombing the stairwell would cut them off as well as slow, if not entirely halt, the progress of the enemy reinforcements. They would have to find a different way down, and if Umji was still safe and sound out there, they still had options. Comms were not working properly after the explosion of magic saturating the entire floor, so they couldn’t talk directly to her. It was awkward, but they could make it work. They had to, if they wanted to survive.

“Not setting it off now?” Sowon queried as she let SinB go after a moment. The gunslinger the remote control in her pocket, a savage grin creeping onto her face.

“Course not, why waste an explosion when there’s no one around to enjoy it?”

Umji was stressed.

And also dizzy, because high winds and a tiny flying drone were not a good mix, and she had to deal with vertigo inducing perspective changes every two seconds. It was still airborne though, and the weather was also shifting rapidly outside. Umji was no meteorologist, but one look out of the window spoke well enough of the coming storm.

Their Spartan allies had launched raids on other Mireu facilities on the outskirts of Ulsan, which had drawn the bulk of the cult’s forces there in response earlier. That, at least, was comforting. It didn’t erase the fact that there were still other units present within the building, and some of them at least had started moving upwards about ten minutes ago.

Umji had cut most of them off, stopping elevators and blowing fuses to seal doors and hallways when misdirection stopped serving its purpose. Her switch to more aggressive deterrence prompted a network lockdown, but she had been prepared for that. She killed the power for half the building, making the Spire go dark and inducing enough panic to make things difficult for anyone trying to maintain order.

At the same time, Umji also activated her Plan B and C at the same time. The fact that reinforcements were being summoned upwards was a clear enough indication that stuff was heating up topside. Signalling for their Spartan allies to come back them up for extraction was one thing, but Umji didn’t want to take any chances.

There was that bank robbery about two buildings over. The hostage situation was nowhere near as serious as it could be, but Umji had deliberately sent a false tip exaggerating the situation to a news crew in the area. They were a semi-independent outfit, something Umji could almost respect, but only almost. Not completely owned by the megacorps didn’t mean the megacorps didn’t find a way to own you regardless, through shell companies posing as third party investors. And businesses needed money to stay afloat. It was just the way the world worked.

But the point was that there was breaking news, and Umji also knew that the news crew already had a chopper out covering another incident halfway across the city. That one was already winding down to a close, but the new tip Umji sent would redirect them to the bank, which was much closer to her current location.

Taking control of it would be difficult, but she could probably engineer an explosion in the Spire somehow to draw their attention. As long as it was close enough, she could hijack it remotely. Perks of being a technomancer.

Umji tried not to throw up as her flying eye in the sky got flipped over a few more times in the rolling winds. Trying to control it to observe things was more challenging than she had imagined. She had noticed the flames spouting out of the top of the dome at the tip of the Spire, and a playback had confirmed there was lightning running through it -- Eunha’s work, clearly. It was that more than anything else that had prompted Umji to start moving pieces around. She liked being prepared for eventualities.

The latest spin almost smashed the golden Snitch into the building, but some last minute course correction saved her drone from turning into a mess of splattered components. The field of view angled around crazily for a few seconds, but Umji’s keen eye caught a splash of colour and shape against what should have been a flat surface.

Turning the eye back was a challenge, but she made it. Umji gasped aloud when she zoomed in and saw who it was, dangling off a rope barely attached to one of the climbing anchors Sowon had affixed on her way up earlier.

“Yerin-unnie!?”

The day sped past in a blur, but Yuju barely noticed as she spent time with her mother in the lab. It was warm and comforting, and the headache that plagued her was but a nagging throb at the back of her head. Not entirely gone, but Yuju was still too enthralled by the fact that her mother was there and…

Why was she so happy anyway? She saw Mom every day. It was no big deal. But she had burst into tears the moment she saw her mother earlier, and the labcoated researcher only laughed and called her a crybaby, wrapping her into a familiar embrace.

She had missed it so much. It was different from the kind of hugs that Yerin used to give her, more maternal certainly, but the warmth was similar enough…

Wait, who was Yerin? Yuju froze for a second, the splitting pain in her head returning with a vengeance. She dropped the crystal she was holding, and it shattered on impact, splintered fractals catching her agonized reflection in a million different angles.

Mother was there in an instant, soothing her. Puppy, it’s going to be okay.

Puppy. Someone else called her that. But who?

Yuju fell to her knees, crystal shards cutting into her skin. Blood tainted the mirrored reflections, painting her red. The red felt familiar, painfully so. The scars on the back of her hand and knuckles stood out in stark contrast, and she started, uneasy.

The crimson reflection caught not only her wild eyed look, but also the image of her mother looming above her. Red red red, it sang, a whimsical tune that repeated endlessly in her ears, amplifying the cracking agony that was tearing her skull apart.

Her mother, dipped in crimson. A burst of memory, and the floor seemed to dissolve underneath her. Through the scattered crystal shards, Yuju saw again, her mother weeping bloody tears, reaching out to her, telling her to…

Run.

Yerin was not having a good day.

Granted, she had drawn first blood in the sense that it was her move that had forced the imugi out of its pseudo-human shape. She was a bit proud of that, actually.

On hindsight, she really should have let go and jumped off the bloody serpent’s back the moment it changed forms, but she had been caught off guard and was trying her best to not fall off and break her neck when the damn thing grew to the size of a small house in the blink of an eye.

The hair on the back of her head was plastered to her skull, and Yerin could feel the slick stickiness of her own blood swathed over her scalp and skin. The impact against the stained glass ceiling had definitely cut deep, but head wounds always bled more than necessary. She was still a bit woozy, but she definitely had worse days.

So she had been in perfect possession of her faculties when the imugi had flung her out through the window, instinctively balling herself to let her back take the impact through the glass. The memory fabric of her outfit was good enough against cutting damage from anything that wasn’t a vibro-edge, and while she had the air knocked out of her from the crash, she was still thinking fast on how to save herself as she tumbled out of the building.

Yerin was never a huge fan of high places, and definitely not after SinB had dragged her along on that dive out of a 30th floor window with no parachute that one time. If Yuju and Eunha hadn’t joined forces to rescue them, they would likely have died. This time though, her puppy wasn’t around to save her, but Yerin wasn’t one to forget past lessons.

Almost as soon as she had cleared the window in what was probably an oddly graceful arc, she had fired off the grappling hook she had hidden up her sleeve. Yerin had never been able to do that wall running crap that SinB could, but going topside to ambush her targets had definitely been one of her lessons, and she had her ways to scale places she couldn’t normally reach.

The whipping winds didn’t really help with her predicament though, nor did the mostly smooth surfaces of the damn tower. Yerin had to suppress the instinctive panic when the hook didn’t manage to latch successfully onto anything at first, gravity seeking to drag her to her inevitable demise if she couldn’t adapt fast enough.

Fortunately, it did snag on something after the initial second of nothingness, jerking her to an abrupt stop as she bounced haplessly on the end like a lost kite in the howling wind. Nausea crawled at the pits of her stomach as she determinedly kept her eyes focused upwards instead, squinting as dust scraped at her skin.

It was a bad angle, but she had gotten lucky; that had been one of Sowon’s climbing anchors she had managed to snag. It wasn’t the best hold she had, and she didn’t have enough leverage to twist herself into a proper position to get a good hold on anything that would at least allow her to cling to the side of the building and try to find her way back in.

The wind wasn’t helping either, buffeting her from side to side as she tried to swing herself into a corner without dislodging her precarious hold. Cold sweat trickled down the back of her neck, along with the blood that was already starting to cake into her hair. It was going to be a  to wash off later. If there was a later.

Something crackled in her ear, barely audible over the screaming wind. Yerin was still trying to figure out how to finagle her way out of her predicament when Umji’s voice finally registered over her comms, almost startling her into losing her grip. Yerin gritted her teeth and tried to ignore the terror-induced cramps that were starting to creep into her limbs.

“Yes Umji, I had a little accident...a little help would be nice...oh. Yes, as a matter of fact I do...I guess I could do something about that. Any ETA? Gotcha. I’ll see you in a bit.”

Dangling in midair about six hundred meters off the ground while having a conversation was a first, but Yerin figured there were odder things in life. At least getting tossed out of the tower had taken her out of the effective radius of the magical field, which allowed Umji to get back in touch with her. There was a silver lining in every cloud after all.

Yerin grinned recklessly as she tried to relax herself for the action ahead. It would do her no good if she froze up at the wrong moment. She had a flight to catch.

The blast rocked her off her feet, and Eunha was sent skidding twenty feet across the cracked marble, head spinning as blood oozed out from her nose. A second blast went off somewhere behind her, and the fire mage thought she heard SinB whoop in the distance.

Eunha tried to recollect herself as she pushed herself upright, glass cutting into her elbows since her scales had faded from her earlier exertion. She squinted vaguely, her vision oddly doubled from exhaustion, trying to see through the burst of light that had knocked her down earlier.

She had figured out the pattern and tried to overload the stitches holding the cocoon together, and the resulting effects had been...explosive. Blinking rapidly to clear her vision, Eunha bit back a gasp when the light faded, revealing the scaly human form of the imugi, and the crumpled figure of Yuju it was holding up by the scruff of her neck.

Sowon must have come up behind her in the meantime, because the leader was suddenly there, pulling the exhausted mage to her feet with one hand, blade ready in the other. All of their focus was on Yuju, who seemed to be unconscious, and completely at the imugi’s mercy.

“I must say, this is quite the unusual human. Remarkable mental defenses.” The imugi seemed almost impressed. “If you hadn’t given me the opportunity, I would never have been able to subdue her like this.”

Eunha shuddered, guilt rising like a tidal wave. Sowon gripped her shoulder tightly, steadying the younger girl.

“Give her back. ” Eunha’s fists were clenched, fire starting to gather in the depths of her eyes. She might have been worn out, but she still had a little more fight in her. For Yuju, she could do this.

“Now why would I do that? She’s quite a miracle, you know? Endless mana…” The imugi traced a talon down Yuju’s cheek almost lovingly, drawing a thin red line across tender skin. Eunha trembled with fury, but Sowon kept her in check, not wanting the girl to do something stupid.

“As long as I live, she lives. Mana, unending…” The imugi’s eyes glittered with greed, then seemed disappointed for a moment. “If only I could consume her, but I could settle for taking her body for my own.”

“You will do no such thing!” Eunha exploded, yanking free from Sowon’s grasp and flinging herself forward as her entire body lined itself with flame. Sowon swore and lunged forward as well, trying to stop Eunha from falling into the imugi’s trap.

It was clear enough from what Yuju had said earlier. Eunha had fused her soul with the dragon orb, and the imugi wanted the orb. The imugi would eat her in a second if he got her hands on her, and then they would have a much bigger problem.

Then she saw SinB sneak up from behind the imugi, even as she swung her blade wildly at the smug creature to distract it from noticing. Eunha was wreathed in flame, hammering at the magical shield the imugi had thrown up, and Sowon couldn’t physically pull her back at this point.

SinB’s little knife sliced neatly through its wrist, and the imugi howled, forced to drop Yuju. SinB took the chance to catch the comatose shaman, backing up rapidly in case the imugi retaliated. She wasn’t quite fast enough, and the shockwave blasted her back into one of the pillars, possibly cracking a rib. Yuju fell helplessly from her grasp, ragdolling into a vulnerable heap on the ground.

Sowon tried to close the distance and behead the imugi. At this point, she didn’t care if it wouldn’t be completely dead. Killing its physical body would at least handicap it enough for her to get her team out of here. Things had gotten way out of hand, and she needed to end things fast.

Unfortunately, she was also taken completely by surprise when a sudden tail sprouted out from behind the imugi, sweeping into her abdomen and knocking her clear across the chamber. If not for her armor, she would have broken more than a few bones. As it is, Sowon coughed and tried to shake the stars from her head, even as blood dripped from where she had accidentally bitten her own tongue.

That left Eunha alone with the imugi, and none of them were close enough to help.

In her defense, Eunha put up a good fight, but she was already too exhausted to be at her best. The imugi overpowered her in a matter of seconds, grabbing her by the throat with its remaining hand and pulling her close. Sowon and SinB clambered to their feet to try and help, but then a wave of cultist soldiers swept in, having climbed up the elevator shaft and forced it open after SinB had collapsed the stairway earlier. Sowon took down a good number of them, but she was quickly forced to the ground, as was SinB.

The imugi smiled in triumph.

Wake up.

Who is it? She was so tired. I just want to sleep.

They need you.

Vague sounds and faint images, as if through a heavy fog. Yuju stirred, her entire body weighed down in shackles in a formless space. She was trapped, and her mind was sluggish, unable to focus.

Mother… She vaguely remembered her splintered dreams, tainted red and sharper than any blade, cutting like a knife into her muddled brain. The shock woke her, just a little. Enough for her to notice the murky darkness in which she was trapped.

Yuju struggled to focus. There had been...a fight. She had been fighting and then…

The formless grey around her solidified into mirrored walls as her brain started to fight the fog that was trying to keep her incapacitated. As her surroundings swirled into clarity, Yuju found herself bound and hanging from a ceiling, thorn-like chains wound deep into her body.

This isn’t real. She knew instantly, but the pain and exhaustion was no illusion, and she was a prisoner in her own mind. It was her own mind, because the mirrored cell was familiar. She knew this place, had seen it from the other side before.

The containment chamber. It was gone, destroyed years ago. It shouldn’t exist anywhere else, except in her own head. She knew all this, and yet…

Someone was screaming outside of her head, and everything hurt. Yuju squeezed her eyes shut, struggling to break free of her chains. They only dug deeper with every move, leeching greedily at her flesh and gnawing like a thousand tiny teeth.

You are not alone.

Yuju’s eyes snapped open. She saw her own reflection, bloodied and battered, hanging like a sacrifice strung up for the crows. The thorns shackling her had grown, fat and heavy as they fed off her blood like the parasites they were.

Blood is life is power. A familiar mantra, but who had taught it to her? Yuju muttered incoherently to herself, a deeper madness threatening to overwhelm her. She locked gazes with the bright, mad eyes of her tortured reflection, and remembered.

She was bound, but this was her mind. Hers, and no one else’s. Her will was her own, and in her own mind, she was everything.

Weakened, trapped, someone eating away at her lifeforce, sapping at her power. A crushing will, something old and powerful binding her, but she had no fear.

Endless mana… A tiny whisper from far away. Life unending…

You see now.

There was power in sacrifice. Strung up like a gallows victim, Yuju’s head lolled backwards until only the whites of her eyes showed. The thorns dug deeper, eager to tap into her strength. The pain was a faithful companion, and Yuju knew what she had to do.

Life was power. Symbolism was everything in this imaginary space, and she grasped it like a drowning sailor in a storm, her only hope to overturn this captivity.

I offer a sacrifice, myself to myself, hung from a windy tree.

An old verse, steeped in ritual and imbued with the faith of a hundred, thousand generations. The thorns bulged, feeding in excess from the sudden surge, wrapping the trapped shaman even further in their encroaching embrace. The last of Yuju’s face vanished from sight, but not before she smiled.

And we all fall down.