a black cloak shivers over a wraith. silver pleats cascade down her back in a complicated weave; mega stones, tera shards, z-crystals, and more shimmer with the turning of her head. the room is a long stretch of granite floor; a marbled obsidian table is stark against the white. 

glass windows take the place of traditional walls; all four corners, a perfect panorama view of the world going up in smoke around them. 

fog rolls in and the door becomes a window too after tsubaki steps through. the wraith's eyes lift and molten gold eyes, surrounded by a swath of ruined flesh, pockmarked with glittering scales, greet the angel of this liminal space. it regards her with a tilt, scratches at an open sore on its lip, and reaches forward

"it's been too long, baki. my coffee's gone cold." long, spindly fingers, curling into claws, push a cracked mug across the table. 

Hyakkaryōran Tsubaki

☉

a thick tongue worms past too sharp teeth as laughter rattles in the back of its throat. claws follow furrowed grooves in the obsidian and continue their motion to what remains of its pale skin, mottled over with scars and scales and thick, fat drops of coagulated blood.

"i'm me," it rasps, leaning slowly across the table to curl the overflowing cup back to itself. it drinks greedily, teeth scratching at porcelain. "sundered, inevitable me.

"and this is the end of the end."

fire races up the side of one window. a snaggletooth dragon slithers into view, spitting embers. it scratches in futility against the pane and its mistress raises a hand against the glass, watching with a blank expression as it chokes on its own smog and tumbles towards the dark expanse of the ocean miles and miles below them.

"the end of the inevitable."

it casts a ghoulish glance over its cape to look at the angel, lips cracking along its jawline. 

Hyakkaryōran Tsubaki

☉

this is true ascendancy, where the mortal flesh is made to rot and be cast aside to make way for the truly divine. death is the first step towards rebirth and how could she be someone better if she hadn't let it strangle her, kill all the human parts of her so she could save them all?

its smile widens, lengthening to the tips of its ears, and sharp, grating laughter whistles through a throat so unused to speaking in the manner of humans.

"if only she could have," it says. "it would have been more painless that way, losing everything that ever mattered. how quickly they fled when her self-immolation burned them."

its voice drops to a callous whisper as it strides down the length of the room. long claws leave thin cracks in its wake, dragged heartlessly against the glass panes. 

"but she did not stop. how could she, when the alternative was...this?"

the sea burns a horrible, sanguine red. 

Hyakkaryōran Tsubaki

☉

"silly little mortals." talons clack against granite. 

"you know, at the end, i don't think she felt her failures," it says thoughtfully. fire plumes behind it, but the panes do not rattle. there is no sound, save for the breaths shared between these two unearthly bodies, and the occasional plip from tsubaki's spilled coffee.

"how long?" it echoes and hums in laughter. "how long does it take to lose one's humanity? how much ichor can one stomach before they're consumed from the inside out?"

it rolls its shoulders and its cloak shivers again, rustling white picks adorning velvet. and then it opens, not a cloak at all, but two vestigial wings draped from thickened, puckered muscle on the back of its neck. they fan outward to reveal its body, skeletal and emaciated, stripped of flesh and shaped with scale and sinew. 

there is a hole in its chest, scored through with furious healed-over wounds. some of the blood still lingers on its own claws. 

"soon it will be your turn. i can smell it in your blood, moxt torke."

Hyakkaryōran Tsubaki
'little angel'

☉

its nostrils flare and dagger teeth glint with the wicked curve of its smile. it can not perceive itself any longer. looking through the windows offers no reflection save for the world burning outside, and perhaps that's as much of a mirror as it needs. it exists in a stasis of self-loathing, its foundation the pyre she yearned for a century ago before she thought love could save her and all she cared for. 

she chased power once upon a time too and she broke herself, over and over and over again with every swallow of ambrosia. stripped herself of what it meant to be her and only when she nearly unraveled did she find the courage to claw herself from her hole. 

and for what? 

if she'd kept on, if she had given more, given everything, would she have become a different monster? one capable of saving them all?

"you cannot scrub the sin from yourself so easily," it hisses. 

"and who are you to speak of what makes a god?" it leers forward, scaled palms pressed against obsidian. hind legs shift and talons scrape as it advances on all fours, wings outstretched. a thick appendage unspools behind it, curving from its spine to dangle over the floor.

"we are but stardust and ash, and so long as you have blood to spill, little angel, you can be blackened. i can hear the chorus singing," it says as it nears. "i can hear the sanguine symphony in your corrupted veins."

saliva dribbles from one corner of the wraith's mouth. 

Hyakkaryōran Tsubaki

☉

to consume a god-touched is to consume itself. it yearns for its resplendency, the feeling of ichor coursing through its veins, driven by the steady thump-thump-thump of a working heart. but it does not know that it misses its mortal skein, tangled and formless all at once, perfect in its imperfections. 

it feels only the hunger. 

and watching the world turn and burn around it has obliterated it for centuries, chipped away at every nook and cranny that once could have housed any scrap not divine. 

the gods of no one do not weep for the lost, but rapture comes in many forms and it does not yet realize (or maybe it does, and has, and is waiting with baited breath) that its angel has come with a message of deliverance. 

it stares longingly, mesmerized by its angel's lullaby, and its chin brushes the gates of heaven.

a snarl works its way through its slack jaw and paralyzed throat. flesh bubbles and hisses, sputtering from mandible to eye socket. flesh oozes in one long, agonizing drip, and the wraith stares as the churchgoers heave behind its empty, mouldering eyes.

but a light wanes - an immutable, soft gold glow. a whisper of a woman graced by that which she loved one more time, until the darkness takes that too. 

and then the spell is broken. 

"you are no angel," it gasps and teeth rattle as its neck unfurls, bone by impossible bone, skin squealing as it shoves its gnashing face through the bars, if only to taste redemption one more time. 

Hyakkaryōran Tsubaki

☉