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Part 9
Page 18
Kougaiji was out the door and running before Dokugakuji
had finished shouting his name.
It was not like the last time. There were no voices
calling, no guiding force, but he knew what was going to happen.
What had happened.
Fading Sirius in a mirror-like puddle of water,
shattered and vanished as the king sprinted right through it downstreet.
Too far. Too far away. He wasn't going to make it.
"For all that happened," Sanzo had said with
Shujuan's voice, "I don't blame you, Kou."
That idiot. That bastard. Absolving him of this.
Of what he had created. His own goddamn fault.
"The tide that's rising. And the eye of the storm
closing in. It tightens like a noose, what once protected us. It's our
own undoing."
The bond that they'd forged in those dark final
hours on the eve of his father's revival. The link they'd burned across
the distance to tie them together. Ringing echoes on a chainlink fence.
He'd been killing her. All this time, with every
life he took. Killing her until there was nothing left to wear away.
"If she breaks this time, it's going to be the
final shatter, do you understand?"
He'd been so stupid.
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