Himiko moved through the mindscape like someone strolling through her own garden. Every street, every house, every courtyard she passed transformed in her wake—ordinary structures giving way to gilded palace halls, golden murals, and the sound of an open sea.
Her storm-force had begun the work of infiltration. Once it filled every corner of this inner world, the body-snatching would be complete.
She was impatient—she had a feeling things wouldn't go smoothly. But her concern was external: the people outside, the ones who might come and disrupt her. That was why she'd deployed the Yata no Kagami.
Then she came to the well.
The moment she saw it, she understood exactly where her unease had been coming from. It wasn't an external threat at all.
What the hell is this?
The sight of it hit her like standing at the edge of the underworld itself. In the span of a single heartbeat, she felt as though she were looking directly at the gates of Yomi—the land of the dead.
How does a normal person have this inside them?
She desperately wanted to find Sadako and ask: Are you out of your mind? You dug a direct passage to Yomi into your own soul? What were you thinking?
Whatever the reason, Himiko was decisive. She had spent eighteen hundred years maneuvering and scheming for one purpose: survival. And right now, it looked like that well was trying to tear open a passage between worlds.
She moved without hesitation, channeling her storm-force toward it. She was going to seal it.
Sadako's dark self was furious.
As a vengeful spirit who had existed in the physical world for over thirty years, Sadako Yamamura was far more powerful than Bella had imagined. The Undying Blade was just a blade—it could cut down the undead it encountered, but it couldn't erase all undying things in the world. Bella had overestimated herself and underestimated her enemy.
The blade had its limits.
When the younger Sadako was sacrificed, it didn't mean the wraith called Sadako Yamamura was destroyed. At the critical moment, she had done something Bella never detected: she had taken the darkest part of herself—the distilled essence of hatred, the most extreme emotional residue of her grudge—and hidden it deep within the adult Sadako's psyche. They were the same being at the root; the concealment was seamless.
A second personality had taken shape in the depths of Sadako's mind. One that was pure malice.
Bella didn't know. The meek, slightly timid adult Sadako didn't know. Even Himiko hadn't detected it, not at first.
This dark persona had chosen to remain hidden, waiting. It would resurface when Sadako faced injustice again—or when something struck deep enough. In that moment, it would merge with the host body and take full control.
The Undying Blade's process of reversing death had been crucial to the dark persona as well. Once it reclaimed the body fully, Sadako would no longer be a ghost—but she wouldn't be human either. She would be what the ancient texts called an ikiryō: a living spirit. A ghost that breathes. Something that appears only once in a billion lives.
But the dark persona's carefully laid plan was falling apart.
Himiko was ruining everything.
As reluctant as the dark persona was, it had no choice but to act. If it waited any longer, Himiko would claim the body, and that would be the end.
From the mouth of the well, thick, viscous blood began to pour—not a trickle, but a flood. It surged outward and formed a river, wide and deep, choked with the bones of animals and humans alike. The blood-river spread fast: over Himiko's feet, then up past her shins, her knees, her waist.
The dark persona unleashed itself at full power, holding nothing back. No mercy. No hesitation. Only hatred distilled into force.
Himiko hadn't fought with her own hands in a very long time. Her reaction was a full beat too slow. By the time she recognized that she was under attack, fury had already replaced surprise. "A wandering spirit dares challenge me? I am a queen! Get out of my way!"
Under normal circumstances, a female ghost wouldn't dare provoke her. Yamatai was small, but it was still a kingdom—Himiko carried genuine regal authority.
But she had no idea who she was dealing with. She didn't know that two days ago, the dark persona of Sadako Yamamura had been pinned down and nearly overwhelmed by a Tang Empress.
Compared to that, a queen of Yamatai was nothing.
And the moment Himiko invoked royal authority as a weapon, Sadako's dark self detonated.
First that woman, and now you? I couldn't fight back—I hid away—isn't that enough? I'm hiding and you still come after me? Am I really that weak to everyone?
Old wounds and new fury stacked on top of each other. The dark persona erupted at one hundred and twenty percent—and suddenly, Himiko, without the Yata no Kagami and armed only with the Shikon Jewel, found herself in serious trouble.
The Queen of Yamatai fought back with everything she had. Her storm-force was relentless, hammering in every direction without pause—a real storm, the kind that leaves no room to breathe. She struck hard and she struck constantly. But after a long, brutal exchange, all she had managed was a draw.
She couldn't retreat. The moment she pulled back, her spirit-body would become fuel for the enemy.
The dark persona couldn't retreat either. She'd already withdrawn to the deepest corner of Sadako's psyche. Where else was there to go? There was no choice but to fight.
Himiko's command of spiritual arts was masterful. The storm-force she wielded in the mindscape attacked from every angle—tornadoes hammering at the well that served as the dark persona's final anchor, torrential rain churning the blood-river into chaos, lightning cascading in all directions in an attempt to grind down this last pocket of resistance.
Sadako understood none of it. She had no magical arts, no eighteen-hundred-year foundation.
But she had the well.
From the well's mouth, the blood-river kept spreading—seeping into Himiko's spirit-form, contaminating it. Her power was born entirely of grudge and hatred: messy, impure, lacking any of the refinement that Bella or Himiko or Ogun cultivated. She had no reason to pursue purity. She didn't need it.
A clear, clean stream is easy to poison. A foul, stagnant ditch—what more could you possibly do to it?
That was Sadako's weapon: her own filth. And it was the same principle Calypso had used against Bella—the power of corruption, turning the enemy's strength against itself.
The difference was that Bella had been weak, and Calypso strong. Here, Sadako was the weaker one, and Himiko the stronger.
But destruction is always easier than construction. A barefoot fighter going up against someone in armored boots—even if the armored fighter is more powerful—will force that fighter to move with extreme caution. Every step has to be careful. Every move has to be precise. And that made Himiko fight conservatively. She had to destroy the dark persona without getting herself splattered in the process.
Her strategy was the strategy of the experienced: patience, no overreach, a calm mind, and the superior craft of eighteen centuries—grinding the opposition down, piece by piece.
Bella and Lara knew none of this. The two of them—a pair of adventurers, in a sense—were still making their way through the mountain terrain.
They arrived at a narrow crevice cut in the shape of the letter Z, barely wide enough to pass through sideways. Get through this, and they'd be out of the mountains entirely.
Bella slipped through without effort.
Lara? ... Lara's proportions were the problem. Her upper half wedged solid on the way through.
"This is really bad! A little help here!" the adventurer called out.
Is this what people mean by a 'blessing in disguise'? Are you actually showing off right now?
Bella doubled back. What followed was a prolonged operation involving pulling, squeezing, and pushing in various combinations.
She misjudged her strength on one particular push. Lara yelped.
"Lighter! Lighter! You're going to crush me!"
"Breathe in! Suck it in!"
"It's not a breathing problem, you don't understand!"
"Say another word and I'm leaving you here."