Today, it was finally coming to an end.

  Saigo had never understood why so many under the Ceiling believed in rebirth. Even within his little clan it was often spoken of, a distant hope that kept people going. The recurring belief was that by virtue of their deeds, or lacking those, for the sheer length of their wretched lives, one would be rewarded. All one had to do was hold on long enough and then the next life would be much better. Or so the thinking went.

  It was a bastardized version of the more traditional belief, which held that rebirth was random. He could see why, in their clan, it would have changed over the years to include a concept of balance. After all, if it was random, they might well be reborn once more into this forsaken basement, and that was not a gamble anyone here had been prepared to take.

  But he had no need for those beliefs. He’d always felt that there was a serene beauty in death. For one, it brought equality. Whether someone had risen to Opal or lived as a Clay their whole lives; they would both end up as corpses all the same.

  Death was also a necessity for life. Corpses would go on to feed beasts, or the soil itself. The teachings of the crystals were clear on this; without being fed by dead things, the ground would eventually turn barren. Plants needed not only water and light, but insects and organic matter.

  Still, those thoughts brought little relief as he dragged Akihiru’s body over the dirt and pushed it through the passage in the wall. One last look at that innocent face, a memory of the only eyes in their clan that truly still looked at the future, and then he was gone.

  It was a longstanding tradition in their clan. The Final Gift, they called it reverently. To rot beneath the soil, so that the next generation might still grow food and survive. How many generations before him had held on to that hope? That one day, the parasites would have finally all starved to death, and they could begin the long work of reclaiming their lost floor.

  That nurturing layer under the dirt was stacked full of corpses, now. Along with the cursed nightmares had come a swift decay of the mind. His discovery of the tea had come far too late. In a few weeks, his clansmen had fallen like flies. The only thing that had allowed him to survive was his advancement. Truth opposed lies, thus the verdant Ki that followed revelation easily held off Uso’s influence.

  Now, he was the last. With him, the hopes of his ancestors would finally die.

  Centuries of suffering. Centuries of miserable endurance, of desperately hanging on to faint hopes. After all that, one critical failure had been enough to bring them down.

  But the time for musing on his failures had come to an end. There was only one thing that did offer relief through all this suffering. One thing that had kept him going as he shoved his brothers and sisters into that hole. He ran his fingers over the coarse wood of his spear and let out a deep breath before striding through the hallway and putting his hand on the crystal that would open the door.

  One way or another, at long last, today was the day that it would all come to an end.

  He had left behind the stories of his clan as well as that of his failure. He’d left warnings and teachings as well, though in a brief fit of rage he’d swiped the last of them off the table and had not checked if the crystals still worked. It would not matter. Nobody had entered this floor in centuries.

  A weight seemed to lift from his shoulders as the slab closed behind him and he walked slowly down the dark hallway. The hard part was over. After watching his clansmen fall one after the other, this final duty was light as a feather. Now, he was just a man with nothing to lose.

  With every second step, he struck the ground loudly with the butt of his spear. The time for hiding had come to an end. But it wasn’t needed. Uso was already waiting for him in the grand hall of the Cupola. The parasite was no fool and knew well where he’d been hiding. After all, it had fed greedily on his brothers and sisters in the last weeks, even through the layers of stone that had protected them for generations.

  The results of that feeding frenzy were clear: instead of the few thin claws it wielded when he first saw it, there were now ten gleaming black limbs, each longer and thicker than before, with a sharp point at the end. Its tentacles had grown in size and number too, all of them protruding from the back of the old man’s body, but wrapping around in a way so that it was barely visible.

  Another thing had changed, too. There were now infected beasts skulking around, white hounds and dark felines growling and hissing at him, where there had been none before.

  “Beasts have ever been easy prey for us,” Uso said in a husky old man’s voice. A deceit for certain, but not one he would spend the Ki of revelation to remedy. “A few pieces of myself, to give life to dormant pieces of my brothers. For most of these beasts, it’s sufficient to hunt only two, one of each gender. The rest is generously provided by biology.”

  A shiver ran down Saigo’s spine as Uso let out a dry, rasping laugh. He moved in closer, running the silver Ki of blades through his legs before performing the Three Strides. A few light taps of his feet on the hall’s flagstones carried him to Uso’s side where he lashed out with broad swipes of his spear.

  The parasite’s laughter continued as it blocked his attacks, the black claws having grown hard enough to withstand even a Fortified blade. Saigo had left an opening, but Uso did not take it, circling him briefly before backing away and letting the beasts advance instead.

  “Finally the Talc has emerged. I have been waiting for you,” the parasite said as two felines struck with bright red emanation attacks. But Saigo had recognized the bright red smoke and was ready with feelings of peace and love, forging a shield of rosy Ki that held easily.

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  “After all those long years waiting for the moss to complete its slow work, finally another path has opened up. Tenjin must be smiling down on me.”

  Saigo frowned as he blasted the rosy shield towards the yelping felines and rushed ahead with the Hunting Stork to put holes in their hearts. He carried that momentum forward and struck again at Uso, this time a heavy downward blow with a bit of verdant Ki mixed in with the silver-hued energy of blades.

  Brown Ki dispersed, a claw cracked and a tentacle was sliced open, but the parasite had many left. It would take a lot more than this to bring Uso down, but he already knew that. He had come prepared.

  The hounds gathered the ivory Ki of fear and howled, but even now, there was not a hint of fear within him. What more did he have to lose?

  The rust-colored Ki of bravery sprang easily from his chest, negating the effect of their howls. They spat sticky globs of white Ki as he came at them, but threads of burnt orange smoke easily dissolved them. He cut the first hound’s throat out with a low cut before using the haft of his spear as a club to shatter the other’s spine.

  Even though he knew that to converse with the parasite could lead to nothing good, curiosity got the better of him. “What moss?” he asked in a voice as dry as cracked stone.

  Uso laughed with cruel amusement. “So the Talc can speak. Do you think it’s wise, asking the Lord of Lies for his secrets?”

  A few beetles appeared from between Uso’s claws, claws scratching on the stone as they came at him. He grimaced as he saw the dark shroud that covered them, circling around Uso to avoid these new beasts. He knew the black smoke of despair all too well and understood its weakness, too. But if there once had been a wellspring to have fed him the bright Ki of hope, it had long since run dry.

  “I suppose there is no harm in revealing that ancient scheme to you. But a parasite can give nothing for free. A secret for a secret. You must tell me of your hopes and dreams.”

  Saigo pulled three disks from his robe and slid them over the floor as he sprang into action. Two taps brought him to Uso’s right flank, spear striking first high, then low. The deep brown Ki of lies surged up, but he clad the spear’s blade in thin strips of verdant Ki. Claws held him off, but then two snare traps exploded, locking claws and tentacles in place.

  He cut through a tentacle and scored a line over the old man’s corpse. Claws and tentacles flashed frantically as the final trap spat out a spray of corrosive fluid. Uso hissed, smoking limbs curling up like a wounded insect. Saigo launched a fierce array of blows, each empowered by silver Ki. Claws cracked and a neat hole that was meant for the heart punched through the old man’s shoulder instead, the parasite jerking it aside at the last moment.

  The price for that final blow was his left arm laid open by a swiping claw. He fell back as the snare traps expired and now Uso advanced furiously, a mess of flashing limbs that took all his effort to dance away from. A beetle passed his notice and bit him in the calf, Saigo grunting with pain as he kicked it away.

  It was not going well, but that didn’t matter. He was fine with whatever outcome.

  Or so he thought, until Uso spoke again.

  “Ishitabe Moss has one unique property that many do not know of, but this old host knew more than most. It works insidiously, just as we parasites do, but far slower. It takes decades for it to start showing an effect, or in the case of the basalt it is working on here, multiple centuries. But eventually, it will eat away at the stone’s aura, turning it porous and weak. A slow-working yet brilliant scheme, is it not?”

  Saigo stumbled, feeling a flash of cold fear for the first time in weeks. The seal of this floor. The many layers of solid stone conjured by that ancient Patriarch, blocking all entrances. The parasite intended to break it.

  It was a shocking feeling, to realize that there were, in fact, things he still wanted. Even if he wanted only to avoid them. He had thought that with him, at least, not only the hopes of his clan would perish, but also the hopes of the parasites. There would be not a single person to feed on, dooming Uso to a slow death.

  But if it succeeded in weakening the seal, unassuming cultivators could one day find their way down here. He cursed under his breath. The warnings would not be enough, hidden down in that basement. They should have put signs, written words of caution and instruction large across the Cupola’s walls. They should have…

  Uso laughed.

  “But you have asked the wrong question, foolish Talc. You’ve been given the wrong secret.”

  Saigo’s eyes widened as brown mist was sucked into the corroded tentacles and claws, filling the cracks and holes with fresh carapace and flesh. Uso exploded forward in a burst of speed, claws cracking the stone.

  Saigo struck, but his blow was deflected by one claw, then his spear was knocked out of his hand by a sweeping tentacle that hit like a hammer. A beetle cut off his retreat to the left, so he dove to the right, but it was too late.

  He cried out in pain as one claw after another struck. One pierced him through the shoulder, another straight through the hand. Both feet were nailed to the stone in the same way, until six claws in total stuck through his body, holding him tight so that he couldn’t move an inch.

  The old man’s sunken face looked at him with dead eyes.

  “You should have asked about the other way, the new path that has just opened up.”

  Somehow, Saigo thought he could hear smugness and gloating in that warped voice.

  “You see, there is one thing we learned only after the war had come to an end. The Mon rejects us parasites, even if the host is of sufficient advancement. There must be some transition that occurs after the host has been fully taken over. More than that cursed seal of basalt, that is what has contained us to this floor for so many years.”

  The old man’s desiccated corpse moved even closer.

  “But that transition happens only after a day or so. With a fresh Talc as a host, even a Mon won’t stop me.”

  Saigo choked and coughed, blood trickling down his chin. How had he ever thought he had nothing left to lose? Here was yet another failure, one that could go even further than dooming only his clan. There was only one thing left to do now.

  He refused to perish with an unpaid debt, and the parasite had asked him to share his hopes and dreams. Like many others, he had struggled with his revelation, denied it many times over before he was ready to accept it. It had come to him at the young age of thirteen, making him the youngest in generations to ascend to Talc, and the only one of his own generation.

  For a long time, he’d thought it an ugly one, as far as revelations went. It had taken him several years to see not only the beauty, but the inevitability of it.

  His grin revealed bloody teeth as he fed a trickle of Ki into the final explosive trap, the one that was strapped tightly to his waist. Then, he whispered his revelation in a raspy voice.

  “I desire death.”

  Verdant Ki billowed out, and Uso leaping desperately away like a curled up spider was the last thing he saw before the explosion consumed him.