Three days passed in the blink of an eye, and it felt like far too short a time to prepare for something as momentous as a battle with Hayakawa Kaede and her team. It wasn’t the final round of the tournament, but it felt like it was—if they could beat Hayakawa, then who was going to stop them in the finals?

Dae’s gravity trap spell was complete, but they had no idea if it would work or not. It required Yoshika, Dae, and Eunae to all cast at the same time, and any mistake would result in a total failure. Also, since they only had time to make a single talisman each, they’d only get one chance. Rika had a major breakthrough—not that kind—on her technique and could now create up to two doppelgangers, though they would be much weaker than a single clone. She’d also worked with Eunae to come up with a nasty surprise for Hayakawa’s team that Yoshika was looking forward to.

Unfortunately, Yoshika’s own preparations hadn’t been nearly so fruitful. Yue’s signature technique was extremely complicated, and it gave Yoshika renewed respect for her talent as a cultivator. Yue hadn’t really made the breakthroughs that either of them had been hoping for either, though she did make progress in her domain control. Between the surprisingly intricate pathways that she needed to open within her meridians, her shaky concept of the moon and its association with dreams and illusions, and Yue’s singing lessons—it was the singing lessons that gave Yoshika the most trouble.

“Stop! This is absurd, how is it possible that you can sing out of key with both voices in different ways!?”

Yoshika blushed, refusing to meet Yue’s eyes. For all her talent in cultivation, it turned out that she had none for singing.

“It—it’s harder than you might think to concentrate on singing with two voices at once.”

Yue narrowed her eyes and scoffed, not buying Yoshika’s flimsy excuse.

“You’re no better with one voice either! Besides, I thought multitasking like that came perfectly naturally to you.”

It did. Yoshika was just trying to make up excuses, but she didn’t want to admit that.

“Is it really necessary that we sing? You’re barely even humming half the time you use it.”

Yue rolled her eyes.

“I’ve been training this technique literally for as long as I can remember. My very first memories were music lessons in preparation to learn the Melody. I’ve internalized it over the course of over eighteen years of practice. You need to sing!”

“But why?”

Yue let out an irritated huff.

“You’re awfully whiny considering the fact that this was your idea. Spiritual attacks need a vector. Eunae’s eye-contact, my song, your pressure point strikes—the soul does not simply leave itself exposed for anyone to target. It must be opened somehow, and in this case we do so through music.”

Yoshika frowned.

“What about Fetid Bog? I’ve never needed anything like that to make it work, and you said yourself it’s a spiritual attack.”

“I did. In the case of an aura, the vector is the same as your Lightning God Transformation—pressure points. You are simply filling the space with your qi and forcing it rudely into every available opening. This is why the technique normally wouldn’t work on mages, who can defend against it with nothing more than their natural auras, and why it doesn’t work on anyone who has a domain that you are unable to suppress.

“A proper vector of attack can bypass such defenses. Even a xiantian cultivator wouldn’t be able to shrug off Eunae’s gaze out of hand—which is part of what makes her so terrifying. Likewise, if the soul is appropriately moved by the power of one’s song, the Melody of the Dreaming Moon is nearly unstoppable.”

“Nearly?”

Yue hesitated, then sighed.

“I’ve already taught you about defending against spiritual attacks—grounding yourself in reality and closing off your mind. Usually, if someone’s been moved enough by the music for the technique to take hold, it’s too late for that, but there are other ways.”

“If there are other ways, why didn’t you teach them to the group before? Have you been teaching us wrong on purpose?”

She shook her head.

“No, it’s simply that the other methods were too advanced for most of the group. Now that you’re in the third stage, I suppose there’s no reason not to explain. Listen carefully, I’m going to use my song, and I want you to let yourself fall under its influence.”

Yoshika grimaced, and Yue noticed her hesitation.

“I’m not going to do anything. I just need you to watch the way the qi moves through your soul carefully.”

That was a big ask. If Yue was lying, it could mean being stuck under her thrall again. Yoshika wanted to think that she had grown powerful enough to resist Yue’s techniques, but intentionally submitting to them was different.

“Alright—we’ll trust you. I hope you understand how difficult it is, though. This brings up some really bad memories. Do you know how much it hurt when you tore our soul apart?”

Yue cringed.

“I can scarcely imagine. I’ll apologize as many times as you want. Even at the time, that was an unintended consequence of my clumsy attempts to separate you.”

“Apologies are fine, but we’d rather you back it up with action.”

Yue nodded solemnly.

“Of course.”

Yoshika took a few breaths to calm her rapidly beating hearts. She wanted to trust Yue, and this would be the ultimate test of that trust. She was terribly nervous about it, though—unbidden memories of the nightmare that Yue had subjected her to bubbling up to the surface of her mind. As if it had been waiting for such a moment of uncertainty, Yoshika felt that oppressive feeling of dread come over her again and reflexively pushed her domain out to its full capacity, as if trying to push it away. As always, she sensed nothing out of the ordinary—was it just her nerves?

Yue began to squirm uncomfortably, beads of sweat forming on her forehead.

“Y-Yoshika, are you alright? Your domain...”

Yoshika blinked in surprise, realizing that she had been unintentionally suppressing Yue’s domain. She quickly withdrew her domain back into a polite bubble around herself, as she had seen Yan Ren doing before.

“Oh! S-sorry, we don’t know what came over us. Lately we’ve been experiencing these sudden unexplainable feelings of dread. It’s like a combination of being watched, trapped, and facing an insurmountable enemy all at once. It lasts for a few moments, then vanishes.”

Yue cocked her head, tapping a finger on her cheek.

“Odd. I’ve never heard of such a phenomenon. You don’t suppose it’s just anxiety, do you? It’s a common foible among inexperienced cultivators back home to focus on suppressing the more volatile emotions like fear and anger, while being caught unaware by more subtle feelings like boredom or nervousness.”

Yoshika started to shake her head, but she couldn’t really rule it out.

“Maybe...We’ll ask Elder Qin about it after the tournament is over.”

“Not a bad idea. Now, are we going to do this exercise or not?”

Yoshika flushed, but nodded her head.

“Sorry. We weren't trying to stall.”

She closed her eyes and began to meditate as Yue slowly began her song. It was a soft, quiet melody—almost like a lullaby—and Yoshika could feel herself getting lost in the sound of it. Yue really did have a beautiful singing voice, and Yoshika couldn’t help but envy her a little bit. She was beautiful, talented, and skilled at everything she did. Yue had everything Yoshika had ever wanted in either of her lives, yet she lacked the one thing that Jia and Eui had both taken for granted—freedom.

Yoshika shook off the thoughts and remembered the purpose of their exercise. She focused inward, concentrating on her soul. Sure enough, she could feel the dark qi flowing unhindered through her meridians. Where her own qi would normally fight the foreign influence, as Yue had suggested, opening her soul to the music allowed it unfettered access. She heard Yue’s voice echoing through her mind, carried through the invading qi.

“You can see my qi, can’t you? Concentrate on it. There is a source—an opening in your soul through which the essence of the moon has taken purchase. Close that opening, cut it off at the source and not only will the technique fail, but you will make its essence your own. You’ve done it to me before, once.”

The world around Yoshika transformed, and she saw herself from another perspective, at another time—a memory. Jia, meditating on her newly acquired influx of shadow essence, trying to understand its place in her domain before she’d understood what Heian was. Then, Jia’s eyes opened, and the tether connecting her—Yue’s projection to her body vanished.

“It cost me a lot, you know. Had I not lost all of my cultivation it would have taken me months to recoup what you took from me. This time, I give it freely. Do now what you did then—but inside your soul.”

Yoshika was a little annoyed at Yue for presenting her with illusions after saying that she wouldn’t, but it was for communication, so she allowed it. She traced the path of Yue’s qi through her soul, seeking its origin. It was easier said than done—she kept losing track of the essence of darkness, or losing her focus and failing to properly visualize the abstract nature of her soul. After what could have been minutes or hours in the frustratingly timeless state of meditation, Yoshika found what she was looking for. A ‘place’—for lack of a better word—in her soul where the qi seemed to appear as if from nowhere, an opening created by the movement of her soul.

Once found, the opening was fairly easily closed. She clamped down on it with a thought, cutting it off at the source and making the qi her own. There was no resistance to her efforts, though she intuitively knew that there should have been. Without its connection to Yue, Yoshika should have had to fight the foreign qi to prevent it from deviating, yet nothing of the sort happened. The qi, along with all the intent it carried, was immediately accepted into Yoshika’s soul, and she could feel that it was more than mere darkness.

To Yue, the darkness was uncertainty, fear, and the unknown. It manifested as illusions, nightmares, and lies. Yet she was also the moon—a brilliant, beautiful harbinger of the night. The darkness of Yue’s domain held more than the false dreams that she inflicted upon her victims. The qi that she had gifted to Yoshika held within it Yue’s dreams—her hopes and fears, her regrets, the trust that she had given to Yoshika despite all of her own darkest fears. In that moment, Yoshika truly understood Yue—perhaps more than she did any of her other friends. She knew with unwavering certainty that Yue would never betray her again.

Yoshika’s eyes shot open, and she ignored the small trickles of tears running down her faces—matched by Yue’s own. Her intuition was screaming at her that the qi Yue had given her was far too precious to simply refine into her cultivation or feed to Heian. It was a piece of Yue’s domain, given freely, and already Yoshika’s own domain was beginning to impose her own meaning upon it—her bond with Yue. As Yoshika began frantically dumping things from her ring, Yue blinked in surprise, subtly wiping the corners of her eyes with a sleeve.

“W-what’s wrong? Did something happen? Oh, by the emperor, I’m sorry—I didn’t meant to—”

The raw concern in Yue’s voice hurt Yoshika’s heart—to think that not too long ago, Yue had been the person she hated the most.

“It’s fine! Better than fine. We just need something that can hold it!”

“Hold what?”

Yoshika shook her heads, how could she explain!?

“The qi! It’s perfect for our artifact, but we need something to hold it—the right kind of thread or—ugh, with Heian it was her hair!”

Yue’s eyes widened, and she sat forward.

“You’re talking about that pattern you started sewing into your gloves? If they’re an artifact, you really ought to name them.”

Yoshika sighed with exasperation.

“Not now Yue!”

Yue blushed.

“R-right, sorry! Heian is a spirit, her hair isn’t a physical thing.”

Yoshika paused. That was true, but she’d been able to thread it into a needle and sew with it anyway.

“We don’t know why it worked, it just did, okay? We’re really kind of just figuring this out as we go.”

Yue bit her thumbnail for a moment, then pulled a golden hairpin out of one of her buns, causing it to fall loose. She held it out to Yoshika.

“What about this?”

Yoshika recognized it as the hairpin that she had made for Murayoshi’s class. A piece of art that Yue had crafted as a pure expression of herself—which he had accepted.

“It’s perfect!”

She snatched it out of Yue’s hand, and almost without even needing to guide it, the dark qi flowed into the hairpin, as if it had always belonged there. Yoshika’s hands practically moved by themselves—she took out the gloves and began using the hairpin as a makeshift sewing needle. Yue watched with interest as the pattern on the gloves grew, despite the lack of thread on the needle, each stitch left behind a glowing line of pure moonlight. By the time she was finished Yoshika had expanded the pattern twofold—though it still wasn’t finished—and left a tiny part of herself behind within the now glowing hairpin. Both artifacts had grown stronger as a result of her efforts, though Yoshika was still completely clueless what kind of function they had.

Sheepishly, Yoshika handed the glowing hairpin back to Yue, who accepted it with good cheer.

“That was certainly fascinating! I’ve never seen someone embroider with a hairpin before, much less use moonlight as a thread. As strange as he is, Murayoshi’s methods certainly do seem to get interesting results.”

Yoshika wasn’t really sure what to say, now feeling a bit embarrassed about her behavior as Yue tied her loose, long black hair back up into a bun and replaced the hairpin. Her eyes widened again once it was in place.

“Oh! This is lovely. I can channel my essence through it, and it empowers light and dark element techniques. Though I suspect that Murayoshi’s going to be unhappy with the fact that you helped me develop my artifact. I think I shall name it ‘The Moon Lady’s Pride’!”

Yoshika chuckled.

“A bit ostentatious, isn’t it?”

Yue giggled, nodding her head in agreement.

“As much as is appropriate for an adornment of mine—especially one made by such a valued friend.”

She blushed after saying that, and cleared her throat to hide her embarrassment.

“Anyway—this might be enough to make the difference with my techniques in our fight tomorrow. I can’t make any promises, but at the very least it should help sell Rika’s little ruse.”

“Good. Well, at least someone benefited from all this. We’re still worthless at singing. By the way—how did you figure out what your artifact does?”

Yue blinked at her, nonplussed, before snapping her fingers.

“Of course! I so often forget that the two of you were mortals barely more than a year ago. Just cycle some of your qi through it, and it should come to you naturally, like a jade slip. Artifacts yearn to be used. They aren’t sentient—not usually, anyway—but they do carry the intent of whatever magic they’ve been infused with.”

Yoshika hadn’t thought of that. The idea of sentient artifacts reminded her of the sword demon, Jianmo. Had he been like that, once? An artifact with a mind of its own? Putting the thought out of her mind, Yoshika closed her eyes in meditation and cycled her essence through the gloves. As the essence returned to her body, it carried with it the purpose of her artifact. It was a familiar feeling, as if she had known all along and was just now remembering. She had made them, after all, infused them with her will, her intent, her desires. From the very first stitch, they had always had a singular purpose, whether Yoshika had been aware of it or not. The gloves were born of Jia and Eui’s desire to bring themselves back together, reinforced by the strength of their bonds with friends and each other. What else could they possibly be for?

Yoshika moved the essence through her bodies, channeling it into her gloves as she held her hands up to inspect them. In one hand, a red and black aura that promised the end of all things, and in the other, blue-violet arcs of lightning danced across her clawed fingers. Except it wasn’t Eui’s body controlling the destruction, nor was it Jia’s holding the lightning. Yue’s jaw looked like it was in danger of dropping off of her face as she watched in awe. Yoshika smiled at her.

“We can use the gloves to channel ki from one body to the other without it destabilizing. It’s a little bit limited, but we should be able to freely use each other’s martial arts, as long as we use the gloved hand.”

“That...that’s absurd! Wait—if you channel the ki through the gloves, does that mean that you can use both at the same time?”

Yoshika frowned—could she? Surely that would be—

She circulated the essence of lightning throughout Jia’s body, while she held Eui’s destructive ki in her left hand. She swallowed nervously, exchanging glances with Yue as they both considered the implication.

“Jia’s speed with Eui’s power...Yoshika, I suspect you are now much more dangerous than Hayakawa. You absolutely have to name your artifact now. I don’t care if they aren’t finished yet.”

Yoshika nodded slowly. It was hard to argue with that. The name came to her in an instant, and she spoke it aloud without thinking.

“The Claws of Heaven and the Fist of Earth.”

Yue nodded in approval, before a sly grin began to spread across her face.

“A little ostentatious, isn’t it?”

Yoshika stopped channeling the ki through her gloves, her expressions dropping into matching frowns as she leveled Yue with a dark expression. It seemed her roommate had gotten too cocky and forgotten her place. A lesson would have to be taught.

“Y-Yoshika? Don’t look at me like that, it was just a joke!”

Yue tried to back away, but she was trapped on the couch, with Yoshika’s bodies on either side of her. She sweat visibly as her nerves got the better of her.

“Tell us, Yue...are you ticklish?”

Yue froze in confusion, before understanding began to dawn on her face.

“Wait—no! Ack—hahaha—by the emperor, stop! Ahahahaha—nooo!”