Ciel

“Are you even listening to me?!” Wura screamed.

Ciel barely had time to react before her wrist was trapped in her friend’s burning grip. Wura’s golden eyes, blazing with anger and confusion, locked onto hers with an almost unbearable intensity. It only took a second for Ciel to understand that this anger wasn’t just a tantrum. It was fear, clumsily hidden.

But Ciel had no intention of giving her what she wanted. She held Wura’s gaze without flinching, her own expression wiped clean of all emotion.

“I’m leaving, Wura,” she said simply, gently pulling her arm free.

Wura’s hand fell, and Ciel walked away without another word, without a single glance back. The air was still thick with tension, but she didn’t slow her pace.

She knew Wura. She knew how much she hated the idea of being abandoned. But Ciel, she had never been afraid to leave. She had always known this world wasn’t hers. And soon, she would leave it for good.

Her mission was clear. The Great Rite awaited her. For her, this ritual wasn’t just a trial, but a passage toward something greater. A path to the creation of a new world—a world she would build with her own hands, whether others wanted it or not.

Laughter rang out in the street.

Across the road, a group of children were playing tag, chasing each other with reckless joy, bumping into passersby without a care. But it wasn’t them who caught Ciel’s attention.

It was the last one in the group.

A little girl, her skin pale like sandstone flecked with darker specks. Albino. She struggled to keep up with the others, her breath already short, her legs too small, too tired. Her hair, a nearly spectral white, flew wildly behind her.

And then she fell.

A loose cobblestone, a single moment of distraction, and the girl crumpled to the ground.

Ciel moved before she could think.

She crossed the street in a few quick strides, reaching the child before the tears could even start. Without hesitation, she helped her up, brushing the dust from her now-stained blue dress.

No one had come back for her.

Ciel suspected this wasn’t the first time.

A muffled sob escaped, hesitant at first, then bursting into a stream of tears. That’s when Ciel saw the injury: a torn nail, blood welling up in thin crimson drops on her pale foot.

She quickly searched her pocket, pulled out a bit of cotton, and pressed it gently to the wound. A bandage, a pat on the head, a smile.

The little girl stopped crying almost instantly.

Wura would have run away at the sight of that blood.

But the moment didn’t last.

The child’s eyes suddenly widened, and she recoiled. An instinctive fear, a silent rejection, but clear as day.

Ciel didn’t need to hear the words. She already knew them.

Without a word, she straightened and walked away.

It didn’t matter.

She didn’t need their love.

So why that unbearable sting in her chest?

***

Ciel remembered.

Two years earlier.

Her arrival in Edo had marked the beginning of an experience she had never known before.

She remembered it vividly: the crowded hallways, the frozen stares as she walked past, the whispers that rose the moment she came near. She had barely set foot in the courtyard when a wave of students rushed at her.

Hands grabbed at her curly hair, examined her skin, her fingers, as if she were some strange creature fallen from the sky.

Ciel had fought back, kicking, punching, struggling against the tide of bodies. But there were too many.

“Let go of me!” she had shouted, her voice raw with rage.

“Go back where you came from!” someone yelled back.

Then a sharp crack.

A fist slamming into a jaw. A body thrown backward.

The mob froze.

Ciel looked up—and saw her.

Brown-skinned, her complexion deep and smooth as night, her hair in fine locs pulled up high, with a few strands framing her oval face, sculpted in unsettling harmony. But what struck her most were the eyes.

Pure gold, blazing.

She shone.

A strange silence stretched between them as the other students backed away, murmuring behind their hands:

“There’s the other witch…”

“Two deviants in one place… Bad omen.”

Then nothing.

Ciel cleared her throat.

“I could’ve handled it myself,” she muttered.

The girl raised a brow.

“Didn’t look like it.”

Silence.

Then a smirk.

“But fine. I’ll let you prove me wrong next time.”

Ciel growled under her breath and walked off without another word.

But a few days later, they crossed paths again.

At the wrestling club, Ciel found herself without an opponent. No one wanted to face her. No one wanted to touch her.

No one except her.

Wura.

It was like an unspoken pact.

They were together.

***

Back to the Present

The sun was slowly setting.

The market was already starting to empty. Merchants, eager to return home before the Cursed Night, packed their stalls with frantic haste.

Ciel walked quickly, weaving through the restless crowd—until a booming voice cut through the noise.

An old man, dressed in a faded blue boubou, was preaching to the passersby. His deep, powerful voice echoed through the air, heavy with the scent of spices and sweat.

“The tyranny of Koéa, vanquished millennia ago… The Serpent Saviors… Damballa, the liberator, who came to cleanse the world of the Tyrant’s infamy!”

Onlookers stopped—some amused, others angered.

Ciel knew this story.

The founding myth of the Great Division.

The moment everything was broken.

A shiver ran down her spine.

Then she noticed something.

A shadow.

How long had that hooded figure been following her?

She quickened her pace.

The shadow did the same.

Her heartbeat quickened.

She was being followed.

And it wasn’t a coincidence.