Chapter 10 Nikai
Nikai
Nikai dangled his long legs from one of the swings in the Garden of Tongues. It had become a habit of his to come here to
see the stars the way Four used to. But tonight was special.
It was the same night Four had vanished exactly eighteen years ago.
Ever since his King’s disappearance, Nikai’s life as a Reaper had been in disarray: soul collections went poorly, he was stuck
in bureaucratic perdition writing reports about the increasing number of Blighted-souls-turned-Revenants, and he had a new boss to report to.
The Tenth King had been tasked with overseeing the Fourth Court while the search for Four continued. Ten was a nasty piece
of work. He had an uncouth appetite for torture and relished any challenge in which he had the upper hand. It pained Nikai
to bow to his rule, but all of that was the least of Nikai’s worries.
Hell itself was falling apart.
It had started with the little things—errors in death cards, system glitches that sent souls to the wrong Courts—small annoyances
that one could take in stride. But soon, the edges of the underworld began to fade. Bits of landscape turned gray and colorless,
crumbling away. Buildings and other infrastructure followed, succumbing to the ravenous dark. Souls were not spared either:
they, too, disappeared into the Nothing.
Except it wasn’t nothing that they became.
Nikai would know. After all, he’d been trapped in the Nothing once.
Dread crawled up his spine, a familiar specter that appeared whenever he thought of it. The Nothing was a difficult thing
to describe. You had to see it, be inside it, feel the sheer terror of the place where all hope was sucked out of you.
Once confined to the limbo space between the human realm and the Tenth Court, the Nothing was now growing, like a hungry, insatiable beast. No one could stop its steady creep.
The cause was simple: the power of all ten Kings was needed to keep the balance between the spirit and human realms, and the Nothing in its original confines, but the underworld was short one King.
Four.
It’s not your fault.
Words Nikai had repeated to himself for eighteen years. Words he was repeating to himself now as he clutched the cold chains
of the swing. Just like before, those words did nothing to assuage his guilt.
After Four’s disappearance, the other nine Kings had come together to search for their missing brother, taking turns traveling
to the far-flung corners of their realm, where no Reaper would survive and no soul could exist.
But no trace of Four was ever found.
All the Kings knew was that One had unwittingly enabled Four’s disappearance by lending him an artifact in the form of a willow
branch, and Four had used its power. For that momentary lapse in judgment, One was confined to their palace, never to step
out of their throne room. It wasn’t fair, Nikai thought. He’d been witness to the incident, and he knew One had no idea that
Four had planned to steal the willow branch to use it. But someone had to bear the blame, and the burden fell on the First
King.
The only other clue was a cryptic message Four had left with the Lady of the Pavilion, an immortal who tended to Wangyi Lake.
Those who seek me shall never see me.
No one knew why Four had left the message with her, nor what it truly meant. It was assumed to be a farewell taunt, and that
Four had found a way to hide himself somewhere in the vast and mysterious regions of the underworld that did not appear on
any map.
Nikai had been interrogated too. But to his shame, he was of little help. As days turned into years and the Fourth King did
not return, doubt mushroomed in Nikai’s mind. Why did Four give up his throne? Perhaps Nikai didn’t understand his friend at all, or perhaps, they’d never really been friends. Still, Nikai refused to believe his King was gone forever.
Sighing deeply, Nikai wiped his eyes with his handkerchief.
Seconds later, the clouds parted and the stars emerged.
Nikai sat on the swing, taking in the conjunction of the realms. He wondered how many humans were looking up right now, marveling
at the same night sky as he was in the underworld.
Nikai remembered a time when he and Four were sitting right on these same swings. Nikai had been thinking about how humans
liked to wish upon stars, as if the celestial bodies of hot gases had the power to change fate.
What would you wish for? he’d asked Four.
To see the stars forever, Four said, a childlike sense of awe blossoming on his face. How about you?
Nikai had shrugged, making up something trite. He didn’t like hiding things from his friend, but some wishes were dangerous.
“To see the stars forever,” Nikai said out loud to himself now. What had Four meant? How could one see the stars forever?
It was certainly impossible in the underworld, apart from these few precious minutes once a month. But in the human realm,
one could see the stars every night, he supposed.
Nikai kicked his legs in the air, urging the swing higher. A stray thought crept into his head. Did he ever gaze at the stars when he was human? Had he been the sort of human who would gaze at the stars?
An unexplained longing crept into Nikai’s chest, a desire too treacherous to consider. When he was granted the chance to leave
the Nothing, he’d made a choice to forget everything about his mortal life or why he’d been sent there in the first place.
He’d drunk the tea. He’d let go of his past life forever. It was pointless to think or feel too much. His mortal memories
would never return.
Hell was his home now.
Time to get back to work. Nikai pushed himself off the swing and straightened his suit.
As he made his way nimbly down the hill, something made him pause. He glanced back up at the sky.
The clouds were curtaining, hiding the stars once again. But a strange light peeked through. It grew bright, brighter, its
edges a blurred green. It was hurtling eastward across the night sky.
The First King’s voice rang in Nikai’s head, Did you see the green light heading east? The spirit trail of a dying star has appeared, which means an anomaly has occurred
in the human realm.
Nikai was afraid to breathe. Something was happening in the human realm at this very moment. He kept his head and made a note
of the coordinates of the dying star’s spirit trail, then sped down the hill as if a pack of wolves were nipping at his heels.
Fate was intervening, the same way it did just before Four had vanished. And Nikai was determined to witness it once again.