The world reconstituted itself around them like a breath.
No more meadow, no more Ineffable, no more howls of Abominables.
Nothing but Salomeh's inner refuge: a space born from her dreams, a peaceful dimension where colors had the softness of memories and the shine of things never broken.
A lilac sky.
Trees with golden leaves.
A lake still as a mirror.
And, in the center, a luminous little house, like a thought one wants to protect.
Salomeh had brought Hinata there.
Inside, in the cozy little room, Hinata lay on a soft sofa. Her face was still contracted by fear, but her breath, at least, was peaceful.
Salomeh headed toward the adjoining bathroom.
Her body trembled slightly—not from fatigue, but from contained anger.
She ran clear water, plunged her hands stained with red into it, and let the stream run over her cut forehead.
A moment of silence.
She observed her reflection in the mirror:
the cut was now just a pale trace.
The dried blood was already disappearing.
"Strange…" she murmured. The wounds aren't as deep as I would have thought.
Here, her world repaired her as best it could.
A mental balm in lieu of healing the soul.
She breathed in, wiped her face, adjusted her clothes—then returned to the living room.
A shadow beat its wings above her.
Shushu appeared, wings outstretched, eyes glittering with an unsettling red.
"Mistress… Who is this girl?" he asked, nodding toward Hinata.
Salomeh stopped, still damp with dew, and cast a brief glance at the sleeping teenager.
"We'll know when she opens her eyes," she replied simply.
Shushu nodded, but his gaze didn't leave Hinata.
He seemed to analyze, gauge, weigh the slightest anomaly.
Then he sighed, his wings folding back like a veil of shadow.
"In the real world… the battle continues. Strange creatures are spreading into almost all realities. Reports from the other familiars speak of widespread chaos."
Salomeh didn't flinch.
She approached an imaginary window, observing the lilac horizon that was nothing but a mental painting.
"I know," she said calmly.
"So… you're not coming?" Shushu asked in a worried tone.
"Not yet. Hinata needs rest. And I… I need answers.
You should go lend a hand. I'll join you later."
Shushu narrowed his eyes, then bowed respectfully.
"Understood. Don't take too long, mistress."
His body dissipated into black smoke that disintegrated in the soft air of the dream.
Salomeh remained alone.
She drew closer to Hinata, knelt, and gently brushed the girl's cheek.
Her skin was cold, but alive.
This child…
Why did the Ineffable want her?
Why was her existence linked to Sakolomeh's strange shadows?
And above all…
Why, when she had carried her, had a familiar sensation passed through Salomeh, like a forgotten echo?
She gently withdrew her hand, breathed slowly.
"You too… you'll have questions," she murmured.
"And I… I need mine."
While waiting for Hinata to finally open her eyes, Salomeh couldn't stay still.
The calm of her inner world had nothing soothing about it: it amplified her thoughts.
Too many questions.
Too many uncertainties.
And a malaise gnawing at her stomach.
Never—never—had realities been struck so hard by the Abominables.
And yet… that wasn't the most worrying part.
Something was moving behind this chaos, lurking in a darkness that even her mind refused to face squarely.
She stood up abruptly, hand on her chin, walking slowly in the room.
"This thing…" she murmured.
It wasn't Raktabīja Rāvana.
Nor the Multiple Scales breaking realities.
Nor the Abominables proliferating like a cosmic infection.
No.
What had marked her, what still haunted every fiber of her soul…
Was the Ineffable she had faced.
A living absence.
A wandering concept.
A being that shouldn't even exist.
Morlük's voice resonated in her mind, heavy, grave, like a breath from an ancient abyss.
"I know. And you're right to be afraid.
Something truly abominable is being prepared.
The Abominables… Raktabīja Rāvana… all that might just be diversions."
Salomeh closed her eyes for a few seconds.
A weight tightened her heart.
Even with Morlük, even with the power she knew how to wield, she hadn't been able to defeat a single Ineffable.
So if there were several…
"Do you think we have the slightest chance of thwarting all this?" she asked, her voice low.
Morlük's response was immediate, almost like a reflex.
"Of course.
But not you and I alone.
Let's first find the real origin of the danger.
Then… we'll inform the Primordial Gods.
Between divine entities, we have ancient channels of communication… sometimes close to a prayer.
Even across realities, they can hear."
Salomeh remained still, however, her gaze lost.
"I even doubt that the Primordial Gods could defeat an Ineffable…"
A silence.
Long.
Almost heavy.
As if Morlük himself hesitated to respond.
Finally, he spoke.
"You're right.
The Ineffables… are not beings in the sense that you understand it.
They are absences.
In the Dream, the Shadow that carries them is nothing but a void taking form.
They are strangers to every law, every identity.
Their "body" is nothing but a hole in reality… that sometimes imitates what it once was."
Salomeh froze.
She understood.
And the understanding made her shiver.
"So… Bakuzan… my brother… is no longer really my brother?"
Morlük sighed inwardly.
"Oh yes, it's him. But not the same.
Bakuzan has become an absence.
However, this body you see, this voice, this way of being…
They are nothing but memories from the Dream,
vestiges of what he was before breaking his role and his identity."
Salomeh bit her lip.
A brother.
And at the same time…
A memory of a brother.
A present being, but already gone.
She placed a hand on her chest, where the worry became pain.
"So… what's really awaiting us?" she murmured.
Morlük's response took time to come, as if even a divinity hesitated.
"Something that should never have returned."
Salomeh remained silent for a long moment.
She reflected, her mind heavy.
Though she was Morlük's Apostle, bearing all his power and linked to him to the deepest part of her existence… something troubled her.
She had always noticed that, behind Morlük's millennial wisdom, hid an almost brutal frankness.
He wasn't one of those gods who reassure out of politeness or who nurture illusions to soothe mortals.
Morlük never offered hope where there was none.
This coldness, almost a void in his way of speaking, sometimes disturbed her.
But after all… he was the entire Madhurya.
A set of transcendent voids.
A principle more than a person.
Perhaps his behavior had never truly belonged to something human.
A slight noise brutally snapped her out of her thoughts.
"Hmm?"
She turned around.
Hinata was stirring, heavy eyelids, gently emerging from her sleep.
Salomeh approached, attentive. Hinata gently rubbed her eyes, then opened them, her pupils immediately dilating when she saw Salomeh.
"Ma'am?!"
Her gaze then slid around her, discovering this unreal world.
A magnificent landscape, almost fairy-like, shaped from pure imagination—the inner world of Salomeh.
Hinata sat up suddenly on the sofa, completely lost.
"Where… where are we?"
Salomeh offered her a gentle smile and sat beside her.
"I'm glad you're doing well."
Hinata observed her, deeply confused.
"Where's my big brother? What's happening? Where's that… shadow creature?!"
Panic rose, her breathing quickened.
Salomeh raised a soothing hand.
"Calm down. Melokosa is fine.
He even asked me to look after you.
I brought you here so you could rest."
She then gently placed a hand on the girl's stomach.
"Look."
Hinata lowered her eyes.
And remained petrified.
"My… wound…?!"
Salomeh nodded.
The wound had completely disappeared.
But not only that: even the deep scar she had carried for a long time—the one that sometimes burned like a painful memory—was now just a pale mark, a vestige, a painless memory.
Hinata trembled slightly, hand on her abdomen.
"How… is that possible…?"
Salomeh looked at her in silence, the soft light of the imaginary world reflecting in her eyes, as if she hesitated to reveal the truth.