The first thing that Eimi realized was that she couldn't move. Something held her firmly in place, and even she hadn't been restrained her body felt distant and numb like it wasn't hers at all. Her second realization, as she tried to peer through foggy eyes was that there was someone leaning over her. "Souji-sensei?" she asked and tried to move again, then cried out as the jolt sent agony running the length of her arm.

"Lie still," he said firmly. "You're in an ambulance. You had an accident."

"What happened?"

"You caught your finger in the paper cutter. They think that the doctors can reattach it."

Eimi's eyes cleared as she stared directly into Mikage's face, seeing in his eyes that he was lying.

"Although how she managed to cut off just her ring finger," one of the paramedics snorted, thinking that she was speaking to low for Eimi to hear, "is beyond me."

Mikage gave the woman a sharp glance, which she missed, and then leaned forward. "The girl is a bit taken with me and had her attention turned towards flirtations instead of where her fingers were going."

The paramedic openly eyed Mikage. "God, kids are stupid these days."

Mikage gave her a cold smile and then a reassuring nod to Eimi as the ambulance stopped and the doors flew open. As Eimi's stretcher was pulled out, she saw him stare at the palm of his hand, then slip something into his pocket.

Eimi dozed fitfully, still groggy from the surgical anesthesia. Someone came into her room as her head finally began to clear, and she cracked her eye enough too see Mikage peering down at her. There wasn't enough light to see his expression, but his breath brushed rapidly against her forehead. He quickly stood upright as the door opened again and someone else entered the room. Mikage joined him at the door and they apparently thought that she was still asleep because they made little effort to keep their voices down. "How did the surgery go?" Mikage asked.

"As well as can be expected. Her finger is going to be stiff and sore for several months and I doubt that she'll ever have full use of it again. You cut it fairly close to the knuckle." There was a note of admonishment in the man's voice.

Mikage's voice held no remorse. "I did what I had to. There was no other way to get the ring off."

"Did you try butter?"

Mikage's head snapped up. "How can you joke-.

The doctor held up a hand. "A small bit of levity would do you well... But then again, you never do anything by halves, do you, Souji?"

"I hardly think that you're in any position to reproach me, Tsuchiya."

There was a moment of silence, and when the other man spoke, he had obviously conceded the point to Mikage. "We haven't been able to contact her mother yet. I certainly don't relish having to break the news that you cut her daughter's finger off with a papercutter. She really will kill you this time."

"Tenjou is the least of our worries," Mikage said as he reached into his pocket and handed something over to the doctor. "Take a look at this."

Ruka inhaled sharply. "A black rose signet? Where did you get this?"

"It's mine."

"Yours? But it's-."

"Was broken. After Eiminoujo put her mother's ring on, the halves of mine rejoined. I could not break it again."

Ruka leaned back against the door, his breathing heavy. "I was hoping that it was merely coincidence, but... the suicides have started again. Three within the past two weeks, all by fire. How many of your hundred are left now? Sixty-one, sixty-two?" His voice seemed on the edge of breaking. "Tell me Souji, how have your dreams been lately?"

"I relive the death of the hundred nearly every night. Sometimes I walk along phantom streets to a graveyard where I know the names on the stones. It's all a reflection of the real. I found it, in Fukuoka."

"The graveyard?"

"Tokiko's there. She died fifty years ago the day I found it, a very old woman. What about yours?"

"I try to dream of Juri, but Shiori always prevents it. Sometimes though, when Shiori isn't paying attention, I am able to follow Juri to Ohtori, although she always remains a step beyond my sight. I see what it has become."

Mikage shifted slowly. "Sometimes, I see it too. It has not aged well."

"And why do you think is that?"

"I try to not think of Ohtori if I can help it."

Ruka turned to look out the window. "In hindsight, consider just how much of Ohtori's form was a sop to Anthy Himemiya. Think for a moment of the sepulchre that it's become. It's not that Utena left it, at least not entirely. You graduated, I died, and Ohtori continued unchanged. The only constants of the place were its lord and lady. The two of them made a balance of sorts, and from how Ohtori has deteriorated, I'd say that one of its pillars has left it. I think that the Rose Bride has departed"

Mikage clutched his ring, turning it fitfully in his palm. "But how? He bound her. No one can leave Ohtori without Akio allowing it, and Utena herself admitted to failing to have saved her."

"You're too credulous sometimes Mikage. Utena might not have saved Anthy Himemiya, but maybe she loosened the Rose Bride's shackles enough for her to slip free."

Ruka's voice gained a self-satisfied edge and Mikage ground his teeth audibly. "If the Rose Bride escaped, then where is she now? There's no way that she could escape our notice. We all shine to each other, those who have come from Ohtori. The moment that Eimi was born, we all felt it. If the Rose Bride were here we'd see her like the sun shining at midnight."

Ruka shrugged. "All I know is that Ohtori persisted long before either of us, and continued unchanged through countless revolutions of duels, until Tenjou. She somehow changed that."

Before Mikage could reply, the door to the room crashed open, and Utena stormed into the room. "You!" Utena shouted accusingly at Mikage. "When they told me Eimi had had an accident, I knew that you were involved somehow! What did you do to her?"

Mikage was momentarily taken aback, then his features fell dangerously still. "I cut her finger off," he said, with no hint of emotion in his voice.

It was Utena's turn to be taken aback. "Y-you monster. I'll kill you!"

Ruka put a restraining hand on Utena's shoulder, but she shook it off, grabbing Mikage by the collar and throwing him against the wall. Her hand clenched as if closing around the hilt of a sword. "You bastard, how, why did you do it?"

Mikage's face had remained tightly blank, until that moment when his control snapped and he cut loose with fury to match Utena's. "Because you let her have this!" he shouted, pulling her rose signet from his pocket and thrusting it at her face. "I did it to save her soul!"

Utena's eyes widened when she saw the ring. "That's mine! Give it back!"

Mikage put his hand above his head. "I told you how dangerous this was, to you and your damn precious daughter! Why didn't you destroy it?"

Utena grabbed his arm, pulling it down and trying to pry the ring from his fingers. Mikage pushed her back, but Utena lunged forward, her teeth sinking into his palm. Mikage shouted in pain, his fingers opening and the ring falling to the floor. It bounced once then rolled straight towards Eimi. It bounced again as it reached the bed and would have landed on the back of her hand if she hadn't scrambled to the other side of the bed.

"You're awake," Ruka noted as Utena drew back from Mikage. "For how long?"

Eimi stared at the ring as if it were a coiled viper. "How did it do that?" she whispered.

Utena too was staring at the ring, then at Eimi. "How did you get that?"

"From you, according to her," Mikage said, again in complete control as he wrapped a handkerchief around his bleeding hand. "You were sleeping with it last night."

"No," Utena said tremulously, shaking her head, "It's kept in a safe place. I couldn't have-"

"You did," Ruka interrupted. "Because your daughter had it this morning, and put it on.

Mikage started for the ring. "If you're not strong enough, I'll destroy the it myself."

"You can't!" Utena shouted, diving for the bed.

Mikage beat her to it but as his hand closed around the ring he cried out and let it drop. The multitude of thorns melted back into the band as Mikage backed away. Utena picked it up without trouble and sobbed as she clutched it to her chest. "This is the only link I have to him, to her. If I destroyed it, I could no longer see Anthy, dream of Touga... Oh Touga, what happened to you?" She sank to the floor, curling around the ring.

"The prince of defiance," Eimi said, then noticed the glance that the two men gave her. "It was cut into his face, that message was carved over his eye."

"You saw him?" Mikage asked sharply.

Eimi nodded. "When I put the ring on, I went to that place, Ohtori. What was it?" She began to break down. "Why was it full of dead people?"

A sudden chill gripped the room and both Ruka and Mikage seemed to slip out of focus. "It's where the dead may be alive again," Mikage said. "Where the road to eternity has been opened." Eimi reached for her throat, her mouth gaping as the air became too thick and too cold to breathe.

Ruka's face was upturned, his eyes closed. "It's where you can prove there are miracles, where something eternal can be found."

Utena rose, reaching for something that wasn't there. "It's where you can be a prince and-" her eyes suddenly regained their clarity and she staggered towards Mikage, her hand diving into his shirt, there was the smell of burning flesh as she hurled something towards the window. The small piece of black metal burned through the screen and disappeared over the sill. Both men snapped back into focus, and Eimi's chest heaved as the air again slid smoothly down her throat.

"That is why the rings are dangerous," Mikage said. "Why you have to break them."

Utena stared at the angry red circle burned into her hand. "Yours wasn't," she said accusingly.

"It was. I broke it in two and hurled the halves into the ocean. Then I dropped it into the foundation of a construction site, but it came back to me, it always came back. When your daughter put your signet on, mine healed itself and I haven't been able to break it again."

Utena held up her ring, her fingers trembling. "I buried this beside my parents, fourteen years ago. It, not them, is why I returned to that cemetery year after year."

Ruka again seemed to fade slightly and put his hand over his heart, his breath rasping in his throat. "Something must... this can't..." he swayed, then forced himself to stand upright. "An end must be brought to all of this. If he manages to break his shackles, then it is the end to all of us."

"Not only us," Mikage said and stared at Utena, who looked away.

"Get out," she said. "Leave me and my daughter alone. I know you both. Get out."

Mikage against seemed on the verge of losing control, but Ruka grabbed his shoulder and pulled him out of the room, giving Utena a look that was both sad and wary.

Utena didn't move for a long time and Eimi curled up on the corner of the bed, realizing that she know longer knew who, or even what she was anymore. "What's going on?" she asked, almost pleading.

Utena got up and slowly walked towards the window. Looking down she saw a small break in the flow of people on the sidewalk as they unconsciously stepped around a small object on the ground. She saw Mikage standing on the other side of the street, staring at where his ring lay. He looked up suddenly, his eyes meeting hers, then turned and walked off. Although her eyes had only been off of it for a few seconds, the ring was gone when she looked back, although she was sure that no one had picked it up.

"M-mother," Eimi began, "when I was in... that place, I saw someone, something. It called me 'daughter.' Was it... who is my father?"

Utena frowned as she turned, as if concentrating intently. "He was- I- you were..." She seemed to be fighting against something. Eimi reached out for her mother's hand but lethargy slammed down on her like a physical force and keeping her eyes open to almost all the strength she had. Utena's face went suddenly blank. "I left the tea steeping, I need to-. I..." Before Eimi could react her mother was out the door.

A nurse came in shortly thereafter to check up on her. "Could I talk to Dr." although the lethargy had faded after her mother left, thinking was still a struggle, " Tsuchiya?"

"He's gone home," the nurse replied. "If you're worried about your finger, don't be. Just rest it, and if it seems to be healing fine by the end of the week you can go home."

Eimi didn't know how to tell the nurse that that was not her reason for wanting to see the doctor, but she smiled vapidly at the nurse's suggestion that that she get some more sleep so that she'd heal up nice and quick.

Eimi sighed in frustration as the nurse left, then watched the shadows in the room disappear as night quickly fell. Her finger began to ache as the light faded, and she turned her head to the window. The sky was exceptionally clear and the stars shown brightly down at her. Eimi pulled the covers over her head and curled into a ball. There were so many stars and they were so close that they seemed to reaching out for her. Eimi turned her back to the window but that only made the sensation worse. She tried to focus on the sounds of life in the hall outside her room, and longed for Chuchu.

Eimi's eyes snapped open. There was someone in the room with her. "Who's there?" she asked. It took her a moment to even be sure that her eyes were open; all the light seemed to have been stripped from the room. A soft scuffle of movement came from the door and then a voice, distant and disconnected. "The way must be prepared."

"Souji-sensei?"

"This is the first step of the job you're advancing," he replied strangely. "Her eyes told me that she was one of those who wanted to make memories last forever. Your eyes tell me that you have the power to actually do so."

Eimi could see the speaker, although the room was still completely dark. A young man stood in front of the door. He was dressed in a school uniform done all in black, an aura of even deeper black clinging to the flower pinned to his breast and emanating from the object clutched in one hand. When he spoke, it was with Mikage's voice. "To realize your power, you must realize your legacy."

The boy took a step forward and for a moment Eimi saw the real Mikage underneath, as if the boy was an image laid on top him. The boy continued to walk towards her, not quite in synch with Mikage so that parts of him continually showed through. Eimi saw his face: his eyes were wide, blank. Dead.

The boy reached for her and the darkness gathered around his palm shot forward. A black rose filled Eimi's eyes and a ring of fire burned into her forehead.

Eimi flailed blindly through the darkness. There was no ground, no down, no up, just black and endless cold. A hand suddenly reached over her shoulder and pressed itself against her breast, and Eimi screamed as daggers of ice pierced her heart.

A face pressed against the side of her head. "Hush child," Mikage ordered her.

A small whimper escaped Eimi's lips as the fingers of ice pushed deeper into her chest. "Mikage, why?"

She could feel his lips against her ear. "With my signet whole, I felt him reaching for me, through the ring. I suppose even his patience is finite and having come so close to you once, he was not willing to wait for you to come to Ohtori on your own again. He knew what would tempt me, what price I would require to bring you to him."

"No, Souji-sensei, you can't!"

"He seemed to have thought that my graduation and exile would have left me broken and susceptible to temptation." Mikage gave a cold, dead chuckle. "It is a rare event indeed to pull a coup on the lord of Ohtori."

Eimi looked down at where his fingers sank into her flesh. "Then why are you doing this?"

Mikage's fingers flexed around her heart. "I cannot do this alone. Before, I had Mamiya to lend me strength, but he... Killing you would only grant us a temporary reprieve. Ohtori has persisted timelessly, but your mother changed that and that change might bring its end. You are Revolution's daughter, you can bring its apocalypse."

Eimi's convulsed as Mikage's fingers clenched again. "What are you trying to do?"

"The midgard serpent is so vast that if a few coils of its length are stolen, it will never notice. That is what I am doing, making light with the belly of the beast. I need your strength to conduct this interview," Mikage whispered and laid his other hand across Eimi's eyes. "I am going to show you your legacy."

She could still feel Mikage's hand clasped across her eyes, his fingers around her heart, but she was staring into a tiny room through a square of glass. There was a chair, and a low shelf set into the wall in front of her, and something sat in the chair, the barest of nebulous outlines, but Eimi was sure that it was looking at her.

"Begin," Mikage commanded.

The silence was pregnant and then the form spoke in the most beautiful voice that Eimi had ever heard. Beautiful and familiar and for a moment she felt a primal memory of warmth, and weightlessness, and that voice whispering in her ear.

"A garden," it started, "it all began in a garden. There were two, and the garden, and they were content for idle lifetimes, because their garden was as they wished it. But after time even perfection bred ennui, and the two sought something more."

The shape was becoming more distinct, and Eimi thought she could make out a face, and two bottomless eyes.

"Deeper," Mikage said when the figure fell silent. "Go deeper."

"They left the garden and found a world that was harsh, and imperfect, everything that they wanted, and they created more like them to fill the world and make it bloom. Though they tried to keep themselves hidden from their creations, He could not bear to see His daughters suffer, for to Him each was a princess. So the people of the world came to know their father as the constant prince, but their mother was shy and reclusive, and her seclusion planted seeds of fear and mistrust within the hearts of her children."

Something changed in the figure in the chair, something subtle, yet it still ran through Eimi like an electric shock. Mikage didn't seem to feel it and when Eimi tried to warn him, she found that she was unable to do anything more than watch.

"Because of his love, all the girls of the world were princesses, every girl, save his sister. She alone could not be a princess, and thus became a witch." The figure's eyes became dark, turbulent, verdant pools, drawing her in. "And the witch became jealous as she watched her brother forever quest to save the princesses, jealous that she who was once the only other was now so neglected. Her jealously consumed her and she became a thing of darkness and one day she lured her brother into a trap and locked him away from the world, so that once again she would be the only other.

"But the princesses of the world would not forget their prince, and this time it was they who quested for him, but always they were defeated by the evil witch."

Mikage finally seemed to become aware that something wasn't right. "No," he said, tightening his arms around Eimi. "That's not right, that's not how it happened."

The figure stared directly into Eimi's eyes and she felt terror curdle in her stomach as she recognized him. "And one day there was a girl who thought she was strong enough to best the witch, and for a time it seemed that she would be the one to free the prince, but ultimately the witch struck her down. However, before that, the princess got close enough to the prince to bear his daughter, a true princess, one who could finally defeat the witch."

Eimi felt Mikage's body tense with terror. "No, that's wrong."

The figure stood with enough force to smash the chair against the back wall. "I am not the midgard serpent. I know when someone tries to steal my belly button. I'm not the fool you take me for, Nemuro. I compelled you to bring my daughter to me, and thus you did." It spread its arms and the tiny room blew apart, disappearing into the void as greater darkness spewed forth. It grabbed Mikage's wrists, and pulled his fingers away from Eimi's heart and eyes then reached for her heart with its own hand.

"No, damn it, no!" Mikage shouted, throwing himself at the center of the dark. His feet kicked out, catching Eimi in the stomach and spinning her off into the void.

"No," the darkness shouted, reaching out for Eimi, but Mikage tangled himself with it and Eimi felt currents in the void envelop and draw her down. The darkness cast Mikage aside, reaching out for her, but the currents had pulled them too far apart. The pressure of the dark increased and the last thing that Eimi saw was Mikage drifting through the void, a rime of ice already beginning to form across his face.