“I take you’re not retarded,” her tone lands in the middle of dumbfounded and amused. A smile-made trap that triggers every hair on my body. Danger. Patchouli must’ve seen it too. “You don’t look so—you look smarter than the idiots I ate before this tree packed with enough Old Magic to cause a second mass extinction pinned half of Gensokyo on top of me.” Her point wasn’t lost.

“The life of this child may or may not hang on the measurement of my secrecy.” Lady Patchouli does not back down, yet confidence forged in a dream degrades, as does my physical instrument. What is she doing?! We cannot afford to keep the secret of Sekai’s existence; it’s beyond the point of that mattering in the slightest… isn’t it? We kept it a secret from Remi to avoid manipulation of fate overlap and from the rest of Gensokyo to protect the girl from Yukari. Whatever reasons Patchouli must think we have to keep the secret, it’s moot against having a failed ritual and a dead daughter in our hands. My throat clenches, words begging to be freed, hands numb and a pounding headache settling; even with four arms and the pure strength I had poured into this secret sigil, the tree gained purchase, a shrill scraping resounding throughout the cavernous underbelly of a destroyed HSE.

“And that bimbo's life and yours depend on the truth leaving your mouth!” The bloodied iron meets baked ground, destroying hundreds of characters in a second. Lady Patchouli quivers, yet does not move to stop the Underworld goat. T-The ritual we worked so much for, our daughter’s future…

It leaves me before I can stop myself: “P-Patchy, please…” Wood cleaves rock.

“… I know what I’m doing, Meiling.” Her eyes aren’t on me when she shifts again; they’re on sleeping Sekai. Cuddled on the cold ground, lifeless and dirty. An ant crawls across her cheek, unbothered by the world collapsing right above. “She has her whole family to protect her.”

The way she spoke those words, the sheer confidence behind them.

A pound of the heart, then another.

Blood poured from the sides of her mouth as she stared down a fuming Yuuma. Her scleras had grown blue and her skin a pallor lighter than marble, and the ends of her fingers quivered maddeningly. Patchouli Knowledge is at the most weak I’ve ever seen her… Yet, with her back to our defenseless daughter and rigid eyes fixed on a cruel woman bathed in blood, I don’t think I’ve seen a more powerful figure.

Before such grandeur, how could I ever falter?

Heart tightened despite the dread throbbing from the base to the top of my spine, muffling it; arms recuperated their hold and though the headache remained, it was with great effort that the belief in her steadfast back—gentle eyes, home—overtook central standing.

I don’t know what she has in mind, or if she even has a plan…

… But I believe in Patchouli Knowledge.

Yuuma had opened her mouth, rage obvious and patience much more in each glimmer of scarlet. Lady Patchouli was faster, stepping forth as the soulglass, aflame in blue and phantasmagorical radiance, marked bounds. “I won’t answer your questions, for they impose unacceptable risk on the livelihood of this child,” Patchouli reiterates, a groan midway through leaving Yuuma’s mouth. “There are those I can answer! Should they satisfy you is beyond me, but hear me out, for the sake of a child not yet lost…” A groan that swiftly dies, a breath that is held not by mortal or immortal: the world, and it endures only one additional second. She’s doing it…? “Her name is Hata no Sekai! Anything else matters not to me—her origins, this ritual or this tree—, and she’s… S-She’s my daughter! Mine and Meiling’s! Not of conception; our daughter. As long as we are not interrupted, she lives. Her dream is to visit China, and I have every intention of trampling whoever stands on the path of that dream. There’s no need for things to come to that, and I know you care—I wouldn’t be alive if you didn’t—so, for the sake of that dream, I urge you to leave us!”

Hanging by a thread, yet with a booming voice to muffle the rumble of a cataclysm. Had the heart of Patchouli reached her or not, I couldn't know…

The mafia boss rose and slung the deformed end of blunt metal over her shoulder as the other, wider one hung low like an axe ready for the slaughter.

A bated breath, an answer to come.

… Yet, rather than answering first, Yuuma turned with a scoff—

“—Her words are mine,” hope cuts through despair like a meteor does the sky. Alongside Conquest incarnate rides awe: she'd stepped from a blood spring cascading down charred rock and debris, a power she hasn’t—couldn’t—make use of for decades now… Red streaking the sides of her mouth, contrasting with porcelain skin, hints at what’s transpired, and the gaze she pierces the goat with is as unnerving as her large black wings. A gaze that mellowed as it briefly lingered on Sekai. She knows. “Leave, while fate yet permits you.” The ultimatum is laid by Remilia Scarlet to the tune of rivers of blood.