Descendants

Kazumi never cries. 

Physical pain, hateful words, hormones…

She just doesn’t cry. 

Except she does cry as she stumbles through the castle hallways, dark lines running down her cheeks. The perfect makeup Misaki put on her is ruined for good. 

She wipes at her cheeks but the tears just come back immediately. 

“Fucking hell!” She yells as she stumbles over her own feet yet again. In a fit of pure rage she grabs the hem of her skirts and lets off a few smaller explosions to get them out of the way, ruining the dress and leaving behind burnt pieces of fabric. 

She glares down at the now knee long dress and pulls off her shoes to fling them at the stone wall. One of them actually sticks, the heel hitting a spot between two stones. 

Kazumi kicks the other away, another anger-driven explosion going off in her palm. 

She reaches a crossing and looks to the right, which would be the way back to her room. She hesitates though as she wipes at her cheeks once again. 

The hallways are empty. Everyone is back in the great hall. There is no way she would run into anyone. 

Then why can she hear someone call her name. 

The voice sounds distorted and low, with a strange echo to it. 

Kazumi frowns and turns left. “Hello?” She calls, her feet slowly starting to move on their own. “This isn’t fucking funny!”

She looks around in confusion, trying to listen for the voice again as she slowly makes her way along the hallway. 

“Kazumi!” It calls again, this time it sounds like it’s laughing. 

She stops and whirls around once, a glare on her face. “If I find you, I’ll explode you into the sun!” She cries furiously as she stomps ahead. 

The hallway leads to a staircase. Kazumi knows where it leads. The only option here is going down into the dungeons. She’s been here before. Once. With Raidon. 

That was right after she got together with Takeo when they were still kids. 

She glares down into the darkness and reaches up to pull the pins out of her bun, unleashing her wild mane before she drops the accessories and starts her descent. 

Once at the bottom, she stops to listen, her eyes searching the darkness as they’re not used to the lack of light quite yet. 

“Kazumi…”

She turns towards it. Left. 

“Kazumi!”

Slowly, her sight adjusts and she can make out the dirty walls and moist floor as she keeps following the strange voice. Her feet are still bare and the floor is cold but she ignores it. 

“Come here...Kazumi…”

A right turn, another long hallway. There’s a door at the end. It looks heavy, made of dark stone with seemingly magical runes covering it. 

Once she’s close enough to make out the runes clearly, a low hum echoes through the walls and she stumbles before leaning against the wall. “Fuck…” She gasps and reaches up as pain pulses through her chest. It’s an unpleasant sensation, like the vibrations are shaking her heart and lungs. 

She’s about to let her eyes slide shut and give up on holding herself up when she notices dark smoke pushing through the tiny gap underneath the door. 

Her first thought is that it looks somewhat like the smoke that appears when Raidon changes but she quickly shakes that picture away. This strange smoke seems to know exactly where it’s going. 

Once ebbed through the gap, it rises up to cover the heavy door, especially pushing into the runes that start to glow weakly as soon as the smoke touches them. 

The dark layer gets thicker and thicker until the light stutters and fades away. Another vibration pushes through the hallways and Kazumi cries out as she struggles to stay upright against the force. 

Within seconds, it’s over and she stumbles forward as the vibrations she was just fighting against, disappears too suddenly. 

As she regains her balance, she hears a creak and looks up. 

The heavy door slowly slides open and Kazumi can’t help but stare with wide eyes, expecting someone on the other side but she’s still alone. 

“Come…” The voice from before whispers again and she doesn’t hesitate as she steps through the door. 

The room is huge, almost bigger than the great hall. The walls are covered in bookshelves and there’s not a single free spot in them. 

“Wow…” She gasps as she takes in everything around her. “What is this place?”

“Kazumi!” The voice yells and she flinches, her attention ripped away from the library. 

As she lowers her head, an inconspicuous door in the corner next to a desk catches her attention and she quickly steps over to it. 

Just like the stone door to the library, this one also opens on its open, leftover smoke hovering in the frame as Kazumi steps through, eyes wide in wonder. 

In comparison to the library, this room is barely lit and looks downright unloved. The walls are made of black stone, there are a few candles illuminating what they can here and there. Other than that, the main focus lays on several tables made of stone, each of them holding some kind of item. 

Kazumi frowns at the display and steps over to the first one. It displays a seemingly broken sceptre, a gem held in place by dark metal that’s formed like a claw. 

On the next table, there’s a music box covered in strange symbols, followed by a chipped tea cup, a collection of coins, a rusty crown and these are just the things displayed on their own table each. Lining the walls there are rusty metal constructions holding a huge amount of smaller items. 

Kazumi stands in front of the collection and takes everything in, when the voice comes back, whispering at her from behind. 

“This way…”

She whirls around and frowns at the opening in the wall she seemingly didn’t notice before. 

“Kazumi…”

She makes her way towards it, her eyes locked on the display behind it. 

“Come here…”

She steps through the moldy archway. 

“Kazumi…”

Her gaze falls onto the huge gold necklace that’s sitting on a royal blue pillow on top of the stone table. A beautiful red diamond adorns the front and Kazumi’s eyes widen. 

“Take it.”

A brief thought flashes through her mind. Something along the lines of ‘No! Don’t do what it says!’. 

But her hand is already moving towards it and within seconds, the thought is gone as she carefully wraps her fingers around the thick gold band. 

Something like an electric shock shoots through her fingers and she almost drops the necklace but her muscles seem to move on their own as she lifts it up towards her neck anyway. 

“Wait…” She suddenly says as the diamond is about to touch the skin of her chest, her hands freeze in the air behind her head, about to clasp the necklace shut. “What...am I doing here?” She mumbles and frowns down at herself. 

Her feet are bare and dirty, the skirts of her dress are burnt up to her knees, the layers in scraps and her hair's hanging down wildly. 

But then the strange voice is back and at the same time the diamond in her hand starts to leak the same strange smoke as the door did before. 

“You want to be Queen, right?” The voice purrs.

“You will be a Queen.”

“Just put it on.”

“Don’t be scared.”

Kazumi shuts her eyes to tune it out. “Shut up…” She whispers. 

“Don’t you want to show him?”

“To show him what you can be?”

“What you could’ve been?”

Kazumi slowly opens her eyes again, glaring down at her feet. “I hate him.”

“Don’t you want him to know that?”

“Show him!”

“Show everyone!”

Kazumi observes the black smoke moving around her, her hands shaking from holding the necklace up for so long. She bites her bottom lip and waits a second longer before clipping the necklace shut behind her neck, letting it drop down onto her chest. 

The moment it makes contact with her skin the black smoke rushes up and envelopes her completely. 

It grows bigger and shoots around the room before disappearing within seconds. 

And with it, Kazumi is gone too.