The wound that had pierced his chest had healed completely. Under that reversing power, even his torn clothes had returned to their original, undamaged state.
The cursecraft magic array slowly dimmed as the doll girl descended. As the incantations faded, the firstborn power that had filled his body ebbed away like a tide, as though it had never appeared at all, as illusory as a reflection in water.
But at that very moment.
On his right wrist, the rules he had imposed on Black String Moon a month earlier, when he had been on the verge of awakening, gradually took the form of the black ouroboros he had lost after waking.
Like an ancient, tamed mark.
It surfaced on his wrist, then vanished in a flash.
But Lynn's attention was nowhere near it. He loosened his tight embrace around Black String Moon and gazed at her tightly closed eyes, at that exquisitely crafted doll's face.
He stared blankly.
"Xian Yue, can you hear me now?"
But her eyes remained tightly shut, without any sign of life.
Lynn immediately pulled the winding key he had filched earlier from a corner of his system space. He propped her up against himself, then used his other hand to pull open the zipper at the back of her clothes, revealing her back, engraved with eerie purple patterns, and the winding socket set into it.
Just as before.
Creak-creak-
He pushed it firmly into place and kept turning it, supplying the doll in his arms with the energy her cursecraft needed.
Under his efforts, the eerie purple patterns on her back finally began to glow. Little by little, they spread along her skin and across her entire body, like a slowly blooming rose.
At last.
Lynn saw her lips part slightly, saw her eyelashes tremble.