[Save me...]
She faintly heard that plea. By the time Han came to her senses, she had already arrived in a silent realm of pure darkness.
This was the core world inside the Shikon Jewel, the place where it imprisoned the girl's soul...
An ancient stone coffin rested quietly before her. Within the black coffin, an omen of death and misfortune, a woman's faintly glowing white soul was bound fast by heavy black chains, like a sacrifice offered upon an altar. Both the coffin and the chains were manifestations of the Shikon Jewel's corruption.
The girl's eyes were tightly shut, her brow drawn in distress. Her slight body writhed helplessly within the chains, like a pitiful moth trapped inside a lampshade. She had come longing for light, only to find herself unable to leave that supposed light ever again. It had become a cage she could not escape...
"Do you want to be freed?" Han murmured, her fingers involuntarily touching the girl's painfully furrowed face.
Within that realm, somewhere between illusion and reality, she seemed to have witnessed the girl's entire life...
Her previous life, and this one...
Her joy, her sorrow...
Her hope, her disappointment...
Her heart, controlled by the Shikon Jewel and denied release...
"Why did you make a wish on the Shikon Jewel...?" Han asked softly in the still darkness.
"Was there really no one more important to you than him?"
"You still had a family who loved you so much!"
[It was fake, fake, fake...]
The girl's anguished, despairing voice reached her through their touching fingertips...
"Was it really fake?" Then why had it felt so real to her, that sincere love her parents had for their daughter...?
"Is that what your memories and your feelings tell you?"
"Do you truly believe those memories you cherished