The truth, she found, felt smooth, like a skipping stone in the palm of your hand.

Magic won't save us. The power it would take to conjure on such a scale, the tithe would destroy us. The only hope...is hope. You don't need tokens for it - it's in your heart or nowhere. And in your heart, child, it had been stronger than I have ever seen.

And yet, something tied them together, strong than any of that, something with the power to conduct her blood and breath like a symphony, so that anything she did to fight against it felt like discord, like disharmony with her self.

Once upon a time, a little girl was raised by monsters. But angels burned the doorways to their world, and she was all alone.

She had a sadness that was so deep, but it still could turn to light in a second, and when I saw her smile I wondered what it would be like to make her smile. I thought... I thought it would be like the discovery of smiling.

A pause came between them, and it was so full of Akiva that Karou imagined she could smell him.

Creatures with no dreams of their own can do naught but destroy the dreams of others.