But surely Zomuri wouldn’t just toss something as important as a soul into the pile, would he?

Sora perked up. “Or if he did, it would be on top.” After all, the golden pearl of Prince Gin’s soul was a very recent addition.

She began crawling on hands and knees over the surface of the treasure, moving slowly so she could examine every inch around her. It was better than trying to search all the treasure, but progress was still almost sloth-like.

Methodically check a three-foot radius around herself.

Shift forward.

Repeat.

Soon, Sora’s neck began to ache, and her eyes were crossing from focusing too hard. She couldn’t keep this up.

What Sora needed was better vision. She had an arsenal of taiga eyesight spells that she could cast in her sleep, but ryuu magic was more powerful. Perhaps she could combine the two, but which spell to choose?

Not a hawkeye spell. Nor a jaguar or lemur. Sora needed something that would be good for identifying things that were ordinarily underwater, like pearls.

“Octopus spell!” she said, surprising even herself. Octopodes had some of the most impressive vision in the sea. They could see colors and textures where other animals couldn’t; that’s how they were able to camouflage themselves so well.

Instead of linking her thumbs together in the taiga mudra and undulating her eight other fingers as if they were tentacles, she conveyed the intent of the spell to the ryuu particles. Sight like an octopus, she thought over and over until the magic understood what she wanted and her vision opened wider and sharpened at the same time.

“Yes,” she gasped.

The room wasn’t just shiny with gold and jewel tones anymore. It was now a kaleidoscope, variations of light and all manner of colors that Sora had never seen before. Each piece of treasure stood out as unique, with different smoothnesses, brighter or darker reflections of the gems next to it, varying degrees of smudges and dust.

That’s how Sora saw what she was looking for. On top of a pile of gold to her right, there was a small ivory jewelry box that was free of any dust at all, as if the lid had recently been opened.

She crawled over and carefully opened the box.

A single gold pearl rested inside, on a pillow of deep green satin. It rolled right off the satin and into Sora’s fingers, as if it had been waiting for her all along.

“Got you,” she whispered.

Sora reached behind her neck and unfastened her necklace, the one Mama had given her during Autumn Festival break when they’d been at Hana’s shrine. It was a traditional Kichonan memory pendant, with a single golden pearl representative of the deceased’s soul. The pearl on Sora’s necklace was only a little smaller than Prince Gin’s actual soul that had been on the satin pillow before her.