They can't get back into the manor. The doors won't open, the windows, long missing their glass panes, have some kind of invisible forcefield in its place.
Not even Eirian's magic can force an opening.
She was working her way up to trying to take the whole thing down when it occurs to her to stop trying to tear it down from the top and see if she can pull it down from the foundation.
She kneels down and plants her hands flat on the ground. She learned to use her magic through trial and error, it was always too dangerous to reveal she even had it, let alone look for someone else who did and who could teach her. It's probably why she couldn't use it effectively against Song Ran.
It's almost enough to make her regret a lifetime of avoiding the City of Illumination, but if she stopped to really think about it, even being able to smack Song ran out of the air like a bug wouldn't be worth being under their thumb.
She was a teenager when she first figured out how to push her magic into things, instead of simply throwing force at them. The first time she'd done it; she'd blown up the vase.
And the plate.
And then the table she'd tried next, figuring she might have been luck with something bigger.
She'd turned that dining table and all its chairs into splinters before she'd finally gotten a handle on pulling back her magic and trickling it into the item slowly enough that it didn't immediately explode. She'd practiced for months before she could pour her magic into something without destroying it and it had taken years before she could affect tiny changes in one part before leaving another untouched. It had been the basis of the technique she'd used to rid the Camelia and Chenzhou of the miasma.
Now, she wasn't trying to burn out a microscopic poison. She was trying to pull down an entire manor. It should have been a lot easier, but as she started to push her magic into the ground, she found resistance she wasn't expecting.
It wasn't like the miasma, it didn't try to fight back, but there was something else sunk into the soil here. Something old, that had been a part of the soil for so long it had started to resemble it.
It was leeching out of the house itself, which meant it was probably Song Ran and whatever twisted magic being a ghost had given her. It didn't feel like Eirian's magic, or any other magic she'd ever experienced. It didn't feel like the magic she felt around magical objects either or even the pendant Chenzhou had worn that she'd destroyed.
It got stronger the closer she got to the manor, which was unsurprising, and she let her magic slither through the soil along the foundation of the manor until it had mapped the entire thing. The foundation was as expected; smaller than the manor they saw now because it had only been placed for the original building and none of the growth that had come after.
There was one surprising thing she noticed. The foundation ran much deeper than she'd been expecting, nearly twenty feet underground. Towards the bottom, Song Ran's magic could barely be felt. Despite haunting this place for centuries, Song Ran's reach seemed to be limited to the immediate manor itself.
But she'd had enough time to dig in deep. Eirian's magic couldn't get a grip to pull anything down. There were no holes in Song Ran's grip to slip inside.
Dismayed, Eirian let her magic spread to see if there were any tunnels or storage rooms underground that were connected to the manor.
She didn't find anything connected to the manor or the foundation and was just starting to pull back her magic when Song Rui appeared next to her and said, "The cool room is in the northwest section of the garden."
"Oh, thanks." Eirian pushed her magic in that direction, bypassing the manor and foundation.
"You're welcome."
Somehow, the awareness sank in slowly and immediately at the same time, leaving Eirian stuck in one of those frozen moments of panicked shock that always felt like an eternity.
Eirian's magic snapped back to her so quickly that it knocked her on her ass.
Song Rui peered at her through a curtain of hair. "Are you okay?"
Eirian's mouth opened and closed, but she was too startled to actually say anything. The urge to scream welled up in her chest but Finn beat her to it.
"AAGGHHHH!"
Unfortunately, he was close enough that it felt like Eirian was being stabbed in the ear.
"IT'S HER! IT'S HER!" Finn pointed at Song Rui, who looked confused at the attention she was receiving. "IT'S THE LADY FROM THE TREE! SHE WAS HANG-"
Eirian snapped around to see that Lord Zhao had clamped a hand over Finn's mouth. It wasn't stopping Finn from gesticulating wildly but at least it saved their hearing as everyone else came running.
"It's Song Ran! She's back!" One of Li's guards yelled, drawing his sword.
Song Rui blinked wide, liquid eyes at them. "You've met my sister?"
Chenzhou and Yuze slide to a stop next to Eirian, hauling her back away from Song Rui.
"Wait, that's not-"
Eirian shook off Chenzhou and Yuze's grip. "Song Rui."
"Yes?" Physically, she shared her sister's long dark hair and pale skin. Her hair was still pulled into a complicated bun, although the hairpin that should have been holding it in place was gone. Somehow, she looked less dead than her sister. Still pale, but her eyes lacked the malice of Song Ran.
There was something odd in them though, maybe that was specific to being dead?
Her robes were a soft lilac, nicer than Song Ran's and not as frayed or worn down.
The most startling difference between them was the wound around Song Ran's neck. The skin around her throat was red and twisted, ugly black and purple bruises spreading out from the deformed skin.
~ tbc