Silence was not common in hell, not in a place where quadrillions of souls cried and rolled around on the ground in feelings that there was no hope.
But on their return trip to the City of Severance, as the Wraithwagon phased through the infernal landscape, rocketing through the plains of Naraku, Ran found silence.
No one dared to break it. Not him, not Haru, not even the Overseer who shared the Wraithwagon in them.
All of them cowered—silently—in the heaviness of Mukoku's aura. The aura stewed around them, volatile and foaming.
Ran exchanged a look with Haru and the acolyte pressed a finger to his lips in a shushing gesture.
Ran nodded to convey his understanding.
Haru dipped his hand into his pocket and brought out what looked like a medallion without a chain.
He gave it to Ran who took it, eyeing it in curiosity.
Understanding his confusion, Haru brought another similar coin-shaped object from his pocket.
Ran looked on as he turned to see if he was watching him and then Haru pointed at the object. Ran nodded and Haru slapped it to his forehead.
When he removed his hand—contrast to what Ran had been expecting—there was no coin-shaped object stuck to his friend's forehead.
His friend mimed for him to do the same with his own coin-shaped object.
Ran stared disbelievingly at him and mouthed, "What is it?"
His friend made a "Get on with it" hand gesture.
Ran sighed and immediately froze.
Everyone in the Wraithwagon stiffened.
All eyes avoided looking at him. Everyone suddenly became busy. The Overseer brought out a neckerchief from nowhere and became oh-so busy folding, making sure each fold was as precise as humanly—or demonly—possible.
Haru closed his eyes and fell against the backrest of his seat, his head hanging to the side as he pretended to be so busy asleep.
Ran stared at all of them in betrayal as he waited for the inevitable.
Mukoku, in the front seat of the Wraithwagon, slowly—moving so slowly that Ran died a thousand times in his heart before she even turned—turned around.
She looked back at where he was sitting—beside his friend who had just betrayed him—her piercing eyes red with extreme anger.
Ran made to provide an excuse and opened his mouth. The Queen of Severance locked gaze with his and his mouth dried, his excuse died before it could be spoken.
He licked his lips and looked down to avoid her fiery gaze.
Her aura filled the entirety of the Wraithwagon and pushed down on all of them like gravity.
As of to say—watch it!
Ran, nervous and wanting to get busy too to escape her attention, fiddled with the coin thing in his hand and when he had nothing else to do, he immediately did as Haru had done earlier.
He pressed it to his palm and slapped it to his forehead.
"Finally!"
Ran nearly jumped off his seat.
Carefully, he looked around. The Overseer was still pretending the neckerchief was the most important thing in the world, a child after his own heart.
Haru still appeared as if he'd drunk a whole river of sake and was passed out.
Carefully, he looked to Mukoku and saw that she was no longer glaring daggers at him.
Confused, 'Where did that voice come from then?' He thought.
"From me, you idiot."
'Haru?' He thought.
"Yes, it's me."
He turned and carefully looked at his friends. He was still right there, slumped beside him in a position that would certainly cause him some back pain later.
'How are you channeling your voice into my thoughts?'
"It's the Eirasen, or as it is called in Kurana, Oni no kane—demon's money. I'm not pure enough to engrave my flesh with Fey runes, but the Eirasen is made of pure souls, the souls of innocents harvested when demons attack Kurana. That's why one Eirasen can buy you a kingdom here in Naraku. I have just five, I inherited them from my mother."
"So the Eirasen is how we are able to talk to each other through our thoughts?"
"No. Like I said, I'm not pure enough for Fey runes, but the Eirasens are. I engraved these two with Fey runes that would allow us to use them as a medium for conversing mentally."
Ran swallowed an imminent gasp, holding it in while looking to Mukoku to see if even that had gotten her attention.
"This is incredible and amazing," he thought to his friend once he'd noticed that Mukoku was still steaming in her corner and he hadn't provoked her ire.
"I thought so too."
"Is there a limit?"
"Not that I know of. I saw it once when you opened the Holy Book of Light. It was on the next page. I quickly memorized everything on it. There was nothing about a distance limit and from my experience with kin, that usually means that there isn't any."
"Wow."
For the rest of the journey Ran and Haru withdrew from vocal conversation to mental conversation.
And when they finally arrived back at the City of Severance, they made sure they were on the other side of the palace from Mukoku.
Well, that was at least until the Overseer put paid to Ran's escape.
He was on the rooftop of the restored palace with Haru and they chatted happily about the wonders of Feys.
"I think I will wait for my first blaze in hell before I do another," Ran told his friend.
"That's sensible," Haru said, nodding. "Maybe by then Mukoku would have calmed down enough for us to go find your father."
Ran frowned in worry, staring at the boy. "It takes that long for her to calm down?"
Haru gave him an expression that was a half smile half grimace. "Usually, it's longer."
Ran sighed and Haru tapped his shoulder in understanding. "Don't worry, you will get to save your father."
He wanted to tell his friend that he didn't know that but decided to accept the words of comfort for what they were instead of getting aggressive for their lack of bolstering courage.
"Do you know where I can get Eirasens?" He asked Haru.
"Why do you need Eirasens?" His friend gave him a searching look, his eyebrows furrowed.
"I've been thinking. If I can't draw more runes on me until the next blaze then I can gather as much Eirasens as I can get my hands on and start on the path of mastering all the Fey Elements. Though I only need seven coins, every blaze I'd engrave a rune of each of the seven elements on the seven coins. I'll keep doing so until I've engraved all of them."
"So a blaze—five years—for every rune. The entire Fey rune constellation is Aey to Zetto, twenty eight runes. All Elements are seven, so that's seven Eirasens." Haru was frowning as he did the maths. "You will engrave a rune from each element, respectively, to each Eirasen per blaze… That's one hundred and forty years Kaito Ran."
Ran grinned at his friend, knowing something he didn't.
"If I try engraving them on my body, I don't have seven me, so it would take nine-hundred and eighty years," he said, smiling in amusement at his friend's gaping expression. "I think. One-hundred and forty is more manageable, don't you think?"
Haru just kept smiling. Pitying his friend a bit, he finally revealed to him his reason for not being bothered about the amount of years it'd take him to complete this plan.
"I will only need to do four blazes. Once my years of servitude to Mukoku is completed, I will return to Kurana. There I'd only need seven days to pass before I can engrave again. So with four engravings already done in Naraku…"
"...you would need only one-hundred and sixty-eight days to round up everything. Or even less as you already have Ether Orin, the sixteenth of Ether, with you."
Ran nodded. The rune of the mind, it was what Haru had given to him so they could communicate mentally.
"So how do I go about acquiring Eirasens?"
Haru sighed and looked at him sadly. Ran already knew at once to expect bad news.
"Eirasens are pressed from pure souls. Most mortals get them by sacrificing virgins to demons, one innocent being is worth ten Eirasens. That's the only way to get an Eirasen, Ran, aside from inheriting or being gifted it. If you steal it, it will always return to the owner."
Ran sighed and was about to respond when the rooftop door banged open and the Overseer walked towards them, mumbling curses under his breath.
"There you are, knave," the demon said with a cruel smile. "Now come with me, you have work to do in the Queen's quarters."
Ran gave Haru a look of horror.
From the door, left open, a rumble came through, an echo of the Queen's wrath.