A faint smell of paper starts to flow around the room. A charcoal-like, bitter smell accompanied by the air becoming heavy and hot. It's humid and hard to breathe or sweat. Marisa finally finds this odd when a loud, violent pop occurs very close to her and a scorching flurry of flakes splash in her face. She gasps and pries her eyes open in seconds, seeing before her an inferno that surrounds the entire hut and lights it up in a blinding orange tint. She recoils at the sight and has to cover her eyes from the brightness at first, but can eventually look at it while squinting. She kicks her covers off and reaches for her outfit but can't seem to find it. Valuing her own life over the clothes, she throws the table above her aside and towards the fire, then leaps up and tries to look around for somewhere to get out. She leaps right into the smoke that fills the room, making her start to violently cough and drop down to her knees, still hacking and choking as an overreaction from the unfamiliar sensation.

She eventually decides to look up to see an increasingly voluminous cloud of smoke coat the ceiling. She looks around for the exit but can't find it; the walls have started to collapse slowly and fire is blazing in through the open windows. The bamboo begins to pop around her incessantly, making embers shower everywhere. Marisa begins to crawls towards where her broom was, hoping it hasn't burned up yet. She grabs the handle of it and then realizes that both ends are ablaze and the rest of it is scorching to the touch. She recoils and screams, grabbing her wrist and squeezing it while she sucks polluted air through her teeth and tears up. Failing to find a safe way out, she calls out, "Mokoooou!" A few seconds later, "Keeeiine!" Neither answer, and the ceiling pops and collapses where the table used to be. The covers, pillows, her clothes, and her broom burst into flames while she cries, "Heeelp meeee!" with the looming vowels becoming choked stutters.

When she finishes the cry, the rest of the ceiling caves in and falls into the entire hut. Marisa gets caught under it and barely crushed underneath the flaming bamboo. Nonetheless, they easily burn and melt away her exposed skin from the bottom up. As soon as she is over the sudden shock of being pelted from above by the flaming stalks, she starts to panic from the immeasurable pain that the heat and incinerating flesh brings. She starts to flail around aimlessly, throwing around the chunks of singed and burning bamboo in every direction. It's light, but still hot, so she only spares future burns by thrashing out of the rubble. She then tries to stand now that the smoke has cleared, but finds herself unable to on account of the massive pain from putting any pressure on them. She begins to cry and makes a loud-yet-low groaning yell.

She prepares to crawl away towards some random direction, but the walls collapse soon after and attempt to crush her again as if the hut had a grudge. The burning seems to hurt even more this time as the flames start going straight into her flesh, so she screams as loud as possible. A shriek that could rival banshees and quickly devolves into a guttural growl of her gargling blood. She spits out the blood and gasps for breath, then starts to shudder and twitch rapidly. The pain begins to dull, only in time for her hair to catch fire and quickly burn towards her scalp to cause even greater pain. She starts to scream yet again but this time also starts to try pulling out her hair chunk by chunk. The tearing sound of her hair strands being ripped straight from her follicles is just barely audible over the crackling flames while her grunts of agony continue to get more primal and coarse. She's far too slow; her scalp begins to burn. In mere moments, all of her hair has been torn out and burned, making her bald and still roasting alive. With little left to burn, the flames leave her head relatively alone aside from some severe burns which reveal the flesh beneath.

Marisa just about drops down in defeat, but still refuses to give up. She starts to crawl away from the rubble of the hut through the nearly crushing weight of the walls of dying fire and bamboo. She climbs up and out of it, then over the shattered leftovers of the walls. She drops down, out, and onto the ground, but then hears a peculiar tearing sound and an empty gut feeling. All of time slows down at that moment and she looks very, very slowly behind her with the palest possible face and completely empty eyes. She stares behind her with her mouth agape and tears streaming down her face, unhindered. Her entire upper body is blistered and red, her back black and yellow and torn all to shreds with gaping indentations. Her legs and most of the lower body have been torn open and hang vaguely from the sharp, hot edges of the destroyed wall. They are in the same condition of irreparable, destructive burning but worse. Her blood and guts are strewn all over the ash-covered ground of charred grass and dirt. All of them are nearly unidentifiable in form from their former selves and now just appear as a mass of nearly annihilated flesh. No doubt is left in her mind that she's about to die again. It was not a sudden one this time, and she wishes that it was.

Marisa simply lies her head in the ash while her vision fades rather quickly and her blood pours out and becomes rapidly invaded. She can't even have her final thoughts with the sheer amount of shock. Finally, everything ends while the forest is razed with fire and the falling ash gives off the last pleasant view of something that reminds her of snow.

And then she wakes up. Again. After all of that horrific experience, her eyes shoot open to be met by the darkness of night, staring up at the ceiling of the hut, now peaceful. She finds herself in a cold sweat, feeling like she's in an oven despite the temperature of the room. She throws the quilt aside and lies out with all of her limbs spread apart for a minute while she pants and gasps for breath as if they were her last. Her heart is racing dangerously at this point but she manages to calm down enough to not accidentally kill herself. She starts to take much longer breaths that eventually become normal breaths. She stops and gets up to take a look around. Everything seems normal, quiet, peaceful, and generally non-threatening. Keine and Mokou still lie asleep in their beds and there is no sign of fire. Marisa calms down and approaches a window to stare out of it. There's nothing, not even the moon, sky, or stars which are blocked out by the mana-saturated bamboo. She sighs and simply stands there, staring out into the dark with little to no purpose but the inability to rest well.

At least an hour more passes by before she decides to try sleeping again. She lies under the table without the cover and tries to sleep. She closes her eyes slowly and softly, then waits. Then she waits some more. Then a bit more. She continues to wait. More waiting. Nothing. She pouts and pitifully cries for just a moment. It's about that this moment that she wishes Reimu were here, but she isn't. Therefore, she sucks up her pitifulness and tries again, unsuccessfully.

"I-I can't, I just can't...!" she quietly yells at herself with both hands over her face and gritted teeth. She finally decides to get up again and bravely crawl into Keine's bed while she's curled up tightly on one side. She gets under the covers and scoots right up to Keine, then hugs her from behind and squeezes tightly more out of anxiety than affection. That anxiety makes her embarrassment minimal but still slightly present. After sufficiently burying herself next to Keine, she tries to get to sleep there.

It mostly works until Keine wakes up and notices someone clinging to her. She turns her head around to spy Marisa and so asks, "What are you...?"

Marisa immediately apologizes and separates herself from Keine with the excuse, "I...couldn't sleep well."

Keine stares at her for a bit with her unsettlingly glowy eyes, ignoring her nudity, and then smiles. "It's okay; you just need to ask." She grins and welcomes Marisa with open arms.

"Thank you..." Marisa whispers as she crawls into her arms.

Keine cradles her like the wonderfully caring person that she is for a bit, but then asks out of the blue, "Your reaction...you're not used to this, are you?"

Marisa shakes her head, "Not really..."

Nothing further is said. Keine just finds her to be rather cute. The two eventually fall asleep together and have a more peaceful rest until the next morning.

Marisa wakes up a few hours later, before the other two. She slowly and carefully crawls out of Keine's lap and onto the ground, then stands and looks around while rubbing her eyes and hanging her head a bit. She spends the next few minutes tiredly getting dressed again, giving enough time for Mokou to wake up and notice her.

"You're up early." she comments and yawns at the same time.

"And I thought Hourai didn't need to sleep." Marisa jokes shortly afterwards.

"Nope. It's not really important anymore, but it still sucks to be tired." Mokou explains.

"Um...yeah." Marisa is confused at how she could think that wasn't rhetorical. "So are we leaving yet?" She doesn't sound too excited, but more tired. She also puts her arms behind her head and relaxes it while standing.

"Give me a minute!" Mokou complains, then sighs and scoffs at the same time.

She takes a while to get ready, though. She gets up, stares at the ceiling for a few minutes, then gets dressed and continues to space out for a moment. She then leaps through the window and dashes off somewhere too quickly for Marisa to follow. After a while during which she loses track of time, Mokou finally returns from outside and says, "Alright, let's go."

Marisa takes up her broom and takes off out the hut to follow Mokou.

"So where to?" she asks just as they leave.

"Out." Marisa simply but strongly demands.

"Right." Mokou confirms with a thumbs up.

They go off, just walking at a leisurely pace for a while in the peaceful but somewhat dark and humid forest. That is, until Marisa finally asks, "Hey, you're immortal, right? Like, you can't die?"

"Yeah."

"Does it hurt for you?"

Mokou stops for a second, but continues to walk shortly after answering, "It does."

"Well..." Marisa starts to ask, but has an unreasonable amount of trouble actually asking the obvious question. "I..." she tries again. Mokou is getting a bit annoyed by her inability to speak. "What if I told you that I've died?" she finally does. Not the question she meant to ask, but similar.

Mokou chuckles, "Well, I'd call you a liar!"

That discourages Marisa, but she continues boldly, "But I have; I'm serious!"

"Right. So how did you 'die'?"

Marisa proceeds to describe the ones she has experienced so far, "First, I think I got hit by this lightning bolt and crashed into the ground really hard. Second, Alice hit me with something. I think it was a hammer. Third, I got trapped-" she stops, however. Just as she is about to describe the burning, she stops and causes Mokou to as well.

"Hm? Come on, I was just getting interested." she turns to complain.

"I was trapped in your hut, and it was on fire."

"Go on." Mokou insists, continuing to walk.

"Well, I woke up and it was on fire. Everything was hot and exploding and stuff. I got up and choked on the smoke, then my stuff started to burn and explode. The roof collapsed and crushed me. I got out, but then the wall fell and did it again..."

Mokou asks a sort of creepy question that could be construed as either curious or sadistic, "How did it feel?"

Marisa is hesitant to elaborate further, but does so anyways, "Everything was...hot. Like being too close to a campfire but worse, or maybe getting hit by a Master Spark. No, the fire is worse. It felt..." she makes an odd comparison "...like getting whipped a thousand times."

"You would know what that feels like?" Mokou asks, a bit concerned.

"N-No, no, I'm just guessing..." she hastily explains herself. Mokou isn't convinced, but usually isn't anyways.

Marisa continues, "I couldn't even stand, but then I couldn't feel anything...the pain just...stopped." She starts to slow down a bit and tear up again. She begins to stutter the start of the next sentence, "It...i-it..." over and over.

Mokou stops and backs up next to her. "Come on, speak." she encourages her with a pat on the shoulder.

"It...was real fire. Not Danmaku, actual, hot, deadly fire!" she quietly yells, trying to hold back from crying from the memory that very slowly begins to fade in clarity. "I can't even describe it..." she admits, now calming down.

Mokou can tell that she's withholding something, but doesn't prod further and just tells her to continue walking. Mokou keeps an arm around her with the other in her pocket while they continue.

She leads her to the very edge of the forest and beyond, taking her as far as to the village outskirts before stopping and pushing her forward, "Alright, that's far enough. You can get home from here, right?"

"Yeah, thanks." Marisa quickly thanks her and then runs off. Mokou smiles at another successful job, but is then immediately confronted by somebody else for an escort.

Marisa makes a beeline right for her house, not even stopping to look around. When she lands at her house's front door, she drops to her knees and hugs the door. She does this for a little bit too long before getting back up. She looks around in each direction afterwards and decides to just run off again, completely forgetting what she meant to do before getting lost. She heads off deep into the forest and mucks around with blowing things up. That's pretty much it.

Meanwhile, in the SDM, Sakuya is confronted suddenly while preparing a meal, by Patchouli.

"Sakuya, have you noticed something odd, lately?" she asks as if it were a passing question.

Sakuya continues to chop away at a stick of strange meat, "Now that you mention it, it's become quite a bit harder for me to maintain a time-freeze."

"Interesting. How so?" Patchouli prods.

Sakuya stops to answer, "It leaves me fatigued, not wanting to move too much afterwards. Like the act were eating away at my bones." and then continues.

Patchouli groans and stares at Sakuya, somewhat in thought. "What about changes in the behavior of your sword?" she adds.

"I haven't used it."

Patchouli groans again, asking yet another question, "And what about the mansion?"

Sakuya stops mid-chop, then looks back and around at the dimly-lit kitchen. She puts her cleaver down and strolls out into the hallway, then looks both ways and back to Patchouli. "Actually...yes, it looks smaller."

Patchouli closes her eyes and nods slowly. "Yes, I thought so." she says, then leaves. Sakuya is left guessing about what she meant.

Her next stop is at Remilia's bedroom deep in the mansion. Upon reaching the rather tall double doors leading into it, she knocks and is met with two knocks from the inside. She kicks the door. Remilia opens the door and peeks out with just her head and one arm, still apparently, relatively undressed. "Yes?" she asks with the slightest smile.

"Have you noticed anything odd lately? As in, the past day or two?"

"Liiiiike...?" Remilia slurs while waving her hand around.

"Environmental changes, powers are harder to use, hallucinations, skewed perception of time, etcetera; weird things." Patchouli explains.

"Now that you mention it, yeah." she puts a finger on her chin and contemplates. She then lets the door go and stands in a proud position with one hand on her hip and one on her head, then bluffs "Yes, I've noticed it! In fact, I've been using that to my advantage! Those humans will never see THIS incident coming!" She forgets that she's standing nude in a doorway.

Patchouli stares at her with the most unimpressed of faces, then sarcastically remarks, "Yeaaaaah." She points at Remilia, down a bit, and waits.

Remilia looks down at where she's pointing, then realizes that she's nude again. She grabs the door and slams it shut without another word, except for possibly yelling, "Perverted lesbian!" which accomplishes nothing.

Patchy sighs and yells back in monotone, "I've seen you like that too much to care, Remi." She then leaves without another word to question more people. she goes through most of the mansion asking the maids about their experiences in the past day. No progress in that. She eventually gets to Meiling who is tending to the gardens in the courtyard.

Meiling turns to her just upon appearance and casually asks, "What's up?" which gets her slapped. It doesn't seem to hurt her, though.

"Don't talk so casually to me." Patchouli aggressively commands, but then calms down and asks what she did to Remilia, but pertaining more to Qi.

Meiling perks up upon the question, "Oh, yeah! There's been something nasty going down; I can feel it. Oh, and that witch girl-"

"Marisa."

"Her. She hasn't been around today. It should be pretty peaceful, but even off the flowers, I can feel the distress. I feel like something's wrong with the flow of time, if you know what I mean."

Patchouli nods, "I already spoke to Sakuya, she said similar. Thank you, now get back to work."

Meiling salutes and continues to tend to the plants with a watering can while Patchouli waves goodbye and heads back inside to her library.

"Devil." she calls into the darkness upon entrance. A small devil in black flutters towards her and awaits her command, which is, "Prepare my seat, we have a long day ahead of us." The devil nods, then flutters off while Patchouli makes her way through her labyrinth of bookshelves while picking up several volumes on the way. She approaches a cushioned chair draped with various quilts and takes her seat, leaning in towards the desk that it sits by and opening one labeled "Boundaries of Time, Vol. 1". She lies another aside, which is unlabeled but pitch black on the cover. The devil in black from earlier comes to her side and offers her a cup of tea, which she sets aside before casting above her an orb of light to illuminate the desk, books, and cup. She drapes a quilt over herself and gets comfortable for a long day of reading and taking notes. With the entire library pitch black save for that one spot, the day falls to a bit more of a calm-yet-tense demeanor and no more troubles befall Marisa by the end of it. All is well as night falls — for now.