It had been worth a try. But then the retaliatory attack came so fast and so hard there was nothing Ritsuka could do but let out a strangled cry of pain. She could feel it all too acutely as those monstrous claws pierced her chest, tearing through flesh that shouldn't normally be touched to begin with.

Her eyes went wide. She was afraid, of course she was, she'd never wanted to die. But another feeling lurked alongside that, a feeling of failure, of guilt at letting down her friends, her allies, everyone back in her own world.

But she was going to die. She knew that with a cold certainty as she fell to the floor, already ragged and pained breaths coming ever more erratically and shallowly as blood pooled in the torn remains of her lungs. She was going to die, and there most certainly wouldn't be a convenient god to make a deal with to come back this time.

Something warm and wet pricked at the corners of her eyes, unnoticed beneath the sheer pain she was in, and then her consciousness fled, and she went still but for the slowly pooling blood.

That, and the all too faint, virtually imperceptible twitches as, within her, the torn pieces of her heart still, impossibly, continued to try to beat.