2020
In the ninth volume of The Girl from the Other Side, we come closer and closer to a final conclusion.
Shiva is still locked in the capital dungeon while the king heals from his heart attack. A soldier who feels guilty about kidnapping her checks on her and recognizes the locket. He says it belonged to his friend, from a village that the royal army burned down because of a curse outbreak. He also notes that Shiva is the right age to be his friend's daughter, except of course it's impossible, because the friend and daughter both died with the rest of the village, right? Hmm...
The king follows the high priest to a secret sanctum, where he finds a bunch of forbidden revelations from their god. The king learns a new version of the creation story. Instead of 'the God of Light made the world, the God of Dark stole parts of it, creating the curse,' we learn that the Sky Father and Earth Mother made the world, and humanity, together, and the curse is somehow the result of an acrimonious divine divorce. The Father tried to kill the Mother, and stole part of her body to make more human souls. Somehow he lost his own body in the process, that became the Outsiders.
The king is pretty shocked, and realizes that the point of sacrificing Shiva isn't to somehow use her soul to cure the curse, it's just so that the Father can get a little bit of his body back. The king balks at killing a little girl for what he considers an unworthy reason, so the priest stabs him and goes to complete the sacrifice ritual himself.
The soldier who felt guilty wants to stop the sacrifice too. He goes and finds the king. The king interrupts the ceremony, he and the priest argue publicly, and the public sides with the priest, who is perfectly willing to lie to get what he wants. But meanwhile the soldier has already snuck Shiva away. He takes her to the forest, where she finds Teacher.
Teacher has turned into a tree, but Shiva holds his branch-hand and it turns back into a hand, while Shiva turns into an Outsider too. The final image is a restored Teacher (restored to being an Outsider, not to being human) holding hands with Shiva, who has turned into a tree.
The next volume is the last one, so we'll discover what happens to Shiva and Teacher, and what happens to humanity generally.
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