“Out of my way!”

Tyrant’s greatsword fell like a guillotine through fog, and a body split like wet bamboo. Her own breath rasped like bellows. Twenty minutes of relay assaults had ground her down. Even steel tires, and her strength bled away like tide. The enemy still swarmed with ease. She clenched the hilt till her knuckles blanched, like frost on bone.

She looked around. Comet’s body was a canvas of cuts, some wrapped with hasty bandages like white reeds. Stubborn as a mule, she kept her gun barking without a pause, even as fresh blood trickled from the seams like rain down eaves.

Mizuki’s side was dire. Elana forced herself to become a scattergun and a Reaper Scythe, pairing with Sham for hit-and-run, like minnows teasing sharks. Still not enough. Yun Shi orbited Mizuki like a pale moon, never once drifting. Those under orders didn’t dare kill Yun Shi, so for a short while the two were islands in a dark sea.

“Anta, watch it!”

Hawk Hunter shot in like a cannonball, a raptor stooping from thunderclouds. She shredded the men around Tyrant, and her hands shone slick with fresh blood like lacquer.

“Sorry, Ruth...”

Tyrant planted the sword in the floor like a steel tree and slumped against it. Weariness weighed on her shoulders like wet armor. She’d burned through stamina at several times her norm.

“It’s fine.” Hawk Hunter brushed it off with a wisp of a smile, but fatigue shadowed her face like dusk. Her quick, shallow breaths told the truth like drumbeats.

Tyrant lifted her head and sighed, a sound like wind over graves. The black tide of bodies didn’t ebb. Helplessness pricked, and she laughed.

“When was the last time we faced a wall like this?”

Hawk Hunter’s taut heart jolted. She glanced over, puzzled, like a bird checking the wind.

“I think it was four years ago. I was eighteen, you seventeen. I stood inside a sea of enemies. You didn’t hesitate. You put your back to mine. You were unbelievably dumb then, heh.”

Tyrant grinned, a flower opening in smoke, teasing the blank-faced Hawk Hunter.

“Come on, Anta, you only bring up my bad moments!”

“Alright, don’t get mad. But honestly, every time you stood in front of me, unmoving as a mountain. Even at hell’s gate, your back pressed to mine. You never left me.”

“Anta...”

“Ruth, thank you. For staying.”

“...”

Hawk Hunter said nothing. A hundred words surged like a clogged river. None broke the dam. Tyrant expected it. She lowered her head with a soft laugh. Contentment warmed like a candle in storm. At death’s edge, she could still speak with the one she liked.

Even if this was true hell, she had no regret. Only one: revenge left cold as snow.

“I’m sorry, Guangzi. I still can’t do something that vile...”

She pulled a small vial from her pocket, the glass cold as winter water. Her voice drifted like smoke toward a friend far away.

Tyrant was straight as an arrow. Ocean-deep feud or bone-deep hate, she couldn’t finish revenge with dirty hands. She had tried. She couldn’t force the blade. Her nature locked that door.

“But at least, just this once... I’ll use it to guard the ones who matter.”

She breathed the words. Her eyes closed, then opened, hard as tempered ice. She stood back to back with Hawk Hunter, catching blades that flashed like minnows. In truth, Hawk Hunter had been the shield. So Tyrant chose now.

Her gaze sharpened like a drawn line. She snapped the vial open. Pale powder fluttered out like ash-snow and settled on those who dared to close in.

At first the dusted only frowned. Nothing felt wrong. To them, Tyrant’s move looked like death-throes foam. But minutes into the melee, they felt it. Energy drained at a monstrous pace, like a punctured cask. Organs seemed to melt, as if they’d waded into molten rock.

“Wh—what is this!”

A man shrieked. Blood geysered like a broken spring. He burst apart in the next breath, pulp and silence.

—!

Shock froze the field like sudden frost. No one expected a living man to pop like an overripe fruit. Then it spread. More bodies seized. More bodies burst. A heartbeat ago it was a roaring battlefield. Now it was a grinding mill of death.

People howled in pain, voices warped like twisted metal, faces contorted into masks. The chorus crawled under the skin, a sound baked in hell and hopelessness.

“What happened?!” Mizuki called, baffled as a bird in smoke.

“Break through now!” Tyrant roared. She charged, greatsword plowing a furrow through flesh like an iron plow through mud.

“I’m going to fire a signal flare. Thunder Lady, cover me!”

“Yes!” Thunder Lady didn’t hesitate. Lightning coiled under her soles like snakes. She flashed over and took Yun Shi’s spot. Yun Shi didn’t overthink. She sprinted for the window with the flare like a streak.

In this state, without reinforcements, death was certain. No second path.

The flare arced and bloomed like a scarlet flower, but would anyone see it? Ten minutes after, Yun Shi was still knee-deep in blood and blades. No savior came riding the wind.

“Damn it, out of my way!” She whipped her Light Blade. Cuts fell like rain. Blood misted like spray. No time to breathe. Her bullets were spent. Even her hidden weapons were gone, last cards turned to ash. Still the enemy pressed. Compared to that, Tyrant’s vial had done monstrous work.

“Did she use contraband?” The thought flashed through Yun Shi like lightning across a night lake. She didn’t dwell. She took it as truth. Otherwise, how could Tyrant reap like that? Even she couldn’t.

“Go!” The lead man wouldn’t fold. His order dropped like a hammer. The brothers still on their feet rushed like starving wolves.

Thunk! Cough!

Lixiang took another blade. This one punched her back. She bit the pain like iron, yanked the knife out, and turned. The sight shocked people cold. Several jagged wounds laddered her body. Fresh blood ran in beads like a snapped string of pearls.

“Enough, Xiang. Leave me—cough...” Aya wasn’t better. Bullets and blades had written her in red. Her face was pale as old paper. She stood on will like a spear planted in sand.

“No. My lady, let me protect you...” Lixiang pulled a smile like a torn seam. She ignored her own cuts and spoke calm as warm tea.

After Tyrant used that forbidden drug, she’d cut down more than half the trouble. Those people died with faces twisted by pain, swallowed by despair like sinking stones. No wonder it was banned. On human grounds alone, it was too cruel.

She watched Hawk Hunter sprint to support Comet, a streak across a storm. Tyrant smiled again. She realized she’d been smiling a lot tonight, like flowers forcing through frost.

She’d prepared herself before coming. But only staring at death did she see it—she was afraid to die. No. She just had too much she couldn’t let go. That clinging turned death from a thought into a beast with teeth.

“Come on then. If I don’t kill you all tonight, I’ll die trying!”

Strange patterns bloomed along her greatsword like thorned vines. She poured all her Mystic Power in. Eerie light ran like quicksilver along the edge.

Tyrant locked both hands. Her snarl carved into stone. She swung. A towering wave rolled across open ground, sweeping men like driftwood. In seconds, razor edges condensed in the air. Swish, swish, swish—crossing sword-qi scissored through fodder, slicing them like meat on a butcher’s block.

Tyrant plunged alone, a reaper on a field of wheat. Her face was storm-dark. She ignored their fear-lantern eyes. Her hand rose and fell; bodies turned into silence. She smiled, cold and cruel as ice. She chopped. She thrust. She hewed. Red arcs splashed her hems, petal after petal. She didn’t stop. The cracked smile on her face iced spines. The next heartbeat, the person before her was a husk.

She was Tyrant, a Witch famed for brutality. Her power was overwhelming, and her mercy was a blade she never forged. The ones she hated belonged to the Divine Ling Family. With the enemy right here, why would she hold back?

She laughed wild. Blood fountained. A pretty cheek caught a comet-tail smear of red. Paired with that expression, she looked like a devil straight from hell’s kiln.

“Ah!” “Aaaaaah!” “Graaah!” Screams braided into screams, a hymn from the pit. Blood and dark were one finger-width apart. They lived in shadow. Their future was life or death, nothing between. If they dared to kill, they had to be ready to die.

Tyrant hacked up blood. Her body shook, not from fear but from a fuel tank gone dry. She’d hit her limit long ago.

She bit down. She crushed the pain. She wore her usual face like a mask of iron. Her greatsword swept again, reaping fresh lives like wheat.

“Die!” A sharp blade suddenly punched into her belly. Blood poured like a broken dam. She reached to pull it—and several more long knives stabbed into her. They speared through skin and muscle like stakes. She looked down. Blades bristled from her, big and small, like a cruel thornbush.

Her blood kept running. Her senses dulled like winter light. Her mind blurred like fog. If she died here, maybe it would feel like sleep...

Her overdrawn body was a kite with a cut string, drifting beyond her hands. For a breath, dying like this seemed easy.

Then her dimming eyes flared back to life like sparks in ash. No. She couldn’t die yet. She still had someone to protect.

Her slack, fine-boned hand lifted again. She clamped a blade lodged in her. The ash of her face breathed out hell’s heat.

“Ahhh!” Gasps rippled around her like wind in reeds. She ignored them. Her fingers closed on steel. Her palms split; she didn’t notice. With brute, stubborn strength, she ripped every blade out of her body. Blood pattered onto the ground like hard rain.

“You really think... I’d go easy on you?!” The wounds gaped, ugly as open maws. She ignored them. She roared. She grabbed her greatsword again and dove back into the crush. New cuts bloomed like black flowers. She spat a mouthful of black blood.

“Is she a monster?!” Terror pooled in enemy eyes. Tyrant’s self-wrecking ferocity—and the sight of so many knives having done nothing—made them stumble back a few steps, like leaves before a gust.

She smiled, cruel as frost.

The gashes on Tyrant’s body split wider; dark-red blood leaked from her veins like spilled wine.

Still, her sword never slowed.

The will to kill didn’t fade; battle fanned her like a rising storm.

Cough—cough!

She spat a lump of black blood.

Tyrant clutched her belly, a thicket of gore; fresh red braided with tar-black clots, a nightmare tapestry.

Another blade punched into her.

She yanked it free without a flinch, then hewed the stabber down with one damn stroke, her steel a thunderclap.

Only she knew her own body.

She was burning the wick from both ends, a last thrash before death—only this thrash still bit and mattered.

Blood beaded from every pore like dark dew.

Tyrant’s breath thinned.

Air turned scarce in her lungs.

Pain slipped away, a winter numbness settling like snow.

“Kill...”

Her voice dwindled to a thread, but her sword-arm never paused.

Splat!

Splat, splat!

After she felled a multitude again, her blood ran heavier.

What she spat grew blacker.

The end pressed close, like dusk swallowing the road...

She swung the final stroke.

The last man went under the blood tide and ended.

Tyrant, too, could hold out no more.

She sagged at last.

Her greatsword bit the earth; she leaned on its hilt like a grave marker.

Breathing wasn’t hard—it was absent.

Only blood still flowed.

Is this where it ends...?

Tyrant’s gaze dimmed.

Light drained by degrees.

Only hollowness remained.

Memories rose like lanterns on a dark river.

As a child, with family around, she was happy.

Then that day came.

After they died, she became a Witch.

For revenge, she became “Tyrant.”

Tyrant wasn’t her real name.

She had a plain girl’s name, spoken only by those near.

The Witch’s other name never troubled her.

She even thought she’d live as Tyrant forever.

But that person appeared, and everything bent...

“I like you, Ruth...”

A smile warmed her weakened face, soft as spring rain.

For someone so fierce, that gentleness startled like a bird’s wing against steel.

Only her.

She must protect her, even if it meant lighting her life like kindling.

Tyrant loved her.

That was all.

She never confessed, but she wanted to.

Her consciousness ebbed.

Darkness pooled over her vision.

She sank into it, unable to rise...

She’d meant to walk alone forever.

After she appeared, everything changed.

With her, life stopped being empty desert.

With her, even hell was worth the trip.

For her, a life was a coin to spend.

Her gentleness needed no audience.

As long as she—Ruth—understood, that was enough.

As for gender, she couldn’t care less.

Love didn’t need speeches.

It was that simple.

“My name is Tyrant...”

And also Ruth’s one and only Anta.

That was enough.

Guard the one she loved until the last breath—what could be wrong with that?

Thud!

Her strengthless body slammed to the ground.

The ever-faithful greatsword let out a wail on stone, as if mourning its master.

Beneath her, only blood.

In that pool, only her.

“Anta!”

In that blood, a guard born of the purest feeling was complete.

Even a fallen body still spoke of its master’s deeds.

After guarding, no regrets remained.

In that moment, a smile lingered on Tyrant’s face.

In the blood pool, it shone like a late moon.