So quiet—like snow muffling the world.

Maybe it was her body guarding her hearing, like a mother covering a child’s ears. Since Zer’s cool, gentle water magic flowed deep in her ear and washed the pain away, the world had fallen quiet, like a lake after rain.

Everything carried only a soft echo, like ripples under ice. Skela felt sent back to the church in the far north, back to the mornings she prayed before the statue of the Divine, breath steaming like incense.

Compared to Balad, those days were harsh, no question—like stone bread and iron cold. In the Ha-Ten Parish, means were thin; the crowdfunded dome wasn’t vast like here, so wind and snow slipped through like knives. Firewood went to the houses with the most children; inside, only a handful of kerosene lamps bled small islands of light and warmth.

Yet the air there was always calm, like frost settling on pine.

She’d rarely found that hush since coming to Balad; here, the air buzzed like a hive.

The capital was a clamor. Goods and street food glittered like jeweled stalls; rowhouses and palaces pressed together like scales. No one starved, yet you couldn’t find a satisfied face. Everyone felt they had too little. Everyone wanted more—more—until the world fit into their pocket like a stolen coin.

Desire turned this place into a boiling cauldron; the human sea rolled without rest. After Rockridge issued the marching order, the noise around her never stopped, like drums under a storm.

Some child came back from war missing an arm, living like a broken sparrow. Some timed their greed to profit from war. Endless arguments, screams, sobbing, shoving—like waves slamming a pier.

She knew the capital was “harmonious” compared to the front. That fact hurt worse, like salt on a wound. She stood in the city where the sin began, watching the world slide, inch by inch, toward the abyss, like cliffstone eroding into sea. The helplessness made her want to cover her ears.

Yes, like dear Zer said—cover your ears, shut it all out. It would hurt less, like pulling a blanket over a storm.

But she couldn’t, not with the storms inside her.

Maybe others could. Maybe the old her could. Not Skela Trinity Purdo, not now.

She didn’t deserve that ignorant joy—like honey stolen from a hive she helped burn.

Skela clenched her jaw and stared at the massive, twitching shape, like a mountain under thunder. She let the Windstride incantation flicker through her mouth, quick as a gust.

She thought she heard Zer trying to stop her—like a bell under water. She wasn’t a wind mage by trade, not used to the weightless drift. Still, she steered the wind and lunged at the golem, like a hawk riding a current.

Her plan was simple: if long-range Holy Light couldn’t kill it, then minimize loss and cast at zero distance—drive it through the skull like a sunlit spear.

Skela didn’t even know the name of this profane thing—a stain without a label. She couldn’t hear her companions, their voices like bells buried in snow. She didn’t know its core sat in the head. But she saw Lady Adelaide point at the golem’s helm while speaking to Zer, and judged the weak point lay in the head, like a heart behind armor.

Right then, Lady Adelaide tore the helm open with a spell, like bark ripped from rot, confirming her guess.

Skela glanced down in gratitude at Lady Adelaide. Her strength clearly didn’t match the label “low affinity,” yet Skela felt no surprise. Maybe it was the first impression: the white-haired angelic sister, like moonlight with wings—of course she was strong.

Her intuition was usually right, like a compass needle. Now it whispered again: if she got close enough, she could end this mountain of a monster, like a spark burning dry straw.

Trusting that instinct, Skela alighted on its head, light as a leaf. As the wind spell around her legs fell away, a sticky touch rose through her soles—like stepping into liquid.

She couldn’t help looking down—and froze. It was liquid, yes, but not water; it was an ocean stitched from howling faces and grafted flesh. The dead writhed, struggled, and choked in their own tangled intestines. Organ shreds and black blood, tugged by some tidal force, rose and fell like waves.

Skela, who shouldn’t have heard a sound, was swallowed again by noise. She heard the voiceless shrieks of souls trapped within, like wind screaming through a mausoleum.

A dozen black arms rose from the corpse-sea and clutched her ankles. Their blank white eyes had no pupils, yet she knew every dead thing watched her, hated her, poured its pain like ash into her.

It was a cry from the soul. An invisible rhythm tore down every defense and etched their unending torment straight onto her heart—no air, no flesh required.

One glance, and her knees weakened. She almost knelt under the weight of their souls, like a tree bowed by storm-snow.

Pain, anger, despair, self-reproach—all hers, all theirs—rammed into her mind at once. She clapped a hand over her mouth and gagged, like salt forced down a throat.

In decades of steady prayer, she had never doubted the Divine. Even with war raging, she believed the scales of justice in God’s hand would fall in judgment. Yet now, facing this evil, her faith wavered like a candle in wind.

God, why do You allow such evil, such blasphemy, to stand—like a plague upon Your fields?

What blinds Your eyes? What stops Your ears, that You cannot see this carnage or hear the dead wail—though they pray so humbly, so shrill, so desperate—like sparrows beating at a sealed temple door?

Save us—please—anyone—save us—

The wails echoed in her skull. A painful, crawling itch ran through her body, as if she herself were rotting away. Her will began to scatter—until a jolt snapped her awake, like rock struck by a hammer.

The golem moved again; the fresh wounds had almost knit shut, like clay sealing under heat. Its hand reached up toward her perch, but blood-red chains caught it midair and yanked it down, locking it to the floor like roots.

It was Lady Adelaide’s magic. She couldn’t pierce the defenses on the golem, so she stalled it like this. But the chains of mana soon cracked under its brute strength; they were about to snap, like ice under boots.

Time was thin. Skela had to release Holy Light now, like drawing breath before a plunge.

She drew a deep breath and barely held her stance, like a reed bracing against wind. Her shaking hands traced crooked arcs through the air. What held her up now wasn’t faith but anger at the maker of this evil—and the guilt gnawing her gut like rats.

She swallowed the nausea and spoke the incantation for the Radiant Blade.

“Túl ana me, i righteous kal—”

As she chanted, a longsword of light formed in her hands, like sunrise poured into steel.

But then another voice rang inside her soul, like a stone dropped into a deep well.

“Little mouse... did you come... to see me?”

Her chant snagged and broke. She looked down, startled and unsure. A black shadow crawled up from the blood-and-corpse sea beneath her blade, like ink rising through water.

By the spell’s glow in her hand, she saw the shape clearly, like a lantern catching a ghost.

Old, withered. Dirty, yellowed keratin filmed over his eyes. Years of drink had left him all bone, like a scarecrow. Skela knew him; she could not forget him, like a scar that never fades.

He—no, it—was the old man she met while hiding in Dalahaman, the one who told her of Hakadi’s existence and plan, like a map scratched on bone.

“You came back... but where’s Kaka? Where did Kaka go?”

Lips made of black blood and scraps of flesh squirmed before Skela, breaking and reforming. His hand clutched her calf. The voice sounded like weeping, like rain in a ruined house.

“I waited so long for you, waited for the day you’d return. You were my only hope. Seeing you that day, I was so happy—thought everything could go back, like spring after frost...”

Even as a corpse-born monster, the old man’s face still showed a thread of hope, like a thaw line on ice.

But the next moment his face split down the middle. When it knit again, it had turned into the snarling look from that day with Neprah, like a wolf mask nailed on.

“But you weren’t the little mouse! You lied to me, lied to everyone. You brought that blond demon to our home and sold our secret for your own safety—”

“No, I didn’t know... I didn’t know it would turn out like that—”

He ignored her trembling defense and leaned close again. He pressed his ruined face against the tip of her light-sword. Mad, twisted hatred filled his features, like a fire warped by wind.

“You are the demons’ blade, their horn for slaughter. We died because of you. Our bodies became vessels of chaos because of you. Our souls suffer because of you, never to pass on. All of it is because of you, Skela Trinity Purdo—all your fault—”

“Don’t say another word!”

Skela couldn’t hold herself anymore. Her voice wasn’t defiance; it was a panicked, little-girl cry, like a sparrow trapped in a cage. The formed light-sword flared uncontrollably. As if fleeing everything, she drove it down. Holy Light met corpse-forged evil, and at the touch it boiled like a chemical storm.

An instant later, the searing power of Holy Light burst. The golem’s right brain blew like a split watermelon. Its contents sprayed wide, painting half the stone walls pitch-black, like night poured over brick.

As her intuition had whispered, at close range Holy Light could easily shatter the soul crystal inside the wraithbound golem’s skull.

Yet Skela failed, like a lamp guttering at dawn. She stared at the face still intact, at the slit curling like a mocking smile. Her strength gave out; she sank to her knees, like a banner collapsing.

At the last instant, her blade drifted inches aside and scraped past that familiar face, like a comet missing its mark.

Guilt crushed her. She couldn’t strike the monster wearing that face. So the magic missed the soul crystal hidden behind, like an arrow glancing off bone.

She failed, not only because the golem had broken Lady Adelaide’s bonds. She’d missed the last window, like a tide slipping away. Even if time remained, she could no longer cast.

A copper-sweet surge rose in her throat. Backlash flooded every corner of her body, worse than before. The unruly power smashed through her veins like a flood, wrecking muscle and nerve. She couldn’t even feel pain now—only endless fatigue and numbness, like snow packing the world—until she couldn’t move a finger.

In the final flicker of consciousness, her heart held only endless remorse, like a black river.

If only she hadn’t chased that foolish desire. If only she had kept a clear mind like the teachings said and stayed in the Ha-Ten Parish, living out a nun’s simple, austere life—none of this would have happened.

Yes... all of this was her fault.