After it smashed the carriage, the Bone Eater’s dead joints clicked like beetles in dry reeds. It turned and found Adelaide still sprawled. The fire in its sockets danced again, like a lantern tasting victory, savoring the old thrill of conquest.

The thrill broke. A heartbeat later, an impact surged up through its jaw. It didn’t even have time to harden its guard. The force punched through its jawbone, drilled up, and burst from the crown.

It stared, stunned, at Adelaide suddenly right before it. A blink ago she’d been farther away. Now her face was close enough to feel her breath, and her pupils weren’t the yellow it remembered. They burned a blood-crimson, like fresh dye in water.

For no reason it could name, meeting those eyes filled it with despair. Not fear—sentence. Its inert bones began to tremble, like reeds in a winter wind. It tried to open its mouth and launch a bone spike, but the Bloodsword already speared it, from jaw to skull, locking its jaws in place.

It could only turn its remaining half arm into a bone spike and jab at Adelaide, trying to force her back. She didn’t let go of the Bloodsword. She leaned in instead, pressure mounting, even as the spike threatened to pierce her defensive array. She wrenched the blade with a brutal twist and tore the Bone Eater’s lower jaw off its skull.

A hoarse cry scraped out of its throat, gravel on iron. It forgot to attack. It only wanted the Bloodsword out of its head. Adelaide wouldn’t release it. Man and monster tumbled, a storm of limbs and bone, smashing through several intact carriages before they skidded to a halt.

At last the blade in its skull loosened. It snapped its chin up and ripped free, leaving half its face behind like shed bark.

Close quarters should have been its hunting ground. Yet freedom came to it ragged, like a thrown dog. The Bone Eater touched the hollow where half a skull should be and roared, metal ringing. Its whole body shimmered to steel, and it thrust a blade at Adelaide.

The killing spike froze in midair.

Adelaide held its bone blade with one hand. In the other, she gripped the spike she’d wrenched from its mouth.

In that instant, the Bone Eater felt a familiar chill climb its spine. Fear, old as the grave.

This woman had gone mad.

Her fingers held the blade, skin split, blood running down her arm like a red waterfall. She didn’t spare it a glance. Her eyes rested on the spike in her other hand, and she spoke.

“Did you use this one to ruin it?”

Her voice was a hell-wraith’s rasp. A crack echoed. Adelaide crushed the spike to powder. Her scarlet eyes looked like coals catching wind.

“In that case, I’ll let you feel the same.”

Mana poured in like a tide while she spoke. Adelaide’s hand dropped, not from weakness, but to touch the ground. Only then did the Bone Eater realize the sand underfoot had turned to something harder and colder. The fight had carried them to the caravan’s heart. This was where people gathered after supper. This was where the attack began.

Which meant this was where the bodies lay thickest.

“—esseles (the Nameless).”

The ancient word flowed from Adelaide’s lips. Its graceful syllables were stained by anger, hatred, and an absolute contempt that burned like frost.

Every corpse within several dozen meters crumbled to ash as the word ended. A field of pink petals unfurled without a sound, like spring falling in a storm. The survivors only felt a pressure of chaotic mana and flinched, hands lifting to shield their eyes. For Blood Magic constructs, it wasn’t mere pressure. It was a gale of word-sorcery none could defy.

In that instant, the corpse giants that had stepped into the caravan’s edge slammed against something invisible, iron on glass. They howled, towering bodies shoved back by the swelling field. The ghouls that had clawed and whooped were hit as if by a speeding train. Strength that could tear a grown man apart turned to nothing; they flew up like scraps of paper in a gale, the scene so unreal it felt like a fever dream.

At the eye of the storm, Adelaide rose.

She hadn’t used a specific spell. The tempest that wracked the Blood Magic constructs came from bloodline itself. Pure, brutal suppression of mana aptitude pressed down on them. In this simplest of arm-wrestles, the victor’s scorn took physical form. It dominated and drove out the loser’s mana, muscle by muscle, rune by rune.

It’s the most dangerous, and the proudest, way a mage can fight. If you don’t utterly crush your enemy in power and gift, it’s a way to tear yourself apart.

For Adelaide, it wasn’t a problem.

Her frail heart hammered like a trapped bird. Overworked muscle tore, then knit in the next beat as sacrifice flowed in from outside. There were enough bodies. Enough offerings. It felt like a shackle breaking. Power she’d never tasted surged from somewhere deep within. It heated her blood. It spread like fire through frostbitten veins.

She looked at the only thing still holding inside her field—the Bone Eater. The core made from tens of thousands of bodies barely kept it in place. It crouched, one knee down, ramming a spike into the ground, refusing to blow away like the ghouls.

Even so, that much was impressive.

Even with the corpses’ aid factored in, to withstand her field at this range said something clear. Its creator’s gift for Blood Magic approached Adelaide’s own.

That truth didn’t matter to her.

Right now, all she wanted was to erase what stood before her.

“sercëduinë— (river of blood)”

So she spoke.

“lasta-me (hear me)”

Her low, hoarse voice drifted on the breeze. No strict rhythm. No acceleration. A framework too simple for any grand spell. Opposite that simplicity, mana gathered so thick it stole breath, doubling with every syllable like thunder rolling over hills.

Blood that had fallen from her palm began to wake. It snaked through the piles like a red serpent, looped around, and bit its tail. The moment the circle closed, the air’s mana boiled. The corpse giants seemed to understand. As a last struggle, the three soul crystals they used for eyes locked on Adelaide, trying to call a soul tide to drown her.

Too late. The wraiths that bled from the void tore apart the instant they touched the surge around her. The mana behaved like children hearing their mother call. They rushed to take shape and died the next breath, releasing energy that turned breeze to knives. Innocent, they didn’t understand how deadly their loving embrace was. Razor winds shredded the wraith hands grasping at Adelaide’s ankle. They also sliced her open, head to heel, clothes in ribbons.

Even so, she didn’t stop. Her brown wig had been cut to tatters. Snow-white hair refused to float free in the honey-thick air. Speech turned hard. She bit down on the last syllable, word by word, until the simple incantation closed. All light collapsed into a single dark bead before her.

She lifted her hand and pointed at the Bone Eater.

“Die.”

Three bare words, unadorned, like the pure mana gathered at her fingertip.

Then came a void no mouth could name.

Unlike holy radiance, like a sunrise, the bead ruptured and plunged every gaze into a black deeper than night. The chaotic strain in the dark-red mana behaved like a black hole. It swallowed everything nearby—light, sound, vibration. Every sense went blind. Destruction along its path happened without a whisper.

For the survivors, it felt like slipping into a blink-long dream. When sight returned, a trench ten meters across carved the earth, and everything along that straight path felt… deleted, clean and unreal.

Only when the distant corpse giants crashed down did anyone breathe. The fight was over.

The Bone Eater was gone without a trace. One corpse giant had been wholly consumed. The other two were sliced across half their bulk, no longer able to hold together. They unraveled midair and fell as a rain of pieces.

As for the plague ghouls, almost all were torn apart. Only a few huddled beyond Adelaide’s field.

The desert night wind combed the settled field, cool as water. Moonlight lit Adelaide’s loosened white hair again, a frost-white banner in the dark.

“Is it… over?”

“We won, r-right?”

Uncertain voices rose around her, one by one, then clustered like sparrows. The caravan leader clutched his waist and limped out, supported by others.

“You saved us again, ma’am! We… we can’t thank you enough!”

He shouted it, dazed, and the survivors finally came back to themselves. They lifted tired hands and cheered. They looked at the lady before them with gratitude. No one questioned the hair that had turned white. No one dared stare at the skin shown where cloth had failed.

The old image of her as some sheltered young mistress had vanished with the Bone Eater and the corpse giants. No one would question the general’s choice again. If anything, they praised it with everything they had, shouting thanks until their throats burned—

The fervor didn’t last.

Not just because Adelaide didn’t react. But because they watched her pick up a dead man’s clothes and throw them over her shoulders. Then she bent, gathered fragments of a skull, and, like spooning cereal from a cold bowl, scooped what remained inside and tipped it into a cloth sack.

They stared, mouths open, as she moved from place to place. She wore no expression. She collected the severed parts of those who had spoken to her, and those who hadn’t. No one could cheer anymore.

Under their strange looks, Adelaide remained as she appeared—unmoved.

All her mind was on materials.

No sweet burn of revenge. No wonder that she had shattered her old limit. The heat that had felt like boiling blood had faded. She moved mechanically, searching for offerings that still held use. She forced every thought onto that work.

Because if she didn’t, her mind would run elsewhere.

Like why Mira had lied to her. Why, with no way out, she’d said she had withdrawn and told Adelaide to meet her outside.

Or why Mira refused to answer the Magic Crystal Stone’s call and tell her what was happening there.

Was it because she had no room to spare in battle? Or because she didn’t want to share her location the moment the stone lit, didn’t want Adelaide to go to her, didn’t want her to walk into danger?

Adelaide’s hands halted for a heartbeat; the world felt muffled. A gemstone shard lay in the sand, its shape gone, a film of half-congealed blood veiling the azure that should have shone.

...

She reached out, tremor running down her arm—then froze midair. She bit down, jaw a locked gate, and forced every drifting thought to scatter.

No. She was just thinking too much.

She had only one task: gather enough sacrificial materials, fast as a rising tide, then stand and fight at her side.

Yes—everything else could wait until after.