In barely half a minute of clash, five spearhead spiders were already down. Yet the ring suffocating Adelaide’s team felt hardly thinned, like a tide still pressing in.

Stung by those first losses, the spiders got wise. A few targets were tough gristle, not worth gnawing. They pulled back, kept range, and looked to ambush the softer flank.

Varie still hit like a tempest, all muscle and steel. But forced to put out fires everywhere, she couldn’t mount clean strikes. Kills slowed, and injuries began to bloom across the team.

“Damn it—these busted-ass bugs got fat, and now they hunt in packs too?”

Hos lunged to drag Tela back through sticky silk. A spider erupted from the dirt, blocking him mid-sprint. Varie yanked an arrow from a carcass and snapped a shot—whoosh—straight into the one diving for Hos.

“It’s the Domain of Echoing Remnants!” she shouted, voice sharp as flint. “Chaos irradiated them. They’ve evolved!”

Adelaide, pressed by three spiders, felt heat rise before thought. The hot spring riddle from Varie flashed back like steam on skin. “All right, lioness—before we get chewed to paste, mind sharing whatever life-saving tip you stashed in that stocking by your hearth? The part about these Echoing Remnants!”

No answer. Varie had no breath to spare. Her quiver ran dry by the heartbeat, the field soured, and her help hit its limits. Even her lion, Barni, wore fresh cuts like red thorns.

Just as the thread felt ready to snap, the spearhead spiders suddenly stopped attacking. The air hung tight, a drumhead before the strike.

Hiss—hiss hiss hiss—!

The lead spiders rasped a jagged chorus. Others lifted their heads, tiny eyes spinning inside barbed mask-plates. After a few beats, they turned as one and scattered like leaves before wind.

“…Huh? Did we… drive them off?”

Hos and the others asked it like children poking a sleeping wolf. The spiders never looked back, and relief shivered through the team like warm rain.

Only Queen Dreamlan, crouched by a bush with two dead twigs, faking a hide in the grass, frowned. She sniffed the air like a hunter catching smoke.

“No. Something’s coming—”

“Kabos!!”

Beanpole’s shout split the moment. The retreating spiders dragged off a human-shaped cocoon. Inside, a body twisted hard against silk—Kabos, alive and writhing.

Beanpole ran like a snapped bowstring. But Kabos had fallen first, hauled far while they fought for breath. The distance opened like a dark river—too late to bridge.

He was almost swallowed by the trees. Adelaide felt a cold pinch and shook her head, mercy stiff and brittle.

Poor man—may the god be kind to your soul, though that prank-happy tyrant probably won’t be—she thought, and kept her hands clean. Casting here meant failing the mission, and she wouldn’t do that for a stranger.

Then the spider dragging Kabos fell—no, not a slip. Its limbs turned to rope, motion dying mid-stride. Its bulk skidded a few yards, momentum scraping the dirt.

Its midsection burst with wet squelches. First, a spray of fine green beads; then viscera spilled out like rotten fruit.

In that heartbeat—

“…something cut it in two.”

Mira said it for Adelaide, and blocked the teammates who’d just arrived.

Kabos ripped a ragged hole in the silk and forced his face through. He gulped for air—then the breath stuck like a fishbone in his throat.

Half a second later, the trapped breath tore out as a shriek.

“G-ghost—ghost! Aaaah!”

He stared up at the half-transparent figure hovering above him, screaming like a child. The shade seemed drawn by his cry, lowering its head to meet his eyes.

“Catch!”

Beanpole hurled a thick rope. Kabos grabbed it, hands shaking, and was yanked backward like a snagged fish.

The shade drifted after him, slow and sure.

It wasn’t alone.

Shadows bled up from deadwood, from cracks in the swamp, from inside spider bodies. Half-transparent shapes, vaguely human, faces smudged like fog. Only one truth held—once, they had been like Varie.

They gave Adelaide’s people no time to run. The shades closed in, ring tightening like a noose.

Adelaide swallowed hard; emotion first, then instinct. She and Mira braced back to back, breath syncing like drums. Varie’s voice cut in, dry as tinder.

“Since you asked what else the Domain of Echoing Remnants does—congrats. You get the live demo.”

She nocked the last arrow in her quiver. Her tone was barbed, but Adelaide tipped her head and saw no lie: Varie’s face had gone grave as stone.

“Soul Devourer Sormaidon—dragon true to its name,” Varie said, gold light starting to braid the air. “A chaos wyrm that feeds on souls. Every swallowed soul fuels it.

“In the feeding, the captive souls rot into chaos. Their regrets and rage condense into tangible magical disturbances. They drift in the Domain of Echoing Remnants and hunt anything living—like these shades.”

“Yes,” Queen Dreamlan added softly. “They were all once Nacha.”

Varie’s jaw had held a flicker of struggle, a warrior facing kin. The queen laid a hand on her shoulder, palm steady, like a firebank cooling.

Varie didn’t flinch. After a few seconds, she let out a long breath and chose the hard road.

“They were,” she said. “Now they’re only monsters.” Gold bled brighter in the air, like dawn through frost. “Sorry, Adelaide. This run’s a wash.”

Adelaide’s mouth opened, then snapped shut. She cursed hard in her head and drew a sigil, fingers precise as knives.

Magic here was taboo. But these remnants weren’t foes you could beat with steel. With the ring closing, self-preservation trumped the scorecard.

“Unlock mana seals—ready to fight!”

Ah, rotten luck. The quest barely started, and it was already ending. And there goes any hope for a second win. Figures—it’s that damned god mucking about again—Adelaide thought.

Varie’s battle cry had barely faded. Adelaide and Mira were about to pour mana into their sigils when the world jolted.

In that instant, the approaching remnant souls froze where they were, like puppets with cut strings.

Adelaide halted her sigil by instinct. Varie’s eyes went wide, gold dimming to ember.

The shades parted, opening a lane as if for a passing procession. At the end of that path stood a shape like them—half-transparent, but different.

Varie let her bow down slowly. Her pupils tightened harder than when she aimed, trying to read the figure’s edges.

Most remnants were long twisted by endless torment, faces erased, bodies smudged. Not this one. Through the glass of his form, everyone saw his features, stark and clear.

“That’s… human?” Adelaide asked, eyebrows lifting. He was slight, too slight. Even shorter than Adelaide, and nothing like the Nacha in her mind.

She corrected herself fast. His helmet had two ear-holes. In one, half a beast-ear showed, ragged and cut. The other ear was gone, a stump at the root.

He wore a warrior’s steel. It was shattered and blackened where flame had kissed, joints fused into ruin.

Worse were the gaps. Flesh lay exposed, skin nowhere, muscle frayed like burnt rope. White shinbones sat in clotted, tar-dark blood. Organ shards clung in sticky strings.

He wore no flesh in truth, being a remnant. Still, Adelaide saw writhing maggots in every inch, a vision that crawled into her breath.

If there was any part less broken, it was his face.

What a face—left cheekbone, socket, and jaw melted to bone-white, matching the ruin below. The right held shape by will alone, lips burned away, a hard arc of resolve still there. His lone right eye carried a light the others lacked.

Once, he had been a handsome warrior. The armor’s crest whispered rank, the kind that commanded lines. And that whisper made the ruined half seem more terrible, like night highlighted by dawn.

Even Adelaide, who waded through corpses daily, drew a thin breath, a cold edge nicking her throat.

“Who are you…?” Varie asked, and regretted it before the words finished.

She knew remnants couldn’t speak. He didn’t answer. Silence settled like ash.

For a heartbeat, loss ached in her chest. Her teeth met, a promise of pain.

She knew him well enough. The slight build, the dragonfire burns—signs clear as brands. He was one of Lama City’s garrison, dead in the war with Soul Devourer Sormaidon before the god’s blessing ever found him.

Words gathered, then died. Deep inside, she felt the shame burn: he still suffered under the wyrm, and she was helpless to free him. Grief pooled like winter water.

As Varie lowered her head, the man’s shade moved, as if sensing some shift.

He came forward slowly, each meter brightening his eye, light sharpening like a blade whetted on stone.

He stopped near enough to share breath. His one eye met Varie’s, then turned to Queen Dreamlan.

He lifted his hand. The fused armor barely flexed, but he forced it, inch by inch, pressing palm to the broken gap where his heart had been.

A salute.

“You—” Varie’s eyes widened. Metal creaked and scraped in that tiny motion, a sound like memory bending.

With his gesture, the circling shades blurred, then thinned, and vanished like smoke in rain.

With them, Soul Devourer Sormaidon’s pressure peeled away. The air opened, bright and clean. Their lungs loosened. The soul-shackles dropped like chains from tired shoulders.

It felt as if they’d stepped outside the Domain of Echoing Remnants.

In the scarred traces of the wyrm’s field, only one shade remained—the Nacha warrior standing before them.