A boom-crack split the air; fruit and vegetables burst like confetti; behind the counter, a poor shopkeeper stared, stunned and slack-jawed.
The largest market district in central Sanda welcomed its loudest day since reopening, a festival river swelling through the streets.
After nearly two years shuttered, easing ties between the two tribes finally unbarred its gates, like frost melting under spring sun.
On this auspicious day, merchants rubbed their hands like sparks, and their shelves bloomed with long-hoarded wares.
Citizens poured in like a tide; young and old picked fruit and greens at every stall.
Even golden-haired long-ears threaded the crowd, a scent that made Nacha men veer aside, a once-in-a-millennium bustle.
The celebratory fever ran all day, a drumbeat that refused to fade.
Even at closing, bouquets and banners still clung to doorways like vines in evening light.
Behind counters, owners grinned and counted their first honest coin in ages, like rain after drought.
No one imagined the market would stir again, and this stir would carry a rougher edge.
This time, the “liveliness” wouldn’t mirror the morning’s blessing.
“Uuuaaahhhh! You hold it right there, you stone-faced mule!”
Staring at the human-shaped hole smashed through his wall, the shopkeeper could only gape, breath held like a fish.
From nearby, a cracked shout rolled over, and a girl burst into view—waist-length dark-chestnut hair, a pair of little lion ears perked on her head.
Wait—wasn’t that the Nacha Tribe’s Hero?
His jaw dropped further; before the thought could settle, the supposed Hero skidded to a stop at his door and bowed like a falling leaf.
“Sorry, sorry! Someone will cover your repairs!” Her voice boomed, bright as brass yet threaded with frustration and haste.
She turned and shouted, “Uh—Kabos, you’re up! Negotiate with this shop! Finish fast and catch up!”
She vaulted over the splattered fruit and dove through the man-shaped hole, vanishing as abruptly as a hawk slipping into cloud.
A stunned shopkeeper kept his mouth open; across from him, the meat-roll lady stared back like a mirror.
Their eyes searched each other for sense, but only silence answered, and the wreckage sprawled like a battlefield.
After long seconds, the silence cracked—an out-of-breath Human staggered to the doorway, clutching his chest.
“Hah—hah—this is killing me; I didn’t run this hard even fighting that damned lizard!”
He wheezed, then looked up and hurried through an explanation: they were on a covert mission; please keep quiet; repairs and ruined goods would be compensated.
Only then did the shopkeeper’s memory trickle back like water finding its course.
Right after he’d closed, a hooded figure in a coat had dashed past, flipping the outer crate of Lisse fruit.
He’d bristled, but the figure flung something from the coat; a red glare washed over his vision like a burning veil.
When sight cleared, the runner was gone, replaced by a golden-haired, blue-eyed silhouette, teeth bared like a wolf.
He remembered that bright, fierce figure leaping over him.
Then came the boom, and a human-shaped hole bloomed in his wall like a violent flower.
“By Isylia, what even was this…?”
He wasn’t alone in that cry.
The Hero juggling the chase and Mira’s trail of chaos, and the Medicine Peddler fleeing for his life, would have said the same if breath allowed.
As the Medicine Peddler melted into the crowd’s din, Varie had already lowered her longbow.
She’d planned to abandon a direct chase and lock down the market exits instead, like casting a net at a river’s mouth.
Her team had no locals from central Sanda; plunging blind into a maze was a fine way to lose the quarry.
Better to seal the outlets and wait for the fish to swim into the basket.
Sound logic, clean as carved stone.
Because of that, Varie didn’t foresee what Mira would do.
Mira saw the face beneath the mask and froze, her sword halted mid-air like a bolted thunderbolt.
Varie assumed she’d also forgo the chase.
Instead, Mira lunged like an arrow loosed, sprinting for the Medicine Peddler’s last turn, ignoring every obstacle, breaking straight into the market.
Varie and the others had no choice; they gritted their teeth and followed into the storm.
The Medicine Peddler had nursed the same plan.
Charging into the bustle, he’d felt giddy, like a fox slipping into tall grass.
They won’t dare chase; they’ll seal the exits, he’d thought, and that would suit him fine.
He could drag for time, then vanish under their noses through a hidden passage.
Before he could grin that ugly grin, screams flared behind him, and stalls went banging and flying like dominoes.
He glanced back and saw a presence like a windstorm, eyes pinned to him like iron nails.
He spun forward and ran hard, throwing terrain and spell scrolls between them, over and over.
His blonde pursuer moved unlike any Nacha local; twice he almost gained distance by threading the aisles.
That edge vanished each time in a heartbeat.
She didn’t care about collateral at all.
Once the gap widened, she became a human bulldozer, sprinting in a straight line like a comet, and everything on the path—fragile gourds, or not-so-fragile walls—met the same fate.
These walls had been reinforced by Nacha craft; in masonry the Nacha outstrip even the Elves.
Such walls are no tofu scraps; even a Nacha would struggle to ram through.
An Elf’s body couldn’t compare.
And yet she did exactly that, even at the cost of herself.
She burst through the last wall, face streaked with brick-scraped blood, eyes never leaving him, and fear needled the Medicine Peddler’s spine.
“Crazy—crazy bitch!”
He flung another spell from his coat; the leather strip burned mid-air, flared red like a flashbang, and spun into a net of blood-thorn vines.
The net dropped toward her like a night sky of knives.
Lightning cracked; the blood-threads crisped to ash mid-air; his scroll bought no time.
She was already on him.
“Puh—hah—!”
Air blew out of his lungs under a crushing force; pain shredded his ribs, and his cry ended in a hard impact.
He went like a cannonball, his God-blessed Nacha frame no match for that momentum.
He smashed through two shops and crashed into a noodle stall, burrowed into an unopened sack of flour.
“Eh?! Ew!!! What the—?!”
The unlucky noodle-seller screamed, but the golden-haired, blue-eyed long-ears didn’t spare him a glance.
Her eyes stayed welded to his face.
“Cough, cough—crazy—crazy bitch, you—”
He rasped, and her elbow clamped his throat; the rest of his “what are you” died unspoken.
He wriggled uselessly, mind snarling like a trapped dog.
Who was she, why hunt him without cost, did he know this long-ears?
Her face felt wholly unfamiliar…
No—no.
Something felt wrong.
From this supposed stranger, he smelled a familiar scent, a thread of perfume like an old wound reopened.
That scent tugged at plundered memories, and strength flooded a body already starved of air.
Not an Elf—she’s no long-ears!
His eyes widened; her free hand lifted.
She tore off his mask.
In that instant he saw it on her blood-slick face: shock, confusion, and hatred etched to the bone.
“It’s… you!”
Her beauty, equal to any Elf, wrenched into a snarl, feelings surging like a storm out of her eyes.
But the heat in that scent had already stoked his strength.
He jammed a hand into his chest pocket and yanked out the one life-saving scroll he hadn’t dared use before.
He hurled it into her chest with a ragged howl.
A blast of pressure bloomed, invisible wind slamming the long-ears off him like a wave.
He himself flipped in the air several times and crashed hard, the world spinning like a tossed plate.
He struggled, failed, then clawed up to his feet.
It didn’t matter.
He’d spent his last scrolls, but this one worked better than expected.
The wind gust had blown flour everywhere; the whole market turned to white fog.
Visibility fell to a few meters; everyone hacked and coughed like smokestacks.
In that nobody-looked chaos, he staggered for a certain manhole—the sewer system, his original goal.
When the Nacha Tribe first came, the Amei River was in flood; waters rose like a swollen dragon.
Their first act was to build a sewer; its efficiency and complexity shocked the Elves.
Now he meant to use those tangled veins.
Compared to that labyrinth, the market was a child’s maze in a park.
If he reached it—
He was one hundred percent sure that once he entered the sewers, the crazy bitch could never catch him.
He gripped the manhole cover, joy flaring like sunlight after storm.
He turned to confirm her position one last time.
As expected, he saw the blonde figure far away, which curled a mocking grin across his ugly face.
With sight hindered, she’d chased the wrong way and lost him.
She spotted him now, but even at that speed, by the time she reached the manhole he’d be gone, swallowed by a web of tunnels.
She’d never catch him.
His relief ended there.
He watched, eyes wide, as the blonde figure, far away a heartbeat ago, met his gaze and then vanished from where she stood.
In the next heartbeat, dread surged; a blade’s icy kiss settled on his throat.
