On the 29th, Gill and his crew spurred their mounts, hooves drumming like rain, and tore back into the city.

“Ah! That’s the Kuso Guild’s Chief Steward?”

“No way...”

“It’s over... the sky’s about to change...”

Faces tightened like shutters in a storm. The townsfolk saw Gill’s expression, flat as dead water, and drifted back like reeds in a sudden wind.

...

“Young lord?! Young lord—!” Cecilia saw a nightmare crack open. Her blossom-bright face twisted pale, and she stumbled and ran into Herbert’s corpse like a moth to a cold flame.

“This isn’t real... this isn’t real...” She stared at Herbert’s bloodless face, then collapsed to her knees. Her wail rose like winter wind through bare branches, raw enough to move stone.

Medith shut her eyes, heart clenched. As if she’d already tasted this ending.

“How could...” Even Sais, braced for the blow, trembled like a taut bowstring.

“What do we... do?” Peggy bit her peach-soft lip. The grief and dread beyond the door crawled over her skin like frost.

Medith laced her smooth, water-cool fingers with Peggy’s. “It’s alright. I’m here.”

“What the hell... happened?” Gus stood stunned, confusion clouding him like fog over a river.

Jade’s demon-god mask showed no ripple of feeling. Arms crossed like a shut gate, he seemed wholly unmoved.

“Medith!!!” Gill smashed the stout wooden door with a single punch. He stormed in, fury pouring off him like wildfire.

The women bristled, hackles up. A blade-keen danger cut the air. They drew steel and locked into guard.

“I’ll kill you, you sanctimonious painted slut!” Gill’s rage was a black tide. Murderous intent thickened like tar.

The air dropped to a cellar chill. Breath smoked like frost.

“I’ll say this once. I didn’t kill him. You’re too hot-headed. Heat burns reason. Burned reason makes fools. Fools die.” Medith’s eyes were winter glass, unblinking.

Gill laughed from the edge, a cracked chuckle. “Heh! He wasn’t your brother. No wonder you look like it’s nothing. You must be laughing inside, huh?

Herbert is dead. He died so bleak, left to rot under open sky. Not even a grave...” His voice snagged and broke.

Medith met his gaze, face earnest as a clean flame. “About your brother... I’m sorry. He was a bastard.

Forgive me for marring the dead, but he was a bastard. He hid behind that Overlord Pact, bullied girls every day, pressed small guilds under heel.

But I would never use a dirty hand on him. I’m no petty coward. If I had to kill him, I wouldn’t do it like this.”

“You heard her! She wanted the steward dead!”

“That red-haired, big-chested woman swung first! She sliced off two of the steward’s fingers!”

“They killed him!”

“Everyone, move! Kill them and avenge the steward—”

Kuso Guild bodies heaved with anger, smashing tables and chairs. Wood splintered like dry bones.

Crimson Sunset Guild members had no orders. They gripped their weapons tight, shields up like cliffs against surf.

The women almost let slaughter off its leash. Medith lifted a hand, stopping them. Eyes met and held—leave this to me.

They lunged to hack into the Crimson Sunset line. Medith’s green hair streamed like river grass in a gale. She burst upward, body a drawn bow.

With a draw-slash, she vanished and reappeared at the street’s center, wind peeling like silk.

“Breaker’s Verse: Silence Is Gold.” Medith slid her blade into its sheath, motion slow as falling snow. Kuso weapons answered with sharp cracks, snapping clean, yet no blood spilled.

Shock froze the crowd. They glared like wolves behind wire, but no one dared move.

“Don’t you have laws?” Medith’s lids lowered, frost glazing her tone. “You think a loose tongue can crown me guilty?”

“You want proof? Here’s proof!” Gill gestured. Several male sprite corpses thumped onto the stones before Medith, pale as driftwood.

Onlookers shrieked like swallows scattered by a hawk.

“And this coin is your personal mark, right? Herbert clutched it when he died. He held it so tight I... I had to break his fingers... And—and the landmark boulder in Misty Gorge.

Didn’t you carve words on it?

‘Crimson Sun Army! The embers never fade!’

You never expected this, did you? Herbert... Herbert crawled there before he died and left the key signal!!!” Gill forced the words through a throat of thorns.

He handed over the coin, crusted with dried blood, and a copied rubbing. The rubbing said nothing about an arrowhead.

Medith dropped into a crouch by the unknown male sprites. The more she looked, the darker her face grew. They were true Wind Sprites, dressed exactly like her.

Color drained, not from fear but from clarity. She knew she’d been framed, yet there was nothing to refute.

Same clothes. Wind Sprite ancestry. Real combat scars. The coin she herself issued. And that rubbing.

Everything he said was true. Not a stitch of it faked.

But what happened in the spaces between—that was a night no one could see.