Ye Weibai hadn’t lied.

He did have a younger sister, not Ye Fei but Ye Qiu. He called her Little Qiu, or Qiuzi, the names soft as a warm palm.

In a house with no adults to steer the lantern, Ye Weibai was both brother and father to Qiuzi. Her feeling for him was less fondness than dependence, like a vine clinging to a wall.

Unlike Ye Weibai—fine-grained, keen, gentle—Qiuzi had her own tenderness, but she showed the world a bright, sunlit innocence, like light through green leaves.

She was frank and carefree, yet she watched others’ hearts with care, like a breeze that knows every window. Just like Daisy.

Daisy noticed the weariness pooled in Ye Weibai’s heart, and tried to comfort him in her own way. Clumsy, but real enough to hit like rain on dry earth.

“Brother Bai~”

When the girl smiled and pillowed her head on his thigh, chestnut bangs veiling her neat profile, his daze came from a vision—Qiuzi curled like a kitten on his lap.

For that heartbeat, his sister’s silhouette overlapped with Daisy’s on the surface of his eyes, like two moons trembling on one pond.

So he made a quiet, natural choice, setting the vow like a stake in the earth: he would protect Daisy.

…

Half a year ago, Owen wasn’t a Monstrosity.

He loathed Monstrosities, of course, but only in the abstract. Without living that nightmare, his hate was a cold wind, not a wildfire.

When the tragedy at home struck, he was a few kilometers away, doing day labor at a town general store. He counted days and coins, nursing a hope—on his break he’d buy the gift he’d picked for Filia.

She’d love it, he thought, like a bird loves dawn.

News reached him three days later. When he rushed home, the dust had settled like ash.

The Monstrosity had been slain by an Exorcist; father and mother were in the ground; Filia had sealed herself away. He would never forget the smile he saw when he stepped inside—Filia sitting on the bed, smiling like a clean cut on porcelain.

“Brother, you’re back.”

Red hair, red eyes, the little girl beamed and greeted him, as if nothing had happened, like a festival lantern lit in a ruin.

“Mom and Dad, they got eaten. Good thing I hid under the bed.”

“Such good luck, huh.”

Filia tilted her head and smiled, moon-bright in the dim room.

Owen trembled head to toe, hand clamped over his mouth, and listened as Filia smiled and told it all, every word a shard of glass down his throat.

“What kind of sick joke is this? Why her, of all people? She’s nine!”

He forced a smile for Filia, then went back to his room. He fell to his knees, tears breaking like a dam, and ground out the words between his teeth.

But he knew he couldn’t fall. Filia was still there—his sister, a lone lamp in a storm.

He thought that was the bottom. He thought fate had dropped him into its deepest pit, that worse couldn’t come. Soon he learned it was only the first crack of thunder.

Somehow, somewhere, a rumor slithered through the village: Filia would become a Monstrosity someday. At first he was wary but dismissive. See a Monstrosity and become one? If that were true, the World would’ve collapsed.

Then one evening he came home and found two village youths—men he barely spoke to, not enemies—skulking at his door like foxes at a henhouse.

Even at dusk, he saw the iron rods behind their backs. Wet blood clung to the metal, dark as crushed cherries.

Owen snapped. He dropped his bundle, shoved past them, and stormed inside. He found Filia in the courtyard corner, caked in mud like a fallen sparrow.

“Ah, brother, I think my arm’s broken!”

Hair wild, face smeared with blood, Filia looked at her limp right hand and smiled, soft as a petal.

“Like this, I can’t even cook dinner.”

“Does it hurt?” Owen knelt before her, knees like stones on cold ground.

“It’s fine. Just a little. They insisted I’m some Monstrosity, so this proves I’m not, right? So it hurts, it hurts—but I can bear it.”

In that instant, Owen’s heart almost stopped, like a drum dunked in ice.

He understood: the Monstrosity was dead, but because of that rumor, their enemies had shifted from the inhuman to their own neighbors.

He’d been too young, too simple about human nature—taking footprints for flowers.

What now?

This time he’d caught them; they fled, faces pale. Next time?

He couldn’t stay by Filia’s side forever. Their parents were gone; he had to earn. And even at home, he wasn’t strong—how could he fight villagers sloughing off their humanity, like snakes shedding skin?

His first thought was to leave the village, like a bird bolting a burning tree.

That was when the woman appeared, a shadow at the threshold.

“Don’t run. If you run, she’ll become a Monstrosity.”

Her voice scraped like a rusty blade across glass, rough and shrill.

Owen stared wide-eyed. If any villager had said that, he’d have leapt on them and torn out a mouthful of flesh. But this long-haired figure in black, veiled in darkness, left him on his knees, fists knotted, teeth grinding, silent.

Because she was an Exorcist.

Even the one who hunts Monstrosities for a living said so.

What else could Owen do? What else could he do?!

“You can still protect your sister.”

“How?” Owen locked eyes with her. “I’ll do anything.”

The woman laughed softly, like a knife sliding back into its sheath.

“You won’t need to sacrifice much. You just need to look at something.”

Without hesitation, Owen followed her.

A Monstrosity feeding, head down to the gore, like a shadow gnawing the moon.

Half a day later, Owen became a Monstrosity.

…

Owen came home with Daisy in tow, like a night wind dragging a torn kite.

In the courtyard, at the entry to the hall. In the dark, Ye Weibai stood there, expressionless, a stone lantern in rain, watching Owen.

It stood on the threshold. Its thick hand clamped the girl’s left wrist. It swayed as it dragged her in, careless as a butcher hauling meat.

Daisy wasn’t on her feet. Half her body trailed like a broken Doll, dragging over the ground, blood painting the path like a red ribbon.

Ye Weibai could almost trace the blood road from Uncle Shaun’s inn to here, a crimson thread stitched through the night.

As It crossed in, the girl’s head knocked against the raised stone sill with a dull thud.

She didn’t cry out. Dust and blood masked her face; beneath the tangled bangs, her chestnut eyes held no light, like ashes gone cold.

Her white nightdress was gray, red, and black in patches, and a wide hole yawned in her left chest like a moth-eaten flag.

From the front, Ye Weibai could see the dirt behind her—where a heart should’ve been. It beat instead in Owen’s mouth.

“Ah. So that’s how it is.”

Daisy was dead.

The dead don’t scream.