Just as Ye Weibai had said, the truth rose like a shard of ice through black water.

He should’ve noticed long ago, a lantern flickering in fog that he walked past on purpose.

On the [First Day], he swallowed Philia’s cooking, and it slid down like rancid fish from a dead tide.

Back then Owen’s strange look could pass for a crooked “good luck,” a grin carved into old bark.

But in Uncle Shawn’s shop, he tasted Daisy’s food and met the same bile, like brine in a cracked shell, and that should’ve rung like a snapped twig to a deer.

Sensitive as a cat in rain, he still chose blindness, pulling a gauze over his own eyes like morning mist.

That flimsy veil smothering his thoughts—he understands it now—it was the [Misfortune] that [Time] whispered at the very start, a chill wind under the door.

Ye Weibai is only human, a reed in a storm; his pride isn’t sinew or arcane flame, it’s Thought, the small lamp in a skull of night.

“I lost what I had and gained what I lacked,” he said, clenching his fists as if cradling a warhead, feeling the Monstrosity’s surge like thunder buried under skin.

He felt no joy, only a flat calm like winter water. “Truth is, I lost more than I got.”

“This applies to you too,” Ye Weibai lowered his gaze like a falling leaf and watched Owen pant in ragged gusts. “Owen—Philia’s brother—once human, now a Monstrosity. You think you sacrificed yourself, a saint on a pyre.”

“In truth—” Ye’s mouth curled like a cold hook. “You’re the most selfish one here.”

“I can see it,” Ye fixed on Owen’s pupils, knives under ice. “Every twitch says, ‘I’m sick of this,’ ‘I want to die,’ ‘If I die, I don’t have to carry Philia’—clear as moonlight, brother.”

“N—no—no!” Owen’s eyes bulged like twin blood moons, and red poured from him like a split wineskin.

“I don’t know how you turned,” Ye said, head tilted, a raven in profile. “Did you do it to protect Philia? No. You ran for cover like a turtle into shell.”

“Become a Monstrosity, and you dodge the duties of being human, no more writhing on hot coals, no more waking cold—”

He paused, the blade finding the seam. “No more fear that Philia, turned Monstrosity, would kill you,” the words dropped like frost.

“No! No! That’s not—!”

Boom!

Owen slammed both hands into the earth and launched like a fired shell, rage a brushfire across his face.

Ye floated into a backflip, a drifting feather over a clawed swipe, and landed light as ash farther off.

He watched Owen charge, a blood-soaked bull in twilight, and smiled like a thin crescent. “You can’t beat me.”

“From the first time I saw your eyes, a strange taste touched my tongue,” he said, right fist tucked by his waist, body turned, hair and hem lifting like a breeze from nowhere, the whole of him a drawn bow that hummed.

“Now I know it. If your look at me was hunger, then mine was the surprise of an elephant at an ant’s jeer,” his voice was dry grass. “So yes, we’re both Monstrosities. But you—are too weak.”

Hum.

His right fist drifted forward like a lazy comet, then snapped, the air tearing like silk, a black ripple sketched across night.

Before the shriek of air reached Owen’s ear, Ye’s knuckles sank into Owen’s soft belly, a hammer into wet clay.

Boom!

As if a giant mallet found him, Owen spewed a spray of purple blood, flecked with torn viscera like wilted petals, and flew back like a broken kite.

He carved a furrow through the soil, earth spitting like startled birds, until he slammed a thick root and shuddered to a stop.

Leaves spiraled down; he coughed another sheet of blood, and lay like a punctured bellows.

“That’s all,” Ye said, flicking red from his knuckles like rain from a leaf, and he walked toward Owen with shadows pooling at his heels. “Even in a human skin—”

Tap.

Ye looked down at the dying Owen and smiled, winter-smooth. “I can still kill you easy.”

He raised his right hand, fingers flattened into a blade, and chopped for Owen’s neck like a falling guillotine.

Swish.

Blood sprayed like brushstrokes.

But the head that flew was his wrist, spinning like a pale bird in the dark.

A thread—no thicker than a hair—hid in the night like a spider’s line, perfectly still across his path.

Hot knife through butter, it parted his wrist as if flesh were warm wax, clean and cruel.

Ye didn’t even frown; his other hand flashed out like a hawk, caught the severed right hand, and pressed it to the stump.

Moments later, the seam knit like ivy, lines closing until skin met skin.

“Oh? Hyper-regeneration?” a voice rasped, charcoal scraping stone, sparks without light.

The blood-bright thread quivered in the Void, then reeled back like a fishing line into the wide sleeve of a black-robed woman stepping out of the inked night.

“That your Monstrosity Art?” Her tone was a dull saw on bone, crude yet cutting, a grin hiding under the hood.

Beneath the cowl, a pointed chin lifted, and her lips arced like a sickle. “Useful little trick.”

Ye’s wrist looked new; he flexed it like testing a fresh bow, turned, and faced her, the scent of danger cold as iron at the nape.

“Demon Exorcist, ma’am?” His words drifted like frost.

“Oh? You know me?” She tilted her head, owl-still.

“I guessed,” he said, a lantern held steady in night.

“Ha. Good guess,” she breathed, smoke coiling. “Then guess what I’ll do next?”

“Kill me,” Ye replied, flat as slate. “You want my ability,” the line landed like a stone in a pond.

“…” Under the hood, her brow creased like a cut in ice. “That kind of secret… you’re not one of the newborn? Among the old Monstrosities, I’ve never smelled you, like a stranger wind.”

“Then hear the rest of my guesses,” he smiled, a knife without heat. “Your weapon broke fighting the Monstrosities at Xibei Village?”

“You leaked the news that Philia would turn?”

“You guided Owen into turning?”

“And your endgame—was to make Philia a Monstrosity?”

The forest was black and still, a held breath in a cavern.

Ye dropped each question like another pebble into a deep well, ripples swallowed by dark.

He’d held these since the story’s dawn, a string of seeds in his palm; with each clue sprouting, the hedge parted, and he neared the gate. One key was missing—until he saw this woman, lantern to a map of threads.

At last, strands braided, and the fog tore like old gauze; behind it, the truth stood bloody and cruel, a beast without a face.

“You were guessing, then,” she smiled, a thorned rose. “Otherwise you wouldn’t call the [Demon Core] a weapon.”

“That puts me at ease. Even I, without a [Demon Core], struggle against the old ones, like wading through tar.”

As she spoke, her hands came forward from behind her back, pale birds uncaging.

“You—?!” Owen’s eyes flew wide like shutters in a storm; rage tried to flare, but he was a guttered candle, too broken to stand.

Ye’s eyes narrowed, a falcon’s lid.

The woman chuckled, low as a purr.

In her hands, she held two small girls like dolls from a shrine.

One was Philia, one was Daisy.

One body was cold as river stone; the other slept, petal-soft.

“You guessed well, though some bits were off,” she paused, her smile blooming like a poisonous flower before it pivoted. “When I saw Philia the first time, my heart thumped like a drum in an empty temple.”

“I had never seen anything so bright, so radiant, so clean—like dawn through glass.”

Thud.

She tossed Daisy aside like a sack of grain; Ye’s body tightened like a bowstring, but he didn’t move, snow still on stone.

“Oh?” she breathed, a cat with cream, and stroked Philia’s cheek as if sweeping dew from a blossom, her eyes glazed with a moonlit dream. “I thought then—if something this lovely turned Monstrosity—she’d be strong beyond belief, a storm wearing silk.”

“So, I lured the Monstrosity,” she said, soft as rain.

“Wha—?!” Owen stared, thunderstruck timber, sap boiling under bark.

“Yes, big brother,” she smiled, sultry as a flame behind paper. “I was the one who lured the Monstrosity.”