Creak.

The door eased open with a dry creak, like a twig snapping in cold air.

“Philia, you’re back? Why so late?” Owen’s voice warmed the room like a small stove; his smile lifted like a paper lantern.

He looked at the girl stepping in, and the lantern guttered.

Her hands hid behind her back, but the air tasted of iron, a thin fog of blood drifting between the chairs.

—Who did this?! Those villagers again? No—cowards don’t dare. His thoughts sparked like flint in a storm.

His brows knit. Behind Philia, a black‑haired boy slipped in, a shadow stitched to her heels.

Owen’s red pupils rippled, a blood tide surging under a still surface.

This one—his scent—echoed Owen’s own, two storms sharing one sky.

—That was the scent of a Monstrosity.

The newcomer was Ye Weibai.

He wore his human shape again, but his clothes hung in rags, like clouds shredded by wind.

He crossed the threshold, black‑and‑white eyes steady on Owen, a smile curved like a thin moon.

“Owen.”

Owen sat, lids narrowing, gaze taut like a drawn bow. “You are…?”

“Let Philia rest first, then we talk.” Ye Weibai patted the girl’s shoulder, then bent close, voice light as wind through reeds. “Remember to keep the gift I gave you.”

She flinched like a startled sparrow, then steadied, a pond finding its mirror.

She lifted her chin and smiled with springtime brightness. “Mm!”

Watching his sister slip into her room, Owen drew his gaze back, fixing it like a nail. “Now you’ll speak, right?”

“I am—” Ye Weibai held his eyes, voice soft, steady as midnight rain. “A Monstrosity.”

Boom—

…

…

One‑thirty in the afternoon.

Uncle Sean’s inn drowsed in sunlight; dust drifted like lazy pollen.

A chestnut‑haired little girl sat cross‑legged on a chair, chewing her pencil like a squirrel gnawing a twig, eyes lost in a page that looked like a maze.

“Why does this World even have math?”

She tilted her head, worry a knot; she knew each digit, yet together they turned into strangers, like letters tossed in wind.

“I just want… to sleep.”

A light voice drifted in, a feather blown across the table.

“The correct answer is minus seventy‑five.”

“Eh? That… sounds right.” She blinked, lifted her face, and turned toward the sound.

A black‑haired boy stood there, features clean as ink on fresh snow.

Sun pooled through the window across his cheek; his smile was a small ripple on quiet water.

For a breath, he and the sun seemed woven together, one warmth, one glow.

Daisy forgot to breathe, her chest a held bird.

For no reason she could name, she felt she’d seen that face somewhere, like a dream you almost catch.

“Eh?”

Light speared her pupils; staring into those clear, dark eyes, her own eyes grew wet, rain gathering for no reason at all.

She touched her cheeks, dazed, and found two cold tracks like twin brooks.

“I’m… crying?”

—But why?

—Why am I crying?

“What are you crying for?” The black‑haired boy chuckled, a bell in a courtyard, and called her by name and bond. “Classmate Daisy.”

Her small heart kicked like a drum under thin silk.

—Classmate Daisy…

—So familiar, like a path she’d walked.

Her mouth opened; something wanted out, but fog wrapped it tight, a net over water.

At last, memory flashed; her eyes lit like lamps. “Bai—”

Crack.

Ye Weibai stepped in and chopped the side of her neck, a hand edged like a fan.

Before the word could fly, Daisy folded like grass and fell into his arms, soft and boneless.

“Sleep a while, Classmate Daisy.”

Ye Weibai settled her safely, then took the stairs, footsteps tapping like beads on a string.

At the top, he met Uncle Sean turning from the hall.

The man froze, then smiled, sun in his teeth. “That little rascal Daisy—guest comes in and she won’t even say hi, I—”

Crack.

“Uncle, you sleep too.”

Ye Weibai hoisted the fainted uncle with one hand, easy as lifting a sack of wheat, and set him on the chair beside Daisy.

He turned back down the corridor, humming a tune like a stream under stones, slipped through the dark inner hall, pushed a wooden door, and entered the room skewered by the Exorcist’s coffin.

His steps ticked closer to the coffin; Ye Weibai smiled, a curl of fog over water. “I’ve come as promised—”

Boom—

The words didn’t finish. He didn’t hesitate. His Monstrosity state unfurled like a storm tearing its veil.

A violet arm, sharp as a spear, drove into the coffin.

It went in through the front, came out the back, a striking snake through wood.

Blood and splinters flew together, a red rain with wooden hail.

Ye Weibai heaved; the coffin spun sideways and slammed into the wall, burying itself like a nailed plank.

The force was savage; the lid exploded like brittle ice.

A black‑robed woman, chest tunneled clean through, spilled out like wet cloth.

The Exorcist herself.

Her head smacked the floor, bounced high like a dropped stone; blood fountained from the cavern in her chest, painting the boards in breaths, a spreading lake.

She lay limp, raised her face with effort, eyes wide with disbelief, every breath bubbling blood. “W‑why—”

“Eh, it’s not that hard.” Ye Weibai stepped closer, smiling like a cat in a sunbeam. “At first I thought it was the coffin’s aura. Until yesterday I realized how strong I am. A mere coffin couldn’t make me feel off. So the path was clear—the Exorcist’s true body was inside. Only answer.”

“And besides—you leaving a coffin here for no reason? Strange from the start. Only an idiot would miss it.”

“Y‑you—” Her focus blurred, mind like wet paper.

“You want to ask why I’m killing you?” He crouched, near and easy, smile steady. “The direct reason—Philia. The root reason—”

His voice cut clean, a string snapped.

Whoosh—

White lightning crossed the room, tearing the air; violet blood burst into waves, beads spinning like petals.

Thud.

A heavy drop hit the floor; dust leaped like frightened moths.

Something rolled once on the boards.

Ye Weibai’s head—still smiling.

“No interest.”

The black‑robed woman, limp and gasping a heartbeat ago, pushed herself up slow, like a serpent lifting from sleep.

She smoothed her left chest; the mortal wound was gone, leaving only torn cloth and the soft whiteness beneath, quiet proof of the strike.

She looked down at the headless Monstrosity at her feet and smiled a cruel crescent.

“Your root reasons? I don’t care.”

She touched the back of her head. A red core loosened there, a Demon Core sliding into her palm.

A breath of wind, and it turned to powder, red ash fading like dusk.

“Tch.” Violence flickered in her eyes, a storm behind shutters. “I got careless. Wasting the last use of Feigned Death in a nowhere town—damn it.”

To her, Feigned Death had saved the most critical Demon Core from that red‑clad woman’s slaughter; that was her lifeline through winter.

“What’s damned is you!!!”

Suddenly, the headless body surged up, killing intent layered like armor, a violet claw spearing for her skull, a falcon’s dive through noon.

No one would have imagined this—no Monstrosity should live without a head. A human, even an Exorcist, would die before they thought.

But the black‑robed woman showed no fear, only a cold smile, lips thin as blades. “I knew it wouldn’t be that simple—”

Monstrosity techniques are a thousand strange rivers; she’d seen corpses fight as if waking. Her mind was a ledger balanced in blood.

Even if you fight without a head, so what? Inside my Cocoon state, mere flesh can’t touch me; your storm breaks on my shell.

Click.

Whoosh!

A violet streak flashed, fast as needle lightning.

“Eh?”

Splat.

Her body quivered; the cold smile slid sideways, face misaligned like a broken mask—no, not just her face. Her entire body shifted, edges no longer meeting.

As if something impossibly sharp had sliced from groin to crown, a single cut, clean as a scythe through grass.

“Eh? Eh? Eh?”

Her hands trembled; she hugged herself, desperately trying to keep her halves from parting, a child clutching ripped cloth.

“W‑w‑why—”

She was already no longer human; split in two, and still she refused to die, life clinging like frost to a leaf.

Blood poured without end. She stared at the Monstrosity gently drawing back a long violet tail, disbelief hammering. “Y‑you… you knew… the loophole… was below?”

The headless body swayed its tail behind, long and whip‑like, as it slid up out of the hole gouged in the floor.

That tail had slipped in from below, outside the Cocoon’s embrace, and torn her body like a hidden river cutting earth.

He picked his head off the floor and pressed it to his neck, calm as setting a bowl on a table.

Under hyper regeneration, flesh threaded together like vines. In moments, the head grew back into the neck, seamless as bark.

Ye Weibai smiled after a breath, the curve soft. “You told me, Exorcist.”

—Yesterday, you told me.

“Knowing that… you can die easy, right?”

“D‑don’t kill me.” Blood flowed faster, her arms strangling her own torso; she didn’t dare move, afraid one twitch would let her halves fall apart like cleaved wood.

She had no hyper regeneration; only a monstrous life force kept the candle sputtering. Without help, that candle would gutter soon.

Die—?

No. No. No— I don’t want to die— I don’t want to die.

“I don’t— I don’t want to die!” Fear iced her spine; she’d thought that siege on the red‑clad woman was the closest she’d come to death.

Until today.

Out of nowhere, this Monstrosity walked in.

Now she knew true terror, cold as the bottom of a well.

It’s absurd! What grudge do I have with you?! I don’t even know you!

Why! Why! Why kill me!

“S‑save me— save me—! Please— save me!” She broke down, tears and snot stringing her ruined face, ugliness blooming like bruises.

Suddenly, something lit her mind; she shouted, words tumbling. “R‑right! You can’t kill me— you can’t! I left a mechanism in Philia’s heart— if I die, it triggers— Philia dies, no saving! You’re here for Philia, right? So you—”

Whoosh.

“You’re noisy.”

A violet flash cut sideways, slicing air like a north wind through reeds.

Her body jolted; blood burst, and two halves became four, quarters dropping like chopped wood.

Her eyes flew wide, locked on Ye Weibai, a last question nailed open.

Splat.

Blood knocked loose, a red flower exploding.

Four pieces thumped to the floor.

To her last blink, she couldn’t believe Ye Weibai still killed her—wasn’t he here for Philia?

Was that talk of a direct reason a lie?

Then what reason did he have to kill her—

She—would not accept it.

…

…