Red blood streamed through the air, trailing like a ribbon.
Shock hit first, then training bit down. Yin’s body was still flung backward midair, yet she twisted at the waist, spun tight, and landed on both hands and feet at once, bleeding the force into stone.
Her first instinct wasn’t to counter. It was to find the little girl she’d hurled clear. She saw Stardust touch down steady as a drifting petal, and a breath of relief unknotted her chest.
She didn’t know why this child mattered. Her life had been long and slick with gore, and she’d never cared for anyone this much.
Crimson Blossom had subdued her, yes. What she felt for Crimson Blossom was reverence, and a hunger she couldn’t name.
But never this quiet urge to tend someone, never this warmth for Stardust.
They’d traveled only days. They walked, ate, and slept with barely thirty words between them. Yet her heart, dry as cracked earth, felt something soft brushing it, again and again.
Aloof and proud by nature, she let the girl in without noticing. Otherwise, she’d never have slept easy beside Stardust, much less brought her along.
Some feeling soothed her from the shadows. She didn’t know what to call it.
Nor did Yin know Stardust felt it too, and had felt it the first time they met.
That feeling had a name: shared pain—empathy.
That day, the girl stood on a boulder at the forest’s edge. Sun washed over ash-gray hair and gray star-bright eyes. She looked at the tall silver-haired woman’s back. The first words that sparked in her heart were—
“So alike... the two of us.”
So, after Ye Weibai’s lethal shot nearly shattered her, she gathered courage once more and set out.
To see yourself in another’s eyes—that is empathy, nothing more and nothing less.
They spoke little, but that calm-as-water mood made the girl’s heart thrum. If she could, she would keep following Yin on the road to find Bai.
Life is long. Any path is still a path; what matters is who walks beside you.
Humans have always been creatures of the pack.
But fate likes to take its cold shot when the water’s smoothest.
“You still have time to look elsewhere?”
Yin’s thought flickered for a heartbeat. The newcomer was already before her.
A towering woman, wrapped head to toe in black armor. Yin was tall, yet this woman neared two meters. She dropped from the sky like a falling wall.
One hand held a longsword. The other, a giant shield. Both were black, like the ponytail spilling from her helm.
A mountain of shadow fell over her. Yin didn’t look up. She dropped low, coiled, then exploded, springing away like a released bowstring.
Vmmm—!
By the skin of a strand of hair, she dodged the sword that slammed into the ground.
But she couldn’t dodge the shield that spun after.
Boom!
In midair, Yin barely caught the cross-flying shield on her short blade. She avoided being sliced in two by that razor rim, but the woman’s strength was monstrous. Yin couldn’t bear the weight bound in that shield.
It crashed through her guard and hurled her like a doll.
This time she didn’t spit blood. Heat flushed her face, then she clenched every muscle and kicked the mountainlike shield away. She flipped back, again and again, and landed atop a boulder.
Snap.
“Oh.”
The tall woman reached out and caught the hurtling shield like a hawk catching prey. Her voice was cool. “So you do have some strength.”
“Ha—” Yin panted. Silver eyes fixed coldly on the knight, pupils trembling like a snake’s. She said nothing, but her face sharpened into bloodthirst.
If she hadn’t swallowed her own blood, she’d have forgotten what she was.
And she remembered the rumor—the knight tall as a nightmare, black from helm to weapon, ink-drenched and absolute—the [Apocalypse Knight].
Even a sinner like Yin had only heard the name. Back then she wasn’t worthy of their hunt.
The Church of the Divine’s ultimate killing blade, indeed.
Strong. Terrifyingly strong. Strong enough to smother hope. But—
[Devour] had already started. As long as the other side couldn’t end her in one blow—no matter how strong that knight was—
“I can always kill you.”
As she had, countless times before.
She stared at the towering knight. Then her face shifted, abrupt as a knife.
At the woman’s side stood another black knight. No—he hadn’t appeared. He’d always been there. She had simply ignored him. If she hadn’t stared, she would never have seen.
When—when did he arrive?
She hadn’t felt a thing. If he’d wanted, he could have cut her down already.
“Don’t worry.”
The knight seemed to hear her heart. A man’s voice answered, soft and mellow, like a gentle scholar, like spring wind.
But his words froze the blood in her veins.
“My subject of judgment is that little girl.”
...
...
“Time to go.”
Inside the stone house where the furnace roared like a beast, Crimson Blossom still wore that sinuous, tempting look.
Her figure curved forward and back, tall and mesmerizing. Wheat-gold skin gleamed in firelight, bandages wrapped only what mattered.
She lifted the red armor hanging by the forge and buckled it on piece by piece.
Close-woven under-plate, boots, shins, thighs, arms, shoulders, torso—
All of it red. All of it a set. All of it hammered by her own hands here.
She wasn’t in love with forging. It was the jolt of each hammer’s recoil, the burn of flame licking skin, that steadied her, even... pleased her.
She knew that twisted peace came from childhood. From her... father.
Later, when she finally broke free, she slipped under Nightfall and killed her sleeping father.
Heart pierced, the old man stared up at her. He lay on the bed, blood bubbling, breath ragged, wanting to say something—yet never did.
Back then, she thought that would end everything.
She was wrong. Memory never faded. It grew brighter, and it never died.
If—if she could do it over—no. Time never turns its head for anyone.
But none of that matters now. It’s time to end this.
Click.
She slid on the helm with both hands and took the red spear from its rack. Crimson Blossom stood complete.
She pushed open the heavy stone door, crossed the long corridor, and stepped into the gilt-bright hall.
She saw the black knight.
