Weakness.

Weakness is the hairline crack where every misfortune seeps in, like winter sliding under a door.

Fate doesn’t choose; it falls like rain on rooftops and graves alike, even-handed, blind to strength and frailty.

But if you’re strong enough, why bow to fate, like a mountain refusing the wind?

Then why am I sprawled now, smeared with blood and mud, a broken bird in a storm, unable to move?

If—if—I could be stronger, just a little stronger. Why—why—am I this weak, like a drum thudding under ash?

Regret and hate curdled first in Aerin’s chest, then in her breath, a slick of mire twisting into a beast that rammed her heart like a bull.

It swelled, trying to flood her body, even to seize the ground ruled by [Fear]; [Fear] didn’t flinch, a winter wolf baring fangs.

Two beasts of emotion tore and howled inside Aerin’s flesh, gnawing like iron on bone, never yielding.

When the tigers fight, Aerin clawed back a sliver of control; her jaw scraped the grit, then turned, slow as a tide.

She forced her right eye wide, catching the scene by the edge of sight, trying to see Lustrous—her [Companion]—and if she still breathed.

She saw it—black hair streaming, blue eyes cold as a blade; the Black Knight’s fist blew her upper half into scarlet shreds.

Only a pair of snow-white legs fell, spraying blood like a severed fountain into the dirt.

Lus—Lustrous?!

Aerin’s body locked; her pupils pinpricked to dots, an avalanche of terror breaking over her face.

Before she could scream, she saw the girl again, whole, a white dress unrumpled, lazily draped on that vast, glacial black cross, just like their first meeting.

An illusion? Yet the meat didn’t vanish; warmth and copper scent pressed on the air, telling everyone this wasn’t a lie.

Long stood in a sea of flesh, like a demon god; the ground around him was a field of limbs, every one of them Lustrous’s.

It was the fifth time he’d turned her into gore.

His knuckles felt it; he’d hit the girl, and he’d killed her—there was no doubt in the bone-deep thrum of impact.

Those scattered parts were hers, clear as daylight in a graveyard.

Across endless years of judgments, Long, the chief blade, had fought enemies stranger than night; he’d seen faster-than-fast regeneration, and blood rebirth from a single drop.

None was as eerie as the girl before him.

This didn’t look like rebirth, nor revival; the dead bodies stayed dead, as if each dead Lustrous had nothing to do with the one he faced.

It was as if someone else had died—but not someone else—another Lustrous, and yet the same Lustrous, like reflections that bleed when a mirror breaks.

The feeling was wrong enough to weigh even Long’s mind like stone.

Too little information. Even with the Church of the Divine’s headquarters beside Witchwood Forest, he knew almost nothing about Lustrous, about this [Witch].

The Church is a thousand years old, but Witchwood Forest is older still, a shadow that predates the hymns.

And this Witch has been here longer than Long’s blade has tasted blood.

He knew only this: her appearance, and her binding here, wasn’t chance; it was also [Its] hand, a move to steady the [Cycle].

The cause sat in steel silence—a gigantic, cold, black cross.

Standing in the barren ring, Long fixed his sight on the cross, like a hawk staring into winter.

He felt a formless force siphoning his life, slow as moss; for a lifespan so long, it meant nothing, a drip on an ocean.

Long halted his attack. Lustrous didn’t move. She lounged on the cross’s horizontal beam, watching him, voice tired as late rain.

“Still coming?”

Long didn’t answer. He stared at the cross, a thought beating like a hidden drum: It’s that cross—drawing my life to feed the Witch.

Then I’ll smash it.

The Black Knight clenched his fist; wind and thunder gathered, rumbling like storm gods caged in iron.

He aimed to strike.

Lustrous’s face shifted. “You won’t want to destroy it. This is [It]—”

Long didn’t answer. At this point, nothing could bar his path, whether outward chains or inward doubt; he never stopped for thorns.

His motion didn’t slow. The punch hammered forward.

The shockwave wrapped the cross and the girl in the same roaring arc.

With a wet pop, the girl became a blizzard of red flesh, drifting like bloody snow; the cross didn’t budge, not even stained.

Every shred that touched the black iron vanished into nothing, like sparks snuffed by a deep sea.

Long’s fist could crack mountains; even those famed for defense didn’t take it head-on.

So what forged this cross, that it didn’t even tremble?

“Don’t waste your strength.” The girl who’d become meat appeared again on the cross, whole as ever; every revival kept pose and face, even down to the lazy lay of her hair.

“If it could break,” Lustrous sighed, weariness threading her voice, her mouth curling with a complicated smile, “I would’ve done it long ago.”

Long studied the girl and the cross. After a breath, he said, slow as falling ash, “You’re not human.”

“Heh.” Lustrous only smiled, ambiguous as mist, neither agreeing nor denying.

“You’re a [Spirit].” Long didn’t rush to strike; killing her was wasted effort. As the foremost of the [Four Horsemen], he wasn’t just brute force.

“When a human dies, what’s left is a [Spirit]. But you’re different.

“You’re not a human’s leftover [Spirit]. You’re the cross’s [Spirit]. So if the cross stands, you don’t die.”

“[Spirit]?” Her long lashes shivered. Lustrous lowered her gaze; her blue eyes held a frozen ocean, cold and deep, a slow river of chill.

Her smile carried a fine blade of mockery, a curve that didn’t bother to hide its malice.

“I’m nowhere near that pure.”

She spoke, then stepped barefoot along the cross’s cold beam, rising like a reed in night wind; her hair swayed, her waist unfolding.

She wore white, yet she bloomed like a black flower; a smear of unseen sludge seeped from the cross under her feet, a dark breath coating her skin.

It spread layer by layer, painting her, like ink bleeding through silk.

The air fell dim and cold; a sweep of dusk washed the lace hem of her white dress black, then climbed fast, and in a blink the whole dress was night.

A black-haired, black-dressed girl stood on the black cross, arms opened as if to embrace a storm.

Her lazy aura ebbed like a tide, replaced by that ordered darkness she wore when she met Ye Weibai, a night with laws and silence.

The sludge-like darkness rippled outward; not just cloth, but skin, eyes, and lips all turned pure black, like obsidian buried in moonless water.

Darker still was what clung around her—a scent that stopped breath and rattled souls, mischance and twist thick as smoke.

“I am—”

The black [Witch] stood there, looking at Long.

“[Misfortune].”

“Lustrous…”

Aerin’s pupils held her changed [Companion], joy and shock flaring like lightning and rain, while Long’s words about a [Spirit] echoed inside her skull.

“There’s something…”

The golden-haired girl felt a vital piece slipping from her, something she had lost, a keystone deeper than bone.

Even now, with life hanging by a thread, she couldn’t help it; she threw everything aside and dug through her mind, frantic, trying to find the missing shard.

She didn’t know what it was, but a voice in the dark whispered it mattered more than the [Hero King], more than the [Demon King], more than all titles piled high.

“…What is it?!”

The hole in her memory ate at her; sweat beaded on her brow, her body curled small, and her breath raced like a trapped bird.

Right then, Lustrous’s voice brushed her ear, cool as night mist.

“Aerin. Go first.”

Aerin had no time to answer before a force wrapped her, whooshing her up, flinging her toward the far side of the forest like a leaf riding wind.

She couldn’t help shouting, “Lustrous!”

“I’ll hold this.” Lustrous’s voice sounded like steel under velvet. “A [King] has a [King]’s task.”

“A [King]’s task…”

Aerin froze. She shot through the air fast, and in a few breaths the view shifted; the battlefield fell away like a cliff in fog.

She had no time for questions; her feet struck soft earth, and she stumbled a few steps, then looked up, heart thumping.

She was still in the forest.

She braced a hand against a tree, staring, lost as driftwood; the woods were pitch black, and there was no path, only breathing bark and shadow.

Darkness stood like a night beast, silent at her side, watching the golden-haired girl with cold patience, waiting to swallow her whole.

The wind was cold; her heart was colder. The sudden arrival of the Black Knight had boiled her blood, but her own frailty doused it like pail water on coals, leaving ashes that whispered the world’s hard truth.

Aerin hugged herself, arms tight as a shield made of nothing.

When she came, Master Bai had seen her to the edge. Now, she was alone, a candle in rain.

She felt small, felt lesser; even if Master Bai had awoken her [Fear], it did nothing against this night. She was still… this weak.

In days too short for grief, life had split; family gone, home shattered. She was sixteen at most.

Before, Master Bai had stood nearby. Now, alone, she couldn’t hold it back any longer.

Her back sank against the trunk; she slid down, empty as a hollow reed.

She hugged her knees; her head folded into her chest. Her body shivered, and her breath grew quick and thin.

“Someone like me—”

Her voice rasped, snagging on tears. The words she had thought a thousand times finally crossed her lips, heavy as stones.

“Why am I the one carrying the [Hero King]’s duty?”