Soon, the villagers’ screams guttered out like candles in wind. The rat tide slid away, and eyes found only a slick of blood and a heap of red-stained bones.

In barely five seconds, a living person was picked clean, like sun-bleached carrion left on stone.

Another rat sprang in, biting into the crowd like a hooked fang. Only then did the people truly react, fear flooding their chests like cold river water.

"Run!"

The villagers broke in a shambles, scattering like startled sparrows. But the rats moved like arrows loosed from a taut bow, and runners toppled; no one escaped their reach.

Lucimia and Desty stood at a distance, faces still as frost, watching the village’s unfolding scenes like two cold moons over a burning field.

Rat and vermin swarms pounced and tore, their shrieks weaving with the villagers’ wails, sobs, and hoarse roars. Blood fountained like red rain, meat was gnawed to pulp, white bones gleamed like reef, and Lucimia’s unblinking gaze from afar completed a hellscape.

It was the demon’s cold, merciless stare upon a human hell, like winter watching a dying garden.

What followed made that demonic lack of mercy even starker, like ink deepening in a bowl of water.

Seven or eight villagers on horseback ran past Lucimia and Desty, hoofbeats drumming like frantic hearts.

Seeing them was like spotting saviors in a storm. One young man, too shaken, tumbled off his still-running horse, and fell to his knees again and again, begging.

"Ladies of the Bloodkin, please, save everyone!"

The others slid from saddles, dropped to one knee, and bowed, their voices fluttering like prayer flags. They pleaded for Lucimia’s aid and vowed to repay.

"We beg you to help. We’ll repay you well. Whatever you want, we’ll try our best. If anyone badmouths the Bloodkin, we’ll beat him till his own mother won’t know him!"

Desty stayed silent and looked to Lucimia, tension drawn like a bowstring; she knew the choice rested there.

Lucimia’s face stayed calm, water without ripples. After a few seconds, she drew a breath and let it go, voice low as dusk. "Sorry..."

"Don’t— please! If you can save the village, my life is yours!" the young man shouted, his words like stones thrown in a lake.

Lucimia only shook her head, like a leaf refusing the wind.

"Sorry... If I help you, my energy... won’t be enough."

"What?" The villagers stared, eyes fogged like glass.

"So... I’m sorry..."

Lucimia raised a hand; white light flickered in her palm like a small moon. A Magic Array flared under the eight villagers’ feet, lines bright as frost. Before some knew what had happened, the scene flipped; the two girls vanished, and a field of rats and bones flooded their eyes like a nightmare curtain dropping.

Lucimia had used Teleportation Magic.

"Th-this..." The young man hadn’t yet grasped it when a rat shot in from the side like a black dart, clamped his neck, and slammed him down. More rats swarmed up his body like boiling shadows.

Pain poured in like fire through cracks. He finally understood and howled—

"No!! Aaaahhhhh!! Why!!"

That cry carried the pain of flesh torn alive, and the fury of a heart betrayed, like a drum breaking under rain.

The rat swarm rampaged like locusts across a dry field.

When no human figure remained and no cry rose, Lucimia said to Desty, voice cool as ash, "Come back and look with me."

"Mm..."

They hitched their horses, veiled themselves with Invisibility Magic like mist over water, and stepped into the village at a slow pace.

Rats gnawed corpses everywhere, small bodies moving like black waves. The ground was heaps of bone and pools of blood, and houses lay either collapsed like rotten trunks or scorched by fire into char.

Lucimia walked and looked, eyes skimming like a skater over ice, then stopped before a frame of white bones like bleached branches.

This skeleton was smaller than the rest, which meant a child had worn it like a brief coat.

More telling, a hair clip lay beside the bones. It was finely made, set with two gems stained with blood, gleaming red in the firelight like twin embers.

Who those bones had belonged to was plain, like a name carved in bark.

"Should we... take it back?" Desty meant the hair clip. She wasn’t dense; she saw whose bones these were, and she knew Lucimia had given that clip like a spring gift.

"No." Lucimia shook her head, like dusk closing. "Let it stay here. We go."

"Alright."

They left. After a while, Lucimia glanced back toward Aili, memory rising like a warm current from a cold sea.

"Bloodkin sister! When I grow up, I’ll become a mage and help everyone in the village!" The girl’s voice still seemed to echo in her ears like bells.

Lucimia paused two seconds, then turned away again, steps quiet as falling ash.

"She could’ve been an excellent mage," Lucimia said, words heavy like wet cloth.

"Mm..."

"Do you think we’re villains?" Lucimia asked, walking ahead without looking back, the question drifting like smoke.

"...I don’t know."

"Is that so? Mm. Honestly, I don’t know either." Her voice slid like a blade into its sheath.

"..."

They left the village, mounted up, and rode out of the region, hooves beating like slow drums, heading for the next place.

"Where’s next?" Desty asked, her tone light as reed wind.

"Nach Valley," Lucimia answered.

"A valley, huh... We should just need to destroy the Cross, right? Not like here again..." Her voice wavered like a loose string.

"Mm... maybe." Lucimia’s reply drifted, mind elsewhere like a kite cut loose.

"The valley’s big... Will we be searching for a long time?" Desty’s worry moved like rain over sand.

"Maybe. Gendi’s memories have everything except Nach Valley," Lucimia said, the gap like a missing tooth in a cold smile.

"Oh... Think Ment will intercept us in the valley?" The name fell like a stone into a well.

"It’s possible... Hiding the Cross in the valley means he’s prepared to respond. We just don’t know how he’ll play it." Her words lay flat like cards on a table.

They spoke in scraps, words falling like dry leaves, as if trying to forget the village’s night-red pages.

But can such pages be forgotten so easily? Memory clings like smoke in wool.

Lucimia’s mood turned pitch-dark, her mind blank like a frost field. She rode in a daze, moving slow, a boat adrift without oars.

She didn’t think about the valley, or how Ment might move against her. She just rode, like a shadow going forward.

Suddenly, she cut the air with a small call. "Desty."

"Huh?"

"I... kind of feel hungry." The feeling crept in like a thin wind.

"Uh, then... eat something?"

"No." Lucimia shook her head, a pale wave, then drove her heel into the horse’s belly. The horse surged past Desty like an arrow from the string.

"Hey, hey, why so fast all of a sudden!" Desty hurried after, breath skipping like pebbles on water.

While Desty hadn’t caught up, Lucimia lifted her sleeve and stared, gaze sharp as a needle.

An eye had grown on her arm, a wet pearl that breathed. It was alive. Lucimia blinked, and it blinked with her, like a mirror in flesh.

"Lucimia, why the sudden speed!" Desty caught up, voice bouncing like a sparrow.

Lucimia dropped her sleeve fast and said casually, "Nothing. Just running."

"Alright." Desty didn’t dwell on the sudden move; her thoughts flowed past like clear stream water.

They kept riding. Lucimia watched the far sky, a cold plate over the world, and thought silently: Is this corruption? Or retribution? Has the corruption been accelerated?