Edmund whipped around and pinned the sword with a thunderbolt glare. He knew that eerie magic had seeped from its spine, a cold mist meant to threaten him.

He didn’t know how it called a Skeleton, but the intent was clear; the summoned bones rushed like a storm, chopping fast to smother his breath.

Broadsword raised, it aimed at his head and swung. A blind blade shows no mercy; a mindless Skeleton spares no one.

“Tsk…” He clicked his tongue, sour heat flaring. He tried to shift off his ravaged right leg, but pain bit like acid; the tensed muscle slackened. His body wouldn’t dodge.

Gods, it hurts! Has it… already chewed into my nerves?!

No time to think; the blade came on like a flash flood as the thought formed. By reflex, he turned his head; steel kissed his ear, then bit deep into his shoulder.

No geyser of blood burst; his magic was thin, yet his body had stone-hard grit. He took the cut head-on, earning a wound that was neither shallow nor deep.

The Skeleton saw its strike land poorly. That empty shell ran on battle instinct and drew one conclusion—hit the same wound again, and again.

It jerked the broadsword up, tugging loose a smear of purple blood from Edmund. Held high, the blade let droplets patter onto a chalk-white skull. The bone face stayed blank as a winter moon.

No—can’t stay this passive!

He knew the longer he yielded, the worse it got. His lower body was a ruined field; his upper body was still his to command.

He thrust up his least injured right hand and caught the Skeleton’s falling bone forearm.

It wasn’t a spindly stick for lack of flesh; the bone was thick as a felled branch. Even Edmund’s grip barely circled it.

His gaze tightened. He turned his wrist in a clean arc, pivoting like a millstone. The bone arm couldn’t hold his brute strength; it tore free in an instant.

The severed hand and its broadsword hit the floor with a ringing clang. The Skeleton gaped, stunned by the loss, like a scarecrow missing a stake.

He gave it no breath to recover. Both fists clenched, then hammered its chest in a rapid barrage, thump-thump, like drums before a storm.

“Ora ora ora ora! Ora—!”

His last full-force punch aimed for the crown of the skull. The air-ripping fist crushed the cap bone, and the wind of the blow blasted the Skeleton back.

“Haa…” He let out a long breath. He wasn’t one of the Undead; a flurry like that set his muscles burning. That volley pushed his body to the limit.

But… finally, it’s over.

Clack clack—

?!

The bone hand at his side twitched. As his eyes slid to it, the hand shot the broadsword straight at his chest like a wasp.

Past close calls had saved him on reflex, but this thrust outran him. He couldn’t dodge. The blade punched in, and that small hand shoved his massive frame back. He slammed into the rack that held the sword and stopped.

The knife-edge ripped free, trailing a ribbon of purple blood as it sped back to the grave-pile of bones. The Skeleton stood rebuilt and whole before him, no wounds anywhere.

Edmund pried open his heavy lids and looked at it. The healed Skeleton held the broadsword stained with his blood and walked toward him in a slow tide.

[Pull me out…]

A voice came from his side. In the corner of his eye, he saw the sword beside him; its blade leaked a violet-black glow like night ink.

[Pull me out…]

Heh… He laughed at himself inside, a dry chuckle at his knowing the sword’s game yet lacking the strength to resist.

The wound below had started eating upward. Especially the ragged hole in his chest; blood seeping from there turned his head light, like mist rising.

[Pull me out…]

People say your life plays on a reel when you’re dying; for Edmund, it did.

Slides flickered through his mind, one after another—him in the garden with a young girl, playing among flowers and sun.

[Pull me out…]

He dimly remembered that girl looked human. Her voice was so sweet that even a lark fell short, a spring stream against stone.

She was adorably strange. She liked to call herself “wu”—an old-fashioned I—but when flustered or shy, she’d switch back to “wo.” Those slips made plenty of laughter.

Then one day, she stood before him with her hands hidden behind her back. Eyes that peered past the heart locked on him, her face set, unlike her usual light. She said she wasn’t human; she was a… a… what was it?

[Pull me out!]

“I know, quit yelling!”

He answered, even as his hand had already wrapped the hilt before the words left his lips.