Cough—cough.

Stini pressed a gauntleted hand to her mouth and coughed softly; a rusty tang welled up her throat like river silt.

She lifted her palm—dark-red blood, sure as dusk. She grimaced, swallowed the rest, and smeared her palm across a nearby trunk like crude paint.

“Miss Stini?” A heavy-armored knight asked, concern hanging around him like fog.

“I’m fine—cough—it’s nothing. Keep moving.”

She waved him on, her gesture cutting the air like a tired flag.

“We need to move fast, or those bastards will catch up—”

She snapped out the Holy Sword Yingfeng, a flash like a gust through leaves, and swung over the knight’s head.

Too late. A Bloodsucking Fiend, roosting on a branch, had already slid its claws into the visor’s seam like ice needles. Stini cut the creature down in the same breath, her blade a falling star.

“Enemy attack!”

She couldn’t mourn the fallen; her shout carried like a struck bell toward the rear of the column.

“Protect the civilians! The enemy’s Bloodsucking Fiends are hiding in the branches!”

She had been at the very front, clearing the way like a scythe. When the assault blossomed everywhere, she sprinted back through the forest’s teeth.

Wailing rose from dying throats, thin and raw, like wind scraping slate.

“Break out—push outward! Or we’ll all die here!”

Her cry drowned in the roar and the shrieks, a pebble swallowed by storm surf.

Enemies closed from every side, even above; she drove her exhausted body on, her sword whistling like a winter gale.

The fiend overhead split in one stroke; on the return arc, she took the one behind, head rolling like a rotten fruit.

Left. Right. She cut and cut, a windmill knocking rain from its blades.

Maybe the long fight had frayed her nerves; maybe the wounds still wept. She missed the strike from a fiend tucked deep in shadow.

Life and death were one taut blade; Stini had walked its edge for too long.

Instinct flared; she turned and met the claw with her breastplate. The steel screeched like a crying hinge, and sweet metal flooded her throat again.

Lucky—it didn’t punch through her organs, just bruised them like fruit under a boot.

Stini clenched her jaw and drove Galewind into the fiend’s crown, the point sinking like a spear into wet clay.

She took in the chaos—civilians, soldiers, mages—pursued by Bloodsucking Fiends that flocked like crows to carrion.

“To guard… is it?”

Her vow needed no voice; it burned in her chest like an ember. Every heartbeat was precious, and only fighting could harvest more lives from the reaping.

So she ran with everything left, legs beating like drums, toward the storm’s eye—where battle raged thickest and wildest.

Inside the Sanctuary of Life, now claimed by the Demonfolk.

“Mm. I understand.”

He reached out and gripped something nameless in the air, fingers closing like a trap; he caught the “something” within the fiend and pulled it free like a black thread.

Kneeling, the Bloodsucking Fiend shook; inside, something went missing, not flesh but a shard of its idea. Its chaotic essence tipped; its existence frayed like a sand sculpture in rain.

It tried to plead, but its mouth was a sealed jar; only a hollow growl seeped out like wind in a bottle.

“A full company, trained in assassination and ambush, and you couldn’t take one girl.”

“You even let her break out with the city’s civilians while I was dealing with Gugwen.”

“Is that all you managed?”

“It seems your ability can’t bear my trust. Return to the Ocean of Darkness; even useless things like you can still contribute.”

Another wail rose, thin as wire, and snapped.

“You have a point—the opponent carries Hero blood. Sorry; I asked too much of you.”

He dipped his head, then seized the “something” again and set it back into the fiend like a craftsman resetting a jewel.

“As king, I must admit my error. I apologize for pushing tasks beyond my subordinates’ reach.”

“You failed in battle; I punished you already. Stand and withdraw—your sin is forgiven.”

The fiend shrieked with cringing gratitude, moved to leave, and then darkness fell across its view like a closing eyelid.

He held the fiend’s freshly severed head and shook his own, almost tenderly regretful.

“You made another mistake—your screech disturbed my sleeping beauty.”

Yakfarro, Son of the Demon King, the most handsome and most “holy” face among the Demonfolk—golden hair, blue eyes, skin pale as milk.

Strange, yes, yet his aura felt like sanctity, a white lotus among thorn-vines in a brood of darkness and evil.

He wore a simple cleric’s vestment; every badge of the Divine Being was slashed through with dark red, like wounds across scripture.

The plain cloth made his “holiness” stand out more; Yakfarro was a demon who looked unlike a demon. On appearance alone, one might call him a son of a god.

Yet Demonfolk are the same underneath—hungry for blood and death, worshipping violence and ruin. Yakfarro’s true nature was no different.

He walked slowly into the church’s depths, toward the girl bound to the cross like a pale bird pinned to wood.

She slept and wouldn’t wake; a soft moan slipped from her like a bruised note, the dream clearly not sweet.

He caressed her cheek, gentle as a breeze through blossoms, eyes brimming with a practiced devotion.

“Raven… that’s your name, right? So cute.”

Raven turned her head and let out another near-seductive sigh, like warm smoke.

“Don’t be afraid, don’t worry,” Yakfarro leaned close, pressing his flawless face to her temple like cool porcelain. “We have time. Plenty of time.”

“No one will disturb us. I’ll wait.”

“Until you’re even more delicious, my little darling.”

His hand on Raven’s cheek stayed tender, a lover’s script.

His gaze past Raven toward the far shadows was ice-cold, a knife laid on stone.