Chapter 32

Lilith didn’t reply.

The Little White Dragon’s silence settled like frost on dawn grass. Nidhogg didn’t hurry her; she walked the plain, a dark keel cutting a pale sea.

Lilith’s arms tightened, like a child clinging to a warm stone in winter. The pressure spoke of pain, or a need to bleed discomfort out through the embrace.

Nidhogg knew the Little White Dragon disliked farewells; that truth lay in her like old rain under rock. Lilith clung to the past; tossing an old notebook could sour her mood for half a day.

The Black Dragon remembered her weeping in a wall’s shadow over a scrap with a favorite line. Lilith thought she’d hidden well; Nidhogg had seen every tear, silver as dew.

Even so, Lilith had only met Sakunae Mashiro twice—and fought twice, and lost a leg—and she knew the first adventurers in the Grand Mausoleum only by rumor. Yet she refused to see them stamped as dead, especially while Mashiro still flickered like a stubborn candle.

“Does it hurt much?” Nidhogg asked, voice soft as night wind.

“A tiny bit,” Lilith murmured, words glowing like embers under ash. She was sad, but not drowned. The wanderer from the Dragon Territory had weathered more storms; the girl had grown, leaves toughened by loss.

She didn’t crumble before deaths that couldn’t be undone; the ache was a brief dusk, not a winter. More than sorrow, her mind kept circling how to help that white-furred fox lady.

“I’m not that sad now, so don’t worry,” she said, calm as moonlight on water. “I’m thinking—Sakunae Mashiro, the big white fox—how do I free her from the Reaper Fragment and the Moonswallow Mist? If the mist keeps gripping her, isn’t that cruel?”

“She left you so hurt you can’t walk, and you’re worried about her?” Nidhogg’s laugh flickered like sparks. “You just letting the bite go?”

“Of course not.” Lilith shook her head, teeth flashing like tiny knives. “Helping her break the Moonswallow Mist is one thing. Her biting me? She owes me.”

“One thing at a time! Once I haul her down, I can’t let that bite slide,” Lilith rattled on from Nidhogg’s back, a sparrow scolding from a branch. “At least let me bite back once. No—twice!”

Her lively grumbling rose like tea steam. Nidhogg heard the vigor and knew the White Dragon had steadied. She smiled and let Lilith fuss.

After a while, words ran out like a stream fading into sand. Lilith went quiet, breath even, and the hush pooled between them.

Nidhogg walked on, bearing Lilith. The Little White Dragon lay along the Black Dragon’s shoulder, eyes sharp as ice, scanning the grassland. One dark, one pale, two dragons moved through a silence like a held breath.

Then Lilith spoke, a pebble breaking a still pond. “Wait. What’s that?”

Her finger pointed at a tall black shape rising ahead like a standing tombstone. She squinted, trying to gather form out of haze.

“Looks like a knight,” she said, voice taut as string. Her sight was keen, but the distance was long; the figure blurred like ink in water. A high rider on a pallid skeletal horse bobbed in her gaze, much like the Black Knights she’d seen before. “And not just one.”

She remembered their size, the way steel wore bodies like winter bark. That swath of black shadows meant at least three or four. She couldn’t pin it down, so she hedged. “I count maybe four moving together. Can’t see their weapons. Should we detour?”

Nidhogg had barred her from strenuous movement; Lilith hung like a charm on the Black Dragon’s back. She could still throw ice and thread a few lines of astromancy, but she felt like a small weight on a running wolf.

She doubted Nidhogg could fight four Black Knights while carrying her, without losing a third of her edge to care.

“A detour will be messy,” Nidhogg said, gaze like iron under snow. “The grass is worse off the path, the land tilts uphill, and we’d lose sightlines. Too many shadows.”

She followed Lilith’s line and marked the riders. “We’ll close the gap a little. I’ll see if I can end it from range.”

“Okay.” Lilith nodded, trust settling like a hand on the heart.

Her optimism turned out soft as paper. After they walked, the silhouettes sharpened like thorns. They stopped.

It wasn’t four. Lilith’s glance swept the field like a broom. A dozen or so Black Knights, armor heavy as midnight, charged over crumbling black grass.

Shields glinted. Greatswords rose and fell like storm waves. Two riders carried longbows across their backs, the pattern tight, a small squad woven firm.

“What now? Let’s go around.” Moments ago she’d thought about propping a fight with her Taint, sly as smoke. Now she only wanted to vanish like mist.

Too many. At full strength, she’d think twice. Half crippled, with only Nidhogg, and Nidhogg losing a third to carry her? The math was bad.

“It’s fine. Trust me.” Nidhogg patted her small hand, warmth like a coal against winter.

They reached a low mound by the path. Nidhogg set Lilith down on the dirt crest. Lilith looked up, watching the Black Dragon extend a thumb, measuring distance like a sailor reading stars.

Then Nidhogg raised both arms, posture quiet as a kyudo archer beneath temple eaves.

Lilith frowned, a cloud curling on her brow.

She saw it: Nidhogg’s right arm split along two seams, slim lines opening like red petals. Threads of blood seeped out, bright as berries.

Lilith drew breath to warn her. Before the word could form, the Black Dragon’s flesh unfolded, and her forearm shaped itself into a great bow. Sinew corded, and the small forearm bone snapped free like a loosed arrow.

With a bone-deep whoosh, the shot flew. In Lilith’s stunned gaze, it hit and cracked the shielded Black Knight’s skull like a gourd.

The tall body toppled, crashing down and flipping a comrade’s mount. Their tight formation fractured like ice under a boot.

Nidhogg let her hand fall. Within a single breath, the missing bone budded back, smooth as new horn.

She lifted her arm again, moon-still, and aimed at a bowman.