In the hollow space framed by chaos was Agnes Thorne standing proud, her giant hammer still embedded halfway into the place where Remy had been a moment ago.

  The weapon’s head steamed and its metal rang from the sheer force of the blow.

  Although Yuzuriha barely saw what happened, she was still able to catch a glimpse of it thanks to her astris sight.

  What happened was a streak of blinding white force collided with the black and yellow smear that had been Remy. The moment contact was made on his upper left shoulder, his figure scattered like oil across water.

  He was gone the next instance, and there was a gaping hole where the door was. The rest is probably obvious.

  Yuzuriha's response to all of that? She could barely breathe.

  It wasn’t because she was afraid or anything like that, but because she had just witnessed the single most amazing thing in her entire life!

  One moment that rat loving creep was threatening her older sister and then the next? Boom! He was gone!

  “Amazing…”

  Her eyes widened and her mouth was hanging open before she even realized it. Her heart was racing like a child seeing fireworks for the first time.

  The power. The sheer, unapologetic violence in that blow was the kind of thing she had only ever seen in action movies. And even those felt cheap now compared to the real thing.

  ‘Amazing! Amazing! Amazing! That was incredible, she obliterated him in one swing! One hit and poof!’

  It was impossible not to compare it to her old world. Who would blame her? It was a place where nothing like that could be done without the aid of machinery or an entire squadron.

  And here? This woman had done it with her own two hands!

  ‘Ugh, stop smiling, you idiot!’

  The excitement must have bled onto her face because she immediately clapped both hands over it, trying to hide her giddy smile. From the outside, it probably looked like she was horrified.

  After what had happened, it definitely looked like that.

  “It’s going to be fine, Yor. Big sis will handle it. Just sit there and wait for me. Scream if anything happens”

  Marcille reassured her in a comforting tone and stood up with the spear in hand. She crossed to where Agnes stood like some war goddess painted in silver light and dust motes.

  The war goddess must have thought the same. Yuzuriha let them stay in that illusion. Let them think she was the scared little blind girl. While in reality, she was fighting the urge to cheer them on.

  Did that make her seem crazy?

  Her excitement deflated slightly when she let her astris sense sweep over the hammer. And much to her disappointment…it was just a hammer.

  A very big, very sturdy hammer. Maybe made with some rare metal, sure but ultimately just a hammer. A hunk of metal made for the singular purpose of smashing things into nonexistence.

  ‘I was hoping for some kind of magic weapon. But no, it's just big. Really big’

  Well, there had been that Burn Card in the Coffin & Crown bar. That was a magic item probably. Perhaps enchanted weapons were rare.

  Drawing her attention back into the current moment, Marcille stood next to the tall woman, who casually rested her giant hammer against her shoulder. The height difference was more evident now that they stood side by side.

  “Thanks for the signal”

  “No, I should be the one thanking you. If you had not done something. I would have myself, in turn, put Yor at risk. Thank you”

  Agnes waved her hand.

  “It’s fine. Still strange though. I could not pick him up at all.”

  “You didn’t sense him because you were looking for a human. What I felt was…rodents. That’s what he is made of. One of the abilities of his Sealed Technique allows him to create an identical body from a swarm of rats”

  A shiver ran up Yuzuriha’s spine at her older sister’s flat words. And then, sudden clarity settled in her mind.

  ‘Oh, that explains why I couldn’t see him until he showed himself. I’ve been ignoring small animals entirely. I must have looked away from him without even realizing it’

  Another thought clicked into place as her mind spun back to earlier when Marcille’s astris flared up when she got angry.

  ‘That must have been the signal she’s talking about’

  Agnes picked up on it instantly and acted accordingly….Too bad it didn’t wake Tobias.

  ‘He sure is a heavy sleeper, huh?’

  Heavy sleeper was putting it mildly. A cannon could probably go off in here and he still wouldn’t wake up, because that blow had the impact of one.

  Agnes sniffed and planted her feet wider.

  “Sneaky little swine, ain’t he?”

  From somewhere beyond the wreckage, a low and raspy chuckle answered her question.

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  Yuzuriha immediately adjusted her perception again, this time letting herself see the smaller shapes she had been so quick to ignore. And there he was, laying on the ground, his form limned in those same sickly green and bleeding crimsons.

  The left side of his chest and arm looked…wrong.. Flattened and crushed in a way that her mind refused to render in proper detail. If not for her peculiar sight, she would have been looking at gore.

  Yet somehow, he stood up. Bones that shouldn’t have been able to bear his weight carried him upright, and both Marcille and Agnes drew taut.

  And just when Yuzuriha was getting excited for round two, the rat man’s head simply…ceased to be where it belonged.

  “Huh…?”

  It was there one moment, and the next it lay several paces from his body. The rest of him toppled like a puppet whose string had been cut.

  Arthur stood beside what was left, in his hand was a cane sword. Its narrow blade dripped faintly before he flicked it clean.

  “What in the hell was that about?”

  He asked casually, as if he didn’t just cut a man’s head off. The two didn’t seem stunned or surprised, as if they were expecting it. The only ones who didn’t was Remy, and of course, herself.

  Afterwards, both head and body dissolved into a writhing tide of rats.

  They scattered in all directions, pouring into the grass, under the wheels, and between the carriage boards.

  Yuzuriha held her breath, every inch of her skin prickling. She curled her knees up instinctively and back pressed herself tight to the wall.

  “No, no, no. Please don’t. If even one of those things gets inside—!”

  ***

  Duskfall had decided to make camp on a wide open field, fringed by thick grass and wild bushes. The air carried the crisp coolness of oncoming night, the kind that nipped at the skin but was softened by the low crackling of fire at the camp’s center.

  In Yuzuriha’s vision, the place was alive in a different way. Every stalk and leaf painted in shifting colors, every insect, every rabbit or fox darting nearby in a blur of heat.

  Of course this had been just her normal vision. She had stopped expanding her field a while ago, and was slowly regaining her strength.

  Other than the ambush, another reason Duskfall settled here was because travelling any longer in the dark like this was bound to attract more trouble. Now the only light came from the campfire, its flames rising and snapping, painting faces in amber.

  A pot hung over the flames with steam rolling in delicious waves. The smell was almost cruel in how inviting it was.

  The chef this time had been Marcille herself, working together with Temperance to prepare their supper. Savory herbs, rich broth, and the saltiness of some dried meat they had boiled down into a hearty soup.

  Hard bread was passed around to go with it, and Yuzuriha accepted her portion with gratitude. She cupped her bowl in both hands, and the heat from it sank into her skin, chasing away the night chill.

  She was so excited she couldn’t wait to dig in. The first sip burned her tongue slightly, but the warmth that flooded through her chest felt like a blessing.

  ‘...Okay. This is really good. No, better than good! I expected to eat dried food this entire trip. But this is much better.’

  Yuzuriha tore a piece of the hard bread, dunked it into the broth before biting it down. Of course, it was coarse, and a bit dry as expected with its name. But it softened in the soup, it became…perfect.

  She didn’t even care that she might have looked a little too content as she ate.

  It wasn’t the kind of food she would have swooned over in her previous life, but in this one in the middle of nowhere? It was bliss, pure nostalgic bliss.

  Yuzuriha sat pressed against Marcille’s side, almost shoulder to shoulder. Across the fire, the twins Silas and Seth had settled nearer to Temperance, chatting about something over spoonfuls of broth.

  Their relationship seemed to be more like mother and sons, strangely. She didn’t know their backstories but the way they’ve been behaving suggested that.

  Or Temperance was just good with kids, and Yuzuriha was reading way into it.

  At any rate, the group sat around the campfire, only the carriage drivers, no coachmen, were absent from the circle. They were still hard at work on the wall Agnes had smashed earlier.

  Even though her reason for smashing it had been perfectly justified, damage was still damage, and repairs cost money. Temperance, with all the grace of a woman digging out her own teeth, had paid the extra wens with a put upon sigh and complaints.

  That was one of the dramas playing out that night. The other one was on the other side of camp.

  The sixteen men who had tried to ambush them earlier were now kneeling in the dirt. Every last one of them had their heads bowed and begging for forgiveness.

  The one at the front was the man with a crossbow, now slung uselessly at his side. He looked up as if forcing courage.

  “My name is Lu Shuren, son of Lu Fenghua of the Inner River Ward, fourth district of Ganling Street, from the Godfather Republic. I am…”

  He paused searching for a word.

  “...a humble tradesman of silk… and, at present, a man of very poor fortune”

  He pressed his hands against his chest.

  “I ask, no, I beg that you spare the lives of my men. Take mine if you must, grind my bones and scatter them to the sea, but let them live. They are good men, foolish men, yes but not without honor! We were told there would be easy coins. There was talk of treasure caravans, of unguarded chests and sleeping drivers…bah! Lies, all of it!

  We have no quarrel with you, noble travelers. No blade of ours has tasted your blood. We acted in haste, and a hasty blade will cut its master’s hand! Let me be that hand. Strike me down, and you will find no curses from these lips. Only…”

  He inhaled deeply as if the thought pained him.

  “...a final sigh, and perhaps a prayer for kinder winds in my next life”

  He finished and Yuzuriha raised a brow at the sound of him. The way he shaped the vowels was unlike anything she had heard in Tinsel. The consonants were hard, quick and yet the words were bound together like brush strokes in ink.

  He spoke the Tinsellan tongue well enough but there was no hiding the fact that it wasn’t his native language. There was weight in each word, like he was moving them from one language into another before speaking.

  ‘So…either from another country, or another very far off land’

  The young man’s presence was drawn in faint silvers and deep ochres. His figure was lean, the kind of wiry build that came from a long time of travel. A long strip of cloth was tied around his head, the knot set low at the back. His features sharpened in a way that matched the quick movements of his hands as he spoke.

  It wasn’t just Lu Shuren that caught her attention.

  She swept her perception over the group that was kneeling behind him, and her eyes widened in surprise.

  Not all of them were, well most were, but not all. Three in particular caught her view.

  Two had the same elongated sweeps of energy that framed the long ears of elves. However, unlike most of everyone here, their outlines were bright , clear and sharper.

  On the third one she hesitated. Two ridged horns protruded forward from his brow, curling slightly at their tips. She didn’t know what he was, but horns in her old world meant one thing.

  ‘...oni’

  She decided that was what he was until proven otherwise.

  As Lu Shuren was still talking about sacrificing himself for the life of his men. Temperance rose from her seat by the fire, ladled out steaming broth into a bowl, stepped over and placed it right in front of him.

  “You hungry?”

  She asked in a plain tone that caught Lu Shuren off guard, struck by silence for the first time since kneeling.

  “Hungry…?”

  He sniffed the steam.

  “Is this for me?”

  “Eat”

  Temperance thrusted the bowl closer and Lu Shuren leaned back.

  “Forgive me, lady, but in my homeland one must always question a sudden kindness. Soup…this is not poisoned?”

  “It’s soup, and besides…”

  She swept her gaze onto Duskfall nestled around the fire, then looked back at the man.

  “...they don’t seem to be dying, don't they? If I intended to kill you, I assure you it would not be poisoned soup”

  He looked over his shoulder at his men. They shrugged and spoke to him in a tongue Yuzuriha didn’t know, but the tone was encouraging enough. So finally, with a slow bow of the head, Lu Shuren accepted the bowl.

  “...My gratitude”

  And with that, they joined them by the fire not long after. Enjoying delicious food under the night sky.