Lillik had always wondered what it was like for Rinerva—the ability to sense mana, real or artificial. To intrinsically know exactly when a spell was being cast, to determine its element and shape before it even manifested. It must have been like smelling colors in the air.

  But the Spider had her own ways to see the unseen.

  Her arachnid limbs unfurled from beneath her heavy cloak, the sensitive bristles standing on end as they tasted the air. The two monsters stood before yet another commune in the Mid-City.

  “...Lots of people inside. One with heavy mutation,” Lillik chittered, her voice low. “It smells… unusual.”

  Her legs lowered, tucking back into the cloak with jerky, hydraulic motions.

  “Some kind of ritual. I smell wyvern bone—a reagent used in forced mutations—but they don’t have the right binding agents. It’s unstable.”

  “Do we have time to clear it before nightfall?”

  Lillik’s human eyes turned to the massive Giant beside her. Agon was covered in a layer of drying viscera and tufts of matted fur. They had been efficient; nearly a fifth of the Mid-City had been purged, and three Bat colonies had been silenced. He looked like a walking siege engine, but he was deferring to her judgment on the timeline.

  “I believe so.”

  Agon didn't hesitate. His massive fist punched the door inward, the wood splintering with a crack that sounded like a thunderclap, tearing the hinges from the stone frame.

  He stepped in, ready to kill—and immediately paused.

  “Hrn, troublesome.”

  There were no webs. Instead, the walls, the floor, and even the ceiling bore the frantic, jagged marks of a massive ritual circle. It was drawn in something dark and crusty, stretching across the room in a lopsided, maddening spiral that defied the laws of proper alchemy.

  Lillik stepped over the threshold, her eyes tracing the uneven lines.

  “...Not necessarily,” she chittered, disdain dripping from her tone. “Whatever this is supposed to be, it’s improper. The geometry is fractured.”

  “Everyone is a critic, mm?”

  The voice was smooth, cultured, and entirely out of place in the ruined foyer.

  A man in the well-fitted velvet clothes of a noble walked through the door leading further into the manor. His face was clear of visible mutation—no extra eyes, no fur, no mandibles. He adjusted his cuffs, his eyes fixing on the blood-soaked Giant as if Agon were simply a late arrival rather than an intruder.

  But Lillik didn't need eyes to see the truth. Even without extending her legs, the air tasted foul. The acrid, chemical stench of heavy mutation poured off him, masking the expensive cologne he wore.

  “I assume you’re here for the gala?” the man asked, offering a ghastly, wide smile that showed too many teeth. “Several other guests have already arrived.”

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  “The gala?”

  Agon’s brow furrowed. He looked from the blood-slicked floor to the man in the pristine velvet coat. To the Giant’s eyes, this was just a delusional noble ignoring the carnage. He was blind to the biological reality standing before him.

  But Lillik wasn't.

  She didn't move. She couldn't. All eight of her eyes—the human pair and the arachnid cluster on her brow—fixed on the creature involuntarily. Her instincts were screaming. The thing didn't smell like a man; it smelled like a corpse pumped full of mutagens.

  “Yes! We must prepare for the real event tonight,” the man enthused, smoothing his lapels with jittery, precise fingers. “Have you not received your invitations?”

  Agon’s grip tightened on his axe. He looked at the creature again, trying to find the logic.

  “Gods below, what are you talking about?”

  The Noble’s smile widened, stretching the skin around his mouth until it turned translucent.

  “You’re not aware of the masquerade?”

  He took a step forward, his movements fluid but wrong—gliding as if his knees bent backward.

  “And what of you, Spider? Your sister is going to attend.”

  The air in the room seemed to drop ten degrees. Lillik’s mandibles clicked, a sharp, involuntary sound of aggression.

  “It would be truly sad if she was invited and not you,” the creature cooed.

  Then, he looked at her.

  He didn't turn his neck. His head whipped toward Lillik with a meaty, audible crack of cartilage, twisting to an angle that should have severed a human spine. His eyes, now wide and unblinking, locked onto hers with a terrifying, vacant intensity. Steam rose from it's skin as the potions in it's bloodstream tried to fix the damage the motion had done to its neck.

  “But not to worry, we’ve plenty to eat here, spider.”

  Agon didn’t wait any longer.

  The moment the cartilage snapped, the Giant moved. He didn't telegraph the swing; he simply erased the space between torso and legs. His weapon—a slab of iron the size of a structural beam—cleaved horizontally in a blur of violence.

  There was no scream. Just a wet, devastating crunch.

  The axe cleaved the disgusting creature into two uneven, fleshy chunks. The impact was so severe it didn't just cut; it separated the body with the force of a falling portcullis. The torso slid off the legs, hitting the floorboards with a heavy thud.

  But the nerves were still firing. Potions keeping it moving when shock should've had it shutting down, they couldn't repair a severed spine, though.

  The top half of the creature lay amidst the ruin of the foyer, and it was still grinning. Its wide, unblinking eyes remained fixed on Lillik even as the blood pooled rapidly around it.

  “We sleep in emerald.”

  The voice bubbled up through a severed windpipe, pained and gurgling, before the light finally faded from its eyes.

  Lillik shuddered involuntarily, a ripple of repulsion traveling down her spine and clicking through her limbs. She stepped over the corpse, her boots squelching in the spreading pool, and pushed past Agon toward the double doors of the inner sanctum.

  “Move,” she hissed.

  They burst into the main hall—and stopped.

  It was silent.

  Twelve acolytes lay arranged in a circle on the floor. They were in varying states of mutation—some with patches of fur, others with elongated fingers—but they were all undeniably human.

  And they were all dead.

  Lillik knelt by the nearest body. A clean, precise incision had opened the throat. She touched the blood. It was hot. Steam still curled from the wound in the cool air.

  “They died moments ago,” she whispered... The Noble hadn't been greeting them. He had been ensuring they arrived too late.

  Lillik stood up, her arachnid legs unfurling to their full height in a display of pure panic.

  “We need to find Nomi.”