Everything happened far too suddenly.
The pillar of red light that shot straight into the clouds threw the entire city into a panic. The guards were the first to arrive at the scene, quickly taking control of the entire area.
Aside from the countless human bones scattered across the ground, they found a girl in the ruins whose chest had been gouged out, and a witch whose legs had been severed.
When they found her, blood was still gushing out of her stumps, and the witch’s face had gone pale to the point of near shock.
But she paid no attention to the continuous flow of red. Instead, she focused solely on casting healing magic on the girl who was already dead.
A terrifying trail of deep crimson blood stretched from a distance to where the girl lay—it wasn’t hard to guess that the witch had crawled all the way over from there.
The captain of the guards arrived shortly after, and upon seeing the two, immediately recognized them as the women he had encountered earlier in the day.
Instinctively, he ordered his men to bring them to a healer. However, just as one of the guards reached toward Aurora, he was blocked by a barrier crackling with electricity.
“Don’t touch her!!”
Suddenly, the electrical currents from the barrier flared outward, startling all the guards and forcing them to halt in fear.
“Miss Witch, we mean no harm. We only wish to take you both to a healer,” the captain said, taking a step forward despite the buzzing current.
“With the pathetic excuse for healing magic your so-called healers possess? They’re no better than your useless guards!”
She cursed at them in fury, and not a single one of them dared to talk back.
The captain had no retort. The healers under his command probably couldn’t even match a fraction of what the witch was capable of, and sending the girls there would only provoke her further.
Her voice had become incredibly weak, yet she never stopped casting her healing spells.
The guard captain looked down regretfully at the girl lying on the ground. Thinking back to the events earlier that day, he couldn’t help but sigh internally: What a wonderful girl… and now, cruelly murdered by those cultists.
Beatrice’s magic was nearly depleted. Even though all of Aurora’s wounds had completely healed, there was still no sign of her regaining consciousness.
She had completely lost her mind.
She didn’t dare let even a shred of reason slip into her thoughts—because if she did, she would have to face the truth that the person before her was already truly, irreversibly dead.
No matter how advanced the healing magic, there was no saving her now.
So she kept casting spell after spell, blindly, desperately. The brilliant green light of her magic gradually dimmed, until her mana was completely depleted.
“Damn it, damn it, damn it!!”
“There has to be a way—there must be something!”
Her eyes swept across the surrounding soldiers, and a terrifying thought began to swell in her heart.
A twisted smile crept across her face, painted in despair, and the soldiers who saw it felt a chill crawl down their spines. Uneasy, they instinctively stepped back.
“If… a life… for a life!”
Beatrice’s face was completely stained with blood, and all the guards could see were her frenzied black eyes.
Legless, she began crawling toward the soldiers, dragging a grotesque smear of crimson behind her.
“What are you trying to do?!”
The captain of the guards sensed something was very wrong. He stepped in front of her path, his right hand already gripping the hilt of his sword at his waist.
“Netherfiend!!”
Boom!
A red-violet magic circle erupted from the ground. With a rumble like a landslide, enormous tentacles burst forth from beneath the earth.
The buildings around them began to shake, then collapse. The gigantic tendrils lashed out and wrapped around the towering spires, their surfaces coated in a purple slime that corroded and melted any bricks they touched.
“Fall back! Start evacuating the townspeople!” the guard captain shouted over his shoulder.
But when he turned back toward where Beatrice had just been, both she and the girl’s lifeless body were gone—vanished without a trace.
“Captain, it’s bad!”
Just as his eyes scanned the area in disbelief, a guard stumbled toward him, breathless and pale with panic.
“What happened?”
“The walls! The entire perimeter is surrounded by those monsters! Our weapons can’t harm them at all… We’re trapped inside!”
“What?!”
“Damn it—just to save one person, she’s willing to sacrifice the entire town?!”
“What about the sky? Can we escape over the walls?”
Just as he said that, the moonlight suddenly dimmed. Something massive was slowly blotting out the sky.
Enormous tentacles coiled and writhed, spreading across the air above the town, layer by layer, until the entire city was swallowed in darkness—so complete that not a sliver of moonlight could pierce through.
“What… do we do now?”
The captain of the guard collapsed to the ground in helpless despair. One by one, the tall buildings were being crushed. All around, the cries of the townspeople rang out in agony.
The blooming Eismia flowers were trampled underfoot by the panicked crowd, strewn across the shattered streets, their petals dyed in fearsome shades of purple.
It was a hellish sight unlike anything he’d ever witnessed—an overwhelming sense of powerlessness gripped his soul.
*****
High above the town—
Beatrice looked down at it all with calm indifference. No matter how the people screamed and wailed below, she remained unmoved.
The light in her eyes was long gone. She simply kept gently caressing Aurora’s face as she held her in her arms.
“Even if you scold me when you wake up… even if you hit me, hate me, curse me… I still have to do this.”
She looked down at the town, now completely wrapped in those monstrous tendrils, and raised one blood-soaked hand.
Snap.
With the crisp sound of her fingers snapping, a strange glow began to pulse faintly from the tentacles enshrouding the city—an eerie, ominous light.
This forbidden magic had once been used by cultists to sacrifice lives in order to awaken dark gods. But Beatrice had altered its runes. She’d turned it into a spell to exchange ten thousand lives… for one.
The ritual was nearly complete. All it would take was one final snap, and the life force of every soul in the city would be drained. In that moment, she would become a sinner for the ages—a cultist among cultists.
Without hesitation, she raised her hand again, ready to finish it.
But just then—
The girl in her arms stirred. Beatrice froze mid-motion.
She stared in disbelief at the one who was supposed to be dead. A faint breath rose and fell from Aurora’s lips, followed by a soft murmur, as if in the middle of a dream.
“Don’t… hurt her… no…”
“Aurora?”
Warm tears slowly welled up in Beatrice’s eyes, trailing down her cheeks and falling onto Aurora’s pale face.
She gently called her name.
Then, like someone awakening from a deep sleep, Aurora murmured softly, “Mmm… morning, Beatrice.”
She slowly opened her eyes—and in those golden irises, glowing faintly, the clock’s hand pointed to the seventh hour.