Unnamed Memory - Volume 5 - Chapter 9

9. The Present According to the Future

The pale azure light of the moon shone down onto the earth. Amid the all-immersive dark of night, a town to the northwest of Tuldarr’s capital city slept deeply.

Apart from the occasional distant howling of a dog, all was still. Silence reigned.

However, something crawled very slowly through the grass on the edge of town.

It moved so sluggishly that a casual glance in its direction would reveal nothing at all. The sprouting seed absorbed the moonlight and glowed with magic as it gradually grew ever larger.

Lying on her back, she gazed up to see an unfamiliar man leaning over her. He was standing right next to her, something warping his considerate smile as he gazed down at her.

Whispering something, he lifted the object in his grip. The sharp edge of a dagger flashed in the argent light streaming from the window. He plunged it down toward her belly without hesitation, and she let out a shriek.

“NOOOOOOOOOO!”

Aurelia jerked awake with a scream. She was in her room in the estate, alone. There was no one else there, and she was uninjured.

The dream had felt so real. She was shaking all over as she hugged herself. Sweat coated her body

“I am so… glad… I woke up…”

Just then, there was a knock at the door. Aurelia’s racing heart practically stopped.

“What’s wrong, Aurelia?” Travis asked as he walked in. Once she saw his face, she finally trusted that she was back in reality and felt relief wash over her.

“I had a dream… Someone was trying to stab me… They…”

“You had a vision about her past, huh?” Travis said with an irritated click of his tongue.

Aurelia had an unusual ability to see into the history of others. Normally, Travis kept that power suppressed, but it did slip through the seal when Aurelia encountered someone with a particularly intense past. Powerful mages typically had old traumas, and there was no better example of that than Tinasha. It was truly an unfortunate accident that Aurelia had met her when Travis hadn’t been there.

“I’ll take that memory out. Her past is wholly unpleasant,” the demon stated. He approached the edge of the bed and laid a hand on Aurelia’s forehead. After some hesitation, the girl closed her eyes. He gazed down at her.

Her face is so small and pale.

She was so fragile. Should he wish to, he could snap his fingers and make her disappear. Not even dust would remain.

If he killed her now… she would linger in his memories forever, and the loss would torment him. Aurelia had the power to do that to him. Her strong will glowed from within her tender, vulnerable frame.

Why was he so attached to her? Even Travis couldn’t say. At some point, he’d found himself fascinated by the way she was intent on standing on her own two feet, even though they were shaky and trembling. She never gave up on herself. Despite being a weak creature, she was stronger than anything.

For that reason, Travis was willing to pay any price to keep her safe. Each time Aurelia spoke his name, he could feel something inside him changing.

He whispered the girl’s name, and she looked up at him.

“What?”

“I’m going to have to step out for a bit. I’ll post some guards, so behave while I’m away,” he said.

“Where are you going?”

“Somewhere good. I’ll be back before you know it.”

Aurelia cast a suspicious look at Travis. “What does that mean? You’re not going off to cause trouble, are you?”

“I’m not. Have a little faith.”

“Impossible,” she fired back. Travis made an exasperated face.

The expression turned unusually grave after a moment, though. “If someone you don’t know comes by asking about me while I’m gone, tell them I’m head over heels for that woman.”

“What woman? The queen of Tuldarr?”

“Yep. Also, do not leave this house under any circumstances.”

“O-okay,” Aurelia replied, feeling compelled to nod.

Noticing the worry in her eyes, Travis gave her a smile and stroked her hair to assuage her doubts. “Now that you understand, go back to sleep. Don’t want any dark circles under your eyes tomorrow.”

“No, I don’t,” Aurelia agreed, lying back down. She glanced up at Travis, watching how the moonlight threw his features into dark relief. “So you’re coming back?”

“Of course I am. I’ll return before you know it,” he answered.

He hadn’t told a single lie where it counted, so Aurelia felt she could believe him.

She closed her eyes and drifted into a dreamless sleep.

When she woke up the following day, he was gone.

In the morning, a half-asleep Tinasha dragged herself into a bath. An hour later, the blood in her body was finally circulating, and she felt more awake. She stood naked before her full-length mirror, examining her pale and slender form. Her lips curled downward as she observed the bright red crest blooming across her chest.

“I suppose I’m glad it’s somewhere I can hide, but it’s quite the garish symbol,” she commented.

“Of course it is. That’s the sort of thing that’s meant to be shown off. It’s like he wrote his name on you,” Lilia pointed out from behind her, handing her master a fresh set of clothes. “You shouldn’t wear any light fabrics. It’ll stand out like a beacon.”

“It’s too dangerous for me to go to Farsas until it’s gone.”

“That Akashia swordsman might rip it clean off your skin if he found out,” Lilia agreed.

“Stop it, that isn’t even funny…”

He wouldn’t really, but he might be so angry that he’d want to. Oscar would definitely hate Travis even more than he already did. Keeping it a secret from him was absolutely critical.

Tinasha donned a mage’s robe that buttoned up to her neck. “I wonder how long it’ll take until the situation is resolved.”

Lilia shrugged. “Who knows? That all depends on Travis.”

“Meaning it’s completely unpredictable,” Tinasha concluded, gazing beseechingly up at the ceiling.

It was that very afternoon when the first attack came.

The queen was doing paperwork in her study when she abruptly looked up. Something was approaching from the air, tripping the castle wards. Tinasha looked to Mila, who was sitting in a corner of the room.

“They’re here,” the spirit said.

“Looks like it,” Tinasha concurred, getting to her feet. As she did, a man teleported into the center of the room. The high-handed way of warping in without even setting any coordinates was something only the highest-ranking demons could do.

The slim man with bright lavender hair gazed right at Tinasha, or rather, at the mark on her chest. He sneered, as if he were looking upon something too trifling to even bother with. “Are you his little doll of the moment?”

“Well… I suppose he does often toy with me. Why are you here?” she replied.

“My master says that mark of yours is hideous. Your life’s a short one anyway, so it won’t matter much when it ends, will it?”

“I agree with half of what you said. However—”

Tinasha grinned and spread her arms wide. In response, an enormous spell configuration hidden within the room flared to life. A magic circle made of silver threads materialized on the floor, with the man at its center.

It was then that the demon realized he had walked right into a very carefully planned ambush.

With a beatific smile on her lips, Tinasha stretched a hand out toward him. “Today will not be the day I perish.”

She snapped her fingers, and power surged forth.

There wasn’t even time to scream. With a horror-struck expression, he exploded into pieces. Bits of murky blood and guts and black fog spattered all over the room. The gruesome spray hit a barrier Mila had set up and dripped onto the floor.

“That was over too soon,” Mila giggled. With a wave of her hand, the barrier and the man’s remains vanished.

The queen resettled back into her chair, a tight smile on her face. “If they’re all that weak, I welcome however many more she sends.”

“It does feel like a waste of time.”

It was Tinasha’s belief that the success or failure of magical warfare hinged on strategy, whether the target was a human or a demon. As long as she knew her enemy was coming, it wasn’t too difficult to engage them, high-ranking demon or not.

Still, Tinasha felt uneasy as she reset the spell in the room.

There’s no way something Travis asked me to do would be this easy…

“Danan’s been wiped out,” a woman muttered dispassionately, her tone belying a lack of any real grief. But to those who knew her well, that was shocking in and of itself. The demons stationed around her all froze.

The woman seated on the throne was as beautiful as a painting—so much so that she didn’t seem real. Her long silver hair flowed to the ground in gentle waves. The shimmer of the clearest ocean waters shone in her eyes.

While she appeared to be around twenty years old, her true age far exceeded one thousand. She was one of those at the pinnacle of the demon race.

Resting her chin in one hand, she said to the man kneeling closest to her, “I wonder what his new toy is like.”

“It would seem she is a powerful mage, for a mortal. However… she is served by twelve of our own,” a man answered timidly.

The woman frowned. Her lips curled in a sneer. “Twelve? They can’t be much better than trash to serve such a lowly worm. What a disgrace to our people. I’ll put all of them out of their misery while I’m at it.”

“Oh, but I think I’ll be putting you out of your misery first,” someone called. All present let out cries of shock as their gazes converged on a silver-haired man with a gorgeous face and a derisive smirk on his lips.

The woman rose, a mixture of surprise and joy in her expression. “Travis! You’ve come?”

“Only because you’ve forced me to,” he said. The woman stepped forward joyously, but Travis snorted and kept her away. “I want you to stop clinging to me already. This is the last time I’m going to bother with you, Phaedra… You can break into a million pieces for all I care.”

It was a brutal statement.

Phaedra’s smile froze on her face.

Then a huge wave of power tore the hall apart.

Oscar caught a baby’s cry, and a strained grin came to his lips.

The abandoned infant was a boy, and for convenience’s sake, he had been given the name Ian.

It was two days after the celebration, and there was still no information on the child, and no parent had come forth. The ladies-in-waiting in the castle were still taking care of the child in shifts.

After tidying up some papers, Lazar caught sight of the king’s expression and pricked up his ears. “What will we do if we never find the baby’s parents?”

“Raise him in town, I guess. We’ll find him a foster family,” Oscar replied, and Lazar nodded in relief.

Oscar narrowed his eyes at him. “Don’t think I’ve forgotten how you screwed things up with Tinasha and got her upset with me. I’m still working out how you’re going to pay that one off.”

“B-but I was only speaking the truth,” Lazar countered.

“Maybe, but you still didn’t need to say it. I wonder how long you can stand being hung upside down.”

“N-not even an hour!” Lazar squeaked, violently shaking his head back and forth. Oscar eyed his panicked friend, who looked utterly defeated. “Anyway… I never thought she would truly take offense to it.”

“You know she’s the jealous type. We’re just lucky all the windows stayed intact. Although maybe breaking a few would’ve helped her feel better? I might set aside some panes for her to smash if she needs to.”

“She’d be even angrier with you if you did that, Your Majesty. But at the time, she really didn’t seem too bothered by what I let slip…”

“So you agree that you let something slip,” Oscar said.

Lazar was right, though. Tinasha really hadn’t looked that upset. Or maybe she just hadn’t let it show.

She’d given her flimsy excuse about a sickness before Oscar had brought that up, however. Something didn’t add up. It was nagging at him.

Oscar frowned. “I guess I’ll just ask her about it the next time we meet.”

He reached for his next set of documents. Privately, Lazar breathed a sigh of relief.

Now the baby’s crying sounded much louder than before. A lady-in-waiting had to be walking around with the infant, trying to soothe him.

Oscar found that odd, but he returned to his work instead of checking on it.

The day she first met him, Aurelia was covered in mud.

Occasionally, she had dreams about that rainy day.

She’d lost her parents when she was only ten, but she had to go much further back in her memories than that to recall a time when they’d showed her affection.

When Aurelia was around five, she had asked her mother, “Did Grandfather hit you yesterday, Mother?”

She would never forget her mother’s reaction. It shifted gradually from astonishment to fear. Young as Aurelia was, she couldn’t understand why her mother reacted like that.

After many more conversations like that one, Aurelia finally learned that she should not speak of everything she saw in her mind. But by that time, her parents no longer wished to see her.

They would leave her at home and rarely return. Even when she did see them, they would treat her as if she didn’t exist.

But when they passed away, Aurelia cried, nonetheless. Of course she was sad. They had hardly shown any kindness to her, but she still loved them.

It rained during the funeral the following day.

Aurelia was hiding out under a tree in a corner of the expansive gardens, sobbing. She couldn’t take the servants’ pitying looks.

After she’d cried herself out and her whole body had grown cold, Aurelia got up to go back inside… only to slip in the mud and fall over. With both hands planted in the muck, she felt fresh tears begin to roll down her cheeks.

All of a sudden, a man’s voice came from overhead. “Are you crying? Oh, you’re all muddy, too. Can’t you get up on your own?”

He sounded amused, whoever he was. Aurelia didn’t recognize the voice.

Glancing up, she saw a beautiful man she had never seen before. His bright silver hair wasn’t wet from the rain at all. He was floating a little above the ground; perhaps he didn’t want to get his shoes dirty.

Aurelia slowly climbed to her feet and brushed the mud off her hands. Throwing out her chest, she stared at him head-on. “I was crying, but I can stand on my own. A little grime doesn’t bother me.”

He was taken aback by the strength of will blazing in her eyes.

That was how the story of Travis and Aurelia began.

After waking, she walked around the mansion, looking for Travis. That had been her habit for over a week now.

He still hadn’t returned. A blond man was standing at attention in the great hall. He was a guard Travis had left behind.

“Hey, do you know where Travis went? He told me he’d be right back, but he’s not,” Aurelia said.

“There is no need to worry. He will return. I’m sure he’s simply taken a detour on his way back,” the man answered.

“I hope that’s all it is…”

She had known ever since they met that her guardian wasn’t human. Travis had never made an attempt to conceal that from her. Just when she’d thought the man she met at her parents’ funeral was gone for good, he’d reappeared as a duke claiming to be her legal guardian. Her jaw had dropped.

When she asked him if he was strong for a demon, he made a face and gave her a roundabout answer. “Listen, the higher rank you are as a demon, the more you need to present as a human, or you’ll lose yourself.”

He consumed food; he bled. That made him a very high-ranking demon.

When she asked him why he consorted with humans, he replied, “Because it’s fun.”

He had a nasty personality and a bad philandering habit. When they were together, she felt like the guardian.

Worst of all, he was utterly incorrigible. Was that just his demon nature?

Yet, all the while, he supported her. That was more evident now that he was gone.

Aurelia was the black sheep of the Gandona royal family, but Travis never abandoned her. His attitude was to never look back and never give up. There were struggles along the way, but he was always by Aurelia’s side as she worked to move forward.

Where could he be? Why wasn’t he coming back? With so little information, she could only worry.

She bit her lip. “Travis…”

What if he’s gone to that beautiful queen?

The queen Aurelia had met in Farsas was unlike the rest of his usual entourage. When she pondered why she felt so uneasy about her, Aurelia realized something. Based on Tinasha’s attitude when she saw Travis in the ballroom, she probably knew what Travis was.

Aurelia didn’t know if it was because she was such an exceptional mage or because they had some shared history. Regardless, the queen knew Travis was a demon, and she was still close with him.

Perhaps she knows where he is.

Aurelia closed her eyes. She was just too anxious. Little by little, that fretting was turning to a leaden feeling in her gut.

How long would he be with her? Would he leave someday?

Maybe he already had.

Aurelia fought back her hesitation, opened her eyes, and marched out of the great hall. Determination burned deep within her heart.

All had been calm in Tuldarr since the attack one week before. Tinasha stopped in the middle of her daily paperwork to stretch her arms overhead. She even let out a silly squeak, which attracted the attention of Karr and Mila, who were playing cards.

“Things sure are peaceful,” commented Mila.

“It’s not over yet, though,” Karr pointed out.

No more assassins had come, but that didn’t mean the situation was resolved. The mark on Tinasha’s chest hadn’t disappeared, and Travis hadn’t dropped by.

Tinasha pulled down her shirt a little to check on the brand. “How long is this going to take?”

“Time passes differently over there, so it’s likely only been a few hours for them at most,” Mila replied.

“What? Really? I had no idea,” Tinasha replied.

“Demons in the demon realm only exist as conceptual entities, so they don’t pay much attention to how long or slow time is.”

“I see…”

High-ranking demons existed on a separate plane of existence. Only a few chose to appear in the human realm.

Unable to fathom such a world, Tinasha sighed. “Travis will definitely win, right?”

“Undoubtedly. There are twelve demons in the uppermost echelons, but he is the strongest of them all. Lady Phaedra is at the top of the midrange,” Mila explained.

“Wow. There’s a whole other ten of them.”

“Personally, I think you’re much more impressive. It’s hard to believe you have as much magic as a higher-ranking demon in that fragile little body of yours,” Karr remarked.

“Hmm. We must seem very strange to one another, demons and humans,” Tinasha mused as she gazed out the window. Clouds covered the sky; it was not fair weather that day.

Wondering if it was going to rain, Tinasha got up from her desk and walked over to the windows. Just then, she got a flash of instinct and took a step back.

Travis dashed through the darkness in pursuit of his enemy.

Time and space existed and limited the demon realm, though not in the same ways as in the human realm. Demons, whose forms were more like conceptual entities, simply had a different awareness of those things.

Phaedra had fled the instant she’d sensed Travis’s hostility. While they were two of the most powerful demons in existence, she was no match for him in a head-on fight. Unfortunately, catching her when she ran was very difficult.

The end of his long pursuit was nearing, however.

“I’ve blocked off all your exits. Come out, Phaedra.”

His cold, irritated voice rang out in the darkness.

The concept of love was foreign to demons. The closest things they experienced were curiosity and attachment. Travis couldn’t abide anyone who wanted to legitimize those as genuine affection.

The woman he was pursuing was no different. Phaedra didn’t love him—she only wanted to possess and monopolize him. Travis would never agree to such a boring game. He had found something much more important.

Travis grew irritated at Phaedra’s refusal to face him. He let his power rise in preparation for the kill.

“Then you can die,” he spat, words sharp like a blade.

Just as the words left his mouth, a blast of searing white light sped toward him.

Tinasha took a step back only to behold a pillar of golden radiance right before her eyes. The light struck the barrier on the floor and exploded.

“Whoa!” she yelped, leaping away.

Her two spirits conjured a shield to protect her from the blast. As Tinasha cast a defensive spell, Mila and Karr stepped out in front of her.

The surprise attack had penetrated multiple barriers. Tinasha licked her lips nervously.

Karr said tightly, “Run, little girl. We’ll buy you some time.”

She’d only heard him talk like that once before. Of the twelve mystical spirits, Karr was the second most powerful. Tinasha’s eyes grew wide in shock as Mila added, “Please run, Lady Tinasha. I think she’s here.”

As she spoke, a fearsome and intimidating presence filled the room. Tinasha took in the sight of a woman clad in a blinding, brilliant light and finally realized what was happening. “Oh no…”

The last time Karr had addressed her that way was when Travis had appeared. That meant this woman was of the same rank.

She had gently undulating, long silvery hair and pale blue eyes. There was no doubting her beauty.

Like Tinasha, there was something strange and ephemeral in her features. But hers were twisted with malicious intent.

Her clear eyes glittered ominously as her gaze pierced straight through Tinasha. “Are you that little insect I’ve heard so much about? Rejoice, for you get to die by my hand.”

Tinasha smiled tightly in the face of her death verdict. While trying not to leave herself open in any way, she spared a glance up at the ceiling.

Faced with one of her greatest dilemmas yet, this all-powerful mage and queen’s first reaction was a sigh. “Stupid Travis.”

Her tone held a pronounced tinge of resignation.

As he used both hands to divert the light that came suddenly rushing at him, Travis frowned suspiciously. That attack was far too powerful to have come from Phaedra.

However, he did know who was powerful enough to manage it—a man who was also one of the highest-ranking demons.

As he suppressed his annoyance, Travis let a cruel smirk curl his lips. “What do you think you’re doing, Taviti? Where did Phaedra go?”

“She’s manifested in the human realm,” something replied. The other demon had taken no physical shape. Only words alone, infused with his will, filled the space.

Travis clicked his tongue irritably. At some point, his quarry had changed places with someone else. Fury boiled within him for getting so roundly deceived.

The voice continued mockingly, “Perhaps you didn’t notice because you’ve grown so accustomed to wearing that filthy meatsack of a body? Oh, how the mighty have fallen.”

“Can it. Why are you here?” snapped Travis.

“I’m simply trying to help cure you of your pathetic addiction to those insects. The dignity of the greatest demons is in jeopardy, and that concerns us all,” the voice explained.

Travis smirked. He held his left hand out invitingly, scarlet lightning crackling at his fingertips. “So we agree, then. I’m equally fed up with sharing my position with the likes of you.”

As Travis poured his emotions into his magic, he thought of two mortals.

One was the girl he had sworn to protect.

The other was a woman who possessed enough power to match his own.

Taviti wouldn’t let Travis go easily, and Travis didn’t intend to run anyway. He meant to give Taviti everything he deserved for standing in his way.

In the meantime, Phaedra must have arrived with great fanfare and devastating might to kill his old friend. In one part of his mind, Travis wondered if he would make it in time or not. Ultimately, he gave up midway through. “Eh, she can probably fend for herself.”

Then he unleashed a scarlet bolt of light.

The room surged with searing bolts of lightning. Karr and Mila worked together to warp the attacks far away.

Phaedra’s lips curled in a bitter grin as she beheld their swift teamwork. “You’re pretty good for trash who takes orders from a nasty bug.”

“Believe it or not, we’ve been around for a long time,” replied Karr with a friendly smirk, though he couldn’t hide how tense he was. Unpleasant memories from four hundred years ago, when every mystical spirit had been soundly defeated by one high-ranking demon, flashed through his mind. While Phaedra ranked below that man, she was still one of the strongest of their kind.

Behind Karr, Mila signaled with her eyes to her master. But before Tinasha could respond, a golden shaft of lightning formed in Phaedra’s hand. The blood drained from all three of their faces as they beheld that blinding glow.

This one was much more powerful than the one before. One wrong move and half of the entire castle would be rubble.

“Lady Tinasha!” cried Mila, leaping in front of her master to shield her.

Several spells were cast all at once.

Everything went white.

“Ngh!”

Tinasha reached out, suppressing the magic that was gushing up.

The next thing she knew, she was hurling through sudden darkness.

Mila was flabbergasted when her beautiful master first announced she was going to put herself in a magic sleep.

Going back in time was impossible. That man had to have lied about coming from the future. So then why was her master putting such stock in it? Why was she so in thrall to this desire that she was attempting to go through time? Mila couldn’t understand any part of it.

Many of the other spirits chided Tinasha for it, too. Mila felt confident that they could dissuade her. That changed when Tinasha explained things to her.

A tiny bit of loneliness swam in the darkness of her eyes, and yet they blazed with determination.

It was the first time Mila had ever seen her master with a wish so strong she was intent on having her way.

When Tinasha’s pleading gaze, more like a little girl’s than a queen’s, fell on her, Mila felt herself crumble. With a grimace, she said, “I’ll be your guard, then. Trust me to handle everything.”

Her master was stunned, as were all the other spirits.

But that didn’t bother Mila. A strange sense of duty had come over her, filling her with satisfaction.

That was probably the moment she stopped being a spirit of Tuldarr. So long as her beautiful and entirely unique master existed in this world, she would fight to protect her.

“Mila! Mila! Wake up!”

Someone shook her shoulder, and Mila’s eyes opened. Close to nine hundred years had passed since she had taken corporeal form and manifested in this realm; she had adapted completely. She opened and closed her hands over and over, getting a feel for all her senses.

Glancing up, she saw Tinasha and Karr peering down at her with concern. She waved a hand at them and sat up.

They weren’t in the palace; they were behind a half-crumbled wall built of stone. Looking around, she realized this was a part of some sprawling ruins.

“Are we in… the old capital?”

“Yes,” Tinasha answered. A presence-muffling barrier surrounded them.

Mila recalled what had just happened. “Lady Tinasha, is Phaedra…?”

“I believe she’s searching for us,” replied the queen with an upward jerk of her chin. No figure was visible in the dark sky, but Mila could sense something out of the ordinary.

During the attack in the study, Tinasha had put up a barrier to enhance the spirits’ defenses and had simultaneously teleported everyone out via an array. Their present location was an entirely uninhabited wasteland found south of the main city of Tuldarr.

The stone megaliths that made up the cityscape were all that remained of an era when this had been the center of Tuldarr. Close to five centuries ago, a forbidden curse ran amok and left the city partially destroyed. The survivors relocated to the north. Weathered ruins were all that remained.

A wave of Phaedra’s magic wriggled through the skies above like a homing beacon. They wouldn’t remain hidden forever.

Mila staggered to her feet. “Sorry, but I’m going to go buy us some time.”

“Absolutely not,” Tinasha said, rejecting that at once.

Mila gaped at her. “But Lady Tinasha…”

A tender smile appeared on her master’s lovely face. “I will go. You two keep the barrier up around this whole area.”

Her tone brooked no objections. Fierce determination blazed in her dark eyes.

Mila knew that look well. Since Tinasha was just a girl, she had ruled over them as their queen. In the face of such inviolable majesty, the two spirits bowed their heads.

An amused-sounding peal of laughter rang out from above. “So this is where you are? How sneaky. I found it dreadfully dull.”

Tinasha gave a tight smile in response to her enemy’s scorn. She spread her arms out wide. “Itz, Senn, Saiha, Lilia, Kunai, Eir, Sylpha!”

The Tuldarr mystical spirits who had served the Magic Empire for nine hundred years answered her summons. All of them materialized around Tinasha, save for the three who always guarded Tuldarr.

Phaedra snorted. “You lot came all this way just to be brought down by my hand?”

The spirits ignored the demon queen’s open scorn and looked only at their master, awaiting her orders.

Tinasha flashed them a relaxed smile as a spell formed between her hands. “All of you hold your positions.”

Every spirit understood what that meant. Their master had decided to fight alone, and she would permit no dissent. They bowed and vanished.

Immediately after, a barrier sprang up with Tinasha at the center, encapsulating the little city. This barrier, maintained by nine powerful demons, would demarcate the battlefield and prevent any magic from escaping and damaging some other place.

Tinasha took a deep breath of air into her lungs. She held her breath and teleported into the sky, her long black hair fluttering. “I certainly didn’t think I would get this opportunity again…”

The spirits weren’t the only ones reminded of the battle with Travis. Tinasha still tasted the bitterness of that defeat. She and all of her spirits had only survived at his whim.

But things were different now. Phaedra clearly sought to kill her.

If Tinasha died, the contract with the spirits would end.

She thought back to four hundred years ago, and a smile cracked her lips. If she perished, the spirits might be able to flee. They weren’t mere servants to her—they were her friends that she cared for deeply.

Tinasha pulled her mind away from morbid speculation. She was not expecting to lose this fight. Why had Travis come to her with this? If this was just a matter of a capable demon assassin, his underlings probably could have handled it. In all likelihood, he had asked for her help because he’d anticipated a direct confrontation with Phaedra.

“I wish he’d just told me that from the start,” she muttered under her breath. Focusing her mind, she eyed the powerful demon queen before her.

I’m one of only a handful of mortals who can defy them.

Tinasha lifted her right hand, and a sword appeared in it. Her eyes traced the length of the blade, which glinted purple.

So quiet only she could hear it, Tinasha whispered, “No matter who I’m up against, I am done losing.”

Phaedra smiled pityingly—and yet cruelly—at the mortal woman leveling a sword at her. Her lilting, melodic voice rent the air. “Are you ready for your death? Come and let me kill you quickly, filthy pest. I can’t stand this tepid sack of flesh. I want to be home now.”

Even the words she spat in disgust carried an alluring charm.

“Yes, I’m ready for your death. Please come whenever you’re ready,” Tinasha replied, undaunted

“Why you little…”

Silvery white and obsidian black clashed. Two women, such opposites in every way, filled the sky with vast and powerful spells.

The two magical forces collided in a flurry of sparks, like a streak of lightning.

A drop of rain hit the windowpane.

Popping his head up at the sound, Oscar glanced over his shoulder at the window. It was still afternoon, but the sky was dark and gray with heavy clouds. A light rain began to fall, dripping down onto the trees in the gardens.

The king sighed as he picked up a pen to sign a few documents. “Should I have gone to Ynureid in the morning?”

“The weather’s been ghastly all day,” Lazar pointed out.

The new fortress at Ynureid was mostly complete, and Oscar had plans to head there for an inspection. The structure was entirely protected from the rain, so that wouldn’t hamper anything, but a lack of sunlight would make things fairly annoying.

Still, that was no reason for him to change his plans. Oscar got to his feet. “Guess I’ll go get ready.”

“Yes, Your Majesty,” responded Lazar, opening the study door to go and help his liege make his preparations. But once he looked out into the corridor, he froze. “Aaah!”

Oscar frowned when he heard Lazar’s shriek of terror. “What is it?”

“Th-the baby…”

Oscar peered over Lazar’s shoulder to see the baby, wrapped in swaddling cloth, lying on the floor right outside the door. His blue marble eyes stared straight at Oscar.

“What’s he doing here? Who’s the lady-in-waiting in charge of watching him?” asked Oscar.

“I—I’m not sure… That really scared me. He’s not even crying, so we have no way of knowing how long he’s been there,” said Lazar.

“This is ridiculous. Take him away, and I’ll get ready on my own,” Oscar said.

Heeding his king’s orders, Lazar picked up the baby and headed for the drawing room where the ladies-in-waiting could be found.

Oscar turned to go the other way, unaware that the infant was watching him the entire time.

Ynureid’s walls were wet with the drizzle.

Because Oscar had completed the majority of the inspection earlier, after the battle with Cezar, he only needed to inspect the storehouses, the armory, and the overall defense of the fortress.

Oscar was in a council room with General Granfort and other military personnel and magistrates when an officer entered wearing a bewildered look. “Your Majesty, a visitor has arrived for you…”

“A visitor? Here? Who is it?” Oscar asked.

“She says her name is Lady Aurelia of Gandona, sire.”

He recognized the name. It was difficult to forget the girl who had accompanied that demon bastard.

What did she want, though? With a scowl, Oscar asked, “Is her companion with her?”

“No, she is here alone. It appears she’s come on urgent business.”

“Very well, then. I’ll go see her,” said Oscar.

Normally, he would have no obligation to meet with someone from another country, especially one who arrived without an appointment. But if Aurelia claimed it was pressing, then he had to listen. After clearing out all but a handful of magistrates from the chamber, Oscar gave orders to have her brought in.

When Aurelia entered, she apologized for rudely arriving unannounced. Then, with a steely look in her eye, she got right down to business. “Your Majesty, do you know where Travis is?”

“Excuse me?” was all Oscar could say, utterly flabbergasted by that question. “I have no idea. I haven’t seen him since the party.”

“It’s been more than a week since he left me. He said he’d be right back, but I don’t know where he’s gone… Nothing like this has ever happened before,” she explained, gazing earnestly at Oscar.

The king of Farsas frowned. If it had been a week, then that meant Travis had departed shortly after the celebration in Farsas. It wasn’t surprising to learn Aurelia was fretting, but he couldn’t see what it had to do with him. Besides, that man was one of the highest-ranking demons. Oscar couldn’t think of much that would be a threat to him. Travis had likely flitted back to the demon realm on a whim.

Oscar was about to say as much to Aurelia when the next part of her explanation stunned him silent. “I thought Queen Tinasha might know where he’d gone, so I went to Tuldarr. But she’s not there, either… No one knows where she’s gone, so I thought she might be with you.”

“No… she’s not. I haven’t seen her since the day of the party, either. So she’s gone missing?” he asked.

“I was told she was in her study until the afternoon but has since vanished. There are burn marks in the room, so some manner of magic may have been used…”

Unconsciously, Oscar began to grind his teeth.

Something didn’t add up. And this feeling was oddly familiar.

Tinasha had been acting suspiciously after the party, too. And Travis had disappeared on the same night. Something had been off about Tinasha, and now she’d vanished as well.

Maybe he was worrying too much, but Oscar began to have a bad feeling that something had happened.

He needed to look into things immediately and act before it was too late.

Rising to his feet, he glanced at his magistrates. With a sour look on his face, he said, “I’m sorry, but I have to go to Tuldarr. I’ll finish the inspection another day.”

“Yes, Your Majesty!” the magistrates responded right away.

In sharp contrast, Aurelia leaped up in surprise. To her, Oscar said, “You’ve got me worried now, so I’m going to have a look. Once I’ve arrived in Tuldarr, I’ll have my dragon track Tinasha down. I’ll contact you when I know something.”

“I—I’m going, too!” Aurelia insisted.

Now it was Oscar’s turn to look flabbergasted. His eyebrows shot up as he replied, “We don’t know what’s at the root of this. I can’t be responsible for your safety.”

“I’m a mage. Take me with you, please,” she pleaded.

“But you may become the enemy,” he said.

“What enemy?”

Aurelia was confused; she didn’t quite understand what Oscar meant. Was he implying that the two of them might wind up as foes? Or that she and Tinasha would be? It was difficult to imagine, and Aurelia wasn’t sure how to answer.

While she was sorting her thoughts out, the king cut in coolly. “The man you’re searching for is the most suspicious one in all of this. Two times now, he’s almost killed Tinasha simply because he felt like it.”

“He has?”

“And if he’s trying to do the same thing again, you should know that I will end him. And if you come along, what will you end up doing then?”

“Travis really did that…?” Aurelia asked with disbelief. Were Oscar’s words true? Had Travis almost killed Tinasha?

Her eyes darted here and there frantically. She wasn’t catching glimpses of another’s past, but rather, she was rifling through her own memories.

Yes, Travis was bad-natured and enjoyed upsetting others. But over the last six years they had spent together, he had never once caused her physical harm. When he’d admitted to “riling” Tinasha up before, Aurelia never imagined the truth of that statement was so dark.

Aurelia knew what Travis really was, though, and she understood that he had a tendency to regard mortals with very little care.

Still, that couldn’t be all there was to it.

When Aurelia glanced up, Oscar was staring her down with a fierce, commanding gaze. She looked down and away, her face turning sorrowful. “What he did was inexcusable. I know it’s not something that an apology can solve, but do allow me to say I’m very sorry…”

“There’s nothing you need to apologize for,” Oscar pointed out, suppressing a sigh. This was a tricky situation. Aurelia was a member of the Gandonan royal family, so he couldn’t ignore or offend her, but her sudden visit had brought a significant upset.

Oscar puzzled over how to deal with her, and the girl showed no signs of backing down. “If he is about to fight Tinasha, I will stop him. I promise I won’t get in your way. Please take me with you.”

Desperation was written all over her face. Her delicate, fragile frame emanated pure determination.

Seeing her like this gave Oscar the strangest sense of déjà vu. He realized he was thinking of his fiancée and the way she would set her jaw and step forward, vowing not to lose. Despite the inherent awkwardness in that posturing, it was difficult for Oscar to ignore it.

Feeling himself break into a faint smile, Oscar sidestepped the girl to get to the door. “If you’re a mage, then you should be able to look after yourself.”

“Th-that’s right!” she cried, running after the king as he opened the door.

Then Oscar froze.

“What’s wrong?” the girl asked, peeking over his shoulder.

There, in the hallway, lay the baby, wrapped in swaddling cloth.

At her core, Tinasha hated battles.

Since before her original coronation, she had constantly found herself entangled in a maelstrom of conflicts almost daily. Despite having the power to destroy an entire country overnight if she wanted to, she seldom wielded her full capabilities in battle. Even in the war with Tayiri, she was undecided to the last over whether she should mobilize all her strength and decimate the opposing army.

For that reason, Tinasha was actually almost grateful when the Witch Who Cannot Be Summoned came to kill her. Fighting a witch eliminated the indecision on whether to marshal all her power. For the first time, she brought out the whole might of her magic to slay her enemy.

The clash lasted for an entire day. The fierce showdown was on a scale that had never been seen before, with the mystical spirits and witch’s demon servants in the fray as well.

And when Tinasha killed the witch at last, she stood stock-still on the ravaged earth, devastated by the ruin of it all. The first stirrings of doubt flickered through her heart. Was Tinasha not a witch herself, to be capable of wielding such immense power?

While Tinasha’s right hand loosed a spell, her left swept through the air, setting off a wave of magic that neutralized the golden thorns flying at her from all directions. Phaedra growled in irritation that Tinasha had used the smallest bit of power to stop all her attacks. The demon queen scowled and was halfway through casting a new spell when she was suddenly yanked down by her ankles.

“What in the—?”

Innumerable silver threads were coiled around Phaedra’s legs, pulling her down through the air and throwing her off balance. After struggling to free herself from the restraints, she made a split-second decision and applied the spell she was casting to herself.

No sooner had Phaedra done so than Tinasha sent forth black flames that engulfed the demon.

The fire should have been enough to incinerate Phaedra down to her bones, but it fizzled before it had the chance. Free of the flames and silver threads, Phaedra glowered at Tinasha with fury burning in her eyes.

“You impertinent little…”

She had thought this insect beneath her. And her wounded pride only fueled her bloodlust.

“Tch,” Tinasha tutted. “I suppose it was never going to be that easy. Let’s try this, then.”

Another spell took shape. It turned into nine spears that zoomed for Phaedra at staggering speeds. The demon shattered the first furiously, but the other eight evaded her attacks and arranged themselves in midair.

“Miserable little worm!” Phaedra howled.

“Call me whatever you like while you still can,” Tinasha said, carefully controlling the trajectories of the remaining spears. Then her focus happened to shift to Phaedra’s right leg. Rivulets of blood were running down the white flesh, the result of the silver threads previously wrapped tightly around it. The wound must have been deep, because the crimson streams thickened, dripping down before scattering on the breeze.

“Hmm?” Tinasha mused. As Phaedra smashed the last spear, Tinasha teleported away. A second later, a bolt of lightning struck the spot where she’d been.

Time slowed to a crawl, and Tinasha’s world narrowed until there was only the battle—anticipating and acting. She felt her own mind gradually grow sharper and sharper. Her next spell came with no recitation, then she crafted a double incantation on top of it.

“All right, here I go,” she whispered before releasing three spells at once. As a feint, arrows rained down on Phaedra. When she blocked them with a magical barrier, a silver ball of light whizzed through it at breakneck speed and closed in on her.

“Ugh!” the demon growled. Although she raised her hand, she was unable to muster a complete defense. She leaped to one side to try and elude the attack but found that she couldn’t move. Her eyes grew wide with shock and panic. Myriad vines held her firmly from behind. She wouldn’t make it.

The ball of light struck Phaedra and swallowed her. As Tinasha put up a hand to shield herself from the blinding white glow, she giggled. “You’ve still got more in you, don’t you? Go on and show me what else you’re capable of.”

She was high on the exhilaration of battle. The spells ricocheting around the space were more beautiful than anything.

Tinasha read her enemy’s next move. Her thoughts were clear.

A natural grin spread across the queen of Tuldarr’s face; her mind now honed to a razor-sharp edge. That beatific, gracious expression carried with it the power to enchant all who beheld it.

The light that had consumed Phaedra exploded. The woman who emerged from it wore a bone-chilling smile as she faced her opponent. “Of course… I will take great pleasure in breaking down every meaning in this world for you.”

The demon cast her eyes downward. Hundreds of sickles materialized in the air without an incantation. Tinasha beamed at such a sublime sight.

Immediately, the golden crescent-shaped blades arced through the air, racing toward Tinasha.

While channeling magic into her sword in one hand, the queen created beads of light in the other. She leaped backward and used her blade to dispatch the sickles rushing at her. As she did, the orb of light formed argent streaks in the sky as they shot down the remaining crescents.

Despite not being consciously aware of it, Tinasha knew the paths all of Phaedra’s projectiles were taking. She could fully perceive each and every bit of magic in the space the two women were in. If things continued as they were, she might just manage to overpower the demon.

But then, something made the faintest of impacts with Tinasha’s magic. “What was that?”

Her moment of discomposure allowed an attack to connect with her.

“Ow!” she cried as pain lanced through her right arm. From the corner of her eye, Tinasha saw her sword fall from her grip and tumble to the ground. Sickles seized upon the gap in her concentration, grazing her chest and left leg.

Wasting no time, Tinasha cast a spell, and hundreds of luminous beads appeared in front of her heart.

“Go!”

The globules scattered, flying at the crescent blades and crashing into them explosively. In the chaos, Tinasha teleported away and used magic to stop her bleeding. Upon inspecting her deepest wound, she found that her arm was torn to shreds from the elbow up. Her tendons might’ve been snapped because she couldn’t move her fingers very well.

“Oh? Whatever is the matter?” Phaedra asked with great amusement.

“Nothing at all. I’m only feeling a little sleepy,” Tinasha replied, purposely smiling back.

Inwardly, however, she was far from calm. Something had touched the defensive barrier placed on Oscar, which had distracted her and created that opening.

His barrier vibrating meant that something had attacked him with magic. What in the world was going on?

“Oscar…”

I want to go to him right now. I want to make sure he’s okay.

Tinasha had to dismiss that idea, though.

If she warped away now, Phaedra would follow. And to fight outside the space she had enclosed, which the spirits were keeping warded, would mean extraordinary damage. She couldn’t allow that.

Tinasha took a deep breath. Then a brilliant grin split her face. She used magic to make her immobilized arm stretch out toward Phaedra.

I believe in him.

From birth to death, humans were all alone in the world. Only thoughts and feelings, as fine and fragile as spider silk, linked them together.

Right now, winning this fight was Tinasha’s goal.

She would believe in him, and she would defeat her enemy.

“At the moment, you have my full attention. So how about a smile for me?” Tinasha purred.

Power amassed in the young woman’s right hand. A dark crevice rent the air between them.

Phaedra’s lips curled up. Her gaze was locked onto the mark on Tinasha’s flesh, exposed when a sickle had grazed her chest earlier. “That hateful mark. What does he see in you?”

“Oh, who knows, really?”

The crevice grew wide enough that the tip of it reached Phaedra, who forcibly compressed it with a spray of magical sparks.

The demon queen licked her lips with a bloodred tongue. “Then what is it about him that entices you?”

“I’m afraid I couldn’t say,” Tinasha responded tartly. She was simply a stand-in for Aurelia. She wouldn’t have the faintest clue what was attractive about Travis. She found herself drawn to a different sort of bright light altogether. “I doubt any answer I gave would be satisfying.”

Tinasha flung out her right hand, sending the blood on her arm flying. As she did, a dark bolt surged out of the half-closed crevice and made for Phaedra, forking off many times over into a network of jagged lines. The sparking cage closed around the demon queen. Phaedra scowled in distaste at this attack from the most powerful mortal mage. Spreading her arms wide, she produced a luminous golden sphere.

Branches of black lightning licked Phaedra’s skin and left shallow cuts on it as the ball of light pulled them inside, absorbing them. “Repugnant child of the spirits… That nasty, lukewarm body of yours will not fall under his control. I’ll slaughter you first, until not a single drop of blood remains.”

After swallowing the lightning, the golden orb turned a murky black.

Tinasha kept an eye on the situation while her right hand moved in the air. A sword the color of night formed in her grip. She calmed her mind while readying her weapon made of pure magic.

The world of the senses that is revealed to me is so very clear.

Nothing was warped or distorted, nor marred or stained.

She was alive, now and at this moment. She was in good spirits. Her senses were sharp, her magic was polished to a sheen, and her spells were developing beautifully. All of it gave her great joy.

Eyes dancing, Tinasha faced Phaedra. “My body is my own. Only I and one other may lay a hand on it.”

“Shut up, filthy worm!” Phaedra cried, hurling her conjured sphere.

With a full, throaty laugh, Tinasha leaped out in front of the demon.

After a blank moment, Oscar finally came to his senses and looked around the hallway.

There was no one there but the baby. Lazar was still back at Farsas Castle.

“Then who brought him here?” Oscar muttered.

The infant stared silently at Oscar. Anxiety surged through the man as he caught a glimpse of some bottomless darkness in the child’s blue eyes.

“What’s that? A baby?” Aurelia asked, slipping around Oscar and reaching out for the infant on the floor. However, Oscar grabbed her arm to stop her.

“Your Majesty?”

“There’s something off about that child. Don’t touch it,” Oscar cautioned, his judgment informed by his intuition alone. Tinasha had said there was nothing particularly dubious about the baby, but she only meant in a magical sense. She was just as suspicious as he was of why a baby addressed to him was abandoned now of all times.

This is no abandoned newborn. It’s after me.

Tapping a finger against his jaw as he puzzled over how to handle the situation, Oscar watched something bizarre happen. A black mist rose from the baby, climbing slowly toward the king. Instinctively, he reached for Akashia.

Aurelia screamed, “Your Majesty, don’t touch it!”

Oscar’s eyebrows shot up at her shrill cry. He pulled her back and shut the door on the baby. As he kept a wary eye on the door, he asked her, “What was that?”

“It’s a very strong miasma,” she replied. “If you touch it, you may be poisoned. What is that… baby…?”

Aurelia trailed off, her ashy blue eyes going wide as saucers. Oscar followed her gaze to the door and was just as stunned.

The massive door was slowly being dissolved from the other side, as if by a spray of acid. A small hole was developing in the wood. Groaning at the sight of black vapor seeping in, Oscar took a half step back and checked all around him.

The magistrates were staring back at the king with a mixture of fear and distress in their eyes. Faced with an unexpected emergency, Oscar made a split-second decision. “Everyone, get to the wall.”

As he spoke, he edged closer to the window. Opening it, he peered down. They were on the second floor, not too far from the ground.

“Pardon, Your Majesty?!”

“It’s probably after me. I’m going to draw it away, so you do as I say,” the king ordered, pointing to a door set in the wall opposite the windows. It connected to another council room, and if the magistrates exited that way, they should be able to avoid the baby and escape into the hallway.

Oscar already had one foot on the windowsill when Aurelia touched him and said a short incantation.

The next thing he knew, they were both teleported to a grassy field south of the fortress of Ynureid.

Oscar frowned as he stared at the fortress far in the distance. “Thanks for saving me, but what about everyone in that room?”

“I apologize for acting so rashly. However, I don’t think we need to worry about them,” Aurelia said with a tight smile, pointing in the opposite direction from the fort.

The baby was floating there, a black mist coiling around it. It had warped over in pursuit of them.

“If Lazar were here, he’d faint immediately,” Oscar whispered, tilting his head and frowning at the infant. Fortunately, they were surrounded by open grassland. Deciding to fight, the king pulled out Akashia.

“Can you teleport out of here? Go back to the fortress or Gandona,” Oscar said to Aurelia, without taking his eyes off the baby.

The girl shook her head, however. “I’ll help you. I’m not as good a mage as Tinasha, but I can still be of use.”

Oscar wanted to order her to go anyway but gave it up when he saw the look in her eyes. He adjusted his grip on the royal sword. “I guess I’ll take you up on the offer, then. Thanks.”

“I am at your service,” she replied.

The baby regarded them silently. Oscar’s lip curled when he noticed that the black gas seeping out from the infant was withering the plants around it. “It sure looks like a human baby.”

“It does to me, too, but that miasma… It’s definitely coming from the child,” Aurelia replied.

There was no spell visible in the vapor. It simply billowed from the baby, slowly covering more and more.

Oscar glanced between the baby and the blade of the royal sword. “Never killed a kid before.”

The child wasn’t a demon in disguise. Whatever he was doing, he was still human.

At the bitterness in Oscar’s tone, Aurelia bit her lip. “Your Majesty, could you try stalling to give me some time?”

“Do you have a plan?”

“I’d like to search the baby’s memories. They may hint at some way of banishing the miasma,” she replied.

Oscar’s surprise lasted only a moment. He took a step forward to cover Aurelia. “Got it. I’ll buy you some time.”

He didn’t need to ask for details. Aurelia wouldn’t have proposed the feat if she weren’t capable of it.

Oscar dashed in and used Akashia to dispel the surrounding gas. The black mist dissipated at the touch of his blade. Some weakly drifting remnants made contact with his arm, but Tinasha’s defensive barrier repelled them.

“Let the past come to my sight.”

Aurelia closed her eyes. Travis had locked away the abnormal ability that had ruined her life.

And now, of her own volition, she was setting it free.

No matter what kind of power it was, it was her own. Aurelia wanted to find meaning in it. She wanted to believe she was making progress, even with this smallest of steps. Oscar was covering her without questioning a thing, which Aurelia was very grateful for. And she had to honor that trust by giving this everything she could.

Aurelia fixed her gray-blue eyes on the baby. While maintaining control of herself, she sent her consciousness into the time contained within that small creature.

At first, the miasma had no clear shape and merely undulated slowly, but once it seemingly realized that it could not catch Oscar that way, it began to shift its form.

A cone-tipped spear lunged forth out of the mist. Oscar lopped it off with his sword and leaped to one side. While preserving a reasonable distance, he kept its attention focused on him. He couldn’t let it grab Aurelia, who was standing some distance away.

The girl’s eyes were blank as she stared at the baby within the miasma. Oscar turned away, deliberately not watching. While he didn’t know what she was looking at, he had the distinct sense that she would peer into something even he didn’t know about himself. Eye contact felt like a bad idea.

After deftly handling a series of attacks that came at unstable speeds, Oscar heard the girl calling for him and fell back.

Aurelia walked up to him. As she put up a barrier, she asked, “Do you know what Simila is?”

“Sure,” Oscar replied. “That’s the forbidden curse Cezar tried to use just recently. I believe Tinasha said it uses people’s negative emotions as a core and draws out power from another plane of existence.”

“It’s a forbidden curse?!” Aurelia yelped in shock. Evidently, she hadn’t known about Simila at all. But her question informed Oscar that their current situation was related to a forbidden curse.

Nervously, she relayed her findings. “That baby has some leftover remnants that weren’t molded into Simila sealed inside him. He’s been made into an instrument to assassinate you. The remains are a formless mass of evil… or maybe negative emotions? Anyway, because of that, they’ve evaded magical detection. They’re attached to the baby through a mark drawn on his back. If you can destroy that…”

“Oh, so the power can be separated from him? Got it. Thanks.” The king responded easily, then he strode from the safety of Aurelia’s barrier. The girl’s jaw dropped.

Though Oscar knew what he had to do, the baby was surrounded by a massive cloud of deadly fog, and the mark was on his back. Achieving the best scenario without dying or killing the child wasn’t going to be easy.

Yet Oscar wasn’t worried about any of that as he approached the baby. In contrast, Aurelia fretted over what she should do. But soon enough, she widened the barrier to prevent the miasma from coming closer to him.

Oscar chuckled when he noticed her assistance. “You’re a mage, all right. That’s a big help.”

As he moved forward, Oscar dispelled any harmful vapor Aurelia’s barrier couldn’t push away. By this point, the miasma had come into contact with Tinasha’s protective spell numerous times, yet the woman herself hadn’t come running. That must’ve meant she was also tied up somewhere.

“She’s probably gotten herself injured again. I’ve gotta hurry,” Oscar muttered, steadying out his breathing. He touched a hand to his chest, wondering for a moment if he should use what was in his breast pocket.

“No, I bet I can make do without it,” he decided, only needing a second to make up his mind.

Brandishing Akashia before him, Oscar breached the center of the miasma. The black mist formed spears and cudgels to attack him relentlessly. Oscar sliced them all away handily, however, and continued his advance.

But little by little, the vast miasma was seeping in from beyond Aurelia’s barrier. Black droplets clung to Oscar. They weakened upon contact with Tinasha’s enchantment, but as they were made of negative human emotions and not magic, they slowly permeated that layer of protection and burned him like acid.

Pain spread from Oscar’s left shoulder down his arm, but he didn’t let it stop him. Instead, he only quickened his pace.

He was now a few steps away from the baby. Oscar’s twilight blue eyes met the baby’s brighter aqua ones.

A void with no thoughts or feelings.

The birthplace of darkness.

The next thing Oscar knew, he was getting sucked into that dark world.

He could sense the flow of power like a frequency. Splitting his consciousness apart, Travis managed to manipulate it.

Unlike in the human realm, where the structure of a spell was required to exercise magic, the energy spilled forth from every corner here. In this place, force of will was the only thing required.

An invisible snake pursued Taviti, who kept disappearing and reappearing.

“Don’t think you can shake me off, you worthless nobody,” grumbled Travis as he flicked a hand. The serpent divided into five. While he was back in his original incorporeal form, he still felt like blood was rushing up within him.

It was at that moment that an army of murky red hands crawled up toward him from underfoot. As fast as a winged beast, they twined around his legs. The crimson hands immediately began to corrode him from the inside out, and the changes triggered a wave of nausea.

From seemingly nowhere, Taviti spoke in a blasé tone. “You’ve always been all talk, with nothing to back it up. It’s the act of a fool to bluff that you’re more than you are.”

Despite Taviti’s mocking words, Travis wore a dauntless smile. “Enough yapping. You’ll find out whether it’s bluster or not when you’re dead.”

Travis used the strength of his mind to reshape his body. He cut out the corroded parts and regenerated new ones. All the hands clinging to him were blown off.

Taviti’s astonishment filtered into the area.

Travis manipulated his power to deal the finishing blow. “Gloat too much, and you’re just asking to have your throat torn out,” he stated, his voice dripping with evident scorn.

When Taviti turned around, two snakes lunged for him with their jaws open wide.

“How can this be happening?” Valt wondered with a sigh. He adjusted the barriers strung up all over. Instead of raking his nails through his hair in a panic, he was leaning against the armrest of his chair, resting his chin on one hand. “This has gotten a little out of hand. I didn’t think any top-ranking demons would show up.”

“Is one fighting? With the witch?”

“Seems so. It looks like they’re in the old Tuldarr capital ruins.”

“No! Will the spell be all right?” asked the girl.

Valt knocked on the wood of the armrest. “Just barely… I think. She’s got the area warded off and all.”

He grimaced as he withdrew magic from the barriers. Valt, Oscar and Tinasha’s prime suspect, was presently living with Miralys in a new mansion.

Miralys blew on her sweetened tea to cool it down. She was sitting in her favorite wooden chair, brought from Cezar. “So what’s the Farsas king doing?”

“He’s engaged in a conflict of his own. Some sort of revenge plot by the remaining cultists. Those two have no shortage of enemies, do they?” remarked Valt.

“Aren’t you responsible for at least half of them?” Miralys pointed out.

“Well, that is true…”

Valt folded his arms. The situation had taken a strange turn while he’d been off getting his plans in order. He turned his thoughts to the surprise appearance of the high-ranking demons.

Naturally, he knew that Tinasha and Travis were acquaintances. But unlike Tinasha, who was relatively easy to predict, Travis was prone to attracting unforeseen developments. That had caused trouble for Valt numerous times in the past. It had even gotten him killed on a few occasions.

Schemes that involved Travis were far too risky, and Valt had long since given up on using him. Fortunately, things were better now, because a girl named Aurelia had come along to weigh Travis down and balance things out.

Miralys snapped her fingers, and Valt popped his head up.

“What do you want to do? Should we help? You don’t want the witch to die, right?” she asked.

“No… but actually, I think we can stay out of this. This is a good opportunity, so I’ll just watch things play out,” he answered.

“Are you sure?”

“Mm-hmm. If she dies here, it means she’s not strong enough. And if that’s the case, it’s all pointless anyway,” Valt stated, drawing a coolheaded conclusion. Suppressing his emotions, he closed his eyes.

The world was constantly moving in new and unexpected ways.

And though it was far from comfortable, they stood in the midst of the tremors from those battering waves.

Tinasha sliced through Phaedra’s magic attacks.

Naturally, there was no ground to stand upon in midair. It was magic that kept her upright. With concentration, Tinasha adjusted her footing so that it was the same as when she was on land.

Reining in all the emotions that felt like they were about to spill forth, she brought her sword down on Phaedra. The demon woman raised her hands, seething with resentment. When the dark sword and Phaedra’s magic connected, the atmosphere exploded with a loud, unpleasant crackling.

Tinasha took a step closer and thrust her sword toward Phaedra’s left flank. The blade hit her defensive barrier and stopped.

“Corrode.”

Tinasha quietly intoned a spell and infused her weapon with even more power. The black blade started to eat through the barrier, and Phaedra paled. Her hand hurriedly wove a spell to drive it back.

“Vanish!”

Light flooded out. As magic surged up to attack her from head to toe, Tinasha released her sword. Shielding her head and heart with her arms, she teleported away.

A light euphoria had overtaken her. The heat of it was what propelled her forward.

Impatience and anticipation were the same—the wish to move forward immediately. She wanted to see how everything played out, and it was impossible to stop now.

Phaedra watched Tinasha retreat with satisfaction, but she froze upon catching sight of something in those dark eyes staring back at her.

“You…”

It was the gaze of a bloodthirsty beast. A pure urge to kill glittered there. Tinasha had gone straight into a mad, murderous trance.

How could someone look at one of the most powerful demons in such a way? Phaedra couldn’t comprehend it.

I’m scared.

Those dark eyes cast a shadow on Phaedra’s mind. And while she was briefly preoccupied, a flurry of black daggers ripped through her skin. Tinasha had turned the sword she’d dropped into tiny little shards.

In the blink of an eye, Phaedra was as battered as Tinasha, shaking all over with the humiliation of it. She detested the warm, red beads that soaked into her clothing. “How dare you… I will tear you into a thousand pieces and drown you in a pool of your own blood!”

Tinasha gave a gracious smile. “Too much anger can kill you.”

Phaedra had only minor lacerations. Truthfully, Tinasha’s injury was more serious. She was in greater pain than the demon, and she could only move her deadened right hand with magic. Other parts of her ached terribly, too.

But even so, she was not worried.

Every drop of her power was at her command, and she loosed it with impunity.

This was different from the silent irritation she’d felt when battling Travis. She was in the midst of effortlessly challenging someone who outranked her. Something about that got her fired up.

Tinasha turned a heated, hungry gaze on Phaedra. Pale blue eyes blazing with fury glared back as the young queen held out a hand.

“I command you to come forth, o curse-adorned illusions. Render definitions meaningless and revert matter.”

Three white rings appeared as the result of that incantation. They were composed of what looked like rows of letters, all intertwined around the same center.

The sky was dark, threatening to rain at any moment.

The rings sparkled brightly in that monochromatic world.

“What is that?” Tinasha wondered. It was clearly powerful magic, but she couldn’t say what it might do. She uttered an incantation of her own, erecting a barrier to protect herself.

The rings activated before she could complete her spell, however. Revolving as they expanded, they suddenly warped to her position, hemming her in.

“Ah!”

The atmosphere within the rings grew twisted, and Tinasha felt a wave of nausea, as if the air pressure was changing. The instant Tinasha realized what was going on, a chill ran down her spine.

This technique was one that could distort any magic. Every spell cast within the space encircled by the rings would be transmuted or rendered ineffective. Tinasha had never heard of anything capable of twisting the laws of magic and the workings of spells like this. It was hard not to marvel at such unbelievable power and artistry.

Unfortunately, she didn’t have the luxury of doing so. Her half-deployed barrier disappeared. That wasn’t all. The spells she had cast to stop her bleeding and to hold herself aloft in midair contorted, assailing her with a wave of intense dizziness and nausea.

“Oh no…”

Tinasha stumbled; she couldn’t keep herself floating. As she lurched to one side and began to plummet to the ground, Phaedra watched with a smug smile. The demon queen summoned a whirling mass of wind directly above Tinasha to deal the final blow.

“I suppose you did provide me with a modicum of entertainment,” she spat.

Tinasha tried to cast a teleportation spell, but the magic wouldn’t hold within the rings. The winds pressed down on the rings, accelerating her descent.

A moment later, Tinasha slammed into the center of the ruins with a sickening crunch. The impact sent a cloud of sand into the air. Phaedra teleported down, alighting onto the top of a pile of rubble and gazing upon Tinasha scornfully. “You really made me go to quite some lengths.”

As the dust settled, a mass of long black hair sticking out of a pile of broken stone became visible.

Phaedra snorted, raking fingers through her own mussed locks to smooth them out. She positively abhorred the sensation of warmth from the blood coating her skin. “What brittle little bodies. So very loathsome.”

As the demon wrapped her arms around the human body she had taken, something suddenly rammed into her and set her trembling.

Very slowly, she looked down at herself and saw a purple blade sticking out of her chest, stabbed into her from behind. She watched in disbelief as blood dripped down the length of it.

Behind her, someone said placidly, “Thank you for showing me how fun a fight can be.”

“But you… How did you…?” Phaedra sputtered, her gaze still fixed on that long black hair below.

It should’ve been impossible, but someone was indeed standing behind her. Phaedra craned her neck around for a better look.

Tinasha yanked out the sword and fell back. Her glossy black hair had been chopped off just above her shoulders; her eyes glowed like a predator’s.

“I’m grateful to have witnessed such an incredibly rare spell. However, only one person has the right to kill me. I’m sorry,” stated the queen of Tuldarr as she used one hand to flip back her short hair.

When she was slammed against the ground, Tinasha had released raw magic to protect herself. Even so, she’d broken one leg, and several of her ribs felt funny. Only her tremendous power had kept her body together.

Phaedra slowly turned around. When she attempted to cast an attack spell, her vision went dark. She scowled.

Tinasha smiled as she watched the demon woman’s face blanch. “You can’t move very well, can you? I don’t think you’re used to how human bodies work. Too much blood loss makes them very cumbersome.”

Tinasha had first noticed it when the vines cut Phaedra’s leg. The demon must have numbed her sense of pain, so she didn’t notice the blood flowing freely from her wounds or do anything to stop it.

The first thing a mage did when wounded in battle was to stop the bleeding and dull the pain. Failing to do both risked disrupting their concentration. Phaedra had only done the latter, so Tinasha made her opponent bleed out with shallow cuts all over. In particular, she had targeted Phaedra’s back, as the demon wouldn’t notice any lacerations there. Bright red liquid coated everything from her shoulder blades down.

Even more blood gushed out onto Phaedra’s back from the stab wound.

The demon queen glared hatefully at Tinasha. “This substance is so… filthy…”

“Really? A warm body’s not that bad, is it? I like this temperature. Not to worry, though. You’ll go cold soon enough,” replied Tinasha.

“You’re the one who’s going to die!” Phaedra screamed as a silver light flashed in midair. But with a short incantation, Tinasha negated it. A stroke of her sword tore the demon apart.

Crimson stained Phaedra’s lovely silver hair. Drops got into her eyes as well, turning her vision red. Her lips trembled. She was so heavy and chilly.

Was she really going to perish here? Of all places?

There was no answer.

Her vision went black, and Phaedra shivered with fear like a child and closed her eyes.

Tinasha sighed as she watched her opponent collapse onto a pile of rubble. Phaedra’s body lay twisted like a broken doll’s. Black mist emanated from her corpse and melted into the air. Such was the death of a high-ranking demon.

“I will go on while you sleep in this city,” Tinasha said, her eyes watching the sky.

Rain had begun to fall.

Taviti fled into a space sealed off by darkness. Travis’s snakes snapped at his heels, chasing him from behind and from the sides.

He hadn’t anticipated that Travis would be so much stronger than he was. He’d dismissed his fellow demon as someone too used to living in human skin. At the very least, he’d assumed they would be evenly matched.

However, that had quickly been revealed to be delusional thinking. All he could do now was shake Travis off and hide.

After teleporting away so many times, Taviti despaired when he emerged from his latest attempt only to find Travis’s serpents already there waiting for him. “Dammit!”

He manipulated his power, sending out invisible vines to crush the snakes. But the tendrils struck at nothing.

“Convert.”

There was nothing there. At a cruel man’s instruction, the twelve serpents reappeared and changed form. A glowing white cage took shape, trapping Taviti inside.

The demon, caught inside its tremendous power, was aghast. “What the hell is this?”

“Fun, isn’t it? A mortal woman invented it. It divides into multiple hexes and makes a single cage,” Travis explained after appearing outside the cage. He wore a caustic grin as he regarded his old acquaintance. There was no mercy to be found in his eyes. He proclaimed, “This is the end. You can die screaming.”

He snapped his fingers, and the cage glowed brilliantly as it began to collapse.

Contrary to Travis’s hopes, Taviti didn’t scream. He disappeared into the white light until not a speck of him was left.

With a bored look on his face, Travis took his leave.

There was only darkness for as far as he could see. Oscar scanned the space, unaware of how long he had been there or how he had gotten there.

The royal sword was in his hand, but he had nothing else.

Within the boundless gloom, he could sense many wriggling things.

“What’s that?” he called, the words serving to reinforce his identity. They separated him from the squirming entities. He was a drop that had fallen into an inky sea.

“All the same,” the wriggling things whispered.

Resentment, resignation, and grief—they were all connected. They were all the same. So was this ocean of negativity, as well as whatever fell into it.

Their whispers gave Oscar the answer. “I see… So these are people’s darker emotions.”

The instant he realized that, his memories came flooding back. He recalled what he was.

Readjusting his grip on the sword, he slowly turned to face the endless waves of negativity pressing on him.

“Just go to sleep,” they whispered.

“Sadness never ends,” they whispered.

“We are all the same, so join us,” they whispered, reaching out for him with immaterial hands.

Oscar’s only reply was, “Don’t feed me your lies. I’m different from you.”

Even if all this wickedness had originated from humans like him, he couldn’t stay here. He would keep going.

Resentment, resignation, and grief were not worth giving in to and relinquishing oneself to. He would not surrender to anyone.

As the scraps of darkness attempted to latch on to Oscar, he declared, “You’ll never have me. Return to your homes, you ugly things!”

He slashed with Akashia, creating a rip in the endless darkness. Air rushed in.

Many teeming invisible membranes passed through him, and the world changed color rapidly. He was riding a rushing torrent.

No—it only felt that way.

It emboldened him to step forward, regardless. With another slash of Akashia, his vision cleared.

Oscar was back in the grassy field. Amid the vapor that was so thick he could barely make out his out hands, he found the baby and reached for him.

“Your Majesty!” Aurelia cried.

“It’s all right,” Oscar assured her. Miasma seeped in from everywhere through the gaps in Aurelia’s barrier. It melted through his clothes and burned his skin when it touched his arms and chest. But Oscar didn’t falter once.

He held the baby to his chest and glanced down at the infant’s back. When he undid the buttons on the child’s clothing, it revealed a black mark right in the center of his spine.

“Be a good boy now… Bear with it for a little,” Oscar whispered. With a little sigh, he dragged Akashia’s blade gingerly along the forbidden curse sigil.

The mark’s outline shifted. Oscar heard a loud ringing in his ears, and the baby’s eyes flew open.

The change was instantaneous and dramatic.

The cloud of black mist burst open from the center outward. Aurelia let out a cry of wonder.

Now that the vapor was dispersed, it gradually faded until it was gone entirely.

In the midst of it all, Oscar looked back at Aurelia and smiled with the baby, which had started crying, in his arms. “Looks like we did it.”

Aurelia bowed her head, utterly astonished. “That was incredible! Let me see your injuries.”

“Heal him first,” Oscar replied, hurrying over with the baby, whose back was bleeding a little.

Aurelia quickly took the infant into her arms and intoned a healing spell. Oscar breathed a sigh of relief as he watched.

“There, that’s sorted now… but we’re not done yet,” he muttered. While Oscar had gotten tangled up in a creepy forbidden curse, he still needed to find Tinasha.

Oscar glanced toward the distant fortress. The magistrates were probably worried, so it was best that he return to them first. Fortunately, the baby looked to be all right. Just as he was going to tell Aurelia his plan, he sensed someone new appear behind him.

“Oscar!” shouted a familiar voice frantically.

The word filled the king of Farsas with profound relief. He’d only just thought to search for Tinasha, and now here she was. He turned around, prepared to give her an earful of some kind, but froze when he saw the state she was in. “What… what the hell happened to you?!”

“Oh, I’ll be fine,” Tinasha said, flapping a hand dismissively.

No matter how you looked at it, she was a mess. Her dress was ripped to shreds in places and practically dyed red with blood. There was some sort of inexplicable sigil emblazoned on her chest. What concerned Oscar the most, however, was that the long hair he was so fond of had been hacked into a bob.

He stared at the choppy, uneven ends. “What happened?”

“Oh, uh, nothing? Anyway, what went on here?” she asked.

“Do you really think that will work?” he responded dryly, walking up to Tinasha and pinching her cheek.

“Aaahh, that hurts!” she squealed, even as she reached out to heal the burns on his skin. Aurelia watched the pair of them, wholly slack-jawed.

Once Tinasha was released, she finally noticed Aurelia and the baby in her arms. With her head tilted curiously, she inquired, “What’s going on?”

“That baby had some leftover remnants of Simila sealed inside him,” answered Oscar.

“He did?! O-oh, I see… I’m sorry I didn’t catch that,” Tinasha replied, sounding crestfallen.

“Don’t worry about it. It’s not your fault, and it wasn’t too hard to fix,” Oscar assured her, patting her head comfortingly. Then he turned back to Aurelia. “Thanks. You were a huge help.”

“Oh, not at all. It was my pleasure,” Aurelia said politely, curtsying to him. Then she turned anxious eyes on Tinasha.

“Aurelia’s looking for the bastard. Who were you fighting with?” Oscar asked Tinasha.

“Oh, so Travis isn’t back yet? Hmm… What if he lost?” Tinasha mused.

“Do you really think I’d lose? Think before you speak,” chided a grumpy voice as the demon in question appeared behind Aurelia.

She whirled around. “Travis! Where have you been?!”

“I told you to be a good girl and wait for me. What could’ve possibly brought you all the way out here?” he questioned. The gentleness in his eyes belied his stern tone.

Aurelia rubbed her thumbs over the edges of his eyes. She hadn’t seen him in so long. “I—I was worried about you, of course! Stupid!”

“I was completely fine. Unlike her.” Travis smirked.

“You know, if you had such an easy time, you could’ve helped,” remarked Tinasha, crossing her arms and giving Travis a look. Her exhaustion bled into her tone.

From that exchange, Oscar gleaned that Tinasha’s opponent had not been Travis but some common enemy of theirs instead. He decided not to kill Travis today.

That said, he didn’t intend to stop prying. Tinasha’s face grew tight as she sensed the silent pressure emanating from the man next to her. Nervously, she glanced up at him and gave an excuse. “Umm, so basically, I owed Travis, and he asked me to help him.”

“Not getting killed because your enemy changed their mind is hardly what I would call owing them,” Oscar said sourly.

“Well, there were a lot of other things, too, you know…”

“And I’ll hear all about them later,” Oscar stated coolly. Tinasha looked abashed.

She recovered soon enough, however, and looked to Travis. “So does that mean it’s all over now?”

The demon nodded. “Yeah, and I’ll keep my promise. But wow, you got beaten to a pulp. She went pretty hard on you, huh?”

“She was really strong! Ugh, I want my hair back,” Tinasha huffed, waving her arms in a fit of pique. She had already healed all her wounds, but she couldn’t restore her locks.

As she watched Tinasha struggle—and fail—to pull back the hair tickling her face into some sort of ponytail, Aurelia bowed to her. “Um, I’m sorry Travis pulled you into this.”

“You’ve got it all wrong,” Travis cut in. “You should be thanking her, not apologizing. She stood in for you during that fight.”

“She what?”

“Why did you have to say that?” Tinasha hissed, grimacing uncomfortably.

Oscar patted her head. “You just had to get involved.”

“Urgh…”

Aurelia’s eyes grew wide. It had never occurred to her that she was the one in danger, and she would never have guessed that this beautiful queen had agreed to take her place.

Noticing her discomfiture, Tinasha smiled and waved to indicate it was nothing. “You don’t need to feel bad about it. Travis was the one at fault.”

“I didn’t do anything wrong,” the demon king countered.

“You need to fix your whole lifestyle,” Tinasha shot back.

“I already am,” he grumbled. With a little wave of his hand, he made the mark on Tinasha’s chest disappear. At the same time, her hair grew back to its original length. The three humans present were left stunned.

“Wow,” Tinasha said.

“I’m pretty good at that stuff, you know. Let’s just call it a little recompense for battling Phaedra. Aurelia, we’re leaving now,” Travis stated arrogantly. The girl looked up at him and nodded obediently.

At last, she would return home with him. Relief pulled her lips into a smile.

Travis pressed a gentle kiss to Aurelia’s forehead, and the warmth of it filled her with deep comfort. It had always been like that, ever since she was young. And she wanted things to stay that way forever, if possible.

Aurelia offered the demon a bittersweet smile. Feelings she was helpless to express in words were building inside her. Perhaps that was happiness.

But right at that moment, a woman’s voice muttered something.

“You… tricked me? It wasn’t that woman? It was this little brat here?”

“Tinasha?!”

Tinasha clapped both hands over her mouth. Oscar stared down at her with concern.

A voice that wasn’t her own had come out of her mouth. She twisted her body, trying to shake off the curse-like presence.

Her head throbbed terribly. It felt like it was going to crack open. An uncomfortably warm, muddy nausea surged within her.

“You little… You planned an aftershock?!” Travis shouted with clear panic.

Dizziness came over Tinasha. Something was crawling around inside her body.

Suppressing her malaise, Tinasha leaped into the air and teleported away. She reappeared in the sky far above the other three. Clutching her throat, she rasped out, “Get out of me… You have no place here!”

On Tinasha’s final word, she made the magic in her body explode. After an impact that almost tore the young woman apart, a violent torrent of raw power struck her.

Travis gazed up at the tiny speck in the sky that was Tinasha and cursed under his breath. “Dammit…”

“What just happened? Has she been possessed?” demanded Oscar, an ominous look on his face.

The demon king flung an answer back at him. “Not possessed. Phaedra can’t do anything to her. It’s just the very last bits of her. Nothing that little could seize Tinasha completely. The equilibrium of the demon realm must have been thrown off after the loss of two of its mightiest inhabitants. There’ll be some aftershocks until things settle back to normal. That’s why some of Phaedra’s consciousness is lingering.”

“So what are you going to do about it?” Oscar pressed.

“Nothing. The dead can’t come back to life. What Tinasha just did probably blew away the last of Phaedra, and as for the demon realm, those of us who remain are enough to maintain a new balance, so long as we don’t touch anything. If we’d lost any more of us, then things would be different, but the death of two just means a temporary fluctuation in the current of power.”

Oscar frowned at that unsatisfactory explanation. “Then what are you worried about?”

“No one can stop the disruption, even if they’re short-lived. Aftershocks will keep rolling through to try and fill the empty spots until a new equilibrium is reached. Power is pouring into Tinasha—the one who killed the demon. And unfortunately, no matter how high her magic tolerance is…”

An explosion sounded overhead. An incredible mass of magic emerged. In the center of it stood a beautiful woman.

Her long flowing black locks danced in the wind. In a voice as clear as a bell, she laughed loudly. “Ahhhhh… ha-ha-haa! A-ha-ha-ha!”

Tinasha’s shrieking howls reached the ears of the three people below. The noise was downright unhinged and didn’t resemble her usual demeanor at all. Oscar’s eyes shot wide open.

Behind him, Travis shrugged. In a blasé tone, he remarked, “Ah, she’s gone out of control.”

Oscar and Aurelia had no words.

A light drizzle was falling, dampening her thin frame. Tinasha cast an annoyed glance at the raindrops on her shoulders. It was like she was burning on the inside. Her emotions were all muddled and chaotic; she didn’t know whether to find it funny or infuriating. Her soul threatened to split into pieces, and she clutched at her throat.

“Ha-ha! Ha… ha-ha…”

Power was gushing forth unbidden. It poured into Tinasha ceaselessly, as though to reforge her from the inside out.

Tinasha touched her cheek; her fingers came away wet with tears. “Hmm?”

She had nothing to be sad about. She shouldn’t have, anyway.

At present, she possessed enough heat inside her to sear away everything around, and that was all that should’ve mattered.

Tinasha glared at the gloomy, overcast clouds and the incessant precipitation. They were ruining what should have been a gorgeous view.

She snapped her fingers, and a blast of wind shot upward, sending all the clouds flying and clearing up the sky in the blink of an eye. Soft sunlight filtered down to earth.

“Excellent…”

Now things were a little better. She hated the cold. It made her feel like she’d been alone in an unfamiliar place.

Roughly wiping away the tears on her cheeks, Tinasha assessed the heat building within her. She wanted something, and she wanted it very badly, but she couldn’t determine what.

That uncertainty left her wanting to destroy everything in her path.

She shook her aching head as her gaze darted around wildly. When it landed on the fortress of Ynureid, she scowled. “What an eyesore…”

Before she could cast a spell, someone suddenly roared at her from the ground below.

“TINASHA!”

His voice carried well. She cocked her head like a kitten, gazing at the man glaring at her from below.

Oscar and Aurelia were both dazed by Tinasha’s ability to change the weather without any sort of incantation.

Travis scowled. She was growing more powerful than he’d imagined. It had reached a point that she now surpassed a forbidden curse, if only by a little.

“What do we do?” Oscar asked.

“Well… she’s getting used to her magic. It should take about half an hour for her mind to gain control over the power. By then, the terrain around here might look pretty different, though,” Travis replied.

“We just rebuilt that fortress,” Oscar said sourly.

“So? Tell that to your lady,” Travis retorted.

This was all too ridiculous. Oscar massaged his temples. Behind him, Aurelia had gone pale as she clutched the baby to her.

Travis patted her shoulder. “We’d better find some shelter. Wanna head back?”

“Hold on just a minute! Can’t you do something to stop this?!” she cried.

“Not possible,” Travis answered flatly. “Normally, she’s about as strong as I am, but I could always handle her. Now, though? No way. I can’t do a thing. Besides, children of the spirits—spirit sorcerers, that is—get the best of everything in this world. Letting her be is the best course of action.”

Aurelia frowned at her guardian. “Come on. You sound like a coward.”

“I just don’t make a habit of overestimating my own abilities. I do what I can and nothing more. Killing Tinasha’s about the only way of stopping her.”

“Absolutely not!” Aurelia cried.

“Thought so,” Travis responded, throwing his hands up theatrically.

Oscar threw him a stony glance, observing how this beautiful man seemed to be enjoying this somehow. He unsheathed Akashia again. “Then I’ll do it.”

“Are you out of your mind? Sure, Akashia can beat her, but getting too full of yourself’s only gonna get you killed,” said Travis.

“There’s a way to restore her. Besides, I’d rather not rebuild that fortress for a second time. I’m going to get close to her, and you’re going to help me,” Oscar stated in a tone brooking no refusal.

Travis’s lip curled scornfully, and Aurelia poked him in the back. At that, the demon nodded. “Fine. Do you mean get close to her physically?”

“Pretty sure I don’t need any help getting close to her emotionally,” Oscar shot back, and Travis burst out laughing.

While these two men were not on good terms by any stretch of the imagination, they worked out a simple order of operations and then set out to subdue the woman lingering in the skies.

Tilting her head to one side, Tinasha observed the man down on the ground. Irritation flashed in her dark eyes. “Who are you? Stop bothering me.”

That cut Oscar deep. Keeping his eyes focused straight ahead, he asked Travis, “Has she lost her memories?”

“It’s more likely they’re all temporarily jumbled,” the demon answered. “Phaedra’s consciousness may be gone, but her emotions are probably still there. She really, really hated mortals. If you make one wrong move, you’ll wind up in the ground.”

“No way am I gonna let that go unchecked. That’s my fiancée up there,” Oscar muttered. With his off hand, he gestured to Tinasha to come toward him. “Tinasha, I need to talk to you! Come down here.”

“No. Go away.”

“…”

Oscar smiled grimly at her immediate refusal. Her loathing for him was written all over her face; the dead demon queen’s feelings truly were influencing Tinasha.

After a moment’s thought, Oscar looked back up at her. “Come down here if you hate me so much. I’ll fight you.”

Tinasha’s eyes grew wide upon being provoked so openly. She looked shocked and hurt, but only for a second. Then there was only anger. She leveled a finger at him. “Die then.”

Five orbs of light shot from her digit, snaking through the air toward Oscar. He broke into a run and slashed with Akashia, cutting the first two magic spheres apart. Without spells to hold them together, the luminous globes dispersed.

The third and fourth orbs, racing at him from behind, exploded as soon as they touched Akashia.

Behind Oscar, Travis crossed his arms and smirked. “I’m getting tired of this. Just come down.”

As Akashia cleaved through the final orb, an enormous pressure bore down on Tinasha from above.

“Hey!”

She crumpled in the face of the sudden attack, plummeting to the earth. However, before she collided with the surface, a colossal explosion boomed. A tremendous blast of air swept over the area.

Travis threw up a barrier to ward off the kicked-up dirt, and he sighed. “Come on, now. I just want to go home.”

Tinasha glowered at him crossly while floating a little off the ground. That surprise attack had garnered her wrath. Oscar had never seen her dark eyes so filled with pure hatred. “So there’s two of you… I see.”

The woman was seething with fury, her emotions on the verge of burning anyone who so much as touched her. Still, Oscar stepped in closer to her. He touched the ring finger on his left hand, just to make sure. “Strictly speaking, I’m the one responsible for all this. Come here, and I’ll get that poison out of you.”

“I hate you,” she replied, lifting a hand. A gigantic wall of compressed magic appeared in front of her. The white edifice was as thick as a real stone one and as tall as a castle rampart.

The other side of it was just transparent enough to reveal that it was knotted together with a roiling mass of dense, concentrated magical power.

“Go.”

The wall moved toward Oscar, plowing through the ground and sending dirt flying in all directions. He set off at a run, sword in hand.

As the colossal, intricate mass of magic pressed in on him, Oscar swung Akashia down at it. The mighty wall capable of toppling everything it touched developed a giant crack.

Oscar slipped through that crevice and hurried closer. Tinasha frowned and snapped her fingers. A scalding flash of light formed behind Oscar. It pressed into his back, giving off sparks.

But without even looking behind him, Oscar sliced it to shreds. Embers flew off and landed on his arms, but the barrier Tinasha herself had placed on Oscar kept him safe.

The fluctuation in magic reverberated through her body, making her jolt. “AHH!”

“Come back to yourself, Tinasha.”

“Y-you shut up!” she snapped resentfully. She cast a teleportation spell to escape up into the sky. However, Oscar had anticipated that and touched the ring on his left hand. The warp-blocking spell activated. Travis, who had finished eliminating the rest of the wall, whistled from behind.

Tinasha’s eyes grew wide with astonishment before her face darkened with animosity. A huge amount of magic formed between her hands—a radiant golden orb. Tinasha carried it up into the air and hurled it down at Oscar. Realizing it was big enough to blow a crater in the earth, he stopped where he was and readjusted his grip on Akashia.

“GO AWAY FOREVER!”

The air crackled and sizzled. Oscar held the flat of his blade up against the radiant sphere. Akashia only held it in place for a second before splitting it in two.

By that point, however, Tinasha had conjured a black sword. The blinding orb had been a decoy, and she plunged at Oscar from above. Akashia easily repelled the incoming blade and dispelled it, though. Oscar caught hold of Tinasha’s wrist and pulled her in; her face turned to a look of startled dismay.

Despite being presented with such a clear opening, Oscar hesitated for a fraction too long. Seizing her chance, Tinasha focused her gaze as she kicked him in the shoulder. She moved far back, riding the wave of a small burst of power.

Sighing as he looked down at the hand she had knocked away, Oscar heard Travis say, “You could’ve stabbed her in the stomach.”

“If I did that, her guts would burst open,” Oscar pointed out.

“So? Just do it. I’ll heal them up later.”

“But it’ll still hurt like hell.”

When Travis had blown a hole in Tinasha’s abdomen, she’d writhed in agony even after restoring herself. Oscar didn’t want to put Tinasha through that, nor did he want to jeopardize her ability to have children by forcing her to reconstitute her body tissue repeatedly.

A scream rent the air as the two men bickered.

“AAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!”

The queen was caught in a fit of rage, tearing madly at her hair. A wild cry erupted from her tiny, battered frame. “I hate you! I hate you! I hate you! I hate you! I hate you! I hate you! I hate you!”

She was like a child throwing a temper tantrum, though her screams were more heartbroken.

“I hate you! I’m sick of looking at you! Die! Die already, you liar! I hate you! I hate you! I hate you!” she cried, cradling her head in her hands as she burned with enmity.

Coldly eyeing the queen going insane from an over-infusion of pure magic, Travis said, “Phaedra’s emotions are really doing her in. All we can do is beat her into submission and wait for it to subside.”

“No,” Oscar said.

What Travis suggested wasn’t impossible. While Tinasha had all the power of a full-scale calamity, she wasn’t in her right mind at present. Oscar and the demon could subdue her.

That didn’t feel like the right way to go about it, however.

Oscar gazed at her tearstained face. When his eyes met her dark ones, he made up his mind. “It will be all right.”

Akashia in hand, he stepped forward.

Tinasha shivered when she saw the weapon. She held her hands out in front of her to stop him from taking another step and started to pour magic into the space between them.

“I hate you! I hate you! I hate you! I hate you!”

“Why do you hate me? Because I’m a mortal?” he asked.

“I hate you. You’re a liar. I despise you.”

“Well, I can’t deny that I’ve lied to you,” he admitted.

The muddled state of her emotions made it hard to tell where the demon ended and Tinasha began.

Bitterly, she shook her head. White light emerged from her hands, glowing brighter and brighter.

Pure, raw magic—enough power to wipe out thousands in an instant.

From behind, Travis piped up, “Watch out. You take that hit, and this whole region gets decimated.”

Oscar didn’t answer and instead kept his eyes trained on the woman before him as he moved nearer.

As destructive radiance spilled from Tinasha’s hands, she turned a nervous gaze on him and snapped, “You didn’t even want me. You’re going to leave me.”

“I’m not. I’m yours.”

“I hate you,” she said after a pause. A simple spell appeared between her palms. It possessed more than enough strength to annihilate a lowly mortal. All it would take was a thought. Scowling hatefully, Tinasha completed the spell.

A feverish, crazed look crossed Tinasha’s face.

“Love me.”

Seven rings flared into being. The pressure emanating from them was similar to Druza’s forbidden curse, but more intense.

The massive spell flew from her hands, hurtling toward Oscar. He only felt a minor flash of worry as he leaped directly into the path of the attack, however. With a sharp exhale, he dug Akashia’s blade into the interlocking spells.

Light exploded with such intensity that Oscar momentarily lost his sight.

Still, he cut away the spells on the outer edges as pressure seared into him. The hand gripping Akashia went numb. He was robbed of all sense of gravity. However, he continued undaunted, instinctually hacking away the sheer force pressing down on his body.

As he breathed out all the air in his lungs, he found himself standing before her. Gazing down at Tinasha, her face streaked with tears, Oscar smiled. “Is that what you’ve been worried about?”

Was that an emotion belonging to the dead demon woman? Or was it a wish Tinasha herself had kept hidden?

Either way, she was here with him now.

He cupped her face in both hands. “Tinasha, I adore you. You don’t need to worry about that.”

Her teary eyes widened a fraction. Gently, he lay the flat of Akashia against her ivory cheek. From that point of contact outward, magic diffused away.

As her breathing slowly calmed, Oscar pressed a kiss to the bridge of her nose and murmured, “Do you want me to feed it to you? Can you drink it yourself?”

Tinasha’s long eyelashes fluttered. Her deathly pale cheeks turned a faint pink. “I’ll drink it myself.”

She held out a hand, and Oscar smiled tightly as he pulled a vial from his pocket and passed it to her. It contained water from the underground Lake of Silence located beneath Farsas Castle. Drawn from the pool that had created the royal sword, the water could neutralize magic.

Tinasha drained it in one gulp. When she fainted, Oscar took her in his arms. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw Travis waving at them in the distance.