The air went quiet, like even the wind had ducked for cover.
We stood staring at one another—her silhouette stretched long across the snow, a dark sundial marking some doom-laced hour.
Her question lingered between us, hanging there like storm clouds that refused to move on, stubborn in their gloom.
Victoria made a small sound beside me, the kind of sound someone makes when their mind is still touching nightmares.
I didn't want her saying a single word; hell, I didn't even want her breathing loud.
I didn't know what kind of information this woman fed on, or which tiny piece might be enough to damn us both.
I risked a glance at Victoria from the corner of my eye.
She was trembling, fidgeting in these tiny, frantic motions, trying—just barely—to hold herself together.
Her composure was a thin glass pane, already cracked, and one wrong syllable would shatter it.
My blade was already in hand, faintly shaking.
Not from fear—well, maybe a little—but from exhaustion, from Qi that felt like a splintered mirror inside my core.
I shifted my stance, forcing Qi to circulate. Slow, unsteady, uneven. But it moved, and that was enough.
The Lady pressed a hand to her chest.
Blood still seeped through her fingers, warm red against pale skin—a flower blooming in winter.
"A bullet to the heart," she said with a soft, amused chuckle. "Right beside my mana core."
She tilted her head back, staring at the ashen sky bleeding into afternoon.
"No idea who that was… but it seems I won't have the luxury of knowing."
Her voice didn't tremble.
Her breath didn't shake.
She spoke like someone commenting on the weather—fully aware she had died, fully aware she was somehow here anyway, and utterly unbothered by the contradiction.
Her eyes slid back to me, sharp and oddly kind.
"You've dealt with demons and spirits before, haven't you? Enough that my rambling shouldn't sound too foreign."
I gave nothing in return.
I just moved a half-step in front of Victoria, making my body the wall she needed.
I didn't know what this resurrected scholar wanted, but I'd be damned before I let her use Victoria for anything.
She stretched lazily and sank into a squat as though she were preparing to feed chickens rather than interrogate us.
"I made a pact with a demon," she said, giggling when her motions tugged fresh blood from her wound.
"Well—let's just say the experience has been educational, if not pleasant."
She smoothed her torn dress carefully, almost lovingly, like a teacher straightening her papers before class.
I murmured, "I see," remembering the scraps I'd overheard in the clearing.
The words tasted like iron.
Like something final.
High noon arrived without heat.
The sun was a pale eye behind a veil of frost, offering no warmth, only attention.
She looked up again, but her gaze was somewhere far beyond the clouds—far beyond this world entirely.
---
"What…" I breathed.
The word fell out of me, fragile and thin.
It was the same stunned sound I'd made when the shrine girl appeared earlier—right before she was erased by a bullet clean through her skull.
That memory flickered, sharp as lightning.
Then everything went white.
"Oh Kenneth," a voice drawled, echoing from everywhere and nowhere. "That's quite the height of selfishness—envying death."
Seere's voice—if it could even be called a voice—rose around me like a warped choir.
Every syllable was layered with others, as if a dozen unseen mouths spoke in sync.
They whispered a name I hadn't heard in years.
My name.
My world snapped open like someone had torn a curtain from the heavens.
I gasped, lungs tightening.
"What just happened?"
"You died," they said.
The tone danced between mockery and amusement, like someone enjoying the punchline of a joke only they understood.
"Yes, I was shot but—"
I touched the bullet hole in my chest.
The skin was broken. The flesh was cold.
It didn't hurt, but it didn't feel like it belonged to me either.
Seere laughed, sharp and delighted.
"Yes, yes. Quite the feat to cheat death. Even for someone like you."
"Who was the contractee?" I asked.
I remembered, now, why I'd been running—why I'd sought escape.
Why I'd been ready to make my own damn pact before those strangers showed up.
I straightened my clothing—habit, maybe dignity—and began walking through that strange in-between realm.
There was no road, no landscape, just a sense of direction tethered to instinct.
"Twenty-four hours," Seere finally answered.
"What about twenty-four hours?"
"That's how long you have to live."
The words slammed into me.
Not physically—there was no body here—but spiritually.
A coldness, sharper than winter wind, gnawed at my ribs.
"…I see."
It was the only thing I could manage.
"Seere," I said after a while, "where do people go after death?"
They laughed again, softer this time.
"Now you ask?"
A pause.
"Reincarnation is the usual procedure—I think."
Then their tone shifted.
Their next words felt like a blade sliding under the skin.
"But you don't get to reincarnate."
Those green eyes of yours," they whispered, "cost you your soul."
The wind—if it was even wind—wailed around me.
Seere's smile glowed in the dark like a wolf's.
"So let me be the first to welcome you."
I looked up.
The sky was empty, indifferent.
A bitter smile pulled at my lips.
---
"That creature has some kind of death-defying ability," the Lady said when I blinked back into reality.
She pointed lazily toward Victoria, who shrank under the weight of the accusation.
"But we weren't the ones who killed you," I said quickly, trying to angle her attention anywhere else. "Why not hunt the shooters instead?"
"Ahh, but I'm on the clock."
She flashed a thin smile, the kind scholars wore when they finally reached the interesting part of the research.
"I want closure. Call it academic curiosity."
She stood, brushing frost and dirt from her dress with an elegance that didn't match the bullet hole in her chest.
"You usually thank the one who saved your life, not the one who ended it," she added lightly.
She took a few steps away from the ditch, giving us space but not comfort.
"I only have a few questions," she said. "And I'm sure you have some as well."
Her voice softened, but it didn't lose its weight.
"Draken is not the one attacking the town. Whatever plan you had needs revising."
That sentence alone shifted the world around me.
The snow suddenly felt warmer, the cold easier to endure.
Knowledge was heat, and she had just thrown sparks into dry grass.
Eventually, I climbed out of the ditch with Victoria clinging weakly to my arm.
We found the Lady perched on a fallen log, legs crossed, posture relaxed—absurdly serene considering she'd crawled out of death less than an hour ago.
I did not know what she wanted.
But I knew I needed whatever information she carried.
And if talking to a devil meant walking a tightrope over a pit… then so be it.
All devils can do is tempt, I reminded myself.
Qi hummed at my fingertips.
My blade stayed steady in my hand.
I approached her slowly, praying—honestly praying—that talk alone would be enough.