The clouds hung in low, sodden straits over Mavis… a bruised and heavy ceiling that choked the sky. They yielded no quarter to the sun, permitting only a muted… pewter gloom to bleed through, a light that did little to illuminate and less to warm. A perpetual, misting rain fell… a vertical river that pattered a steady, hushed rhythm on slate roofs and turned the village's central thoroughfare into a churned ribbon of mud. The air was thick… the scent of wet earth, pine needles, and the woodsmoke that fought a losing battle from stone chimneys.
In Mavis villagers and adventurers maintained a wary… necessary co-existence, their lives intersecting in the damp crowded spaces between buildings. Under the constant drizzle, the true economy of the village was laid bare. Food was pricey; a loaf of bread under a baker's awning cost nearly double what it would on a sunny day, and a hot pie from a street vendor was a small fortune… But protection was even more so… The blacksmith's stall did a roaring trade in oilcloths and protective waxes, and enchanters offered faint, shimmering shields for a coin to keep a bowstring dry or a spellbook from warping.
Yet… life persisted with a stubborn cheer. Mothers navigated the muddy paths with ease holding brightly colored umbrellas like defiant blossoms in the grey… their children tucked safely beneath their arms. From the doorways of taverns the sounds of families laughing spilled out… Immune to the damp, a group of children in tiny boots splash puddles… shrieking with glee as they chased each other through the rain, their joy a stark contrast to the cloaked and hooded adventurers who moved with deliberate purpose… a warm counterpoint to the weather's drone.
These hardened souls were a spectrum of practicality and paranoia. Some merely hunched their shoulders… pulling hoods low as they hurried between the tavern and the guild hall. Others treated the rain as a personal enemy, using oiled leather cloaks to meticulously shield their prized weapons… a greatsword wrapped like an infant… a bowstave cradled in arms, a dagger's hilt tucked protectively against a chest. They were a reminder that even in this bustling, lively village, the wild was never far… a dull blade or a damp powder horn could mean the difference between a paid contract and an early grave. Mavis was alive, but it was a life lived in the rain, where every laugh was shared under an umbrella… Every step was taken with one eye on the sky and the other on the price of staying dry.
Aamon, Ciel, and their new companion were not a part of this... They had other things to do while the sun was covered. For them, the unrelenting grey was a blessing.
For three days… the clouds had not broken. For three days… Aamon had walked without the searing pain that usually dogged his steps by midday. The perpetual damp had settled into his suit and chilled Ciel to the bone… but for the demon, it was a reprieve that felt like a minor miracle.
They had used the time, holed up in Arya's cramped room at a different… rougher inn, a place where questions were not asked and coin was the only currency that mattered. They had… strategized. Or rather, Arya had strategized… issuing gruff commands and sketching crude maps in spilled ale on the table, while Aamon listened with rapt attention and Ciel observed, her new ice staff always ready to be summoned.
Now… the time for talk was over. The forest path they walked was a soupy track of mud and rotting leaves, the canopy above offering a final… dense layer of protection from any stray beam of light that might dare to pierce the gloom. The air grew heavier, the cheerful sounds of the village long faded, replaced by the drip… drip… drip… from skeletal branches and the distant, lonely call of a crow.
Arya stopped, holding up a closed fist. Her ears swiveled forward… then flattened. Her tail was a stiff, low line behind her.
"There."
she grunted, nodding ahead.
Nestled at the base of a rocky outcrop, hidden by thorny brambles and slick… dark moss, was a fissure in the earth… a gash of deeper darkness that seemed to swallow the weak light. The air that wafted from it was warm, thick… and foul, carrying the greasy scent of unwashed bodies, spoiled meat… and something faintly, acridly smoky.
The goblin cave.
Arya's axes were in her hands in a flash of golden metal. Her earlier swagger was replaced by a predator's focused stillness. She glanced back at her two… companions. Aamon's ruby eyes were wide, not with fear. It was the same eager, unnerving curiosity he'd shown in the woods. His tail gave a single… sharp thwack! against a nearby tree, scattering wet bark. Ciel's expression was, as ever… unreadable… but her hands were clenched tightly around her glacial staff, the intricate snowflake at its apex gathering a faint cold mist.
"Remember the plan."
Arya whispered, her voice a low growl.
"I go in first. You two, don't get in my way. And you."
she said, spearing Aamon with a glare.
"no petting."
Aamon opened his mouth to protest, but a sudden… skittering sound from the cave's entrance cut him off. A hunched, greenish figure emerged… blinking in the damp light, a crude rusted spear in its hand.
The fight for the cave had found them.
The cave mouth vomited goblins in an instant. They spilled out not as a coordinated force… but as a screeching, tide of green flesh and crude iron, their stench of wet fungus and offal preceding them. Their beady eyes were wide with a terror that had a single, sharp-toothed source.
Arya burst towards the darkness in a whirl of silver fur and gleaming steel, her axes carving arcs of light through the gloom. Each swing was punctuated by a wet thwump… or the sickening Krack… of bone. She didn't fight; she harvested… The air grew thick with the coppery tang of fresh blood and the high, reeking stink of spilled viscera. A goblin lunged; her axe split its skull with a sound like a rotten melon hitting stone. Too slow, you little shit! was her only thought in the mantra of violence.
"Pup! The little bastards are nesting!"
she roared, her voice a war-horn cutting through the din. Her golden eyes, blazing with battle joy, found Aamon.
"There's more of these fuckers than I scouted! Plan B! Light the whole damn charnel house up!"
Aamon, who had been watching the chaotic exodus with wide… startled eyes, jolted into action. The raw, animal stench of fear and death was overwhelming… a physical weight in his throat. He stepped forward, his form a stark contrast to her contained fury.
"Alright, I got it! Leave it to me! I can–"
"Shut it and burn them!"
Arya's command was a whip crack, leaving no room for discussion. It was a sound of pure contempt.
The verbal blow landed harder than any physical one. Aamon's spiked tail instantly tucked itself tight against his leg with a soft rustle of bone. A cold knot of shame tightened in his chest. She thinks I'm useless. Was his only thought… but before he could even raise his hand, a calm and clear voice cut through the tension… cool and sharp as a shard of ice.
"friend. The left flank. Three are circling."
Ciel stood a few paces back, a stark silhouette against the weeping grey sky. Her sapphire eyes were not on Aamon's face, it was on the periphery of the battle… her head tilted as she processed the chaos with chilling efficiency. She was the unshakable center of their storm. Her directive was not a shout... but a data point, delivered with absolute certainty.
Aamon is faltering, so provide a target. Re-establish rhythm.
Aamon's gaze snapped to the left. He gave a sharp, acknowledging nod… the sting of Arya's words momentarily forgotten in the clarity of Ciel's command. His clawed hand snapped up, bone rings clicking together with a dry… final sound.
"Cingulum Ignis!"
The air itself seemed to tear.
A torrent of raw, demonic fire erupted from his palm… a roaring, sentient hunger that crawled in a wide, devastating arc. It first engulfed the three goblins Ciel had pinpointed. Their screeches were cut short… not by silence… but by a sizzling… wet hiss as their eyes boiled and their flash-seared from their bones. The fire then surged toward the cave mouth, a tidal wave of annihilation. The relentless rain sizzled into nothingness before it could even touch the ground… the very air superheating around the flames.
The fire licked hungrily across the cave floor… and the goblins caught in its path didn't just die… they unraveled. Their forms dissolved into drifting, incandescent ash that stank of ozone and cooked meat. The fire coated the cave walls, painting the stone in a shimmering… orangeb and black tapestry of annihilation… the rock itself groaning as it heated. It surged deeper into the cavern, a wall of pure heat that pushed inexorably inward promising a cremation for anything left hiding in the dark.
Arya watched, a feral grin splitting her features as the hellish light reflected in her eyes. The heat washed over her… a comforting embrace. She could feel the pop of distant teeth cracking in the intense dry heat. She spared a single, appraising glance at Ciel. No thanks, no acknowledgement… just a sharp, almost imperceptible nod. The abyssal elf had just proven her value in the only currency Arya respected: effective, overwhelming violence.
This was a language they were all beginning to understand.
But the cave was not yet empty… Emboldened by the chaos or driven mad by the death of their kin, a second wave… larger and more heavily armed, poured from a side tunnel Arya had missed. These were brutes, their green skin thick with crude tribal scars and weeping sores… wielding notched axes and heavy clubs studded with rusted nails that wept a yellow pus. They fanned out… their beady eyes locking onto the three intruders with a cunning that promised a coordinated assault.
"Fine! You want a real fight?!"
Arya bellowed, her voice rich with exhilarated fury. She met their charge head on, becoming a dervish of controlled mayhem. An axe meant to cleave her shoulder was deflected with a shower of sparks from her own golden blade… the force of her parry dislocating the goblin's arm with a wet pop. It stumbled back into its companion, who tripped and found Arya's boot crushing its throat in a single… cartilage-snapping stamp. She moved through them like a scythe through rotten fruit. For every one Aamon had burned, Arya claimed two more… her path a growing testament of dismembered bodies, severed limbs twitching in the mud, and torsos split open to spill their steaming, glistening contents onto the wet earth.
their numbers began to tell. While she was engaged with three in front… a fourth, wiry and fast, ducked low… aiming a jagged dagger at the back of her knee. She sensed it, but knew she couldn't fully evade it…
shit! This fuckin goblin gonna-"Lancea Frigoris!" her thought was cut off by a shard of ice… cold enough to burn, shot past her ear with a sound like shattering glass. It took the wiry goblin directly in the eye socket. There was a muffled crunch as the orb froze and shattered… the projectile punching through the back of its skull in a spray of frozen blood, brain matter, and splinters of bone. The creature dropped, its head a ruined leaking cavity, the dagger clattering harmlessly against a stone.
"I had that!"
Arya didn't look back as she snarled, but there was no real heat in it. It was an automatic response… a warrior's pride. The truth was, the shot had been perfect.
Ciel had not remained idle. While Arya was the blade and Aamon the inferno, Ciel was the strategist… the unflinching eye of the storm. She had positioned herself on a slight rise, a vantage point that allowed her to see the entire battlefield. Her glacial staff was now fully manifested… the air around her humming with crystalline cold. She did not waste energy. Each spell was a minimal, efficient motion. When two goblins tried to flank Aamon, a "Pruina Glacies!" sent a sheet of black ice spreading across the ground… their feet flash-freezing and shattering as they fell… leaving stumps that skidded across the frost. When another tried to hurl a javelin at Arya's exposed back, a "Ignis Globus!" formed a javelin of her own, meeting it mid-air and shattering both weapons in a puff of frost that coated the nearby foliage in a rime of frozen gore.
Aamon, meanwhile, had found a new… terrible rhythm. With the main horde decimated by his fire, he waded into the remaining brutes. He did not use magic. He used his body. A goblin swung a club at his head; he caught it in his hand… the wood splintering against his palm, and casually backhanded the creature, the impact caving in its face with a sickening crunch of bone and teeth. Another stabbed at his side with a spear; the point skittered off the fine fabric of his suit as if it were plate steel… he grabbed the spear haft, yanking the goblin forward into the path of his other fist, which struck with the force of a battering ram… pulverizing its ribcage into a slurry of bone fragments and ruptured organs.
The fight, in its final desperate throes… became a symphony of their three styles. Arya's guttural shouts, the wet… meaty impacts of her axes. The crystalline crackle of Ciel's ice, the shrieks of goblins suddenly frozen in place… their skin splitting like overripe fruit. The dull, bone-breaking thuds of Aamon's physical strikes. They were a discordant, violent instrument,...and the goblin war-band was the song they played until the last note faded into the hissing rain.
Silence fell, broken only by the drip of water and the sizzle of the last, cooling embers from Aamon's spell.
Aamon stood, his suit immaculate amidst the gore-splattered clearing. The goblin war-band lay broken around him. One, with its arm torn clean from the socket… gurgled at his feet, dark, coppery blood pulsing from the ragged stump to pool in the mud. He looked down at the wretched creature… its beady eyes wide with pain and terror. The knot of shame from Arya's words, the thrill of the fight… it all melted away, leaving only a profound, aching sorrow. He knelt, his voice soft… a whisper in the aftermath of the storm.
"I am sorry."
His hand… adorned with the bone rings of his mother, touched the creature's forehead. A warm, golden light, so different from the hellish orange of his fire… emanated from his palm. The goblin's writhing stilled, its pained gurgles ceasing as the stump of its arm sealed over with impossible speed… the flesh knitting shut without a scar. It looked up, not with gratitude… with pure, primal terror at the being that could deliver such mercy after such violence, before scrambling away on three limbs into the undergrowth.
Ciel watched, her expression unreadable… the cold mist from her staff slowly dissipating.
"Friend is too kind for the world that birthed him."
The words were simple… a statement of fact.
A shadow fell over Aamon. Arya stood there, her chest heaving… her axes dripping thick… dark strings of blood onto the ground. She watched the spot where the healed goblin had vanished. Her face was a mask of disgust, her lips peeled back from her teeth in a silent snarl. Without a word… without a single glance at Aamon, she lifted one of her golden axes. Her arm snapped forward.
THWUNK.
The axe buried itself deep into the trunk of a tree… a perfect throw, directly in the path the fleeing goblin had taken. It quivered… a golden promise of vengeance, a brutal rebuttal to Aamon's mercy.
"Sentimental shit!"
she spat, the words dripping with contempt. She yanked her axe free with a wet suck… of splintering wood, not looking at either of them.
"That thing will just find more of its kind. It'll tell them about us. About you."
She finally turned her golden gaze on Aamon, and it was colder than Ciel's ice.
"Your kindness gets people killed."
She stomped away, towards the now-silent cave… leaving the two of them in the clearing, the chasm between their worlds now as wide and bloody as the battlefield they stood upon.
With a single sigh, Arya looked at Aamon, her usual fury bleeding away into a frustrated exhaustion as she witnessed the raw… uncomprehending sorrow in his eyes. The demon looked less like a creature of the Abyss and more like a scolded puppy… his ruby gaze wide with the pain of a kindness rejected.
"Don't give me those eyes, pup."
she grumbled, her voice losing its razor's edge, the fight draining out of her.
"You should have known be–"
"N-no! Aaah!"
A scream, raw and piercing, tore through the forest. It was a sound of pure… childish terror… louder than the drizzling rain and cutting Arya off completely.
Aamon didn't hesitate. He was already running, a dark bolt through the grey gloom… his wings tucked tight and his tail thrashing behind him like a whip. All his earlier turmoil was gone… burned away by a single… driving purpose: to help.
He burst into a small clearing and skidded to a halt, mud splattering his pristine boots. The scene was a stark… violent tableau. Among a grotesque scattering of dead birds… their feathers matted with rain and blood, lay a little girl in a tattered blue dress. Aamon's eyes seeking innocence, caught on her golden locks… but all his other senses screamed a different, horrifying truth. Beneath the scent of rain and pine, all he smelled was a cloying...predatory malice that made the air feel thick.
"Eeeek!! Mama?"
the girl shrieked, her wide… blue eyes fixed on him with feigned terror. Aamon flinched as if struck.
"Are you okay, little girl?"
he called out, his voice soft and pleading. He offered a hesitant reassuring smile, the gesture heartbreaking in its sincerity.
"It's okay, I'm a nice demon. I won't hurt you."
The girl's sobs ceased with an unnatural… jarring suddenness. The silence that followed was more frightening than her cries.
Aamon took a cautious step forward. Thwunk… His foot caught on something solid and unyielding, sending him stumbling to the muddy ground. It was Ciel's ice staff… planted firmly in his path like a barricade.
"Friend shouldn't."
Ciel said, her voice a low… urgent warning as she emerged from the trees like a pale ghost. Her sapphire eyes were fixed on the girl, utterly devoid of pity.
"Ciel doesn't trust this. Look at the birds. Who killed them?"
Her words made his wings flutter in agitation. He dislodged his foot from her staff and stood, brushing mud off of his knees.
"But she looks so scared. Why shouldn't we help…?"
He trailed off, his head tilting in confusion.
"Wait. She stopped crying. And she looks… mad. I think you upset her. I'm gonna go help."
"No!! You stay put, pup."
Arya's voice was low and set, a command woven through with grim certainty as she stepped into the clearing. Her golden eyes were narrowed… her silver-blue ears flat against her head. She didn't even look at Aamon; her entire focus was on the little girl.
"Dumb shit."
she hissed, her hand tightening on her axe.
"That's a fucken pupa. A shapeshifter. An actual, no-shit demon."
The little girl's face scrunched… the mask of innocence dissolving into a visage of pure… undiluted hatred.
"Why aren't you coming to help me?"
she wailed, her voice twisting into a shrill… unnatural demand.
"I want my mommy! My daddy was hurt up the road. He's not waking up! Please help!"
The girl began crying again, great heaving sobs that were a perfect… cruel mimicry of despair. The sound was so convincing it made Aamon's own eyes begin to water with empathetic pain. He reached a hand out instinctively… his heart breaking.
But Ciel was there. Her touch was gentle but firm as she pressed his arm back down to his side.
"Friend, Arya is right."
Ciel stated, her tone chillingly analytical.
"That girl isn't normal. Her story is a lie. Her emotions are a weapon. We should kill her."
The words 'kill her' struck Aamon like a physical blow. He curled in on himself… a wounded, guttural sound escaping his throat. He looked from Ciel's cold certainty to the weeping child, his world tearing in two.
He never saw Arya move. She was a blur of silver and righteous fury. In one fluid, brutal motion, her golden axe swept down. There was no battle cry… only the single… sickeningly smooth crunch of the blade biting deep into the thing's neck.
Aamon let out a sickening gasp, the sound choked with horror and disbelief. His legs buckled, and he collapsed to his knees in the mud… utterly defeated. He was never prepared to see a child die.
"Friend, it's okay. We can go to the inn now."
Ciel said, her voice softening as she knelt beside him, placing a comforting hand on his trembling shoulder.
"She… she was a child."
Aamon whispered, his voice shattered. He stared at the small… still form.
"But if you two think she was a demon… then I won't question it."
The trust in his voice was as heartbreaking as the scene before them.
Slowly, heavily… Aamon stood, grabbing Ciel's hand as if it were the only solid thing in a world that had just proven itself to be a lie.
"Good pup."
Arya grunted, turning her back on the gruesome scene as the pupa's form finally collapsed into a puddle of black… viscous sludge that steamed faintly in the cold air. She swiped the blood… now also black and oily… off her axe with a practiced flick, her expression one of grim satisfaction.
"This shit doesn't deserve our time."
But it didn't die.
Arya's triumphant smirk vanished… replaced by a flicker of shock. The puddle of sludge convulsed. The axe she had just cleaned was wrenched from her grip… its haft snapping as the black ooze solidified around it, pulling the blade down into a reforming mass. The little girl's head, lolling at a grotesque angle… slowly lifted. The sobbing stopped. A low, guttural chuckle… wet and phlegmy… bubbled from its ruined throat, a sound devoid of anything human.
"You… hurt… me."
the thing rasped, its voice a symphony of broken glass and hatred.
Its small hand, once delicate… shot up with impossible speed. It didn't grab Arya's arm; it clamped around her wrist like a manacle of iron. A corona of sickly, purple-black energy erupted from the point of contact, and Arya screamed… a raw, shocked sound of pure agony as the magical feedback seared up her arm… paralyzing her muscles and locking her in place. She was trapped, her weapon gone… her body convulsing as the demonic energy coursed through her.
"Let her go!"
Aamon shrieked, the plea torn from him. He took a step forward… but the sight of the child's form contorting froze him in place.
The Pupa was changing.
Its body did not simply grow; it ruptured. The little girl's neck, already holding the ghastly axe wound… tore open with a sound of wet Velcro as the head lolled back, suspended only by a few stubborn tendons and the spine. From the ragged stump of its throat, a new… larger neck began to bulge outward, a grotesque balloon of mottled, greyish flesh forcing its way up,... stretching the remaining skin of the child-form to a translucent… screaming thinness.
Its bones didn't just crack; they shattered and re-knit in full view, a series of wet… percussive snaps like firecrackers in a bag of meat. Its torso swelled, ripping the tattered blue dress to shreds. The skin of its back split open like overripe fruit… and a row of jagged, bony spines erupted through the bleeding flesh in a spray of black ichor. The golden locks of hair sloughed off in clumps, hitting the mud with soft… wet plops, revealing a bald, distending skull. The single, human eye sank into the swelling flesh… and a moment later, a cluster of a dozen milky-white eyes bubbled up to the surface… each one blinking open with a sickeningly moist click.
It was a nightmare of forced evolution… a mockery of life growing into its true, predatory form… all while its vice-like grip never loosened on Arya's wrist, the small… delicate fingers now deforming into thick, chitinous claws that dug deep in her wrist, drawing fresh blood.
"Pup…!"
Arya gasped through clenched teeth, her body shuddering… her free hand scrabbling uselessly at the demonic limb holding her.
"Kill it! It's not a child! It's a fucking demon! This is what they are!"
Ciel's staff was already raised, the air crackling with intense cold… but she hesitated, the shifting forms of the demon and Arya too close… The risk of hitting her new, furious ally is too great.
Aamon stood paralyzed, his mind a storm of conflicting truths. The weeping girl. The breaking monster. Arya's pain. This is what they are. The words echoed the Guildmaster's story… the Queen's warnings. This was the reality he had been shielded from in his cell. This was the true face of the Abyss… and it was killing his friend.
The Pupa's distended skull swiveled… its multitude of milky eyes fixing on Aamon.
"You damn oni!"
it scratched out, its voice like dying birds.
"Your kind always acts better than what you are… making every other breed your slaves!"
The demon's grip tightened. A sickening CRUNCH of cartilage and bone echoed from Arya's wrist. She screamed, a raw, shredded sound of pure torment.
"Just because your kin was once fabricated from the Abyss, doesn't make you better!"
the Pupa shrieked, its body still writhing and expanding.
"Lady Abyss would hate you! A weakling who doesn't consume such fresh meat!"
Something in Aamon broke with the demon's words. Not his innocence… but his paralysis.
A low growl rumbled in his chest, a sound none of them had ever heard from him. His bone spiked tail, which had been dragging limply in the mud… rose slowly into the air. The individual bone segments seemed to unlock, the spaces between them stretching with soft clicks. It didn't just lift; it elongated… slithering through the air like a serpent of living bone, growing longer… and longer… until its bladed tip hovered just behind the transforming Pupa's multi-eyed skull.
His ruby eyes were no longer wide with confusion, but narrowed with a terrifying… focused intent. He met Arya's pained gaze for a fraction of a second, a silent question and answer passing between them.
Then he struck.
The motion was not a thought… but a syllable in the language of extinction. A single… fluid whip-crack. His tail, a living bone scimitar… did not pierce; it erased the space between intention and execution slamming through the Pupa's skull with the force of a ballista bolt. There was a wet… explosive POP-CRUNCH!! as it punched through bone, brain, and the cluster of milky eyes, erupting from the center of the demon's forehead in a shower of black ichor and gelatinous vitreous humor.
The creature's monstrous transformation stuttered. The milky eyes widened in shock… then went dark. The magical corona around its hand flickered and died. Its grip on Arya went slack.
For a moment, the only sound was the rain and Arya's ragged panting as she wrenched her mangled wrist free and stumbled back… collapsing to one knee. The Pupa's form, caught between girl and monster, trembled violently before collapsing in on itself, dissolving not into a puddle, but into a fine black dust that was carried away on the wind.
Silence.
Aamon's tail retracted with the same fluid grace, coiling back to its normal length, the bone spike now slick with black ichor. He stared at the empty space where the creature had been… his chest heaving. He had not just defended himself.
He had killed. Deliberately. Efficiently.
He looked at his own tail as if seeing it for the first time, then his gaze lifted to Arya.
She was cradling her wrist… the skin blistered and already bruising a deep, ugly purple around the clear imprint of fingers. She looked from the fading black dust to Aamon… her expression unreadable. There was no praise, no thanks. Just a slow assessing nod.
"Took you long enough."
she grunted, but the usual contempt was gone, replaced by a thread of raw, grim respect.
"Now you know."
Ciel finally lowered her staff… the cold mist around her dissipating. She looked at Aamon, her head tilted.
"Friend learned a new thing."
she observed quietly.
Aamon said nothing. He simply nodded, the weight of the act settling deep within him. He had crossed a threshold. The world was not just full of beautiful lies and painful truths. It was full of things that needed to be killed… he had the tools to do it. The knowledge was a cold stone in his gut, and it felt like growing up.
Then, his eyes fell on Arya's injured wrist. He stepped toward her, his clawed hand lifting.
"Ossa Daemonis."
Aamon intoned… his voice flat. A shroud of darkness, deep and void-like… wrapped around Arya's wrist. This wasn't the gentle golden light of the healing he'd used on the mouse. This was something colder… sharper. It didn't just heal; it seemed to fortify, the darkness sinking into her flesh, feeding on the residual demonic power that had seared her.
Arya gritted her teeth, a sharp hiss escaping her.
"The shit is this? The fuck are you doing, pup?"
The black shroud dissipated… leaving behind skin that was no longer blistered, but was now traced with faint, dark lines like veins of obsidian against her wrist. The pain receded, replaced by a strange… humming solidity. She flexed her fingers, the movement stiff but unbroken. She shot Aamon a look that was equal parts suspicion and acknowledgment. It was not a thanks, but it was a truce… forged in the black dust of a shared kill.
Without another word, Arya turned and began to walk… a new tension in her shoulders. Ciel fell into step, a silent sentinel once more. Aamon followed last, his gaze distant… the phantom sensation of his tail piercing demon-flesh a brand new and terrible memory etched into his soul.
They left the clearing behind, the memory of the Pupa's dying shrieks swallowed by the forest… But the woods around Mavis were never truly silent. They were a living, breathing entity… ancient and watchful. The dripping rain was its heartbeat. The rustle of unseen things in the undergrowth was its whisper. In its deep, shadowed places… far from the village's fragile rings of light and law, other things stirred. Older things, and things newly arrived, drawn by echoes of power… the hellfire that had scorched a cave… the cry of a dying shapeshifter… the unique and potent signature of a demon prince learning to shed his innocence...