The blood-colored setting sun could not pierce the rolling storm clouds above Wind and Thunder Gorge.
Lightning crawled across them like countless silver serpents tearing at a pitch-black curtain.
The gale carried the scorched tang of ionized air, kicking up broken stones and snapped branches, drowning the gorge in a doomsday thunder.
Charred crow feathers and severed Leopard Cat limbs littered the ground, and near-hysterical roars echoed between the cliffs, until the ragged river at the bottom swallowed their sound.
A surge of demonic energy rippled across the battlefield. The combatants froze for an instant—crossing paths just as another thunderbolt smashed into the earth.
Among the ruins of the Raimei-Den, Nuyā's black hair hung in disarray.
Her right arm had turned to charcoal, fused to the blood-red patterns etched down her spear, like a corpse-flower born from hell.
Behind her, wings of howling wind unfurled. In the chaos of life and death, she had finally mastered them completely; every tremor resonated with the world's wind.
In her unmoved crimson eyes was reflected the Leopard Cat Third Elder—growling low, fury twisting his features.
His right claw dug into the cliffside, muscles bulging with writhing thunder-veins. The lightning-magma coating his body melted the rock beneath him into glowing red lava.
His killing intent boiled over, becoming a storm of madness.
"Why?! Why?!"
"You filthy little Crow Tengu brat! If you're going to die, why not hurry up and follow your dead father already?!"
Things had gone too far. Even as an honored elder of the tribe, there was no retreat left for him.
The Sixth Elder had died here.The stationed Leopard Cat forces—again and again, he had thrown them away as fodder. Either to drain Nuyā's strength, or to threaten the remaining Crow Tengu survivors. Most had died under his thunder.
Worse yet, to sustain himself… he had devoured many of his tribesmen as blood-food.
If he failed to seize the Wind and Thunder relics now, he could not imagine the punishment waiting once the Panther King learned the truth.
The icy curses echoed in Nuyā's ears as her charred fingertips traced the cracks on the Thunder Spear. Her eyes grew colder, emptier.
Wind and lightning surged in her heart, like a volcano long suppressed, finally erupting.
The wings behind her suddenly beat against the storm's flow. The thunderclouds above ripped open into a spiraling void, and eighteen tornado pillars lined with lightning crashed down.
"Wind-Thunder Rite—Thousand Sparrow Cry!"
Having discovered the union of wind and lightning, Nuyā hurled her spear.
Within the eyes of the tornado, it split into a thousand thunder-sparrows.
Each sparrow's wings were sharpened wind-blades, its lightning-beak aimed straight at the Third Elder's demon-flesh.
Amid the violent turbulence, her carbonized arm shed away piece by piece, exposing stark white bone.
Facing the oncoming storm of sparrows, an unfamiliar terror seized the Third Elder.
His pupils constricted. Thunder-veins blazed across his skin, as if his blood had liquefied into molten lightning. He expelled it outward, forming a thick thunder-shield.
The sparrows slammed into it with deafening detonations—like thousands of bombs exploding at once. Wind blades and thunder-magma intertwined into a devastating tempest, grinding stone and wood to powder.
The Third Elder trembled beneath the pressure, his feet sinking into molten earth to anchor himself.
"Damn it... Damn it!"
"If I weren't injured, this would be nothing!"
Madness filled his eyes. His lone remaining arm swung desperately, trying to swat down the sparrows piercing through the shield.
But Nuyā's Wind-Thunder Rite, empowered by the gorge itself, did not cease.
Cracks webbed across the thunder-shield like shattered glass.
Then—it burst apart.
The storm of sparrows flooded him like a collapsing dam.
His screams ripped through the gorge as wind-blades carved him open, and lightning cooked his flesh.
His fur split. Blood sprayed. White bone gleamed.
His struggles weakened… until finally, his body toppled, falling into the magma with a hiss of sparks.
The swirling clouds parted before the shockwave. Sunset light poured down like frozen blood, pinning Nuyā's broken shadow against the fallen pillars of the Raimei-Den.
The half-shattered thunder spear fell from the sky, embedding itself in the dirt—unclaimed.
The Third Elder's corpse blackened in molten rock. The lightning-slurry faded dark red, like the blood her father shed when he sacrificed himself to give her the Storm Wings.
Nuyā staggered forward across severed leopard-cat claws. Splintered bones cut into her feet; she seemed not to notice.
The over-used wings dissolved into drifting motes. Without their support, she collapsed amid shattered stone.
Her fingers dug into the cracks unconsciously. Suddenly, she remembered An'umaru's final words before death:
"Live."
His last breath tasted of iron, collapsing into her mind like the very thunder that consumed him.
A burst of lightning erupted from the magma, flinging the Third Elder's head skyward.
Nuyā reflexively slashed with her ruined arm, but the wind-blade only sheared away half the jaw.
The hideous skull landed at her feet, hollow eyes still frozen in disbelief and hate.
She suddenly let out a quiet laugh.
Her only intact limb propped her upright again. Within her eyes there was no triumph—only loneliness, and emptiness.
So this was vengeance. Not exhilaration, only ash sinking into the soul.
A cry of young crows echoed from deeper within the gorge.
Nuyā turned toward the hidden caverns where her kin sheltered. Her blood-stuck eyelashes trembled like dying wings.
The sunset finally pierced the clouds, stretching her shadow long and thin.
Like a rusted broken blade thrust into scorched earth, burial ground of countless dead.
A blood-laden wind swept past her ears.
She suddenly turned toward the gorge entrance, footsteps and aura shamelessly unhidden. She lurched toward her spear.
Her toe-bones cracked against the gravel, shattered nails sparking against the spear's surface.
Her burnt body failed to turn fully; her ankle twisted into a stone gap—
—and wind caught her spine before she fell.
"The princess of the Crow Tengu should not fall like a clipped fledgling."
The figure materialized with his voice—armor gleaming, robes fluttering. A boy's hand hovered near her waist, supporting without truly touching.
His face was flawless, smiling gently. Golden eyes glimmered like fragments of sunlight.
Nuyā's fingertip pressed against his throat… only for frost to crystallize at the touch.
She stared at the claw-mark tattoo on his cheek. His features, like sculpted ancient ice, softened slightly.