Consciousness didn't return like a sunrise, it came back like reverse drowning.
Nyra sucked in air violently, her lungs expanding against her ribs with a painful crack. Smell hit her before sight. There was no metallic sulfur stench from the Underworld, no whiff of ash or ozone from a collapsing portal. It smelled like old wood, dry straw, and boiling herbs.
It smelled like earth.
She opened her eyes. The ceiling was low, dark wooden beams arranged in geometric patterns, stained by years of smoke. The light was faint and orange, dancing across paper walls.
Where?
Predator instinct kicked in before rational thought. Threat. Locate threat. Neutralize.
Nyra tried to sit up, her hands scrambling along her side, searching desperately for the Kaburami. Her fingers found only the rough fabric of a futon.
No sword.
Panic hit her spine like an icy bucket of water. She looked down at herself. Her black battle leather — her second skin — was gone. In its place, she wore a dark blue cotton yukata, old and way too big for her lean frame.
The fabric smelled like rustic soap.
And like him.
Someone had undressed her. Someone had touched her while she was unconscious.
A low growl rattled in her throat, nothing human about it. The humiliation burned hotter than the pain. She threw the covers aside, ready to stand and kill whoever had dared put hands on her.
But when she put weight on her right leg, the world shattered.
It wasn't just pain. It was full rejection of her anatomy. Her leg crumpled like a rotten twig. Nyra crashed to the wooden floor, the impact sending shockwaves that bleached her vision.
She looked at her exposed thigh where the yukata had ridden up. This wasn't a normal wound. The cut at her flank — the one she only half remembered — had spread.
The veins along her thigh were black, pulsing with slow necrosis. The flesh around the wound wasn't just torn — it was corrupted. The Underworld's touch wasn't physical, it was spiritual.
The toxic atmosphere of that place had seeped into her bloodstream the moment her aura failed during the escape. It felt like acid eating her muscles, blocking her lycanthropic regeneration.
"Damn him…" she hissed, cold sweat beading instantly on her forehead.
Dracula. He was still in her mind. She could feel his shadow, the invisible chain. If she stayed still, he would find her. The rift might've closed, but he had eyes everywhere.
She needed to move.
Needed her sword.
Needed to kill the Vampire King.
Nyra dug her nails into the floorboards. If she couldn't walk, she'd crawl. She dragged herself toward the cabin door, where a sliver of cold gray daylight leaked through. Every inch was a battle. Her breath came in sharp, ragged bursts.
And then movement. Another one.
She reached the threshold. The sliding door was half-open. The freezing wind cut her face. Outside, snow fell endlessly, smothering the world in silence.
A shadow blocked the light.
Nyra lifted her head, teeth bared, ready to rip out a throat.
The man was there. Eijiro.
He stood like a mountain against the white snow. He carried a bundle of firewood under one arm and a steaming wooden bucket in the other. He stopped, looking down at the woman crawling at his feet like a wounded animal trying to flee a trap.
He didn't step back. Didn't show fear. His dark eyes traveled over her trembling body, the fresh blood already staining the yukata around her thigh.
"Move," Nyra ordered. Her voice was rough, cracked, but carried the authority of someone who commanded death. "Or I'll tear your throat out."
Eijiro didn't move. His gaze went to her nails dug into the wood, then to the trail of blood she'd left from the futon.
"You won't make it to the gate," he said. His Japanese was coarse, words short and unpolished — the speech of a man who didn't waste breath.
"I'm going to kill him," Nyra muttered, fever twisting her senses. She didn't see Eijiro — she saw a guard from the Vampire Castle. She pushed herself up using the doorframe. "Where's my sword? Give me my sword!"
She swayed, her body betraying her. She stumbled forward — straight into his chest.
He didn't push her off. He dropped the wood into the snow with a dull thump and caught her by the shoulders. His hands were large, warm, unbelievably steady. No gentleness — just support. The solidity of a tree root.
"Let go of me!" Nyra snarled, thrashing weakly. His touch felt electric, repulsive — it reminded her of chains. Of submission. "Don't touch me!"
"If you go outside, the cold will kill what's left of you in an hour," Eijiro said, voice unchanged. "And if the cold doesn't, that leg will rot off before sunset."
He lifted her. Nyra tried to scratch his face, but her arms felt like lead. Her strength burned out in seconds. She sagged in his grip, her head falling against his thick wool-covered shoulder.
He smelled like pine resin and honest sweat. A living smell.
Eijiro stepped inside the cabin and kicked the door shut, blocking the winter. He lowered her onto the futon with a care that didn't match his rough appearance.
Nyra panted, eyes fixed on the ceiling again. The rage still burned, but her body was an unmoving anchor.
"You… took off my clothes," she accused, her voice trembling with contained fury.
Eijiro went to the fire pit — a square hole in the floor with glowing embers beneath an iron kettle. He poured hot water into a ceramic basin.
"The leather was fused to your skin from the dried blood," he said without turning. He dipped a clean cloth into the steaming water. "I had to cut it off. It was filthy. You smelled like death — and like something burnt that I've never smelled before."
He approached with the basin and the cloth. He knelt beside the futon.
"No," Nyra said, trying to cover her leg.
Eijiro stopped. For the first time since she fully woke, he looked directly into her eyes.
That's when he saw.
Really saw.
The firelight illuminated Nyra's face, and her eyes glowed. They weren't brown or black like everyone else on that island. They were a deep, electric blue — unnatural. Demon eyes, villagers would call them. Gaijin eyes. Monster eyes. Windows to a soul that had seen horrors beyond words.
Nyra waited for the recoil. For the sign of the cross. The scream. The fear.
Humans always reacted to her eyes.
But Eijiro simply held her gaze. He blinked slowly, his own dark, unreadable eyes reflecting the blue flame in hers. No judgment. Just a quiet acknowledgment of difference.
"I'm going to clean this," he said, nodding toward her leg. "It's gonna hurt."
He didn't ask permission — but he didn't force her either. He stated it plainly, giving her the illusion of choice. Or maybe just the dignity of a warning.
Nyra was too exhausted to fight. And deep down, the animal part of her knew he was right. The stench of her necrotic flesh was starting to make her nauseous.
She turned her face toward the wall, teeth clenching.
"Do it."
Eijiro pulled the yukata fabric aside. The sight of her leg was grotesque. Black veins like spiderwebs beneath pale skin.
When the hot cloth touched the wound, Nyra didn't scream. Her back arched, her whole body going rigid like a bowstring about to snap.
A strangled sound escaped her clenched teeth, her fingers twisting the sheets until her knuckles turned white.
Eijiro worked with calm efficiency. He wiped away pus and dark blood, dipped the cloth again, wrung it out, and continued.
"What hit you…" he muttered, almost to himself. "It wasn't a blade. The flesh is dead, but the edges aren't clean. Looks like… poison."
"Miasma," Nyra forced out, voice shaking. "From the Underworld."
Eijiro paused for a moment, the cloth hovering above her skin. Any other man would've laughed or run at words like that. Eijiro simply continued.
"Then we have to get it out," he said.
He stood and walked to a crude wooden shelf. He returned with a small curved knife used for cleaning fish or game, and a ceramic jar.
He set the blade in the fire. The metal hissed and turned red.
Nyra stared at the glowing knife.
The primal fear of fire — the curse of her beast half — spiked her heartbeat.
"What are you going to do?"
"The black flesh has to go," Eijiro said, examining the red-hot blade. "Or it'll eat the rest of you. Then I'll seal it with this." He tapped the jar. "Aconite root paste mixed with ash. Burns like hell but stops rot."
Aconite. Wolfsbane.
A bitter, dry laugh escaped her.
"Aconite is poison to my kind," she whispered.
Eijiro looked at her, the glowing knife reflecting in his eyes.
"You're not a normal wolf. And that wound isn't normal. Poison fights poison. It's the only chance."
He approached again.
"Hold on to something," he warned.
Nyra looked at him. This stranger in a lonely mountain cabin, with bronze skin and worker's hands, treating a blue-eyed, cursed-blood monster like just another tough job.
"Why?" she asked, sweat dripping down her temples. "Why didn't you leave me in the snow?"
Eijiro positioned the blade over the necrotic flesh of her thigh. Heat radiated from it.
"Because the snow already has too many dead," he said.
And then he cut.
This time, Nyra screamed. A scream no human throat could produce — a torn, primal howl that made the fire tremble and the falling snow outside seem to hesitate.
The pain was absolute, blinding, white. She felt dead flesh separate from living flesh, smelled burning meat mixing with herb steam. She felt his hands holding her down — firm like shackles, gentle like shelter.
And then the merciful darkness came again, pulling her away from the cabin, the pain, and the dark-eyed stranger who dared to save her.