Her blood blade came crashing down.

  Blow after blow, heavy and relentless as a smith's hammer on glowing iron. The sound wasn't a clean cut, wasn't an elegant strike—it was raw force eating its way through flesh, bone, and demonic essence. Each impact made the forest floor vibrate, as though the roots themselves were flinching. Dry cracking echoed through the night, underscored by the wet slap of dark blood spraying onto moss and leaves.

  The demon gasped, its body staggering back beneath the sheer violence of the onslaught. Bark burst from the oaks where its claws braced. Earth was churned up, stones kicked loose. But its laughter didn't die.

  It only grew sharper.

  "You… are dangerous." Dark, viscous blood dripped from its lips and stained its tusks. Its grin twisted into a grimace of pure malice. "All the better."

  Valeria stood close before it. Her shoulders hung low, as though she were suddenly carrying a weight heavier than steel. Her breath came in hot, rapid bursts, burning in her throat as though each draw scraped the lungs from the inside. Her arms were heavy—not from weakness, but from the kind of strength that is too vast for fine movement. In this state, the world had shrunk to essentials for her: targets, movements, blood.

  There was no more hesitation, no weighing of options. No "if" and no "but." Only the craving for the next blow. Only the need to hear the next crack that proved the creature before her was finally giving way.

  Tear him apart. Leave nothing of him.

  The blood blade vibrated in her hand as though it had its own pulse. Warm. Heavy. Alive. Every swing drew red threads through the air, and where it struck, an aftershock lingered—not of light, but of heat and metallic taste.

  The demon retreated further, but it wasn't fleeing out of fear. It moved like someone choosing the distance precisely, the better to study its opponent. Its grin widened while its eyes—those unnatural spiral irises in toxic green and violet—seemed to rotate, as though a wholly separate, maddened sky were turning within them.

  Valeria pressed the attack. One step, two—the ground beneath her boots was slick with blood, but she barely felt it. She heard only the heavy beating of her own heart. Not in her chest—everywhere. In her temples. In her wrists. In her teeth.

  She wound up, the blood blade like a guillotine.

  The demon didn't duck. It glided to the side, as though its body were merely an idea that changed its mind at the last moment. Valeria's strike hit the ground, tearing up a chunk of earth as if exposing a root. Moss and leaves flew. A sour smell rose—wet earth mingled with sulphur.

  She wrenched the blade back and struck again.

  The demon laughed through it all, as though each hit didn't just wound it but entertained it.

  Valeria's blood blade trembled briefly in her hand.

  Not because her strength was fading.

  Because the air around her was changing.

  It was as though someone were kneading the night itself together. A pressure that had nothing to do with physical presence settled over the clearing. Not like a weight on the shoulders—more like a grip around the throat of the world.

  Valeria felt it in her skin before she saw it. The fine hairs on her arms stood on end. Her breath caught for a fraction of a heartbeat. The blood blade suddenly became… sluggish. Not heavier. More as though the air were holding it in place.

  A violet magic circle opened beneath the demon's clawed feet.

  It pulsed ominously, casting long, distorted shadows that crept up the nearby oaks, as though the light of the world itself were being smothered. No clean lines like a proper protective circle. It was a spiral. A coil that devoured itself greedily inward, as if trying to bore directly into the core of the world.

  Toxic green and violet glowed in the furrows. The longer Valeria stared at it, the more she was overtaken by the feeling that it wasn't the spiral that was standing still—but herself.

  The brutal focus of her berserker state began to waver.

  Not because of fear.

  Because of memory.

  Valeria's gaze flew involuntarily to Krent.

  He lay motionless in the shadow of an overturned root. His breathing was barely more than a flutter now, an irregular rattle growing quieter each time. Dark blood had completely soaked through his shattered armour and seeped greedily into the moss, as though the forest itself were drinking.

  Valeria felt something cold spreading inside her, something that didn't come from the forest.

  No. Not like this. Not here. I won't let you die.

  The berserker in her screamed to keep striking, until the demon fell silent for good. But the part of her that was still Valeria saw only Krent—and the seconds slipping far too quickly through her fingers.

  She forced herself to break off.

  It felt like throwing a bolt in her mind at full sprint. Like slamming a door shut behind which something raged. The pain didn't come immediately… but then it hit like a wave.

  The blood blade lost its menacing glow in an instant. The shimmering red turned dull. The weapon grew heavy and began dripping from her hand like thick, dark water—first in viscous threads, then in heavy drops, until it seeped uselessly into the ground.

  With the blade went that brutal focus, that intoxicating roar in her head that had been drowning out all pain. The forest came back—with sounds, smells, reality. And with it came the price.

  Magic returned to her body—but it was not a gentle inflow. It was painful, as though her body had violently locked out the mana during the berserker state and now the dams were breaking uncontrollably. It stung beneath the skin, as though needles were driving through veins. Her fingers cramped. Her stomach clenched.

  She stumbled to Krent and threw herself down beside him in the moss.

  Cold. Wet. Blood-warm in places.

  Her hands moved too fast, too frantic. She tore at the pouches on her belt as though she could pull time from leather. The clink of glass rang across the clearing as she produced a healing potion. The vial glowed from within like liquid emerald, as though a piece of spring were trapped inside.

  With trembling fingers she lifted his upper body. Krent's head fell heavy against her shoulder, his weight too great, as though he had suddenly lost all the tension that usually held him together. His face was pale. Too pale. His lips faintly blue. His breathing came in fits, as though it needed convincing each time.

  Valeria set the vial to his lips.

  "Drink… please…" Her voice broke, dissolving into a desperate sob.

  A drop ran down from the corner of his mouth. Valeria cursed softly, pressed the glass more firmly, tilted it, more carefully so he wouldn't choke. Then she felt it—a tiny swallow. Barely more than a reflex. But it was there.

  She exhaled as though she had been holding her breath for minutes.

  At the same time, she laid the flat of her hand on his worst wound. Beneath her fingers the fabric of his armour was shredded, the edge of the metal sharp. Warm blood clung to her skin. A faint green light flickered to life. Healing magic. As familiar as her bow—and yet now like a tool in a storm.

  She tried to guide the mana, to force the tissue into regeneration. She felt the body resisting, pain and shock holding the structure in place like nails.

  The healing flow was far too slow.

  And it was erratic.

  Not because Valeria lacked the technique.

  It was the forest itself—or rather the demon's aura, twisting everything. One moment the ambient magic was so dense she could barely control it, the next it tore away and left a vacuum that made her hand feel "empty," as though someone had pulled the ground from under her feet.

  Every time she tried to grasp the healing flow, it slipped through her fingers like sand.

  Krent rattled heavily. His eyelids fluttered uncontrollably. His hand searched blindly for her, but found only the blood-soaked fabric of her garment. His fingertips clawed into it—not tightly, more like someone holding on to a dream.

  "Run…" he breathed.

  It was barely more than air passing over his lips. And yet it struck her like a blow.

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  "Shut up!" Valeria pressed the vial harder against his lips, as though she could force him to stay with her through sheer will. "Not now. You're not going anywhere."

  She felt her own eyes burning. Not from smoke. From something else. Something she didn't want to allow herself.

  Behind her, the demon's laughter scraped through the night.

  "Playtime is over, little human."

  Valeria raised her head, and her heart clenched.

  The demon now stood in the centre of the massive spiral that had burned itself deep into the earth. It had grown larger, as though it had been devouring the ground while it pulsed. The coils glowed in toxic green and violet, and at the centre, something was gathering.

  A black light.

  Not darkness—light. Something active that ate colour. It was as though a black hole had bitten directly into reality. Sounds turned muffled. The rustle of leaves grew distant. Even the scent of resin seemed to fade, as if being drawn in.

  The shadows on the tree trunks no longer merely crept—they slid across the bark, as though the ground were pulling them inward with invisible force.

  Valeria heard her own breathing far too loudly. Her heartbeat sounded like drums in an empty room. Everything else went quiet.

  "No chance…" she murmured.

  She gently shifted Krent's head back so he could breathe. Her hands were suddenly tender, as though by doing so she could hold him in the world. Then she positioned herself protectively before him.

  Her body trembled with exhaustion. Her fingers wouldn't close properly anymore. Her mana was shredded from the berserker break and the healing attempt. But her gaze stayed fixed on the demon.

  The demon extended its claws. Slowly. Savouring it. As though tuning an instrument.

  "Die."

  Valeria felt it immediately.

  She couldn't stop this power. Her own magic was too weak, too erratic. Her arrows would be far too slow against this wall of black light. Even if she managed a flame arrow—what would it accomplish when fire itself was being smothered?

  This is the end.

  The forest seemed to hold its breath, just as it had at the edge of the Shrine Oak Forest earlier—but this time it wasn't mere silence. It was a pull that tore at her soul. A tugging, as though something inside her were being bent inward.

  Valeria looked one last time at Krent.

  His face was contorted with pain. His breathing shallow. And yet… he was there. Still.

  She knelt down to him briefly, pressed him instinctively closer, as though she could hide him from the world in her arms. Her forehead touched his shoulder for a heartbeat. The smell of blood was overwhelming. And beneath it: him. Krent. Metal, leather, sweat—familiar, real.

  "I love you," she whispered against the noise that was about to come.

  Then the world exploded.

  Black lightning tore the sky above them open. Flames, pitch black and filled with a terrible life of their own, ate across the ground like starving serpents. The forest seemed to scream as centuries-old trees splintered like dry kindling. Bark burst into shreds. Branches flew. Sparks—black sparks—leapt through the air like insects.

  Dense smoke and biting ash poisoned the air.

  Valeria stumbled backwards, pulled Krent tighter against her. Her arms trembled uncontrollably. Magic beneath her skin felt like water she was desperately trying to hold with bare hands—and it simply ran away. Useless. Empty.

  The spell hit.

  Pain.

  Everything around her became pure pain. Black flames tore at her skin. The lightning burned the air from her lungs before she could draw it in. It smelled of scorched resin, of molten metal—and of something else, something dark that didn't belong to this world. Her mouth filled with bitter ash. Her throat burned as though doused in liquid fire.

  She wanted to scream. No scream came. Only a choked sound that dissolved into smoke.

  Then, after the heat, a sudden, cutting cold.

  An immense pressure bore down on her, as though she were being pushed miles beneath water. Her ribs ground. Her spine seemed to bend. She felt a painful wrenching in her stomach, as though the demon's spiral wanted to twist everything inside her inward and annihilate it.

  She could no longer hear Krent breathing.

  Or so she believed.

  And in that second of total darkness, something broke inside her that she couldn't name. Not her will. More like… the trust that the world was fair.

  A deafening crash shook the clearing.

  Then—sudden silence.

  It wasn't silence in the sense of "no sounds."

  It was a silence as though the world had, for a moment, stopped being anything at all.

  The pain was gone.

  So abruptly and completely that it felt wrong. As though someone had flipped a switch, and everything that had just been burning had never happened.

  Valeria forced her eyes open.

  Dense, grey smoke crept in slow tendrils through the air. Ash drifted down like fine snow. Her skin felt… whole. Not burned. Not torn. She felt Krent's weight in her arms. Warm. There.

  She swallowed, and that alone was already a miracle.

  In the distance, the demon greedily sucked in the fouled air. Its chest heaved ponderous beneath the strain of the massive spell. Smoke rose from the scarred ground where the bodies of its victims should have lain.

  "Finally, peace…" it croaked.

  Its cold grin returned.

  But as the smoke slowly cleared, it froze mid-motion.

  Valeria and Krent still lay there.

  Unharmed.

  A barrier enclosed them both—flawless, shimmering, as though the air itself had become a shield. Not an ordinary dome. No clear boundary. More a surface of facets, like cut glass refracting light—but not into a thousand colours.

  Only five.

  Crimson. Sapphire blue. Gold. Emerald green. Pitch black.

  Each facet reflected precisely that spectrum, and it seemed as though within it lay an order, a law that could not be negotiated. The demon's black flames bounced off it as though they were water against rock. Not a single bolt had passed through. Nothing had touched them.

  Valeria felt it at once:

  This was not a shield that someone actively "maintained." It wasn't a spell that felt like the familiar weave of mana. It was more like a state—as though reality at this one point had decided that no harm would be allowed.

  It didn't feel cast.

  It felt born.

  "Im… possible…" the demon stammered and staggered back in disbelief.

  The spiral beneath its feet flickered nervously. The toxic green and violet twitched, as though the earth had choked on its own malice.

  Then the ground began to tremble again.

  But it was not an explosion.

  It was an answer.

  Valeria felt the air change—not heavier, not colder, but… clearer. As though something foreign were stepping into the forest that the demon's aura could not endure.

  And then a voice sounded.

  It was quiet, barely more than a whisper.

  But it was not a sound heard with the ears.

  It was an echo that resonated directly in Valeria's heart and soul, as though the sound originated where thoughts begin.

  …Flare.

  Valeria flinched. Not from pain. From the feeling that this word named her. That it recognised something inside her she had never spoken aloud.

  Krent didn't react. His head lay heavy against her chest. His eyes were closed. His breathing was shallow—but it continued.

  Valeria swallowed. Her gaze clung to the demon, as though she were afraid that if she blinked, everything would vanish.

  The world answered.

  Not with a single beam.

  Instead, five living flames ignited in the empty air around the demon.

  Crimson.

  Sapphire.

  Gold.

  Emerald.

  Pitch black.

  They didn't burn like ordinary fire. They cast no warm flicker onto the trees. They seemed like pure manifestations—each colour its own gravity, its own soundless tone. They danced for a fraction of a second in the air, as though briefly regarding each other before acting.

  The demon threw its claws up. Its grin shattered.

  "—"

  No scream came.

  Because before it found air, all five flames struck its body simultaneously.

  The impact was silent.

  But the effect was devastating.

  The colours ate through its demonic essence, ignoring every defence and every curse. Toxic green and violet from the spiral twitched like wounded nerves, then broke apart. The black light at the centre collapsed, as though someone had revoked its permission to exist.

  A flash of light illuminated the Shrine Oak Forest—not a harsh white, but like a brief moment in which the night forgot the wrong rules. The shadows were obliterated entirely for a single heartbeat.

  Then there was only consuming fire.

  Crimson that seemed like wrath.

  Sapphire that cut like cold.

  Gold that burned like judgement.

  Emerald that compelled like life.

  Pitch black that was not dark—but final.

  And at last: silence and ash.

  The demon was no more.

  For a tiny moment, black ash hung indecisive in the air. It swirled as though it didn't know where it belonged, because its origin had been erased. The smoke cleared in a strange fashion, as though recoiling from something.

  Amid the swirling remains, a figure materialised.

  Valeria held her breath.

  It was a young woman, already grown. Spectral. Nearly transparent. As though she were made of solidified starlight and memory. Her contours were there—and yet not fixed. One couldn't tell whether the wind passed through her or whether she was the wind.

  In her hands she held an immense two-handed sword. The blade looked so heavy that no mortal could have wielded it. And yet it rested in her grip as though it were part of her body—not a burden, but a given.

  Her hair seemed to move, though the air now stood perfectly still.

  The five flames of "Flare" did not go out. They drew together and began circling the young woman in a calm, majestic orbit, like planets around a distant sun.

  Crimson. Sapphire blue. Gold. Emerald green. Pitch black.

  Valeria felt the barrier around her respond to this movement, as though it were woven from the same threads. The facets shimmered briefly. Not unstable. More… approving.

  The young woman did not look at Valeria.

  Not at Krent.

  Her gaze seemed to reach into an infinite distance, as though she were seeing something that lay far beyond trees, sky, and time. For a moment it seemed as though she wanted to speak—but Valeria heard nothing more. Only the lingering resonance of that single word inside her.

  …Flare.

  Then, as suddenly as she had appeared, she began to dissolve. The glow faded. The spectral outlines bled into the grey smoke of the clearing, as though the world were breathing her back in. First the edges, then the shape, then only the feeling that she had been there.

  The five flames drew together, grew smaller, denser—and dimmed, as though withdrawing back into the barrier itself.

  The prismatic dome flared one final time—in exactly those five colours—and then slowly receded, as though releasing the air again.

  Valeria and Krent sank exhausted into the moss.

  Only now did Valeria feel how badly her body was shaking. The tension she had been carrying fell away like armour one can suddenly no longer hold. Her hands were numb. Her shoulders ached. Her head throbbed.

  She opened her eyes and looked up at the star-clear sky. The smoke drifted away in thin threads. Between the crowns, the sky was "normal" again. No spiral. No black light. No sea of colours.

  Only stars.

  Silent.

  As though they had seen nothing.

  Beside her lay Krent.

  He was unconscious, but his breathing was calm and steady now. It wasn't much—but it was everything. Valeria laid her hand on his chest, just to feel the rhythm, to prove to herself that this was real.

  The beat was there.

  Slow. Strong enough.

  We're alive.

  The thought didn't come triumphantly. Only like an exhausted whisper, handled carefully because it was too fragile to say aloud.

  Valeria closed her eyes briefly. Her chest rose and fell shallowly, and her own heartbeat suddenly felt foreign—as though it had grown accustomed to something during the fight that was now missing.

  But before she could drift fully into darkness, she felt it.

  Only for a single heartbeat.

  Deep inside her.

  Warm. Small. Tender.

  A second rhythm.

  Barely perceptible—but unmistakable. Not an echo. Not her imagination. Not a lingering trace of magic. Something alive that hadn't come from the forest, hadn't come from the demon, hadn't come from the fight.

  It was inside her.

  Valeria's eyes filled without her being able to stop it. Not from fear. Not from pain. From something so quiet that it struck her more deeply than any scream.

  A soft whisper echoed in her mind, the young woman's voice—gentle as a lullaby, and yet carrying a gravity she couldn't explain.

  Valeria moved her lips.

  "Thank you…" she breathed.

  Not to the forest. Not to the sky. Not to the stars.

  To whatever had just decided she wasn't allowed to die.

  Her eyelids grew heavy. The world went soft. Sounds drifted far away. Krent's breathing beside her remained the last sure sound.

  Then darkness enfolded her gently.

  The Shrine Oak Forest fell completely silent once more.

  Only the bitter smell of scorched earth bore witness to what had happened here. And the clear sky gazed down silently upon them both, as though guarding a secret the world was not yet meant to know.