By the time Diego and Beatrice reached the city farther inland, the sounds of the shoreline had faded into something distant and monstrous.
Explosions still rolled across Hanabi Island, but here they came as low thunder between buildings rather than immediate impacts. Smoke stained the sky above the city, and crowds of civilians packed the streets under the direction of Hunters trying desperately to move them toward evacuation centers.
Diego looked back toward the coast.
He couldn't see any of the others.
That bothered him more than he wanted to admit.
Diego still couldn't quite accept how quickly the Golden Festival had turned into this.
Only hours ago, people had been eating, laughing, wandering beneath lanterns.
Now the streets were full of blood.
Diego: "I can't believe this is actually happening."
Beatrice glanced toward him while helping an elderly woman over a broken section of pavement.
Diego: "I just hope everybody's okay."
Beatrice's expression softened.
Beatrice: "So do I."
That was all either of them had time for.
A scream came from the intersection ahead.
Three vampires rushed from an alley toward a cluster of civilians. The Hunters nearest them reacted immediately, forming a defensive line while several others hurried the civilians farther inland.
Diego drew his sword and joined them.
The first vampire came straight at him.
Diego stepped aside, redirected the attack, and cut across the vampire's ribs. Another Hunter finished it before it could recover.
Beatrice handled the second with much less movement.
One step.
A clean strike.
The vampire dropped.
The third tried getting around them.
A Hunter intercepted it from the side.
The evacuation continued.
There was no time to celebrate individual victories.
Every few streets, another group of vampires appeared.
Sometimes two.
Sometimes five.
Sometimes more.
The Hunters moved with the civilians, creating a shifting defensive perimeter rather than stopping to chase every enemy that retreated. Their objective was simple.
Get people out.
A young boy cried for his mother.
Beatrice found her less than a minute later beneath a damaged awning and helped reunite them.
Diego carried an injured man whose leg had been crushed beneath fallen masonry until another Hunter could take him.
The city was still standing.
For now.
But the farther the battle spread inland, the less certain that became.
Then something began drifting down from above.
Diego noticed it when several gray flakes landed on his sleeve.
Ash.
He brushed them away.
More followed.
A Hunter nearby looked upward.
The air above the street had begun filling with it.
Gray particles spun between the buildings, catching the orange light from distant fires.
Hunter: "Must've blown in from the coast."
Another Hunter nodded.
There were enough burning buildings across Hanabi to explain it.
Diego accepted that answer immediately.
Beatrice didn't.
She stopped walking.
A piece of ash passed in front of her face.
Her eyes followed it.
Something was wrong.
The wind was blowing east.
The ash moved north.
Beatrice's expression changed.
More particles crossed overhead.
Not drifting.
Traveling.
Too quickly.
They changed direction around the corner of a building without losing speed.
Beatrice reached out.
One gray fleck spiraled around her fingers.
Her stomach tightened.
She knew this movement.
No.
That was impossible.
For a moment, the street disappeared.
⸻
A different sky.
A different world.
Ash covered the ground like snow.
Someone walked ahead of her through it, complaining that she was taking too long.
A man surrounded by drifting gray.
A familiar voice.
A familiar curse.
The ash moved around him like an extension of his thoughts, opening a path whenever he walked and closing behind him when he passed.
Beatrice remembered laughing.
Remembered fighting beside him.
Remembered wind scattering his ash while he complained that she ruined every technique he tried to use.
Then another memory.
Standing on opposite sides of an argument neither of them would concede.
A life that no longer belonged to this body.
⸻
Beatrice returned to the street.
Her hand slowly closed.
It can't be.
Another stream of ash passed overhead.
Same movement.
Same strange precision.
Her heart began beating faster.
She had to know.
Beatrice turned toward Diego.
Beatrice: "Stay here."
Diego blinked.
Diego: "What?"
Beatrice was already moving.
Diego: "Beatrice?"
She ran toward the next street.
Diego looked at the civilians.
Then at her disappearing figure.
Diego: "Why would you say that like I'm actually going to listen?"
He handed responsibility for his section to the nearest Hunter and took off after her.
Beatrice was fast.
Far faster than he expected.
She crossed one intersection, vaulted the wreckage of a vehicle, and disappeared around another corner before Diego reached the first.
Diego accelerated.
He caught one glimpse of her farther ahead.
Then she vanished again.
Diego: "Seriously?!"
He followed.
Wrong turn.
Nothing.
He doubled back.
By the time he reached the next avenue, Beatrice was gone.
Diego stared at the empty street.
The ash continued flowing overhead.
Beatrice had already realized where it was coming from.
She followed the current instead of the roads.
Every few seconds, she stopped long enough to examine its direction.
The ash thickened.
Gray particles gathered along rooftops and windowsills.
Soon the city began looking as though winter had arrived in the middle of summer.
Beatrice's suspicion turned into certainty.
She knew this curse.
There couldn't be two people who moved ash exactly like this.
She crossed onto a rooftop.
Another building.
Then another.
The source was close.
She could feel the air changing.
Ash scraped softly across tile.
Beatrice climbed onto the roof of a taller building.
And saw him.
Across the street, atop another structure, stood a man surrounded by gray.
Ash circled his body in broad currents, rising from nothing and joining the growing mass over the city. Some of it moved into nearby streets. Some gathered into dense clouds. Some floated around him with almost lazy precision.
Beatrice stopped.
Two hundred years and another life disappeared in an instant.
He looked different from how memory had preserved him.
But not enough.
The posture.
The expression.
The curse.
There was no mistake.
Beatrice: "I can't believe you're here, Sazan."
The vampire turned.
His eyes settled on her.
No recognition.
Of course there wasn't.
This wasn't the face he knew.
Sazan: "Hm. I don't believe we've met, human."
Beatrice almost laughed.
Not because it was funny.
Because she'd expected that answer and still wasn't prepared to hear it.
Beatrice: "Maybe you'll remember once you've seen this."
Her eyes changed.
Red.
Her fangs emerged.
Sazan's expression sharpened.
Then Beatrice activated her curse.
Black veins appeared along her face.
The air answered.
Wind curled around her ankles.
It rose along her body in thin spirals, catching the loose edges of her clothing and lifting her hair.
The gust wasn't enormous.
It didn't tear roofs apart.
Didn't rip trees from the ground.
There simply wasn't enough curse blood in her body for that.
Like several of the reincarnated vampires living among humans, Beatrice had spent years taking only what she needed.
The minimum.
Enough to survive.
Enough to keep herself from weakening too severely.
Not enough for anything resembling the power she once commanded.
But she didn't need overwhelming force.
Not for this.
She needed recognition.
Sazan stared at her transformed appearance.
Then at the wind.
Sazan: "A vampire?"
Ash gathered around him.
Sazan: "We've had many traitors lately."
His eyes narrowed as the wind around Beatrice became more distinct.
Sazan: "And you control the wind."
A small smile appeared.
Sazan: "Looks like I'm up against my natural enemy."
Beatrice raised one hand.
The wind changed.
A narrow current shot across the gap.
Not a tornado.
Not even enough to damage the rooftop.
It struck the ash beside Sazan and split the cloud into two perfect halves.
His eyes widened slightly.
Beatrice rotated her wrist.
The current curved.
It circled behind Sazan and scattered another cluster of ash without touching him.
Precise.
Controlled.
Familiar.
Sazan's smile faded.
Beatrice moved her other hand.
Three thin blades of compressed wind formed.
They fired.
Sazan immediately raised a wall of ash.
The first wind blade cut through the center.
The second curved around the left side.
The third dropped beneath it.
None targeted his body.
All three sliced through the ash surrounding him.
Sazan froze.
Beatrice watched his face.
Something was beginning to move behind his eyes.
Memory.
Not recognition yet.
But close.
Sazan compressed ash into a blade and rushed forward.
Beatrice waited.
He crossed the rooftop.
His weapon came toward her shoulder.
She moved only one step.
A circular gust wrapped around the ash blade and pushed it off course.
Sazan's momentum carried him past.
Beatrice tapped two fingers against his wrist.
A concentrated burst of wind struck precisely beneath the joint.
The ash weapon dispersed.
Sazan turned.
Beatrice was already several meters away.
She hadn't attacked him once.
Sazan generated several ash projectiles and fired them in a spread.
Beatrice extended her palm.
Wind spiraled inward.
The projectiles entered the current and curved around her body.
She released it.
Every ash bullet passed harmlessly to either side.
Sazan stared.
Beatrice remembered doing exactly that before.
Many times.
Usually while laughing at him.
She raised her hand again.
A small vortex formed around Sazan's feet.
The ash beneath him lifted.
Then spiraled upward.
Not enough to trap him.
Just enough to recreate an old technique.
Sazan looked down.
His expression finally changed.
A flicker.
Recognition trying to surface.
Beatrice saw it.
She pushed farther.
Two currents of wind crossed around him from opposite directions.
They caught his ash cloud and twisted it into a narrow spiral above his head.
For a second, the shape resembled a funnel.
Sazan didn't attack.
He simply watched it.
A memory was forming.
His ash.
Her wind.
The endless irritation of having his curse dismantled by someone who knew exactly how to manipulate the air around it.
Beatrice lowered her hand.
The wind weakened.
She was already breathing harder than she should have been.
That annoyed her.
Once, techniques like these would have required almost nothing.
Now even this much demanded careful control.
But it was enough.
She hadn't come here to kill him.
Hadn't even come here intending to fight.
She only needed him to remember.
Sazan's ash slowly gathered around him again.
The vampire looked at Beatrice's unfamiliar face.
Then at the wind circling her body.
His eyes narrowed.
Something in his expression had become uncertain.
For the first time since she found him, Beatrice thought she could see the man she remembered beneath the enemy standing before her.
And somewhere several streets away, Diego was still trying to figure out where the hell she had gone.
Sazan's uncertainty lasted only a moment.
Then the ash around him began to spread.
What had been drifting lazily across the rooftop thickened until the night sky above them turned gray. Ash poured from his body in impossible quantities, rolling over nearby buildings and filling the streets below. Roof tiles disappeared beneath it. Windows vanished behind dull clouds. Even the distant orange glow of Hanabi's fires became muted.
Beatrice felt the pressure of his curse immediately.
Sazan raised one hand.
The city changed.
Stone beneath his feet began crumbling into gray particles.
The rooftop dissolved from the edges inward, solid material breaking apart without flame or impact. Wooden beams collapsed into powder. Nearby signs lost their shape, followed by walls, balconies, abandoned vehicles, and entire sections of the road.
Everything the expanding field touched began becoming ash.
Beatrice's eyes widened.
She remembered this too.
Sazan spread both arms.
The transformation accelerated.
The building beneath them vanished.
Beatrice jumped as the roof became a churning gray sea beneath her feet. Wind gathered around her ankles and carried her toward another structure, but that one was already deteriorating.
Brick turned gray.
Glass clouded, fractured, and disappeared.
Metal groaned before breaking apart into countless particles.
Sazan remained suspended at the center of it all atop a dense column of his own ash.
His ultimate.
World of Cinders.
Within seconds, several city blocks were being consumed.
The ash didn't simply fall afterward.
It joined him.
Every street that disappeared gave Sazan more material. Every building became another current under his control. Dense gray clouds twisted between structures, growing until Beatrice could barely see ten meters ahead.
Then she realized something worse.
Sazan could see her perfectly.
The ash brushed against her clothing.
Against her hair.
Every particle carried information back to him.
A blade formed out of the gray beside her head.
Beatrice ducked.
Another came from behind.
She turned and pushed it away with a precise gust.
Five more appeared.
Then ten.
Beatrice moved through them with short bursts of wind, never wasting more curse blood than necessary. She pushed one blade into another, slipped beneath a third, and redirected a fourth into the gray ground forming below.
Ash bullets followed.
She twisted sideways.
Wind curved around her body and carried the first barrage away.
The second came from above.
Beatrice flicked two fingers.
A narrow current split it.
But Sazan had too much now.
The entire environment belonged to him.
A massive hand formed from the ash beneath Beatrice.
She jumped.
Another emerged above.
Beatrice spun between them as they closed together, using a concentrated burst beneath one foot to propel herself through the narrow opening.
The hands collapsed.
More ash rose.
Walls formed around her.
Then blades.
Then spears.
Beatrice's breathing grew heavier.
Her curse blood was already dwindling.
She couldn't match volume with volume.
Trying would be pointless.
Sazan could bury the entire district beneath ash before she produced even a fraction of the wind she once could.
So Beatrice stopped trying to overpower him.
She remembered how she used to fight.
Not bigger.
Cleaner.
She closed her eyes.
The ash storm rushed toward her.
Beatrice lowered both hands.
Wind gathered around her body.
Not outward.
Inward.
Every current compressed toward a single point.
Her clothes snapped violently against her body. Loose ash began spiraling toward her, caught by an increasingly narrow vortex. Sazan's blades distorted. His projectiles bent away from their intended paths.
Beatrice opened her eyes.
Then crossed both arms.
For the first time, Sazan froze.
He knew that stance.
Beatrice stepped forward.
Her arms opened.
The wind vanished.
For one impossible instant, there was complete stillness.
Then a thin line formed across the World of Cinders.
It stretched from Beatrice toward the horizon.
The air screamed.
A concentrated current narrower than a sword stroke erupted forward with enough precision to divide the ash storm cleanly in two.
Not scatter it.
Divide it.
The attack tore a perfectly straight corridor through Sazan's domain.
Ash was ripped away from the center and forced into two enormous walls on either side. Buildings still in the process of disintegrating were briefly exposed beneath the opening. The night sky became visible again through the gray.
Beatrice turned her wrist.
The corridor curved.
Wind followed.
The razor-thin stream swept across the battlefield in a graceful arc, dragging Sazan's ash with it and folding his entire storm around itself.
One vortex became two.
Two became four.
Sazan tried regaining control.
Beatrice stepped again.
Her fingers closed.
Every current suddenly reversed.
The separated ash currents collided against one another.
Sazan's own domain compressed into a dense spiraling column above the city.
For a moment, almost none of it remained around Beatrice.
She stood in a perfect circle of clear air.
Sazan stared at her.
The signature technique had been unmistakable.
The same stance.
The same impossible control.
The same maddening habit of using his own ash against him.
His eyes widened.
Sazan: "Could it be you, Athena."
The wind around Beatrice weakened.
Her shoulders lowered.
Beatrice: "I go by Beatrice now. That's the name I was given when I reincarnated."
Sazan stared at her as though the sentence itself made less sense than the attack.
Then the ash collapsed.
His curse released.
The massive column dispersed harmlessly into the air, falling across the city like gray snow. The buildings that had already been converted were gone, leaving several blocks scarred and partially erased, but the expanding destruction stopped.
Beatrice released her curse as well.
The black veins faded.
The wind around her disappeared.
Her vampire features softened back toward the human appearance Sazan had first seen.
Her legs nearly weakened beneath her.
She hid it.
That technique had once been effortless.
Now it had nearly emptied what little curse blood she had.
Neither noticed the movement several buildings away.
Diego finally reached the source.
He climbed through a shattered upper floor, breathing hard after losing Beatrice several streets earlier. He was about to call out when he saw her standing opposite the male vampire.
Then he stopped.
They weren't fighting.
Not anymore.
Something about Beatrice's posture made him stay where he was.
He crouched behind the remains of a wall and listened.
Sazan stepped closer.
Sazan: "You were reincarnated? What kind of twist of fate is that?"
Beatrice gave a faint smile.
Beatrice: "Believe me, I've wondered the same thing."
Sazan: "You look nothing like Athena."
Beatrice: "I'd be worried if I did."
Sazan looked her over again.
Beatrice was younger than the woman he remembered. Different hair. Different face. Different body entirely.
But that wind could not belong to anyone else.
Sazan: "How much do you remember?"
Beatrice: "Everything."
That answer wiped away the last of his doubt.
Sazan's eyes shifted toward the city around them.
Sazan: "Then you remember what happened."
Beatrice's expression became quieter.
Beatrice: "Some of it."
Sazan: "Some?"
Beatrice: "My memories ended when I died, Sazan."
The words hung between them.
Sazan looked away briefly.
Beatrice had imagined this moment before.
Not specifically with him.
But with someone.
Someone from that world appearing in front of her and telling her what happened after her life ended.
For nineteen years, she had lived with the unanswered question.
What became of them?
Which side survived?
Who died after her?
Who kept fighting?
She had learned to stop asking herself because there was never going to be an answer.
Now one stood directly in front of her.
Sazan: "And you've spent this new life among humans?"
Beatrice nodded.
Beatrice: "I was born here. Half human. Half vampire."
Sazan's expression tightened slightly.
Beatrice: "I grew up with them."
Sazan: "And now you fight for them."
Beatrice didn't answer immediately.
Sazan: "Athena—"
Beatrice: "Beatrice."
He paused.
Sazan: "Beatrice, then."
The correction hurt more than she expected.
Not because she disliked hearing her new name.
Because both names belonged to her.
Athena wasn't some stranger whose memories she had inherited.
That had been her.
And Beatrice wasn't some temporary replacement either.
This was her too.
Nineteen years of another family.
Another world.
Another life.
Friends who had never known Athena.
People she had come to love without needing the past.
Sazan: "You're really on their side?"
Beatrice looked toward the evacuation routes in the distance.
Beatrice: "I thought I was."
Sazan caught the wording.
Sazan: "Thought?"
Beatrice looked back at him.
For several seconds, she couldn't make herself ask.
Her heartbeat had begun to change.
There was one person whose fate mattered more than every other answer Sazan could give her.
Beatrice swallowed.
Beatrice: "Tell me."
Sazan waited.
Beatrice: "Did my father survive that battle?"
Sazan's expression softened.
Sazan: "He did."
Nothing around Beatrice changed.
No wind.
No explosion.
No dramatic movement.
Yet something inside her stopped completely.
For the first time since reincarnating, Beatrice felt something in her heart she hadn't felt in a very long time.
Hope.
And immediately after it—
Fear.
Beatrice: "Is he still alive?"
Sazan nodded.
Sazan: "Yes, he's still alive."
Beatrice stared at him.
The city became distant.
Her father was alive.
Two hundred years.
Another world.
Her death.
Her reincarnation.
And he was still there.
Somewhere in the Alter World, the person she'd thought she would never see again was alive.
She should have been happy.
Part of her was.
That was what made it hurt.
Because another part of Beatrice had spent nineteen years building a life here.
She had believed there was meaning in what happened to her.
Born again not as a full vampire, but as something between both worlds.
Half human.
Half vampire.
Perhaps fate had been telling her something.
Perhaps she'd been given another chance specifically because she could stand between both sides.
That belief had made becoming a Hunter easier.
It had made fighting beside humans feel natural.
Then came Odd Jobs.
People she hadn't expected to become precious.
People who irritated her.
People who made her laugh.
People she had protected and been protected by.
People who knew Beatrice.
Not Athena.
She had grown up surrounded by humanity.
She loved them.
And somewhere, buried beneath all those feelings, had been one shameful hope she had never allowed herself to say aloud.
That nothing remained for her in the Alter World.
Not because she wanted everyone dead.
Never that.
But because if there was nothing to return to, then she wouldn't have to choose.
Her new life could simply be her life.
Her father was alive.
The choice had returned.
And Beatrice already knew what she would do.
That was the cruelest part.
No matter how badly she wanted to stay—
She couldn't abandon him.
Not after getting another chance.
Not after learning that somewhere across worlds her father had survived the battle that killed her and continued living without his daughter.
Her chest tightened.
She hated how quickly certainty formed.
She would return.
She would fight beside him.
Even if it meant leaving everything here.
Even if it meant abandoning people she'd grown to love.
Even if they hated her for it.
A small sound came from behind the broken wall nearby.
Beatrice turned.
Diego stepped out.
His face was confused.
Concerned.
Diego: "Nova, what's going on?"
Beatrice stared at him.
Of course he followed her.
She should have known.
Diego looked between Beatrice and Sazan.
Then at the ash covering the street.
Then back at Beatrice.
Something about her expression unsettled him immediately.
Beatrice slowly turned her head toward him.
A soft smile appeared.
One tear slipped down her cheek.
Diego froze.
He had never seen her look like that.
Not once.
Beatrice: "Tell everyone I'm sorry."
Diego's brow furrowed.
Beatrice: "Please, survive this battle somehow."
Diego: "What?"
Behind her, Sazan understood before he did.
Sazan: "So you'll be coming back to our side?"
Beatrice closed her eyes.
For one moment she saw Odd Jobs.
Faces.
Meals.
Arguments.
Missions.
Ordinary days she hadn't realized would become precious until she was suddenly being asked to leave them behind.
Her smile trembled.
Then she opened her eyes.
Beatrice: "Yes."
Diego's expression changed completely.
Diego: "Woah. Nova, what're you talking about?"
He stepped toward her.
Beatrice didn't.
Diego: "What does he mean, their side?"
Beatrice couldn't explain.
Not now.
If she tried, she wasn't sure she could finish.
Diego moved closer.
Diego: "Beatrice."
Her heart twisted.
Beatrice raised one hand.
Diego stopped.
Beatrice: "Goodbye, Diego."
Wind gathered around her palm.
Diego's eyes widened.
The blast hit him before he could defend.
Not sharp.
Not cutting.
Pure force.
A concentrated wall of wind struck his chest and lifted him from his feet. He crossed the street and crashed through the weakened side of a building.
Stone and wood collapsed around him.
Beatrice immediately lowered her hand.
She knew exactly how much force she'd used.
Enough.
Not more.
Inside the wreckage, Diego struggled to move.
His vision blurred.
His ears rang.
Through the broken wall, he could still see Beatrice standing beside Sazan.
He reached toward her.
Diego: "Be-Beatrice."
His arm fell.
His eyes closed.
Beatrice stared at him from across the street.
The tear reached her jaw.
Another followed.
She wanted to go to him.
Wanted to apologize properly.
Wanted to tell him this wasn't betrayal.
Wanted to tell him that nineteen years couldn't simply disappear because somebody from her old life had shown up.
But that was exactly why she had to leave.
Those nineteen years mattered.
So did everything before them.
Beatrice turned away before she could change her mind.
Sazan watched her quietly.
Ash continued falling around them like snow.
And somewhere within the ruined building behind her, Diego lay unconscious with one hand still stretched toward the place where his friend had been.
***
Beatrice: "Can we move somewhere else?"
Sazan studied her for a moment.
There was no mockery in his expression now.
Sazan: "Of course."
Beatrice nodded.
That was all she needed.
The two left together.
They moved away from the evacuation routes and deeper toward another section of the battlefield, keeping enough distance from the Hunters that Beatrice wouldn't immediately be forced into another confrontation.
She didn't look back.
Not because she didn't want to.
Because she did.
Too much.
⸻
Several minutes passed.
Diego woke to someone shaking his shoulder.
His eyes snapped open.
Pain immediately followed.
His back hurt.
His head rang.
Dust covered his clothes, and broken wood lay across one leg.
A Hunter pulled the debris away.
Hunter: "Easy. You're alright."
Diego's memories returned all at once.
Beatrice.
Sazan.
The wind.
Her crying.
His eyes widened.
Diego forced himself upright.
Diego: "Where's Beatrice?!"
The Hunters around him exchanged looks.
One of them pointed toward the street.
Hunter: "Gone."
Diego stared at him.
Diego: "What do you mean gone?"
Hunter: "She left with that vampire."
That answer hit harder than the wall had.
Diego looked toward the empty road.
There was no sign of her.
Only ash.
One of the Hunters helped him stand.
Another kept staring at him.
Not at his injuries.
At him.
The man's eyes narrowed slightly.
Hunter: "You're with Odd Jobs, aren't you?"
Diego looked over.
The Hunter seemed to recognize him.
Then his expression shifted.
Hunter: "That girl was too."
Diego said nothing.
The Hunter looked in the direction Beatrice had disappeared.
Then back at Diego.
Hunter: "Say, did you know she was a vampire?"
Diego froze.
The question was simple.
The answer wasn't.
He opened his mouth.
Nothing came out.
That hesitation lasted barely a second.
But the Hunter saw it.
Diego knew immediately.
The man's face changed.
Not enough to become openly hostile.
Enough.
Diego could almost see the thought forming.
He knew.
Before either could say anything else, another Hunter rushed from the intersection.
Hunter: "Vampires approaching!"
Every head turned.
Several figures were moving between the buildings ahead.
More than a few.
The Hunters immediately drew their weapons.
Hunter: "Get ready!"
The questioning Hunter looked away from Diego and raised his sword.
For the moment, that was the end of it.
Diego tightened his grip around his own weapon.
He had been bailed out.
Barely.
The approaching vampires were the only reason the conversation had stopped.
But it wasn't over.
The Hunter glanced at him once more before stepping into formation.
That look said enough.
Diego knew he would probably have to answer soon.
Maybe after the fight.
Maybe sooner.
And when that happened, he wasn't sure what he was supposed to say.
Because yes.
He had known.
And Beatrice had just left with the enemy.