Her metallic scream split the night—sharp, distorted, and vibrating through the trees like a blade dragged across iron. The forest recoiled. Leaves shuddered. Even the air seemed to twist, bending around the force tearing through her body.
Mandle lay motionless on her chest, unconscious, his small weight pressed against her as if the world itself had pinned him there. Inside him, the last remnants of the energy he had poured into her earlier flickered weakly. His breaths came shallow and strained—each one thinner than the last. He was struggling to breathe, his life slipping away slowly, quietly, unnoticed.
Unaware of the storm erupting beneath him.
Her back arched violently, but her arms never loosened around him. Shadows rippled beneath her skin, crawling like living ink, threading through her veins in jagged, unnatural patterns. The ground trembled beneath her palms as she clawed at the soil, not in attack, but in desperate resistance.
The forest dimmed.
Branches leaned inward. Roots shifted beneath the earth. The air thickened with a pressure that felt ancient and hungry.
Another metallic cry tore from her throat—this one deeper, layered, as if two voices fought to escape through the same mouth. Her eyes snapped open, glowing with a fractured light that flickered like a dying star.
The demon was devouring her system piece by piece. And now—finally—it reached her mind.
A shudder ran through her as the last of her brain cells surrendered. Her gaze went blank for a heartbeat, then sharpened with a cold, void‑born awareness that did not belong to her.
Then her body changed.
Her skin dulled, losing all warmth and color. Her limbs stiffened, her features hollowed—yet none of her beauty vanished. Instead, it twisted into something otherworldly. A ghostly pallor washed over her face, sharpening her cheekbones, deepening the shadows beneath her eyes. She looked dead—yet impossibly striking, like a demon queen risen from the void, her presence both terrifying and breathtaking.
Her features remained, but transformed. Refined. Exaggerated. Made haunting.
Her pale face glowed faintly in the moonlight, smooth and flawless as carved marble. Her figure, once warm and human, now held a cold, sculpted elegance—curved, graceful, and unnervingly perfect. She was a pale beauty, the kind that stole breath and froze blood. Anyone who looked at her would see it instantly: a ghostly, chilling, irresistible presence that commanded both awe and fear.
And then she turned her head toward them.
Slowly. Mechanically. As if her neck were being guided by invisible strings.
Her hollow eyes slid across the clearing, landing first on the wolf, then on Hoj. The movement was so smooth, so unnatural, it felt as though time itself had slowed to watch her. The air tightened. The shadows deepened. Even the moonlight seemed to dim as her gaze passed over them.
There was no emotion in her stare. No recognition. Only a cold, death‑soaked awareness that made the forest itself recoil.
Even the wolf felt it. Its ears flattened, its body lowered instinctively as her hollow eyes swept toward it. The pressure rolling off her was suffocating, and the death‑cold glance she cast in the wolf's direction made its fur bristle and its breath hitch.
A chill crawled up Hoj's spine, sharp and electric, as if her glance alone could strip the warmth from his bones.
She leaned forward.
Her fingers curled into the soil. Her body tensed. The air around her gathered like a storm about to break.
She was about to dash—swift as wind, deadly as shadow—straight toward Hoj and the wolf.
But then she froze.
Not because of Hoj. Not because of the wolf.
Because she felt something on her.
Or rather—someone.
Her gaze dropped.
Mandle.
Unconscious. Fragile. Dying.
Her ghostly expression flickered. The cold, void‑born awareness inside her stuttered. Something old, something buried, something human pushed against the demon's hold.
And then she remembered.