Kasha’s horse flew down the ravine.
It didn’t take long before she found the source of the screaming.
A large cave had been cut into the rock face halfway down the ravine — obviously a den of some large animal. In front of it stood a massive tree, and clinging to the upper branches of that tree was a nobleman, shaking violently and screaming at the top of his lungs.
“Get back! Get away from me, you hellish creature! I said get back!”
At the base of the tree, a gray bear the size of a small house reared on its hind legs, swiping ferociously at the man above it.
One look at the bear’s face explained why the man had called it a hellish creature.
Its eyes burned like blood. Its teeth were far longer and more densely packed than any natural bear’s. From the nape of its neck down along its back, a row of spines bristled.
This was no ordinary beast.
It was a demon beast — a masu. A kind of mutant, warped by fragments of a dark stone that had burrowed into the creature’s nervous system.
And Kasha, without having intended it, had played a part in bringing this terrible thing into existence.
The second of the three dark stones whose seals she had broken — Masu Opus — had been different from the other two. In the process of separating the curse from it, the stone itself had cracked. The separation had succeeded, but the stone’s own power had been diminished as a result.
What she had not foreseen was that Simon — or rather, whoever was directing Simon from the shadows — had gathered the shattered fragments of that stone and used them to create creatures exactly like this one.
This gray bear was the first experiment. When the experiment proved successful, the production of demon beasts had continued. And eventually, it had culminated in the creation of something far more terrible — a killing machine of unimaginable power known as the Demon Wolf, Ulvbane.
All of this Kasha had pieced together from what she had discovered while wandering the continent alone in the life before her return, combined with what Leon had told her and what the prison guards had let slip.
She looked at the monstrous gray bear with a heavy heart.
It swung its enormous forepaws again. The tree lurched and splintered.
The nobleman clinging to the nearly toppled trunk was the color of ash, screaming without stop. In his hands were a broken bow and a whip embedded with fragments of blue-glowing glass — a magical tool. Each time he cracked it at the bear, it threw off a searing flash. But a masu was not an ordinary creature, and the attacks amounted to nothing.
Groooaaarrr.
A savage, blood-red hunger roiled in the creature’s eyes — a naked desire to tear its enemy apart, burning with malevolent intent.
Kasha dismounted quietly.
She steadied the horse with a hand on its neck, then turned and stepped carefully toward the masu.
I didn’t mean to bring you into the world. But I did. So it falls to me to see you out of it.
She slid the leather case from her shoulder and took out the device.
Stepping carefully, she raised it, settled it, and took aim.
At that moment, as though catching a breath, the bear lowered itself to all fours and fell briefly silent.
Snap.
The branch Kasha stepped on broke beneath her with a sound too loud to ignore.
She froze.
The bear’s head swung toward her with terrible speed.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
Her heartbeat was enormous — filling her chest, her ears, the air around her.
As though it could hear it, the bear locked eyes with her. Slowly, it turned its body to face her. A savage satisfaction glinted in those ruined eyes at the discovery of new prey.
Kasha swallowed hard and opened the valve that channeled energy into the device. A low hum rose from it, and the glass sphere inside began to fill with shifting golden light.
She tried to stay calm. She tried to aim.
But her hands were trembling. Her grip kept sliding.
The masu began to move toward her. Slowly at first. Then not slowly at all.
Sweat ran down her temple.
…Focus.
As though it sensed her anxiety, the creature accelerated. The distance between them closed with frightening speed.
Kasha’s shaking fingers found the trigger.
Fwing.
She fired. The beam cut wide. The golden light scattered uselessly into the air.
The beast understood now that she had tried to strike it. It planted its feet and released a roar that could only be described as the sky tearing open. Up close, the sound did something to the chest — a cold seizing, a suspension of breath.
Her fingers reached for the trigger again. They were shaking so badly she could barely find it.
Then warmth fell over her cold fingers. At the same instant, a voice came fast and quiet into her ear.
“Take a breath. Let it out. Hold it. Then fire. Don’t hesitate.”
Leon had come up beside her without a sound — close enough that she could feel the press of his cheek near hers as he guided her aim.
She could hear his breathing, right there.
His presence — powerful, steady, nearly as overwhelming as the creature before her — enveloped her.
The fear receded.
The fingers covered by his hand stopped shaking.
She breathed in. She breathed out. She held.
And without hesitation, she fired.
Fwing.
Crack.
The shot landed true.
The golden sphere struck the masu squarely between the eyes.
The beast pitched backward as though launched from behind, and fell. It did not move again. The stillness it fell into was almost peaceful — astonishingly clean.
“It — it worked.”
Kasha said it in a trembling voice and turned to look at Leon.
He turned at the same moment, and suddenly their faces were almost touching.
The distance was close enough to feel each other’s breath.
Kasha’s deep pink eyes went wide with surprise. Leon was staring back at her with an intensity that had nothing measured about it — eyes that had already left the fallen masu far behind, riveted entirely on her face, as though he might devour her.
If anything, the gaze aimed at her was fiercer than the one the creature had worn.
She realized he had not let go of the hand still resting over the trigger.
He was burning. An inhuman heat, as though contact with him would scald her. His breath was rougher than usual.
He was shaken. She knew it. She tried to pull back — and found she couldn’t. Like a small animal frozen in the gaze of a predator, she couldn’t make herself move.
Her confusion must have shown on her face, because a thread of red crept visibly into the corner of his eyes. His pupils contracted and expanded, contracted and expanded.
Leon felt two things collide — his will, and something else that had nothing to do with it.
Kasha’s parted lips, soft and startled, were directly before him. The vivid color of what lay beyond them — he could not look away from it.
He wanted to close the distance.
He could feel the rational part of his mind going slack, like something melting at its edges. The context, the setting, the time — none of it registered. All that existed was the overwhelming pull toward her — the need to close his mouth over hers and breathe in whatever breath she had left.
The firm, reliable structure of his self-control was on the verge of final collapse.
And then he saw it. Her eyes blinking rapidly.
Her fingers wriggling beneath his — trying to get free.
She was frightened.
The moment that registered, it was as though something cold had been poured directly into his bloodstream.
He bit down hard on the soft inner flesh of his mouth — pain sharp enough to travel all the way down his spine. A deliberate cruelty turned inward, to kill what was rising in him with something starker. The warm, iron taste of blood spread across his tongue.
Then a sound came from the direction where the bear had fallen.
He wrenched himself back from her, a low sound escaping him. He turned in the direction of the noise and raised his bow without a breath of hesitation. The transformation was remarkable — nothing at all suggested, in the straightness of that stance, what had been happening in his body a moment before.
“Move away from there.”
The nobleman who had been inching cautiously toward the collapsed masu startled badly and threw his hands up. It was the same man who had been treed earlier.
“S-Sir Leon? Ah — you were the one who brought this thing down? I was only going to have a look.”
“No.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I didn’t catch it. Lady Kasha Rüschino did.”
“I — what?”
He drew out the last syllable in an undignified expression of disbelief, staring at the device in Kasha’s hands with an expression of bafflement.
Leon did not bother elaborating. Bow still raised, he tilted his head — a signal to back away from the bear.
“I’m not — I was only curious. Something looks different about this bear. It looked different before, I swear.”
“That bear isn’t dead yet.”
Kasha’s voice, clear and unhurried, cut into the exchange. She sounded as though nothing unusual had occurred.
“What? But I saw it go down —”
“It’s asleep.”
“…What?”
“I put it to sleep. With holy power. So if you keep making that much noise, you’ll wake it back up.”
The man, visibly startled by her seriousness, finally stepped back. He still looked puzzled.
“You put it to sleep? With holy power? But how does —”
Leon watched Kasha walk toward the bear and slowly followed behind her.
She was examining the creature with a calm, matter-of-fact expression — a beast ten times her size, the one they called a man-eater. She went so far as to lift one of its eyelids and check its pupil.
Leon instinctively set down his bow and moved his hand to the hilt of his sword, prepared for the moment it might wake.
“…Did you not say not to wake it?”
“Briefly is fine. It was struck by holy power at extreme density and completely stabilized. It’s probably having the best dream of its life.”
He crouched and examined the bear himself.
The man is right.
Something had changed. It was perceptibly different from before.
He was almost certain he had seen spines along the bear’s back when he’d been trying to aim alongside Kasha. The teeth had seemed far more monstrous — dreadful enough that, encountered in darkness, it would have been easy to mistake for something demonic.
But the gray bear lying in front of him now was immense, yes, but it looked like an ordinary bear. Enormous and scarred, but no longer unearthly.
And something else struck him.
The bear’s face.
The savage, frenzied animal that had been clawing at a tree not minutes ago — it was lying now with an expression of utter tranquility. Like something that had been freed from a terrible trap. Like something that had, at last, come to rest.
Kasha was looking down at it with an expression he could not easily read.
After a long moment, she raised her head and made a quiet request.
“Please end its life without pain, if you can. And… if you’re willing — a prayer. That it might go somewhere better.”
