'Sorry, sis...'
A tear slipped down Antanasia's cheek.
Then—
*BOOM!*
The battlefield shook.
Antanasia flinched.
'Ugh...?'
For a moment, she thought death had finally arrived.
But there was no pain.
No darkness.
No ending.
Only the heavy silence that followed the explosion.
'Huh...?'
Her eyes remained shut.
She did not dare open them.
Somehow, looking at the world after expecting death felt more frightening than dying itself.
'It looks like... there really isn't any pain.'
A few seconds passed.
Still, she did not move.
'Sorry...'
Her fingers twitched weakly against the dirt.
'It looks like I broke first, sis...'
Then Xalier's voice came.
"Let's make a deal."
Antanasia's eyes opened.
"...?"
The first thing she saw was his sword.
Its edge was buried in the ground beside her head, close enough that one wrong movement could have ended her.
Xalier stood above her, calm as ever.
"Let's make a deal instead."
"Uh...?"
Antanasia coughed.
Blood filled her mouth and spilled down her chin.
Her body was still broken, split, and barely holding together, but her energy had not stopped moving. Even now, it was desperately trying to knit torn flesh and shattered bone back into shape.
For beings at their level, a destroyed body was terrible.
But not final.
Xalier looked down at her without sympathy.
"If you swear allegiance through both your Dao Heart and your Mana Core, I will let you live."
Antanasia froze.
"What...?"
Her voice came out hoarse.
'Dao Heart Oath...?'
The words alone were enough to make her thoughts turn cold.
The Dao Heart was not just a heart.
It was the shape of one's path.
Purpose.
Dream.
Will.
The reason one kept moving.
An oath bound to the Dao Heart was not something one simply broke.
If it shattered, so did the person who built their life upon it.
'No. Don't do it.'
Her thoughts answered immediately.
'Never.'
Then another image rose.
A girl who looked almost like her.
'Sis...'
Her emotions answered differently.
Xalier continued.
"And your Mana Core."
"Fuck..."
A little strength returned to Antanasia's voice.
She understood why he said both.
A Dao Heart Oath was terrible, but someone desperate enough could still twist it. Cheat it. Let their path deform. Become something worse and survive.
But the Mana Core was different.
For someone like her, her Mana Core carried strength, identity, foundation, and self. Breaking an oath tied to it was not only death.
It was a denial of the being she had become.
'If I break that...'
Her breath trembled.
'There won't be anything left.'
"Fuck...!"
Most people would choose death.
Death was cleaner.
Death at least allowed the soul to move on, reincarnate, or be remade by whatever laws caught it afterward.
This kind of oath was worse.
If she accepted, Xalier could order her to kill her own family, burn her own home, kneel in the dirt, or live forever as a chained blade.
And she would obey.
She would have to.
"Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!"
Xalier did not rush her.
He only waited.
That made it worse.
Antanasia forced herself to breathe.
"If you didn't want to kill me, why go this far?"
She tried to buy time.
Tried to move her thoughts somewhere other than the girl in her memories.
Xalier's answer came without emotion.
"No. I wanted to kill you."
Antanasia's mouth closed.
"I simply thought of something."
His hand moved to the sword hilt.
"So? What is your answer?"
"..."
A few seconds passed.
Then—
Shhk.
Xalier pulled the sword out of the ground.
Slowly.
Deliberately.
Antanasia's eyes trembled as he raised it again.
"If..."
Her voice broke.
Xalier paused.
"If?"
"If my sister's protection is included..."
She hated how desperate she sounded.
But she kept speaking.
"If I cannot be ordered to harm her. If she is protected. If we can stay together if we want..."
She swallowed blood.
"Then..."
The word almost died in her throat.
"Then I accept."
Xalier looked at her.
For a moment, Antanasia could not read his face at all.
Then he said, "Alright."
"...Uh?"
She blinked.
"Just... just like that?"
"Yes."
Suspicion immediately crawled into her expression.
Xalier did not care.
"I will go capture your sister. Then you can be with her. Neither of you will be able to leave without permission anyway."
Antanasia's face twisted.
"You..."
She understood.
It was mercy shaped like a cage.
Kindness with teeth.
A cruel man offering exactly what she asked for and nothing more.
Xalier's sword rose slightly.
"Is it a deal?"
Antanasia closed her eyes.
Her sister's face appeared again.
'Fuck it.'
She exhaled.
"I accept."
A bitter laugh escaped her.
"Ouch... alright..."
She tried to adjust her broken body enough to begin the oath.
"I, Antanasia Blesteman..."
"Not to me."
Xalier interrupted her instantly.
Antanasia stopped.
"What?"
Her eyes narrowed.
"Then to whom?"
"First, heal yourself."
Xalier did not explain.
He stepped back.
"Hm...?"
Only then did Antanasia notice that his eyes had returned to red.
The empty purple glow was gone.
The black wings were fading.
The black-blue flames had already begun to disappear.
"...After you are done, follow me."
Xalier turned away.
The energy wings dissolved into nothing behind him.
His hair slowly returned to raven black.
He looked down at his suit.
Blood, dust, ash, and cursed energy clung to the fabric.
"Hmh..."
Blood-red energy flared around him for a brief moment.
When it vanished, his clothes were clean again, and the suit looked as neat as if he had never fought at all.
"Good."
He walked to a nearby tree, leaned against it with crossed arms, and waited.
Antanasia stared at him.
'This bastard...'
...
A few minutes passed before Antanasia could even sit up.
"Can you remove a little more of your killing intent?"
Her voice was rough.
"And the energy you left in my wounds. It hurts like hell."
Xalier raised one hand toward her.
Blood-red energy rose from the cuts across her body, pulled out like thin threads.
"Ugh..."
Antanasia clenched her teeth.
Then exhaled.
"Thanks. Better."
Her wounds immediately began healing faster.
The damage Xalier had left inside her was the real problem. Without his energy constantly tearing at her body, recovery became much easier.
Still, "easy" did not mean quick.
If left alone, wounds like these could take days to fully heal.
Maybe longer.
Antanasia had no intention of waiting that long.
She stood unsteadily and walked toward her severed left arm.
Her right arm was a ruined mess too, but one finger still had enough connection for the space ring to respond.
A bottle appeared near her mouth.
It looked like a healing potion.
It was not.
For vampires, healing and drinking were not very different things.
The bottle contained blood.
Some creature's blood.
Antanasia caught the bottle between her teeth, tilted her head back, and drank.
**Gulp. *Gulp.*
Her throat moved greedily.
A moment later, bone began growing from her destroyed right arm.
Then muscle.
Then veins.
Then pale skin stretched over it all.
"Ugh... eww..."
She spat the empty bottle aside and grimaced.
"Fuck! High Ogre blood. It was full of fat!"
Her tongue stuck out in disgust.
"They scammed me. Fuck, at least it was actually essence blood."
Xalier said nothing.
Antanasia picked up her severed left arm from the ground.
The cursed katana was still held tightly in its dead fingers.
Carefully, she forced the cursed blade back into its sheath.
The red markings covering the severed arm faded little by little.
Only then did she press the limb back to her shoulder.
Smoke rose from the wound.
Flesh connected.
Bone aligned.
Nerves screamed.
Her fingers twitched.
"Good..."
She flexed them once.
Then stopped and looked down at her clothes.
"Wait."
Her damaged red and black outfit began repairing itself, torn fabric pulling back together as the enchantments restored its shape.
It was not just clothing.
It was magical armor.
As long as durability remained, its appearance could recover.
Then Antanasia's eyes widened.
"Fuck!"
She looked at Xalier.
"You cut the durability of my armor in half!?"
Xalier did not react.
She clicked her tongue and picked up the two katanas she had dropped earlier.
While she sheathed them, her eyes remained on him.
"Didn't you advance to the First Order of the World Source Realm around a decade ago?"
No answer.
"How the hell are you already in the Second Order?"
Still no answer.
Antanasia's eyes narrowed.
"And what was that black-blue flame?"
Xalier remained silent.
She placed the second katana back at her waist.
"Can we go now?" he asked.
Antanasia stared at him for a few more seconds.
Then sighed.
"Yes."
"Follow me."
Xalier turned and moved in the opposite direction from where Antanasia had originally been going.
She frowned, but followed.
"Aren't we going the wrong way?"
"I did not lie when I said you were heading in the wrong direction."
"Huh?"
The first thing he had said to her returned to her mind.
No.
You are going in the wrong direction.
"But I felt—"
"It was fake."
Antanasia stopped for half a step.
Then continued moving.
'Fake?'
Her senses still told her the fallen object was deeper in the direction she had been searching.
The trace was still there.
The wound in space.
The residue.
The pull.
All of it.
Then understanding slowly crawled across her face.
'Wait...'
Her eyes moved across the forest.
The trees.
The shadows.
The paths.
The energy in the air.
'Don't tell me...'
She looked toward Xalier's back.
'This whole forest is inside a massive array?'
The thought alone made her stomach tighten.
Arrays that could fool sight were common.
Arrays that could fool smell were rarer.
Arrays that could fool blood sense, divine sense, and directional perception at her level?
That was already monstrous.
But an array that could create a false trace strong enough for her to follow while hiding the true direction...
'How many resources would this even need?'
They crossed the forest at terrifying speed.
Sometimes running along the ground.
Sometimes leaping between branches.
Sometimes flying low enough that the canopy hid them from the sky.
Antanasia kept looking around.
The more she paid attention, the worse it became.
It was not one array.
It was layers.
Illusions.
Spatial folds.
Energy disturbance.
False scent paths.
Reflection anchors.
Killing zones.
Misleading traces.
This was not a forest protected by arrays.
This was an array wearing a forest as skin.
"But really," Antanasia said after a while, unable to stop herself, "what the hell were those blue flames?"
Xalier did not answer.
"They looked like fire I saw in my homeland. From yokai and spirits."
Still silence.
"They were not physical fire like your blood-red one. No smoke. No normal burning. But it was hot. Frighteningly hot."
Her eyes sharpened.
"It looked like Spirit Fire."
Xalier's voice finally came.
"You answered your own question."
Antanasia's steps almost faltered.
"What?"
She stared at him.
"Wait, you—"
"Yes."
Xalier did not look back.
"My grandmother was a Kitsune ."
"..."
Antanasia lost her voice.
Bloodline mattered in this world.
Most powerful families guarded theirs carefully. They avoided diluting it, fearing the loss of traits, powers, and inherited nature.
But sometimes...
Rarely...
Different bloodlines did not weaken each other.
They combined.
And when they did, they created things that should not exist.
Antanasia looked at Xalier's back.
The vampire king.
Blood Red Flash.
Spirit Fire.
Kitsune blood.
"You motherfucking monster."
Xalier did not react.
"If you have Spirit Fire, why not use it more?"
"Same reason you do not use your Cursed Blade more."
Antanasia opened her mouth.
Then closed it.
"...Fair."
She hated that it was fair.
The cursed blade gave strength, but the price was not small. It hurt her, warped her, and gnawed at her self every time she drew it.
If Spirit Fire carried even half as much cost or risk, then Xalier's answer made sense.
That did not make it less annoying.
A short time later, Xalier stopped.
"We are here."
Antanasia looked around.
There was nothing.
Only trees.
Grass.
Wind.
False quiet.
She released her divine sense.
Nothing.
No entrance.
No barrier.
No separate space.
No obvious formation.
Her expression changed.
"There is nothing here."
"Just shut up and follow me."
Xalier stepped forward.
Then vanished.
Antanasia stared.
For a moment, the forest remained completely normal.
Then a faint ripple passed through the air.
Not enough to reveal an entrance.
Only enough to prove something had been crossed.
'Another Plane?'
Her eyes narrowed.
'No... a Small World?'
Planes were strange.
Some existed beside reality.
Some layered over it.
Some could be entered only through specific gates.
Others could drag a person inside without consent.
There were large ones, small ones, natural ones, artificial ones, stable ones, dying ones.
Some were there.
Some were not.
Some appeared in the same place as the real world, overwriting it for a moment before disappearing again.
But Antanasia was not shocked by the existence of a hidden space.
She was shocked because she had not noticed it.
At her level, even a disguised Small World should have left a trace.
A pull.
A seam.
A difference in how energy moved.
Yet she had felt almost nothing.
Then her eyes slowly widened.
'Oh...'
She finally understood.
'Its shape has been changed.'
Not only hidden.
Changed.
The Small World's boundary had been distorted, stretched, folded, and anchored so it no longer felt like a normal, separate space.
On top of that, countless arrays were forcing that unnatural shape to remain stable.
'What the fuck...?'
A chill ran down her back.
'What are they trying so hard to protect?'
For the first time since accepting the deal, Antanasia felt something close to real caution.
Not fear.
Not yet.
But caution.
She looked at the place where Xalier had vanished.
Then clicked her tongue.
"...Troublesome."
After one last glance at the false forest around her, she stepped forward.
The world folded.
And Antanasia followed Xalier inside.