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The horn of Rem shone under the broken light of the forest as if the night had remembered an ancient form of beauty.
Link saw it before understanding what he was seeing. The world had been reduced to the smell of blood, damp fur, split earth and dirty mana, but that horn cut through all of it with an impossible clarity. It was not large like his, nor double, nor dark at the base with reddish tips. It was unique, white, clean, born in the middle of Rem's forehead with a fierce elegance that made her face stop looking human without becoming less beautiful. On the contrary. For an absurd second, in the middle of a circle of growling demonbeasts, Link thought that Rem had never looked so beautiful.
It was not a sweet thought.
It was a stab.
Because that beauty came accompanied by something broken.
The air around her compressed. The pressure of her mana changed like the weather before a storm. Rem's blue eye lit up with a hard light, without tenderness, without doubt, without the cold patience with which she washed wounds or corrected domestic clumsiness. The chain of her Morning Star creaked in her hand. Her breathing became deeper, lower, almost animal. The forest, which a moment before seemed sure of its numerical superiority, took an entire step back.
Subaru noticed.
"Rem…"
His voice came out smaller than it should have. Not out of fear of her, or not only because of that, but because Subaru knew too well the feeling of seeing someone he wanted to save move away toward a place where his words could not reach. He had Meili in his arms, still unconscious, the cloak stained with dirt and the bandaged hand trembling from the tension. Link barely looked at him sideways. The order he wanted to give him was simple: retreat. Stay behind. Don't get in the way. But he knew Subaru didn't work like that. Subaru was weak, yes. He was fragile, clumsy, exasperating and physically ridiculous compared to any of those present. But he was also the kind of idiot who kept walking even if the whole world dragged him back by the neck.
Rem took a step forward.
The first Wolgarm that dared to jump toward her died before completing the arc. The Morning Star spun with a metallic roar and crushed the animal against the ground in such a way that the earth opened in a splash of mud, blood and bones. There was no hesitation. There was no recoil from the impact. Rem was already moving toward the next before the first's flesh finished falling.
The second attacked from the right. Rem spun on her heel, the chain described a wide circle and the iron ball hit it from the side, throwing it against a trunk with such force that the wood cracked. The third tried to bite her leg. She raised her knee, kicked it squarely in the snout and, when the creature retreated stunned, the Morning Star descended like a sentence.
Link saw her move.
A part of him, even in the middle of everything, was fascinated.
It was not the Rem of the kitchen, nor the Rem of the village, nor the Rem who had barely curved her mouth by the stream. This was something else. A Rem who did not smile, who did not speak of duty, who did not hide her strength behind a tray or a bow. It was the Rem born from a hated and feared race, the Rem who had survived a village in flames, the Rem who kept her love and her guilt under layers of obedience until the horn opened the door to everything she tried to contain.
Beautiful.
Terrible.
And out of control.
"Link," said Subaru from behind. "Something's wrong."
"I know."
"No, you don't know. She's not thinking clearly."
"I know."
"Then we have to stop her!"
Link did not respond immediately. His kagunes were still open behind his back, stained with the blood of the Wolgarms he had killed to reach Meili. Each one moved with a life of its own, tensing at every shadow between the trees. The wound on his side, caused by the earth attack, was already closed. The skin under his clothes joined in silence, but the pain remained like a hot line. It didn't matter. At that moment, pain was information. The blood in the air was information. The number of creatures was information. Rem was the center of the storm.
And Subaru was right.
Rem was killing, but she was not measuring.
Each blow destroyed a demonbeast, yes. But each blow also opened a space in her defense. Each advance distanced her a little more from Subaru and Meili. Each dead creature made the others learn. They were not as intelligent as humans, but they were cunning enough to surround, feign, distract, wait for the mistake. Rem was forcing them to retreat by pure violence, but the mass was still there, closing in from all sides.
"Get the girl out of the circle," said Link.
Subaru pressed Meili against himself.
"And you?"
"I'm going to stay with Rem."
"She can hit you."
"It wouldn't be the first time a beautiful woman has tried to kill me."
Subaru looked at him with furious disbelief.
"This is not the time for that!"
"That's why it was a short sentence."
A Wolgarm slid between the bushes toward Subaru. Link did not turn his head. A kagune shot backward like a spear and pierced the creature through the neck, pinning it to the ground before Subaru even finished recognizing the danger. Blood splashed over the leaves. Meili did not wake up. Subaru froze.
"Move," said Link.
Subaru obeyed.
He ran as best he could toward a more open area, carrying the girl with desperate clumsiness, while Luci floated near Link and blinked with nervousness. The small sphere seemed to want to approach Rem, then Subaru, then Link, unable to decide where the most urgent danger was. Link raised two fingers without taking his eyes off the battle. Luci understood enough to turn off almost all her light.
Rem roared.
It was not a human scream.
The sound cut through the forest with a violence so clean that the Wolgarms hesitated. The Morning Star spun again, knocking down two with a single sweep. Rem advanced over them without looking back, each step sinking into the earth, each movement faster than the previous one. One of the animals managed to bite her arm. She did not stop. She ripped it off with her free hand and slammed it against another before crushing both with the weapon.
"Rem!" shouted Subaru from behind. "Rem, listen to me!"
She did not listen.
Or she did listen and could not return.
Link moved.
He reached her just when three Wolgarms attacked from different angles. Rem saw two. Not the third. Link intercepted that third with his shoulder, let the teeth sink into his flesh and caught the beast's head with one hand. He squeezed until he felt the skull crack under his fingers. The creature shuddered, kicked and went limp. He threw it aside.
Rem turned toward him with her eyes lit.
For an instant, the Morning Star rose as if it were going to hit him.
Link did not retreat.
"It's me."
The chain trembled.
It was not enough.
Rem threw the weapon.
Link tilted his torso and the iron ball passed grazing his hair before bursting the trunk of a tree behind him. Splinters shot out. A cut opened on his cheek. It healed in the same second.
"Good," murmured Link. "Difficult conversation."
Rem pulled the chain to recover the weapon and turned again toward the demonbeasts, as if Link had stopped existing as soon as he was no longer an immediate threat. That was good. Or less bad. She still remembered what she had to kill. Her violence still pointed outward. But her surroundings were filling with blood, noise and movement, and that could change with one wrong push.
Link fought beside her.
Not with the clumsiness of before. Not like someone testing a body he still didn't understand. This time he let the monster take space. His four kagunes opened like a fan of red flesh under the moon, and each one fulfilled a function: one covered Rem's back, another cut lateral advances, another pinned to the ground those who tried to pass toward Subaru, and the last remained near his own body, ready to block magic or teeth. His hands also entered the combat. Fists, elbows, knees, grips. When a demonbeast got too close, Link hit it with the simple brutality of someone who was no longer measuring the damage.
One fell with its chest sunken.
Another lost a leg and was finished before touching the ground.
A third jumped toward Rem's throat. Link caught it in the air with two kagunes, broke it against the ground and threw it toward the group trying to surround them.
The blood started to cover him.
At first, just stains. Then lines. Then a hot layer that stuck to the skin, to the clothes, to the kagunes. The smell was strong, dense, full of corrupted mana and demonbeast flesh. Link felt it as something more than smell. Something inside him, that pang he had been ignoring since the afternoon, opened its eyes.
No.
Not now.
He hit another beast. He destroyed it with a kagune. He took a step to cover Rem's side, received a bite on the forearm and broke the animal's neck with a dry twist. Another attacked from above, from a low branch. Link raised his face just when it fell.
The creature opened in the air.
Its blood fell like rain.
A drop entered Link's mouth.
The world stopped.
Not for Subaru.
Not for Rem.
Not for the Wolgarms.
For Link.
The taste touched his tongue, metallic, thick, hot, full of something that was not food and yet his body recognized with an intimate violence. It was not human flesh. It was not the dark smell of Subaru. It was not bread, nor fruit, nor stir-fried loin, nor quesillo, nor anything that belonged to a table. It was demonbeast. It was living mana inside monstrous blood. It was cells, heat, energy, power concentrated in a taste that his humanity had no words to reject before his body accepted it.
His RC cells responded.
Not with relief.
With hunger.
The word did not reach his mind as thought. It arrived as jaw. As a hole opening under the ribs. As a laugh from someone else rising up his throat. The small wounds he carried closed suddenly. The mana fatigue, that heaviness he still dragged from the Explosion, reduced as if someone had poured fire into a turned-off machine. The kagunes tensed, thicker, brighter, the red veins under their surface pulsing to the rhythm of his accelerated heart.
Luci moved away.
Subaru saw it from afar.
"Link?"
Link did not respond.
He passed his tongue over his lips.
There was more blood there.
His eyes changed completely.
The double kakugan lit up with a different depth, blacker, redder, more liquid. The horns began to emerge under the skin of his forehead, not called by technique or decision, but by instinct. First the bases, then the complete curves, dark and reddish, absorbing mana from the environment and from the polluted air of the forest itself. His breathing became slow.
Too slow.
Rem killed another beast beside him.
Link turned toward the corpse that had just fallen.
The demonbeast was still moving. Spasms. Legs scratching earth. Blood coming out through the open neck.
Link knelt.
Subaru opened his eyes.
"No…"
Link sank his fingers into the flesh.
It was not a clean attack. It was not the efficient gesture of someone eliminating an enemy. It was something else. Something lower, older, uglier. He separated flesh and fur with obscene force, brought his face closer and bit.
The entire forest seemed to lean toward him.
Subaru was left without a voice.
Rem, lost in her own frenzy, did not look at him at first. The Wolgarms did. Several creatures retreated, not before a larger predator, but before something that had stopped behaving like prey. Link tore off a piece of demonbeast flesh, chewed it with an empty gaze and then smiled.
It was a smile that did not belong to him.
It was not the clumsy smile with which he tried to flirt with Rem. It was not the tired grimace he shared with Subaru after a horrible loop. It was not even the arrogant smile of having survived a stupidity. It was thin, twisted, happy in a way that was frightening. A smile that reminded someone enjoying a banquet under a rain of blood.
The mana moved again in him.
Faster.
Stronger.
The kagunes hit the ground around his body, raising mud and leaves. His horns absorbed atmospheric mana with violence, trying to reinforce a body that had already decided to receive the impact even if it was not prepared to do so.
Rem roared again.
Her Morning Star crushed two Wolgarms at the same time. She was also bathed in blood, with the white horn illuminated by the moon, her eye open and her face hardened by a fury that did not distinguish fatigue. The number of Wolgarms had decreased, not by strategy, but because Link and she were turning the forest into a slaughterhouse. Still, shadows kept coming out. Too many. Too insistent.
The small bald Wolgarm, the one that had launched earth magic before, was still alive.
It watched from a distance.
Link smelled it.
The smell of that creature was different. More concentrated. More repulsive. More full of the same root that had bitten Subaru. The hole inside him did not interpret it as a tactical enemy. It interpreted it as the main dish.
His smile widened.
"You."
The creature retreated.
Link took a step.
Rem, in her frenzy, moved before him, throwing herself toward a group that threatened the flank. The bald Wolgarm took advantage of the instant. Its paws touched the ground and a magic circle appeared under the earth, wider than before, less explosive but more precise. It did not aim at Link.
It aimed at Rem.
The attack emerged from below.
Not like loose stakes. Like a jaw of rock and roots, a wave of earth rising to crush her against the trunks. Rem was in the middle of a Morning Star swing. She could not correct the movement in time. Her blue eye, lit by the frenzy, barely managed to move toward the threat.
Link saw it.
Hunger saw the creature.
The man saw Rem.
And, for the first time since the blood entered his mouth, something inside him broke the surface.
It was not a phrase. It was not a complete memory. It was the shine of the white horn. The smile by the stream. A voice saying that she was also glad he had woken up. A shopping list. A fruit saved for Luci. A hand preventing him from getting up too soon.
Rem.
Link moved.
He did not think about technique. He did not think about devouring. He did not think about Subaru, nor about the curse, nor about the girl, nor about the forest. He jumped between Rem and the earth as if his body had decided before his mind who his last defense belonged to.
He hugged her from behind.
Not like in the mansion.
Not like on a date.
Like a shield.
His arms surrounded her, pressing her against his chest, and the four kagunes closed around both of them in layers. One dug into the ground. Another extended to the left. The other two crossed over them like living ribs. The horns absorbed mana with violence, trying to reinforce a body that had already decided to receive the impact even if it was not prepared.
The earth struck.
First came the sound.
A deep crash, as if the forest had closed a giant door over them. The rocks pierced the first layer of kagune and made it burst in red blood. The second resisted half a second before breaking. The third deflected part of the impact, but the complete mass hit Link's back, sinking air, flesh and consciousness. He felt something break near the ribs. He felt the spine scream. He felt his mouth fill with blood that he no longer knew if it was his or the beasts'. Rem was trapped between his arms, protected by him, by his kagunes and by the brutal stubbornness of a body that refused to let her go.
The impact threw them backward.
They crossed a bush, hit an elevated root and ended against a huge trunk. Link received the crash on his back. The bark cracked. The tree trembled entirely. Rem was left against his chest, stunned, her eyes still lit, but without having received the greater part of the blow.
The kagunes fell to the ground.
One twisted.
Another tried to rise and failed.
Luci shone with panic over them.
Link opened his mouth.
No sound came out at first.
Then a low, broken, almost unrecognizable laugh.
"Don't… touch her…"
Rem blinked.
Her frenzy did not break, but it wavered.
Link's face was next to hers, stained with blood up to his jaw, with his eyes still red and black, the horns half shining, the twisted smile dissolving into a grimace of pain. The wounds started to close, but too slowly. He had spent too much on regenerating, on moving, on devouring, on protecting. The explosion from the morning had still left echoes in his reserve. The demonbeast blood had ignited his body, yes, but the blow had fallen on everything that could still break suddenly.
The bald Wolgarm growled.
Link tried to lift a kagune.
It did not respond.
He tried to tighten his arms around Rem, as if he could still cover her.
His fingers loosened.
Rem looked at him.
Her blue eye opened a little more.
"Link…"
Perhaps it was her voice.
Perhaps it was just air leaving her throat.
Link could not know.
The night tilted.
The smell of blood remained there, intense, tempting, monstrous. His body wanted to rise. It wanted to bite again. It wanted to continue. It wanted to turn the entire forest into food until there was nothing left that could threaten her. But consciousness was fading from him in layers, and beneath all of them only one image remained: Rem with her white horn, beautiful and terrible, alive against his chest.
The last kagune that was still moving extended by reflex.
It did not attack.
It placed itself over Rem like a broken blanket.
Then Link lost consciousness.