The body hit the ground with a wet thud, its eyes still open, still staring at nothing.
Elisabeth von Noctis stood over it, her silver-white hair untouched, her deep violet eyes cold and empty. Her sword dripped blood onto the forest floor, mixing with the dark pool spreading beneath the corpse.
Grade 4. Another one dead.
She flicked the blood from her blade and sheathed it in one smooth motion, her movements precise, efficient, practiced. The monster had attacked without warning, as they all did, and it had died without mercy, as they all would.
But her mind was not on the kill.
Her mind was elsewhere — trapped in a web of questions that had no answers, circling a truth that kept slipping through her fingers like smoke.
It doesn't make sense, she thought, turning away from the body and walking deeper into the trees. No matter how hard I try to understand it, it doesn't make a single shred of sense.
She had been over this a thousand times.
