[Is Yurien doing this too? No — he participated in this subjugation even before the reversal, so he must know what happened here. You could just rest, right? Let the big guy handle it.]
The demonic sword grumbled. Echi didn't answer. She wasn't in the mood to think too hard right now. Having something to focus on was a relief.
Then she felt it - an anomaly.
Without a sound, like a hunting animal, she turned only her head toward it.
Most people had retreated to their tents in the downpour, but movement was stirring beyond the camp boundary. It wasn't coming from Baraha's direction.
Yurien had left his tent.
She could see him through the slightly open entrance of hers. He walked out into the rain without an umbrella, only a hooded cloak, and let himself be soaked. He looked steadily toward the tents housing Baraha and the vice-commander, then turned and headed in a different direction.
[What? Where's he going?]
"I told you not to use his name so casually."
[Is that really what matters right now? He's heading somewhere strange. What are you going to do?]
She hesitated for a beat. Follow Yurien into the rain without explanation or stay and keep watch in case something approached Baraha?
She didn't deliberate long. She stood, picked up her sword, shook out a waterproof cloak and pulled it over her shoulders, then grabbed a deep purple umbrella.
[You're really going after him?]
"He clearly knows something. If he's leaving camp now, he has a reason."
[But what if something happens here while you're gone?]
"I'm not planning to follow far. And somehow… I don't think he'll go far."
Mana surged from her core through her body. Echi erased her presence. She wasn't as refined as a professional assassin, but reaching mastery in one field tends to bleed into adjacent ones.
She was confident she wouldn't be caught by Yurien.
'Good thing I wore dark colors.'
She slipped into the rain and followed him.
His silver hair and white uniform were hidden under the dark, rain-soaked cloak. He moved past the guards with purpose, leaving camp, heading straight for the gorge entrance. The closer he got, the thicker the fog became.
He stepped into it and disappeared.
Echi hesitated, glanced back at the camp — quiet in the downpour — and followed him in.
Yurien didn't go deep. He stopped near the right wall, not far from the entrance, and began scanning between the wet rocks and soil.
He let his right hand hang loosely, then drew RanGiosa from his palm, the holy sword emitting a faint glow in the dark.
[It looks like he's searching for something.]
The demonic sword murmured, and Echi had the same thought.
'He's using mana to sense something. What is he looking for?'
She watched quietly from behind a protruding tree, angled just past her umbrella. The holy sword's dim glow caught his profile, sharp, precise features, lowered brows casting shadow over his blue eyes.
He pressed his hand to the wall and worked his way along it slowly. His hand came away caked in wet soil; he didn't seem to notice.
When he stopped at a particular spot, he ran his fingers over it, then stepped back, raised the holy sword, and stabbed it into that exact point.
The white blade pierced the dirt wall as smoothly as if it were cutting tofu.
At that moment —
"KYAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!"
A shriek tore through the canyon, inhuman and piercing. Thunder rumbled simultaneously, partially masking it. The wall where the sword had struck split apart, and a mass of decayed corpses came tumbling free.
From the heap, formless white shapes surged upward - smoke-like, each wearing scarlet beads of light where eyes should have been. No mouths, but they screamed. They poured out like rats from a hole.
Specters.
Echi recognized them immediately.
Among the best-known ghostly monsters no physical form, flickering like mist, impossible to harm physically, and among the most dangerous things alive.
Specters possessed their hosts. A person taken over became like a monster, attacking everything around them. A Master could resist. Anyone who couldn't use mana was helpless.
'So that's how Baraha dies.'
If Specters had swarmed the camp unprepared - the junior knights and cadets would have been possessed. Subduing them would have caused devastating casualties. Even the Celestial Knights would have paid a heavy price.
And that was why Yurien had come here alone. Taking people who couldn't resist possession into a Specter nest would only create more victims.
How had he known they were here in advance?
'Among the Giosa owners - Yurien is the only one with his memories intact.'
The realization struck her clean.
If another Giosa owner remembered the erased timeline, they would have come here too.
Only Yurien was present. That meant he was the only one who still remembered.
A wave of relief moved through her - tangled with resentment.
'Why does it have to be him?'
Her insides felt like they were crumbling. She bit down hard on her lower lip.
[There are a disgusting number of them.]
ValderGiosa muttered with distaste.
Even she, who had no intention of revealing herself, briefly considered stepping in. The Specters were flooding the area.
They circled Yurien, their red eyes floating in the mist like lit embers, sizing him up.
He stood perfectly still, hand on the hilt of RanGiosa embedded in the wall.
His silver hair, soaked through, had gone gray, water dripping steadily from the ends. A droplet gathered on his chin, swelled, and fell.
The moment it hit the puddle below, the Specters surged.
His figure vanished under a swarm of murky shapes. Semi-transparent each, but hundreds of them overlapping, clinging, piling over him, he was nearly unrecognizable.
[That's… not dangerous?]
"It's fine."
Echi whispered, relaxing the grip she'd tightened on her sword without noticing.
She didn't need to move.
Yurien drew RanGiosa free from the wall. White mana began coursing along the blade, layering, building, swelling until the sword's original shape was lost beneath it. Golden patterns flared around it, burning bright enough to sting the eyes.
Mana detonated.
"KIIIIAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!"
A shriek of obliteration, sharper than before.
White mana burst outward in every direction like a full moon's light, and every Specter it touched simply ceased to be. Even the mist caught in the wake was swept back like a receding wave.
Echi leaned against the tree, finally at ease.
"A sword that strengthens against evil."
[That's RanGiosa's nature.]
"Yes. And his as well."
She said it quietly. In the white mana and gold light, Yurien looked noble and untouched. So unlike the black stains on her own palm.
The remaining Specters wouldn't last long.
She didn't wait to watch. She turned her back and walked toward camp.
As the tension left her, exhaustion settled in its place.
'Now I can rest without watching.'
No one would die. Not Baraha, not anyone.
She stepped out of the mist - and every hair on her body stood up.
The space was warping.
It bent like light through glass, like ripples across still water. A small distortion had formed in the air above the camp, and it was growing.
The emergency alarm began to ring wildly.
Echi was running before she'd decided to run.
A node. A severed pocket of space, a wound left by the divine sword Rakia Giosa, which moved through the spatial realm and sliced it as it traveled. The severed portions became nodes: isolated, unpredictable, lethal.
She had entered one before.
Voluntarily, to retrieve a Giosa that had been pulled inside. She had barely come out alive.
'Why is a node forming here?!'
KairosGiosa manipulated time from a fixed position. Rakia Giosa manipulated space through movement. They were not the same sword, and yet —
A node forming here, now, in the aftermath of a time reversal, was not a coincidence she was prepared for.
The distortion was expanding at a walking pace for now — but it could burst outward without warning.
Beneath it, the Celestial Knights were evacuating in controlled chaos, packing what they could and streaming out of the camp's boundary.
Echi pushed through the current, moving against it, eyes scanning each face.