*Clang!*
The ring of steel on steel carried from the east, sharp and rhythmic, two blades meeting at speeds that turned each exchange into a single sustained note of violence, and Black Fang looked up.
Her gaze moved east, past the smoke and the dying, toward the source of the clanging where Kaede's radiant arcs lit the sky and a figure slipped between them like water through cracks in stone.
A smile crossed the Venomborne Terror's face, and it was so genuine it looked wrong on her.
"Isn't my little sister amazing?"
Chizuru flinched from the dirt where she lay broken, because the warmth in those words was everything the old woman had been denied.
Black Fang had two sisters on this battlefield, and the one she claimed had been the one the Fujimori discarded.
"What..." Chizuru's voice came thin and wet through the blood on her lips.
