It was another day, and the air was crackling faintly with residual mana as ash drifted through the terrain.
Broken trees lay snapped across the clearing, their roots torn from the earth, blackened by fire and splattered with blood and guts. The stench of burnt fur, blood, and scorched ozone lingered, thick and heavy.
Dead monsters littered the ground.
Dozens of them. Hounds with bone masks, insectoid reptiles with venomous tails, mana-corrupted apes whose bodies still twitched with posthumous sparks. All silenced now. All dead.
At the center of it all sat Albedo, cross-legged on a slab of cooled obsidian with Ember beside him, her breath quiet and steady with her eyes fixed on her partner.
She chewed slowly, jaws crunching through a Low Gold-Rank beast core he had just fed her.
"Easy now," Albedo murmured, brushing her flank with long, rhythmic strokes, "You did well."
