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Ding-ling…
The silver bell's light, airy chime drifted across the road like a white feather on the breeze.
The crushing pressure that had pinned everyone to despair thinned and lifted.
Breaths steadied. Shoulders unclenched. The world felt possible again.
Inside one of the cabs, Koro lay slumped over the wheel, face ashen.
He tilted his head, eyes flicking up to the little brass charm swaying by the window—
The bell his daughter had tied there "for luck."
It chimed again as the wind slipped through the cracked glass.
"Daddy! This is for you."
"You have to come home safe, okay?"
The memory washed over him bright and ordinary and perfect cutting through the horror like dawn.
Out on the road, Scarlet sat in the mud cradling her shredded Vivillon, sobbing into its wings.
Her partner had been butchered; her classmate lay bleeding in the rain.
The girl who always burned with confidence was bare and breaking now, grief peeling everything else away.
The Golisopod paused, antennae pulsing.
Somewhere, that bell had rung and the oppressive miasma it had woven over the field had unraveled.
Annoyance shimmered in its eyes. It enjoyed human fear. The quiet angered it.
The monster exhaled like a bored executioner.
Fine rain stippled its armor as three pairs of auxiliary claws spread wide, hooks glittering with killing light.
No more games, the posture said.
Only slaughter.
It leaned forward. Talons bit deep into the mud.
And then something new bled into the soundscape. A thin, far-off thread of noise that shouldn't have carried, yet did.
What is that…?
Wind.
WHAM!
A black shape tore the rain in half, a bolt hurled by a storm.
It struck the Golisopod full in the chest with trainlike force an elbow hammered forward behind a body of coiled steel.
The crash detonated in the center of the road.
Crimson, jewel-bright eyes flashed through the curtain of rain.
Under night-black skin, muscle surged like cables.
That iron elbow rimmed by a battered pauldron reminiscent of Terrakion's siege-plate drove into the carapace and kept going.
Diamond-hard armor spider-webbed with cracks.
Pale green blood misted the air.
The Golisopod, so immovable a breath ago, flew sideways like a derailed car, carving a trench through mud and water.
Steam curled off the newcomer's skin as raindrops landed and hissed away.
He hit the ground light as a feather, shoulders squared, gaze fixed where the monster had fallen.
Kael.
Silence crashed down in the wake of the impact. Only the soft tick, tick of rain remained.
Scarlet stared up at the figure, tears forgotten, lips parted.
The bell chimed again, ding-ling, as a breeze swept the roadside.
Kael didn't look away from the crater the Golisopod had made.
He hadn't come here to pick a fight; he and Earl had only been crossing the flats, arguing about directions.
But there are moments when a person either steps forward or looks away.
He stepped.
He'd promised himself back in Whiteleaf: he would live by his own code, not by fear or by some system's ledger.
If he could stop a massacre, he would no matter the risk.
And if he was honest, another truth pulsed under his skin: since the last round of upgrades, his power had climbed new skills, surging stats, gear humming with legend.
He needed a real test.
This would do.
A harsh, chitinous buzz rose from the pit.
Sound pressure warped the rain into ripples; droplets hung for half a heartbeat before falling again.
The Golisopod hauled itself upright, cracks veining its chest, eyes burning with insect fury.
Kael rolled his shoulders once, a low, hungry calm settling over him like a mantle of wind and wave.
The bell rang one more time clear, bright, unafraid.
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