From the pitch-black corner, a cold night wind poured in as the car door slid open. Red Falcon lay collapsed in the shadows, his eyes clenched shut, his brow tightly furrowed. Fine beads of sweat seeped from his forehead, as though he were trapped in a nightmare he could not wake from.
This state lasted for several minutes. Then, a faint electric current was released from the electrodes buried beneath flesh and blood, traveling through his nerves, stimulating them again and again—until, at last, he slowly regained consciousness.
Red Falcon stared blankly at the wreckage around him. After a brief moment of disorientation, a painful whimper escaped his throat. He struggled up from the floor, then reached behind his neck and tore away the thin cable. Along with it came the electrode embedded beneath his skin, and a smear of blood.
This was a device known as a failsafe. Everyone who fought against demons carried one. When the mind was overtaken by corruption, it would discharge electricity to forcibly awaken the bearer.
Its activation was notoriously unreliable—almost superstitious in nature. Fortunately, this time it had worked. Red Falcon was awake. The sensation was awful, like having been beaten senseless; exhaustion and pain radiated from every inch of his body.
"What the hell… happened?"
He looked toward the open door, trying to recall the last clear image he remembered. Lloyd had noticed something—something urgent enough to make him suddenly rush out. Then the Radiant had slammed into something unseen, the entire train screeching to a halt under immense resistance. Red Falcon had been thrown against the wall, and everything had gone black.
But there was something else. In the final haze before he lost consciousness, he remembered seeing Eve open the door and step outside.
Eve.
The thought snapped him fully awake. Gritting his teeth against the pain, he grabbed a nearby firearm and staggered out, limping heavily.
Very few people knew the truth about Eve. Even Red Falcon understood only fragments of it. But like glimpsing the shadow of some colossal thing, one could infer the terror of the whole merely from its outline. The truth behind her was much the same.
Eve could not die here—at the very least, she should not die so meaninglessly.
With that thought, Red Falcon stepped into the open world. The entire surface of the land had been reshaped by twisted flesh. What should have been an endless wasteland had been transformed into a grotesque terrain of rises and depressions, molded by some obscene force.
"Where are you…?" he murmured, scanning the horizon.
Then he saw her.
At the far edge of his vision, atop a swollen, mound-like peak, Eve's figure swayed unsteadily.
…
Eyes perceive images. The nose detects scent. Touch discerns texture. Ears interpret the vibrations of sound.
Sometimes, Eve wondered whether what people called intuition might also be a kind of sense—an organ for perceiving things that could not be grasped through conventional means. When something lay beyond ordinary perception, perhaps intuition was the only way to observe it.
Now, she was following that intuition.
After the violent jolt, she had stumbled out alone, step by unsteady step. Though she knew she was ill-suited to killing demons, she felt an uncanny absence of fear, as if death itself no longer mattered, and so she continued forward.
At the end of the horizon, a green light rose into the sky. Eve knew with absolute certainty that this was her destination—as though something there was waiting for her, calling her by name.
Everyone else seemed to be dreaming. When she left, they all lay with eyes closed, breathing softly.
Or perhaps what Eve herself was experiencing was a dream. After all, she had never witnessed a power capable of reshaping terrain in such a short time. That vast expanse of blood and flesh lay far beyond her understanding of biology, while an eerie green veil spread across the night sky.
It all felt like a farcical dream—one where dream and reality had merged, plunging the world into endless madness.
From somewhere far away came faint, indistinct roars. The creatures called demons were clearly roaming this land as well. Eve tightened her grip on the silver revolver in her hand and quickened her pace.
She did not know what awaited her beneath that green light. But like a ritual, she felt certain that once she arrived, she would discover something—whether it was a cruel truth, or a way to end the nightmare.
"Eve!"
A voice suddenly shouted from behind her, urgent and strained.
Eve turned instinctively. A burning round tore past her shoulder. The thermite bullet erupted with searing heat, piercing straight through a demon that had appeared behind her without warning. Its movements had been nearly imperceptible, but Red Falcon had caught it at the moment it launched its attack.
The upper-ranking knight now displayed astonishing physical prowess. Burdened with heavy equipment, he had still managed to catch up to Eve in such a short time. He shoved her aside, then continued firing into the demon as it writhed in the flames. Only when molten metal completely engulfed it did he cease fire. He lowered his weapon, gasping for breath.
"What were you thinking?" Red Falcon demanded, anxiety and confusion written across his face. Leaving the protection of the carriage like that—she could have been killed by any passing demon.
"There's something… there…" Eve said, struggling to describe the feeling, pointing toward the green light.
Seeing the seriousness in her expression, the normal course of events would have been for Red Falcon to scold her and forcibly drag her back to safety. But nothing about this situation was normal. Instead, he questioned her calmly, as though truly listening.
"What do you think is there?"
He looked intensely focused, as if her words carried great weight.
The reaction surprised Eve. She thought for a moment, then answered quietly.
"The source… I think."
"The source?" Red Falcon nodded. He seemed to grasp the implications of the word.
"You know, the connection between darkness works like a vortex. The deeper the connection, the heavier we become within it—and the easier it is to be pulled toward the center."
"Like a swamp," Eve replied. "That's how Lloyd described it to me. Fighting demons is like struggling in a swamp. The more you fight, the deeper you sink."
Her connection with the darkness was indeed growing stronger—until there was almost no boundary left between them.
"That's not wrong," Red Falcon said. "But what I mean is this: the deeper your connection to darkness becomes, the more you can actually see it. Do you understand?"
He tightened his grip on the thermite rifle, his expression grave.
"You mean… the contamination source is there?" Eve asked, excitement and fear mingling in her voice.
"Exactly. If your connection truly runs that deep, then your intuition is probably right. I've come all this way feeling nothing but irritation."
For reasons he could not fully explain, Red Falcon trusted Eve. After a brief pause, he spoke again.
"Then we need a new plan."
"What kind of plan?"
"What else? We've got a rough location now. The next step is figuring out how to destroy it."
As he spoke, he raised the thermite rifle. Flames danced on the igniter at its muzzle, blindingly bright.
"This looks like a large-scale psychic anomaly. The fact that everything's been so quiet tells us enough. The others are probably still asleep."
"Shouldn't we go back and wake them up?" Eve asked. She felt that returning to rouse the others was the sensible choice. With just the two of them, she doubted they could ever make it that far.
Red Falcon shook his head.
"No. Right now, the carriage is actually the most dangerous place. In an anomaly this large, if they wake up on their own, they'll be fine. But if they don't… they'll be eroded and turned into demons."
His voice was calm and precise. He tightened his grip on the weapon and strode forward.
"The optimal solution is for the two of us to confirm the contamination source, then signal anyone else who manages to wake up."
"But communications are jammed, aren't they?" Eve said. Before leaving, she had picked up a communicator—only silence answered her calls.
"That's why I brought signal flares."
Red Falcon grinned faintly and revealed the weapon at his waist: an incendiary launcher.