A few fleeting moments after the skeleton knight was frozen stiffly in place, his terrifying figure began to rapidly fade, losing all its eerie luminance and physical opacity. It appeared as though he were dissolving directly into the background, seamlessly erased from reality by an unfathomable, extraordinary force.
Within a matter of seconds, the leather armored skeleton knight completely vanished from existence, leaving no trace behind as if he had never been there at all.
This sudden, absolute silence fell over the desolate battlefield like a heavy shroud, replacing the suffocating aura of death with a strange, pristine vacuum that left the wounded elf gasping for air in the wake of the miracle.
Staring at the empty space where his executioner had stood, KO couldn't help but breathlessly blurt out, "Praise the Goddess of Life." Deep down, his sharp instincts told him that the Goddess likely had absolutely nothing to do with this impossibly narrow escape.
Yet, in that harrowing moment, stripped of all options, he felt an overwhelming, desperate need to voice his gratitude to whatever mysterious entity had just snatched him from the very throes of death.
As KO shot a wary glance backward, scanning the immediate area for any signs of an encroaching, unknown enemy, he watched as Willow's eyelids finally fluttered open. She had fully braced herself to witness a scene of ghastly slaughter, but the moment her vision cleared, her eyes darted frantically across the empty clearing.
After thoroughly inspecting the quiet battlefield, her gaze ultimately locked onto KO. A profound wave of shock and disbelief washed over her bloodied features, completely momentarily eclipsing the intense physical agony of her fractured bones as she struggled to comprehend how they were both still breathing.
Staggering forward despite her severe injuries, she demanded in a blunt, straightforward manner, "Where is he?" KO stared back at her, his mind briefly racing as he weighed which version of the truth to offer—the long, baffling explanation or the simple summary. However, he knew his own nature far too well; he had never been a man of many words. Choosing brevity over complexity, he offered a perfectly deadpan, uninterestingly flat reply: "Gone."
***
Willow absolutely would not, and could not, accept such a dismissive answer. She demanded an explanation again, this time weaving a sharp thread of impatience into her tone as she hardened her features, attempting to project the absolute pinnacle of authority so KO would finally take her inquiries seriously. She pressed him once more: "Where is he?"
Yet, her demand was met with absolute silence. She repeated the question a few more times, raising her voice in frustration, but KO merely reacted to her escalating interrogation with profound indifference, treating her desperate inquiries as if they were entirely rhetorical questions.
His stony, unreadable gaze remained fixed on the horizon, his stubborn refusal to engage pushing her patience to its absolute limit as the unresolved mystery of their survival hung heavily between them.
Realizing that her demands were yielding absolutely no answers to satisfy her swelling curiosity, she finally chose to abandon the bleeding, motionless figure of KO. Stumbling away, she began to meticulously inspect the exact patch of ground where the skeleton knight had been stationed only moments prior, driven by a frantic need to quell her racing thoughts and solve the baffling riddle of where their attacker had vanished to.
As Willow approached the precise zone where the skeleton knight had stood just moments prior, she couldn't help but ponder the entity's bizarre disappearance. A flurry of competing theories raced through her mind as she desperately sought the truth.
She wondered: Could it be that the skeleton knight had shown them mercy at the absolute last second? Had he simply departed after sensing they no longer posed a threat?
To her desperate mind, it briefly sounded like a plausible explanation.
However, Willow quickly dismissed the thought, knowing it was fundamentally impossible. These dark entities were completely severed from the warm embrace of creation, bound instead to a cycle of eternal malice that left absolutely no room for benevolence or unexpected acts of grace toward their battered prey.
Such a peaceful resolution might have been possible if the skeleton knight were a creature of flesh and blood, possessing actual humane qualities; in that case, he might have been capable of pity. But soul beings were not traditional living creatures. They did not inherit virtues like love, compassion, or kindness from the Goddess of Life.
Instead, they were inherently cruel manifestations who valued only the brutal metrics of war, absolute power, and arrogant pride.
Another distinct possibility Willow considered was that the soul being had simply been assassinated by KO, and that the tight-lipped rogue simply refused to lend credence to the kill. The more she pondered this theory, the more it resonated as exactly the type of enigmatic behavior KO would exhibit.
However, the sole reason she remained deeply skeptical that he was the executioner was his disastrous physical condition. A few moments ago, KO had been in terrible shape, and he remained in that exact same critical state now; his condition had neither miraculously improved nor catastrophically deteriorated.
An ultimate technique capable of utterly erasing an advanced warrior in the blink of an eye would have triggered a violent internal backlash, visibly shattering his remaining physical reserves and leaving undeniable proof of its casting on his broken frame.
If KO had truly somehow defeated the skeleton knight, Willow would have instantly detected it through the toll it would take on his body.
Unleashing an elite ability—such as swallowing a soul being into the shadows or delivering an immense, reality-warping strike within the span of a single micro-second—would inevitably drain anyone's life force to the absolute dregs. Such a massive exertion would have violently exacerbated his existing trauma.
Because KO's overall well-being had not plummeted into immediate, fatal shock, Willow was once again forced to reject the idea that her companion had slain the knight.
As she drew closer to the exact coordinate the skeleton knight had occupied just a moment prior, a radical new hypothesis formed in her mind. Determined to verify if this fresh theory held the absolute truth, she began to meticulously analyze the physical impressions left in the dirt. She even went so far as to mimic the skeleton knight's combat stance, attempting to retroactively align her own movements with his final actions to deduce where he had gone.
However, after recreating the posture for several minutes without yielding a definitive answer, she was forced to rely strictly on the environmental evidence before her.
Willow noted the stark reality: one moment the monster was fully present, and the next, he was completely missing.
Kneeling low, she traced the deeply indented tracks with her fingertips, reading the shifting weight of the displaced earth like an open ledger of the warrior's final, aggressive moments on this bloody battlefield.
She carefully studied the deep indentations left on the sandy floor, analyzing how the creature had shifted his weight and tracking the trajectory of his advance.
Yet, one painfully obvious detail stood out above all else regarding the trail: after a sequence of aggressive forward strides, the footprints simply stopped dead. The impressions indicated that the skeleton knight had frozen rigidly in place—almost as if he had been abruptly startled, completely paralyzed, or left transfixed in awe of something or someone. And right after that sudden pause, the trail vanished entirely.