While Naporia kept him occupied, Neudämmerung soldiers tried to reach Adelheid, who lay inert on the blood-stained rocks. Rolf—the former bandit with the hard gaze whom Kaito had turned into a loyal follower—arrived first. His boots splashed through puddles of blood as he knelt beside her.
"The Commander is alive! We need a medic!" he shouted, his hands pressing on the wound in Adelheid's side. Hot blood gushed between his fingers, thick and dark. He could feel the weak pulse beneath his palms, but he could also feel it slipping away, life filtering through the cracks in his grip.
Eldric heard him.
He broke away from Naporia with a brutal blow—his elbow struck her temple with a wet CRACK that sent her rolling across the ground, her head bouncing off a rock. And in the seconds before she could even see where she was, Eldric charged toward Rolf.
Rolf looked up.
He saw death approaching.
His hand went for his sword, but the movement was slow, clumsy, because his hands were covered in Adelheid's blood and he couldn't find the pommel.
Eldric's sword descended.
There was no time for fear. Only an instant of confusion, and then—
SHINK.
The steel cut through flesh, vertebrae, and spinal cord in one clean motion. Rolf's head separated from his body with a wet sound, a snap of tearing tendons. His eyes blinked once in the air, still alive for a fraction of a second, seeing his own kneeling body from outside before everything went dark.
The head rolled across the ground, leaving a trail of blood. The body collapsed forward, directly onto Adelheid. Blood from the severed neck gushed out in spurts, mingling with hers, soaking her, covering her motionless face in a warm, scarlet shroud.
"NO!" Kaito's scream tore through the air, a sound so primal and wrenching it seemed to come from somewhere else, from a man no longer there.
Another soldier tried to intervene. A young one, barely a boy, with Neudämmerung's uniform hanging loose on his shoulders. He raised his sword with trembling hands.
Eldric didn't stop. His sword moved in a horizontal arc.
SHINK.
The steel entered the side of the neck and exited the other. The young man's head fell backward, held on by a single tendon, while his body took two steps before collapsing like a sack of bones.
Another soldier charged. A veteran, this time. His sword met Eldric's in a clash of steel.
CLANG.
Eldric broke the lock with a knee strike to the stomach that made the man vomit, and as he doubled over, Eldric's sword pierced the back of his neck. The tip came out through his mouth, shattering teeth, before being withdrawn with a wet pop. The man fell, convulsing briefly in an expanding pool.
They weren't battles. They were executions.
Eldric had lost all pretense of honor or justice. His face was a mask of someone else's blood, his eyes empty, mechanical. Only the need to destroy everything Kaito valued before destroying Kaito himself existed. Each body was a message. Each death, a word in a sentence of pure hatred.
Naporia got up.
She was a mess. Her left arm hung limp at her side, dislocated or broken. Blood covered half her face from a gash on her scalp, and stained her teeth as she spat out a clot to breathe. But she got up.
And she charged.
Eldric turned just in time to see her coming. He didn't dodge. He let her drive her sword into his side—a slash that should have been mortal, but he absorbed it as if it were nothing, his crimson aura sealing the wound before it could bleed.
Then he struck.
The pommel of his sword impacted directly into Naporia's stomach with the force of a pile driver. CRACK. Something broke inside—ribs, perhaps, or the sternum. The air left her lungs in an agonizing wheeze as her eyes bulged from the pain.
She fell to her knees first, then forward, her face hitting the ground. She tried to get up, but her arms wouldn't respond. Coughing blood—dark clots spattering the stones—she lay there, trembling, unable to rise.
Kaito saw everything.
He saw Adelheid, wax-pale, covered by Rolf's decapitated body. He saw Naporia writhing on the ground, drowning in her own blood. He saw the bodies—four, five, six—scattered like refuse. Soldiers who had trusted him. Who had believed in his cause. Who had died with his name on their lips.
And he saw Eldric, unstoppable, approaching step by step toward where he stood. The sword dripped blood. His eyes didn't blink.
Lilith still held him, but even she was trembling now. He could feel her thin arm around his waist, could hear her ragged breathing, could feel the fear radiating from her skin like fever. Her power was spent. She couldn't stop Eldric. No one could.
Kaito's hand went to his pocket.
His fingers found the cards—he always carried them, close to his heart. The paper was warm. More than warm. Burning. Especially one of them, glowing brighter than the others, calling to him with a voice only he could hear.
"No," Aria whispered from where she had managed to climb down from her position, crawling over the rocks. Her voice was a broken thread. "Kaito, don't do it. She's not like the others. You can't control her."
But Kaito had already pulled out the cards. He was already looking at the one that glowed intense dark red, almost black at the edges, like dried blood.
"Valeria: The Iron Butcher"
The name burned his retinas. The illustration—a massive silhouette with an axe—seemed to move in the dim light, to breathe, to wait.
Aria tried to run toward him, but her legs gave out after two steps. She fell to her knees, clawing at the ground, could only scream:
"NO! SHE'LL DESTROY YOU TOO!"
Kaito ignored her.
He placed the card on his gauntlet.
The energy reacted instantly.
It wasn't like the previous summons—controlled, precise, almost surgical. This was violent. The card adhered to his skin like iron to ice, burning, freezing, doing both at once. His arm tensed, muscles locked in a spasm he couldn't control.
The other three cards—already used, latent in his power—pulsed in unison from somewhere deep within his being. As if they recognized their sister being released. As if they sang a chorus of welcome.
Kaito felt something enormous press against the limits of his consciousness. A cold, heavy, ancient presence. Something that didn't ask permission to enter. Something that demanded.
The air around him grew thick. The dust stopped moving. The flames of nearby torches shrank, extinguishing as if an invisible hand were smothering them.
"I'm sorry," Kaito murmured. It wasn't clear who he was saying it to. To Aria. To Lilith. To Adelheid. To the dead. To himself. "But I can't let them die."
---
The explosion of energy wasn't red like with Naporia, nor golden like with Lilith, nor silvery like with Adelheid. It was black. Pure black that absorbed light rather than emitting it. It expanded from Kaito like a wave of solid darkness, pushing everyone—friend and enemy alike—backward.
The ground cracked in a radial pattern from where Kaito stood. Larger rocks were torn from the earth and hurled outward. The roar of energy was deafening, as if the world itself protested against what was happening.
And then, as suddenly as it began, it stopped.
Silence fell. Smoke and dust obscured everything. No one could see. No one dared move.
When it finally cleared...
There was a figure standing in the crater the summoning had created.
Tall. Extraordinarily tall—easily 1.90 meters, making even Eldric seem small. Dressed in black plate armor that seemed forged not from metal but from something heavier, more permanent. Each plate was engraved with runes no one could read but that hurt to look at for too long.
In her hands—no, in her hand, singular, because it was so large she only needed one—she held a battle axe. Not an elegant tool. It was an instrument of butchery. The blade was the size of a man's torso, black as her armor, with an edge that seemed to absorb light.
Her face was visible, helmetless. Covered in scars—not the elegant, heroic kind, but the ugly, functional ones. Battle marks accumulated over years of violence. Her hair was short black, practical, unstyled. Her eyes...
Her eyes were the worst. Empty. Completely without emotion. Like looking through windows into a room with no content. There was no cruelty there, no sadism, not even anger. Only... void.
She looked around the battlefield with those dead eyes. Her voice, when she spoke, was deep—deeper than any woman had a right to be. It sounded like stone dragging over stone.
"Who summoned me?"
Kaito tried to respond, but his voice wouldn't come. The summoning had drained him in a way the previous ones hadn't. He felt as if something fundamental within him had... dislocated. Changed permanently.
Drake answered for him, pointing at Eldric who had frozen, for the first time showing something that might have been fear.
"Him. The one with the crimson aura. Stop him."
Valeria turned her head with mechanical movement. Studied Eldric for several seconds. Then, for the first time, showed emotion—a slow, terrible smile that didn't reach her eyes.
"Finally. A worthy opponent."
She said nothing more. Simply... charged.
---
But Kaito didn't see what happened next. His knees gave out. Vision darkened at the edges. He felt as if something within him—his soul, his humanity, his very essence—had been consumed as fuel for the summoning.
Four villains. He had summoned four villains. And the fourth had taken something from him he couldn't recover.
He fell forward. Lilith, exhausted but still functional, caught him before he hit the ground. She lowered him gently, her expression—usually so controlled—showing genuine concern.
"Idiot," she murmured, her voice lacking its usual edge. "I told you not to summon anymore."
Kaito tried to respond. Couldn't. Darkness claimed him, dragging him toward unconsciousness.
His last thought before losing consciousness was simple, terrifying:
What have I done?