Orion's face went pale as he listened to Evangeline. The hand at his side slowly clenched into a fist.
'Still, a part of me wants to believe they're fine. He and Holly have a Contract, after all. If she were in real trouble, I wouldn't be standing here perfectly unharmed. Even if they couldn't cross the Triangle Sea, they shouldn't have been dragged into the depths by the waves.'
'Even if my clansmen did something wrong, it wasn't a crime punishable by death.'
'The Sky-Rend Tribe can fly; even at the last moment, they'd have a fighting chance.'
'And as for the beastmen of the Mysticeti Tribe, they're children of the ocean. They should be fine, too.'
Orion silently repeated these assurances to himself, but for some reason, his heart began to pound wildly, as if something terrible was about to happen.
Elias Moretti walked over from the Grymdale Tribe's camp, his fair, bare chest exposed to the biting wind.
