I hate the smell of blood.
That is what anyone would say.
That reek of rotting iron that clings to the throat and refuses to leave, the sight of that thick, crimson liquid gushing uncontrollably, staining skin, earth, and life itself in a hue that doesn't belong in this world.
It is the agony of watching someone fade away, their body painted by their own spilling life, their vital warmth turning to coldness beneath your hands.
The pain of the strike, that endless red waterfall, the drowning groans, the final breaths cut short in half, the words that die on the tongue before they can even be spoken.
...But I love the smell of blood...
Death is something ugly, cold, and brutal.
A sheep is born beneath the hot sun of the pasture, licked clean and warmed by its mother's breath, among green leaves that always shine like emeralds after a rain.
It grows up grazing peacefully, learning the taste of fresh, tender grass, the sound of the stream, and the safety of the flock.
They wash their soft, thick fleeces in those same crystal-clear streams and sleep huddled together.
It bears its young, protects them with its fragile body, and teaches them to find food and fear the strong winds, just as it learned from its own mother.
But there is nothing this plump, woolly sheep can do against a wolf.
She tried to flee, her small hooves beating desperately against the dirt, her white wool snagging on the bushes, her heart racing until it physically ached in her chest.
She ran with all the strength she had, her wide eyes fixed on the horizon where she thought salvation lay.
But the wolf is faster; his steps are silent, his muscles perfectly calibrated to catch whatever runs away.
He is stronger; a single bite is enough to shatter her balance, a slight pressure on the trachea enough to suffocate her cry.
He was created to hunt, and the sheep was made to be hunted.
And when he brings her down, the sheep feels that agonizing pain in her neck, her blood dripping onto the ground mixed with the wolf's saliva. She lets out her final, weak bleats, warning the flock of the dangerous predator.
But what she fears most is knowing that her lambs—still small and defenseless, left all alone in the pasture—will also be hunted. Not by this wolf, but by his pups, who will inherit the hunger and the strength of their breed, perpetuating an endless cycle.
But I wanted death in those days, even if it was ugly and painful...
So why didn't you come for me, death?
In the blink of an eye, the sky distorted and the void unraveled. I was back, breathing the cracked, lifeless air of Ruitan.
The air still reeked of sulfur and fresh ash, but I didn't let go of the hand I was holding for a single second.
I squeezed my fingers so hard that my knuckles cracked.
And there, standing amidst the destruction, hot tears streaming down my face, I smiled. It was a smile that had absolutely nothing human about it—it was sharp, dark, and diabolical, as if the devil himself had just learned how to smile.
"I'm back, Mommy," I whispered, and my voice came out doubled. One part was soft, still the little girl raised by Kania and Silver; the other was a low, guttural growl that made the very air tremble.
Further ahead, Katarina was already advancing.
Both of her blades were drawn and raised in the air, gleaming with a cold, razor-sharp light, ready to cut, pierce, and butcher anyone in her path.
But before she could take another step, a shiver ran down her spine.
It wasn't a shiver of cold or surprise; it was a sensation so ancient and dreadful that she felt her bones ache from the inside out, as if someone had gripped her spine with hands of iron and ice.
It was the exact same chill she had felt on the day her eye was gouged out....
*...NO...*
*...IT WAS WORSE...*
That looming premonition—the feeling of standing before something that simply shouldn't exist, something that defied the very rules of the world—surpassed anything she had ever experienced.
All her senses, both those trained into her flesh and those born from her divine essence, screamed at the exact same time.
Every fiber of her being, every primal survival instinct, bellowed a single command.
*RUN.*
In that split second, memories flashed before her eyes as vividly as if they were happening right now: she was small, hiding behind the rocks, listening to the roars echoing through the dark forest.
The paralyzing terror that made her chest physically ache, the absolute certainty that the shadows had teeth.
Then came the rage—a blazing fire that consumed all her fear, that made her swear she would never be prey again, never again be a victim of those beasts.
The next instant, an explosion of pink energy erupted from me without warning and without form, expanding outward like a bomb annihilating everything in its vicinity, rather than shooting straight into the sky like Vanki's controlled flames.
In that moment, I forgot every ounce of balance Silver had taught me; my aura control was thrown out the window.
It was the unrestrained release of a power that not even I could hold back—feral, unpredictable, and utterly lethal to anyone caught in its path.
The shockwave hit Katarina dead on before she could even finish her step.
The energy slashed her like a thousand razor-sharp scalpels all at once.
It shredded her armor, sliced through her skin, and ripped open dozens of deep gashes across her entire body in the blink of an eye.
Blood spurted in thick, glistening ribbons, running down her arms, chest, and face.
The eyepatch she had worn for years was cleanly cleaved in half and carried off by the wind. Her long hair, which once cascaded down to her waist, now ended in jagged, broken tips, half of it completely atomized in the blast.
But she gritted her teeth and forced her legs to keep moving, knowing full well that standing still in the face of this onslaught meant certain death.
She dived, spun, and vaulted backward, dodging by mere millimeters the blades of pink energy flying in every direction and the thick arcs of lightning that crackled like shattering glass.
Every stray spark that grazed the ground carved out a smoldering fissure; every passing wave shrieked so loudly it made her ears bleed.
The aura I exuded weighed down on the entire world like a mountain of lead.
It was a morbid, suffocating pressure that compressed the air and crushed bone.
Katarina felt her knees buckle involuntarily, as if gravity itself had been magnified tenfold just to bring her to the ground.
Every breath was a struggle, every movement demanded every ounce of her strength. It felt as though the earth, the air, and everything in existence had turned against her, determined to pin her down so the energy could devour her.
When she finally managed to force a step forward, the soil fractured beneath her boot. A web of deep ravines spread out in every direction, as if the bedrock itself could no longer bear the crushing weight bearing down on them both.
High above, the dark clouds blanketing Ruitan were shredded apart.
Severed at strange, jagged angles, they looked as though an invisible hand had clawed the heavens open.
And through those torn wisps of mist, the pink lightning began to dance. The arcs slithered and intersected, exploding in blinding flashes that painted the world in a pale magenta, raining down from the heights until they vanished into the fissures below.
As the pink haze of the aura slowly began to dissipate, Katarina was still panting, fighting to force her lungs to draw breath beneath the lingering pressure.
That was when she felt it: a thin, damp heat slowly trickling down the side of her neck, trailing toward her jawline.
She instinctively reached up to touch it.
Her fingers came back stained a bright, glossy red.
It was only a superficial cut at first—a hairline scratch that barely seemed to break the skin.
But as she stared, the slit slowly widened as if peeling open of its own accord, deepening and causing the blood to well up in thicker streams.
The pain registered a split second later—a cold, piercing burn that instantly told her this was no accidental nick.
She hadn't been grazed by the explosion's shrapnel.
Something, or someone, had targeted her with surgical precision, moving faster than her eyes could even track.
In that exact moment, her battle-honed instincts flared.
She didn't think; she threw both her blades up, crossing them right in front of her throat the very microsecond the strike arrived.
The impact didn't sound like steel striking steel.
It was a muffled, agonizingly high-pitched screech, as if the air itself had been cleaved in two.
It was a sonic blow, fueled by such absurd velocity that it shattered the sound barrier in its wake—a concentrated force capable of splitting a continent.
Searing, bright sparks erupted where the weapons clashed, spraying outward like a shower of falling stars that flared brilliantly before dying in the dirt.
The kinetic force of the strike was so overwhelming that Katarina felt her arms go numb all the way to her shoulders, her bones creaking as they absorbed an impact that should have launched her into the horizon.
Even deflected, the invisible slash following the trajectory of Laura's claws didn't lose all its momentum.
It carved downward, tearing through dirt and bedrock, opening a perfectly straight, frictionless canyon that extended for miles into the distance, vanishing into the far-off mist like a giant's razor had just shaved the earth.
Only the wake of its passing remained: a colossal gust of wind that slammed into Katarina's chest, whipping her clothes into a frenzy and sweeping away the surrounding dust and debris, carrying with it the stench of ancient fire and unbridled fury.
Katarina remained standing for a few seconds, her blades still vibrating in her grip, her heart hammering so hard it threatened to burst from her throat.
She slowly lowered her weapons, glancing at the blood on her fingers and then at the immense chasm yawning open before her, an ugly scar upon the world.
A cold chill ran down her spine, replacing the heat of her wound.
"If I hadn't raised my blades a split second sooner..." she whispered softly, her voice still trembling from the realization of how close she had come to death.
"...I wouldn't have a head left to think with right now."
When Katarina pivoted her body to look behind her, the world was steeped in a suffocating darkness, illuminated only by the intermittent, strobing flashes of the pink lightning tearing through the sky.
And there, on the very edge of the shadows where the light could barely reach, she saw Laura.
Her hair had grown into a wild, chaotic mess, reaching almost down to her waist. It was tangled and matted with knots, looking as though it had been dragged through gales and hellfire.
Thick, dark strands fell over her face, completely concealing one eye and leaving only a narrow slit visible. But what gleamed from behind that curtain of hair was no longer the gaze of a little girl; it was the ravenous glare of an apex predator.
What drew the eye most, however, were her hands. The claws that had once gleamed silver and sharp were now monstrously larger, curved like miniature scythes, and dyed in a vivid, deep crimson—as if they had been submerged to the hilt in fresh, boiling blood.
Physically, she looked like the same Laura that Katarina knew, but absolutely everything else had fundamentally changed.
There was zero hesitation in her stance, not a single trace of fear in her movements.
The aura radiating from her was thick, feral, and suffocating, reeking of upturned graves and shredded meat.
She no longer resembled a trained warrior. She looked like a beast that had finally snapped the chains binding it for far too long, and who finally recognized everything around it solely as prey or a threat.
Katarina tightened her grip on her hilts, desperately trying to maintain her composure in the face of the very nightmare she had helped forge.
"It seems you've finally embraced that monstrous side of yours. You real—"
Her words were never finished.
Before the final syllable could even leave her lips, Laura vanished.
A dark, crimson blur closed the distance between them faster than Katarina's eyes could track—faster than the thunder of the lightning above.
In the very next heartbeat, she was right in front of the Huntress, eclipsing her entire field of vision.
The claw descended with a cruel, silent velocity, as sharp as a thousand overlapping razor blades.
Katarina had just enough time to register the red flash pass before she felt the strike tear through her flesh.
The tips of the claws traced the entire length of her face, diagonally from the right corner of her forehead down to her left jawline, carving a wide, cavernous gash that split her mouth in two.
Katarina stumbled backward, blood pouring down her lips and throat, but she wasn't given even a fraction of a second to clutch her wound or catch her breath.
Before her foot could even touch the ground again, Laura was already on top of her.
The crimson claw lashed out in a horizontal sweep—not with the refined precision of a sword, but with the rabid fury of an animal intent on tearing its victim apart.
Katarina threw her blades up to block. The impact was so savage that the Huntress's arms popped loudly, and she was shunted several meters backward, her boots carving deep trenches into the soil.
Before she could even come to a halt, another strike was already incoming. Laura used the back of her hand to swat Katarina's chest as if casually crushing a piece of fruit, knocking the wind out of the Huntress's lungs in a suffocated wheeze.
Katarina found strength where there should have been none left.
The exact second the blow landed, she dug her heels into the dirt, twisted her torso, and grappled Laura's airborne body, bracing against her like a man holding a door against a flood. With a sharp, violent pivot, she slammed the beast down into the earth.
The ground fractured upon impact, kicking up a veil of dust and debris.
Even with her arms utterly numb, feeling as though they no longer belonged to her, Katarina didn't hesitate. She raised both blades and brought them down with every ounce of her might toward Laura's outstretched hands, her singular intention to crush and snap those crimson claws that had maimed her so badly.
Laura, however, was already recovering far too quickly.
She thrust her arms upward, claws splayed wide toward Katarina's heart, but the Huntress anticipated the movement. She parried with one weapon and drove the other forward.
The razor-sharp blade sliced through the air like a chilling sigh. It pierced the soft meat of Laura's palm and punched clean through the back of her hand, pinning the beast's limb to the dirt, carving a perfect, straight line right through the center of her palm.
Blood erupted in a hot, glistening geyser, spraying directly onto Laura's face, coating her eyes, her cheek, and her lips.
She didn't scream. She simply opened her mouth, licked the crimson liquid trickling down to the corner of her lips, tasted that familiar, metallic tang, and in that very moment, the world vanished.
The sheep, fallen in the green pasture, her life bleeding out, her heartbeat growing fainter and fainter as she is dragged away to be devoured.
She knew, right before her eyes closed, that her tiny lambs, still waiting for her back at the shelter, would also be found, would also be struck down, would also die without ever understanding why.
And there was absolutely nothing she could do about it.
The wolf, on the other hand, carried the sheep back for his pups to feast upon.
The wolf never forgets the taste of blood.
The wolf feels no remorse, no pity, and no doubt, because blood is what keeps him alive. It is what defines who he is.
He does not hunt out of malice; he hunts because it is his nature, because he is the strongest, because he alone knows how to command the darkness.
He teaches his kin to scent fear, to exploit the weakest link, to dominate their territory, and to lead the pack with equal parts wisdom and cruelty.
He doesn't ask for permission; he simply takes what is his by right.
Today, I finally understand why death didn't take me during those dark days.
It never came for me because I was never the sheep.
I was never the prey forced to run.
For I was death itself.
I am the wolf.
Even with her hand nearly split in twain, her fingers splayed apart and her flesh carved open to the bone, Laura's bestial regeneration knew no limits.
The wound stitched itself shut right before Katarina's eyes. The crimson tissues intertwined like thick threads, fractured bones snapped back together with a wet, sickening crunch, and in mere moments, not a single scar remained—only rigid skin and elongated claws, primed to strike all over again.
Without giving Katarina a fraction of a second to even breathe, Laura launched her body upward, delivering a brutal headbutt aimed squarely at the gaping gash she had carved into the Huntress's face moments prior.
Her stone-hard forehead smashed into the open wound with full force.
Katarina let out a sharp, piercing shriek, the agony searing her raw flesh like spilled fire, and she instinctively jerked back, ripping her blade free from the beast's pinned hand.
Laura refused to let the distance widen.
She leapt into the air, crashing directly onto Katarina with her entire body weight, and drove her knee fiercely into the Huntress's chest. The impact was so devastating that the ground caved beneath them, forming a small crater that cradled their tangled bodies.
The crimson claws shot up instantly, descending in a flurry of rapid, savage swipes, targeting her already-mangled face, her eyes, her throat. She wanted to butcher whatever was left of the face that dared defy her.
Katarina defended herself at the absolute ragged edge of her skill.
She maneuvered her blades with surgical precision, parrying every claw just millimeters from her skin.
If she miscalculated by a single millimeter, if she hesitated for even a heartbeat, those claws would punch straight through her skull.
Every parry was a desperate struggle against death; every deflection drained whatever dregs of stamina she had left.
In the blink of an eye, Katarina spotted the perfect opening.
She swept both her weapons to the side, forcing Laura's claws to glance upward for one second—a microscopic, almost imperceptible window, but more than enough for someone accustomed to fighting with their life on the line.
And Katarina capitalized on that instant.
She thrust her first blade forward with all her might, burying it deep between Laura's ribs until the crossguard slammed flush against the skin.
In that exact same breath, she drove her second blade into the beast's thick thigh, severing muscle and scraping bone.
Laura's body arched, seized by an involuntary spasm, and she instinctively recoiled backward, scrambling off of Katarina.
"I'm not finished yet, you bastard!" Katarina roared, clenching her fists with furious determination.
She surged forward before Laura could even recover.
She unleashed a barrage of rapid, heavy punches: the first to the face, shattering the beast's nose and jaw; the next to the chest, hammering directly onto the hilt of the blade still lodged between her ribs; and finally to the abdomen, aiming to completely destabilize any counterattack the monster might attempt.
Every single blow carried the collective agony of all the wounds she had suffered.
When the onslaught ended, she tightly gripped the hilts of her weapons and violently wrenched both blades out at once.
A shower of hot blood sprayed everywhere, painting Katarina's hands and face.
Offering no quarter, she raised her boot and delivered a punishing kick to Laura's stomach, launching her several meters away until the beast tumbled to a halt on the dirt, panting heavily.
Katarina tried to lift her foot to take a single step forward, but her legs buckled beneath her as if they were made of molten lead.
She dropped to her knees with a dull thud among the rubble, feeling her strength drain away just as fast as the blood still bleeding out from her lacerations.
She forced her head up.
Her vision was no longer clear; everything seemed shrouded in a dark fog, the edges of the world slowly fading out like a candle about to gutter and die.
Even so, she could still see Laura lying there, not too far away. The beast was whimpering softly—a guttural, pained sound—as her flesh hastily stitched itself over the gaping wounds, bones slotting back together and skin stretching taut to cover what had been ruptured.
The bestial regeneration was working in overdrive, but it was also taking a heavy toll. For one fleeting moment, the two of them were dead even.
Fighting just to keep from falling into the darkness.
Katarina drew a deep breath, the air whistling painfully into her punctured lungs.
She closed her eyes for a moment, and forcefully awakened the divine essence coursing through her veins, demanding it to flow, to anchor the fleeing life to her body for just a few moments longer.
A gentle light began to radiate beneath her skin, sealing the shallower cuts and warming up the muscles that had already grown cold.
"Filthy monster," she whispered, her voice hoarse but laden with a loathing that wouldn't die, even with death approaching.
"It's because of beings like you... that so many innocents are butchered. That so many homes are reduced to ash. That so many weep until they have no tears left, and bleed out to their final breath without ever understanding why."
She clenched her fists, her nails biting into her palms.
"And it is your fault... that people like me have to exist."
"People who have to learn how to kill before they learn how to live. Only people like me bear this burden so that others won't have to carry it."
With a slow, deliberate motion, she brought the razor edge of her blade up to her face, pressing the cold, biting steel directly against the scar crossing the hollow socket where her right eye used to be—the very mark that defined who she was, the wound that had never truly healed.
"I swore to myself," she continued, her ironclad resolve making her voice quiver with sheer emotion, "that I wouldn't use this dormant power against anyone else. I wanted to save it solely for the beast that ripped this from me."
"Only for it."
Her fingers squeezed the hilt of her sword even tighter.
"But you... you're leaving me no choice."
In the very next moment, she felt it.
An ancient pain, from eras past, suddenly surged back with full force. It felt as if the wound had just been torn open anew, as if that monster's claws were still buried deep in her flesh.
Where once there was only a quiet scar, a dark rift violently tore inward, yawning wide like a doorway to somewhere else.
From within that breach leaked a dense, purple aura, as profound as the abyss. It oozed out sluggishly, coating the right side of her face, crawling down her arm, and enshrouding her blade in an ominous, shadowy light.
Simultaneously, her remaining eye erupted with an intense glare, as brilliantly green as the oldest, most unforgiving jungle. It dominated her left side, shining with a clarity that stung to look at.
Two opposing energies, two entirely different natures, united for a single purpose.
Katarina opened her eyes—or what was left of them—and locked onto Laura with a gaze that no longer belonged to a Huntress.
It belonged to destiny itself.
"Now then," she said, and her voice didn't seem to come from her throat.
It seemed to echo from deep within the earth, from behind the thunderheads, from a realm completely untouched by time—laden with a calm so chillingly cold that it hurt far worse than any scream.
"Abyssal Form: Huntress's Eclipse."
She crossed her blades directly in front of her face, obscuring everything except her two eyes: one blazing in a deep emerald, the other hidden beneath the pitch-black rift now spewing purple light.
No lightning struck, no bedrock splintered, no violent gale howled.
The aura leaking from her wasn't an uncontrolled inferno or some world-rending energy.
It was a thick, crushing, utterly silent mist that dripped lazily over her shoulders, slithered across the ground, and cloaked her surroundings like the creeping shadow of an entire mountain.
It didn't destroy a single leaf or shatter a single stone. It merely existed, and that alone was enough to display absolute mastery over her aura. She wasn't letting her power vent outwards; she was holding it in, gripping it with all the force of the universe, shaping it exactly where and how she pleased.
That freezing fog closed the distance between them and touched Laura.
And the chill went far beyond the skin.
It invaded her bones, stopped her blood for a split second, and made the very air feel as solid as ice.
It was a stark, terrifying sensation—the distinct feeling of sitting dead center in the crosshairs of something that had never missed. It was like staring straight down the barrel of a gun pressed flush to your forehead, knowing full well there was nowhere left to run.
Laura, who had just managed to knit her own grievous wounds back together with such difficulty, slowly pushed herself upright.
Every single motion demanded monumental willpower and every muscle screamed in protest, but she forced herself to her feet.
She raised her eyes, and there was no life left in them. Only a dead, hollow void—as if she were staring at a fate that had been waiting for her since before she was even born.
She watched the purple and green mist waltz around Katarina, flowing at a leisurely pace, shifting shape without ever thinning out, controlled down to the absolute millimeter.
And in that precise moment, the real world melted away.
A memory surfaced, so viciously clear that it felt more real than the ground beneath her feet.
"Mommy... why do I have claws?"
In that very moment, a blood-red bolt of lightning tore across the dark sky, illuminating Laura's entire body in a cold, supernatural glare.
Standing before her was that tall, slender figure—so thin she looked almost too frail to stand, her pale skin stretched taut over bones that threatened to tear through at any given moment.
Her hair was a matted, grimy tangle, far worse than Laura's was today, choked with knots and dead leaves.
That figure turned slowly, and the eyes that gleamed in the gloom harbored no affection. They held only the cruel certainty of someone intimately acquainted with their own curse.
Little Laura reached over to touch her own arm, and the razor-sharp tips of her fingers instantly sliced open her skin.
Blood began to slowly trickle down.
"I can't even scratch myself without getting cut," she whimpered, her eyes welling with tears as she stared at the red lines blooming across her body.
"It hurts so much, Mommy. Why am I like this?"
The towering figure crouched down until she was eye-level with the child.
Every shift of her posture made her bones pop and grind—a dry, rattling sound akin to snapping winter branches.
She reached out a hand boasting even more monstrous claws. She gently brushed her daughter's cheek, and even that tender touch drew a cut.
"Because you are a monster, my little one," the voice rasped, utterly devoid of warmth.
"And monsters are ugly. They hurt everything they touch, even when they don't mean to."
She leaned her face in closer, and the child saw that within those eyes, there was no salvation either.
"And that is exactly why... you have claws."
The memory dissolved like smoke on the wind, and Laura was right back there, standing amidst the ruined earth, facing down the Huntress who wielded an eclipse.
A slow, crooked smile—brimming with a dreadful acceptance—crept across Laura's lips.
It was the smile of someone who had finally realized exactly what they were.
"And that is what they are for."