Gojo's words hit like a detonator.
Subaru, barely coherent a moment ago, seized his own head and screamed. The sound was raw, animal, the kind that came from somewhere deeper than the throat.
"Looks like you hit the mark." Betty watched the display with a murmur.
"Poor bastard."
Gojo's voice dripped sympathy. His hand did not.
The slap cracked across Subaru's face like a gunshot.
Silence.
The screaming stopped. Subaru hung there in the aftermath, stunned, cheek already reddening. Gojo grabbed his jaw, tilted his face up, and pulled his sunglasses down with the other hand. Those impossible blue eyes locked onto Subaru's.
"Calm down. You're safe now." A pause. "Unless you'd like a refresher on what dying feels like?"
He hauled Subaru to his feet, dragged him to the window, and shoved his upper body out over the ledge.
The drop yawned below. Subaru's heart hammered, survival instinct flooding every nerve. He thrashed, but Gojo's grip was iron.
"Feeling more awake?"
The panic held for several long seconds before Subaru's struggling slowed, then stilled. Gojo's voice cut through low and steady.
Subaru's eyes, empty since the assembly, finally found a point of focus. He looked up at Gojo, throat raw.
"Yeah. I'm better."
A complete sentence. Progress.
Gojo nodded and pulled him back inside.
"So talk. What happened?"
The question landed, and whatever fragile composure Subaru had rebuilt crumbled at the edges. His eyes went red. Something dark and molten churned behind them.
"The Witch Cult." He bit down on each word like he was trying to break them. "It was the Witch Cult."
Gojo and Betty exchanged a glance. Neither had expected that.
But it tracked. If the Witch Cult was involved, they had the firepower to overwhelm Subaru's group even with Puck and Grimm there.
"Details."
Subaru went quiet for a moment, gathering the fragments into something speakable.
"We took the Dragon Carriage toward Roswaal's mansion. Everything was fine until we reached Arlam Village..."
The story came out in pieces, halting and hoarse.
The journey had been uneventful. Pleasant, even. He and Emilia talked and laughed the whole way, same as always. Then they reached the village, and the world inverted.
Bodies at the entrance. More the further in they went. While they were still trying to understand what had happened, the Witch Cult hit them.
At first, it was manageable. Puck, Rem, and Grimm held the line. Even outnumbered, they pushed through, cutting down cultists as they retreated toward the mansion. They made it back and linked up with Ram just as night fell.
Without Puck's power after dark, the situation deteriorated fast.
But none of that was the real problem.
The real problem was the Sin Archbishop.
"The Sin Archbishop of Sloth." Subaru's voice dropped to something between a whisper and a snarl. "Petelgeuse Romanee-Conti."
"A Sin Archbishop."
The picture crystallized in Gojo's mind. Without Puck available at night, a Sin Archbishop would have been nearly impossible to stop. Those were beings on par with the Witches themselves.
"The Witch Cult moved fast. The assembly barely ended, and they were already in Roswaal's territory. Caught you right in their net." His eyes narrowed. "That's not just good intelligence. Either they'd been planning this for a while, or someone tipped them off."
The first option was plausible. The second was damning. And if it was the second, the list of suspects was painfully short.
Roswaal telling Elsa to wait two days before going to the mansion. The timing. The target.
It all fit.
Betty had arrived at the same conclusion. Her brow furrowed as she glanced at Subaru, lips pressed tight.
"Gojo."
Subaru's voice cracked.
"Help me."
His eyes glistened, raw and red, fixed on Gojo with the desperate focus of a drowning man spotting a rope.
"Please. I want revenge. I want every last one of them dead. I won't... I can't let them get away with this. Those people... they..."
His voice splintered. The trembling started again, threatening to pull him back under.
Whatever had happened during that erased timeline, whatever Subaru had witnessed or endured, it had carved something out of him that words couldn't reach.
Neither Gojo nor Betty pressed for specifics. Prying open those wounds now would accomplish nothing but more pain.
"I don't care what it costs. Even if I have to die a hundred more times, a thousand, I will not let them walk away from this. They have to die."
Gojo watched him for a long moment. Then, without a word, he reached out and set a hand on Subaru's shoulder.
"Got it."
Subaru looked up. Tears had carved two clean tracks down a face twisted with grief and fury, though he couldn't have said when they'd started.
"You're my partner. Your problems are my problems." Gojo held his gaze. "So let's get revenge. Take everything you felt last time, all that rage and hate, and put it to work. I'll help. Not just me. All of us."
Subaru's nose burned. A wave of something too complicated to name surged up from his chest, and his lips moved to speak.
Gojo cut him off with a grin before he could start.
"Skip the thank-you speech. I'd rather hear about the Witch Cult. This Sin Archbishop of yours sounds like a good time."
Sin Archbishops were this era's answer to the Witches. Each one carried a Witch Factor, granting them an Authority, a power that surpassed even Divine Protections. The specific ability varied by host, making every Archbishop a unique threat.
Elsa and Meili's so-called "Mother," the Sin Archbishop of Lust, was already on Gojo's radar thanks to recent events. Now Sloth was joining the queue. Good enough as a warm-up.
"The Witch Cult's forces..."
Subaru nodded and began laying it out in detail.
The rank-and-file cultists were manageable. Stronger than ordinary civilians, but nothing Rem or Grimm couldn't handle with ease. The danger was in their numbers. Get swarmed, and even competent fighters ran into trouble. Beyond the fodder, some cultists wielded basic magic.
And then there was the Archbishop himself.
"He's insane. Completely unhinged. His power is... some kind of black hands..."
Black hands.
Gojo's mind flashed to the invisible grip that had crushed his heart more than once. The Witch of Envy's touch.
"They extend from his body to attack. But nobody else can see them. Not Emilia, not Grimm, not the twins. I was the only one."
"Unseen Hand," Betty said.
Both of them looked at her.
"The Authority once wielded by the Witch of Sloth. It creates invisible appendages with physical mass, capable of striking targets who have no idea what's hitting them."
"Sounds fun." Gojo leaned forward, genuinely interested.
"Going in blind would be a serious disadvantage, yes. But once you know what you're dealing with, there are counters. Dust or mist in the air makes the trajectories visible." Betty's tone was clinical, precise. "The real danger isn't invisibility. It's the raw power and the quantity. One Unseen Hand is nothing. A thousand? Ten thousand? At that point, whether you can see them stops mattering."
"Now that's more like it."
Gojo was smiling. The kind of smile that meant he was looking forward to something.
"Makes me want to see it in person." He checked the time and stood. "Let's go."
"Where?" Betty hopped off her chair and fell into step behind him.
"To find the Witch Cult right now?"
"Of course not. They're hiding. We just need to give them a reason to come to us." He glanced back at Subaru. "Right now, we're paying Roswaal a visit. Oh, and you don't know this yet."
His smile turned sharp.
"After you left last time, Roswaal contacted Elsa. Told her to visit the mansion in two days and kill everyone inside. Seems he wasn't confident the Witch Cult alone would get the job done, so he arranged a backup plan."
"Roswaal!"
Fury detonated behind Subaru's eyes. His fist slammed into the wall. Skin split. Blood smeared the stone.
Betty clicked her tongue.
"You're nothing but trouble."
Mana gathered at her fingertips. She wrapped both hands around his fist, and a soft glow pulsed outward. The broken skin knitted itself shut.
"Let's go have a chat with this man," Gojo said. "I'm curious what's rattling around inside that head of his. If we can get him talking, even better."
He stepped into the hallway and rapped on Felt's door.
"What." Her voice came out groggy. She'd already shed the heavy formal gown and changed back into her usual clothes, rubbing her eyes with the look of someone who'd been seconds from collapsing.
"Money run. You in?"
"Yes."
The fatigue vanished like it had never existed. She didn't ask where, didn't ask how. She was out the door and at his side before the word finished leaving her mouth.
In the main hall downstairs, they ran into Reinhard.
"Lady Felt, are you heading out?"
"We're visiting Roswaal. Come with us, Reinhard."
Gojo waved him over with a smile.
"Understood. I'll prepare the Dragon Carriage at once. Please wait just a moment, Lady Felt."
Reinhard bowed and had the carriage ready in minutes.
"So we're going to squeeze money out of Roswaal?" Felt asked the instant she climbed aboard, eyes bright.
"Partly. Mostly there are things I want to ask him."
"Oh. Right, Subaru." She turned. "How are you feeling? You looked pretty rough at the assembly earlier."
The concern in her voice, casual as it was, hit Subaru somewhere tender. The helplessness of the last loop, the agony, the fury of watching everything fall apart while he could do nothing... all of it felt distant now, with these people around him. Manageable. Like maybe, with them at his side, there was nothing he couldn't face.
"I'm fine. Much better now."
He shook his head, offering Felt a small smile.
"Good. Because I'm not handing out any sympathy bonuses."
And just like that, the warmth of the moment shattered. Classic Felt.
Subaru didn't mind in the slightest.
The Dragon Carriage made good time. Before long, Roswaal's mansion rose into view, and they pulled to a stop.
Emilia spotted them the moment they arrived.
"Subaru? What are you all doing here?"
Surprise and delight mixed on her face. She'd been spending most of her time with Puck, and while his company was never boring, there was no substitute for the chaos that came with a full group. Seeing them pull up to the estate put a genuine smile on her lips.
"Emilia."
The name came out rough. Subaru's eyes went red again, his voice thick with something he couldn't swallow down.
"Subaru, what's wrong...?"
She stepped closer, not frightened, just worried. The concern on her face was open and unhesitating.
"Lady Emilia, I'd advise stepping back. Someone here appears to have lost all self-control." Rem emerged from behind Emilia, fixing Subaru with a cool stare. "There's no telling what sort of indecent behavior he might attempt."
...
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