The echo of the explosion didn't just rattle the trees of the southwestern woods; it shattered the fragile peace of Blithe Hollow. In the valley below, the lights of the town flickered like dying stars.
Sheriff Miller, a man who believed in cold steel and hard facts, didn't wait for a report. He saw the plume of smoke rising from the "cursed" part of the forest and mobilized every deputy on duty.
"Lock and load!" Miller barked, his voice echoing in the station's garage. "We have an apex predator and potential domestic terrorists in those woods. Move!"
They headed straight into the meat grinder.
At the bottom of the "False Sanctuary," Martin Hale—trapped in the freezing grizzly—felt the humiliation burning hotter than the "Red Ice" that encased his limbs. Courtney's taunt was a serrated blade in his ego. He, the Architect, had been outplayed by a girl with a flare and a few sticks of dynamite.
"You think... this... is the end?" The bear's jaw moved, but the voice that came out was a chaotic psychic scream that vibrated in the minds of Ken, Norman, and Courtney.
Norman, still leaning on Ken for support, gasped as the "weight" in the pit suddenly intensified. "He's doing something! He's not fighting the ice anymore—he's feeding on it!"
Martin realized that the supernatural cold of the Shinku no Kōri was just another form of energy. He reached deep into the black void where his soul used to be and triggered a Spirit-Burst. It wasn't an explosion of fire, but a violent expansion of pure, negative willpower.
CRACK-BOOM.
The crimson ice shattered into a billion razor-sharp shards. The force of the burst sent a shockwave through the pit, scarring the bear's flesh permanently. The fur on the grizzly's left side was blasted away, leaving behind raw, blackened skin etched with glowing, ghostly runes. But he was free. And he was faster. The pain had burned away the last of the bear's sluggish instincts. Martin was now in total, overclocked control of the beast.
He leaped out of the pit in a single, blurred motion, landing ten feet away from Courtney. He looked like a nightmare—a half-flayed, massive predator with the eyes of a madman.
"Now," Martin's voice hissed in their heads, "the real performance begins."
"Norman, the ritual! Now while he's wounded!" Ken shouted, pulling the Nyota ya Uhai from his belt.
Ken and Norman formed a circle, their backs to Courtney, who stood with her rifle aimed at the mangled grizzly. Ken began the chant of the African Star of Life, creating a golden tether of light that lashed out toward the bear. Norman added the freezing cadence, attempting to bind Martin's spirit to the spot.
"It's not working!" Norman yelled over the rising wind. "The ritual is incomplete! We need the Key—the missing page Martin stole! Without it, we're just throwing light at a shadow!"
Martin laughed, a sound like grinding stones. "You'll never find it. I buried that page where neither the living nor the dead can reach it!"
He prepared to lunge, his scarred muscles tensing for the kill. But then, the forest erupted in a different kind of chaos.
The Sheriff's tactical team burst into the clearing from the northern path.
"POLICE! DROP THE WEAPONS!" Miller's voice boomed through a megaphone.
"Sheriff, get back!" Courtney yelled, not lowering her gun. "It's not a normal bear! Stay away from the treeline!"
But it was too late. The deputies, fueled by adrenaline and ignorance, stepped right into the traps Courtney hadn't had time to "edit."
A deputy named Higgins tripped a wire. A bent sapling, armed with jagged hemlock stakes, swung through the air with a sickening thwack. It didn't just hit him; it pinned him to a cedar tree. The screams started. Another deputy panicked, backed up, and fell into a pit Martin had lined with sharpened stones.
"IT'S AN AMBUSH!" Miller roared, and the deputies began firing blindly into the fog.
The woods became a crossfire of lead, screams, and tactical lights. Martin Hale loved it. He began to move through the panicked officers like a scythe through wheat, a dark blur of fur and scarred flesh. He wasn't just killing; he was choreographing a massacre.
Ken, Courtney, and Norman stood in the center of the madness, paralyzed by the sheer bad luck of the situation.
"Are you kidding me?" Courtney muttered, reloading her rifle as a stray bullet chipped the bark of the tree next to her head. "First a demon, then an undead bear, and now the police are trying to shoot us while getting eaten by the traps we tried to save them from?"
"Our luck is officially a cosmic joke," Norman sighed, his eyes tracking the chaotic "weight" of the dying men around them.
Just as Martin Hale reared up to decapitate Sheriff Miller, the air in the center of the clearing simply... stopped.
The rain froze in mid-air. The screams of the dying deputies were silenced as if someone had turned off a speaker. A deep, vibrating hum filled the gorge, and the sky split open.
A portal of swirling violet and crimson light tore through the reality of Blithe Hollow.
From the rift stepped the Succubus.
She was more beautiful and more terrifying than before. Her wings were vast, shimmering with the iridescent sheen of a raven's feathers. Her red hair floated in a non-existent breeze, and her eyes burned with the hunger of a thousand years.
The humans—the Sheriff, the remaining deputies, —were frozen in a state of absolute, paralyzed shock. Their minds couldn't process the sudden shift from "wild animal attack" to "cosmic horror."
Ken, Norman, and Courtney, however, didn't even blink.
"Oh, look," Ken said, his voice flat and weary. "The demon lady is back. Of course she is. It's Tuesday, isn't it?"
"I'd be more surprised if a dragon didn't show up at this point," Courtney added, leaning casually against a tree, though her eyes remained sharp.
The Succubus ignored the mortals. Her gaze was locked on the scarred grizzly.
"Martin..." she whispered, her voice a melody that made the deputies' ears bleed. "You ran away from our last dance. I don't like it when my toys leave the room without permission."
Martin, in the bear's body, tried to back away. For the first time, he felt a fear that transcended his own ego. "No... I have a masterpiece... I have a game..."
"The game is over, little ghost," she said with a delicate, lethal grace.
She moved faster than the eye could follow. She didn't use claws. She simply leaned forward and pressed her lips against the grizzly's snout. A Succubus's Kiss.
A blinding flash of violet light erupted. The ghost of Martin Hale was literally sucked out of the bear's mouth—a screaming, translucent wisp of agony. The Succubus inhaled, swallowing Martin's soul in one graceful gulp.
With a casual flick of her wrist, she snapped the old grizzly's neck. The massive body hit the mud with a dull thud. Martin Hale was gone. The bear was dead.
The silence that followed was heavier than the rockslide.
The Succubus turned toward the trio. She licked her lips, her eyes scanning Ken. "Now... for the main course."
The Sheriff and his men were still catatonic, but Ken, Courtney, and Norman were already moving. They had been through enough trauma to bypass the "shock" phase and go straight to "survival strategy."
"Norman, Shinku no Kōri—maximum output, 360-degree radius!" Ken commanded, his voice firm.
"On it!" Norman slammed his hands into the ground. A wave of red ice erupted, not targeting the Succubus directly, but creating a jagged wall of frozen spikes between her and the cowering police officers.
"Courtney, the high-velocity rounds! Target the wing joints!"
"Already on the second magazine, Ken!" Courtney opened fire with a precision that would have made a sniper jealous. She wasn't aimlessly shooting; she was pinning the Succubus's wings to the frozen ground.
Ken stepped forward, the Nyota ya Uhai glowing like a sun.
"You want a dance?" Ken shouted, his aura flaring as he used the healing magic to shield his friends from the Succubus's charm. "Then let's dance. But we're not your toys anymore."
The Succubus laughed, a sound that shook the very foundations of the forest. The real battle for Blithe Hollow had just begun.