I lay face-down in the snow, my breath coming out in shallow, broken clouds. The cold bit into my skin, numbing everything it touched.
Something thin and wrong slid through my nerves—
not poison, but threads, biting into my body like iron woven into silk.
It pulsed.
Burned.
As if something had been torn open and left exposed to the air.
The sensation of a tongue dragging slowly across the wound made my skin crawl. Every instinct screamed at me to move, to thrash, to escape—but my body refused to listen. I was pinned, not by weight, but by something far more precise.
"Stop… moving…"
The whisper drifted down to me, light and airy. Too light. It reminded me of wind slipping through old gravestones, carrying a voice that shouldn't exist anymore.
From the corner of my eye, I caught movement. The girl adjusted her mask, tilting it just enough for me to see what lay beneath.
Her face wasn't entirely human.
Her skin was pale—too pale—almost translucent, as if light could pass straight through it. Her jaw unhinged slightly, stretching farther than it should, revealing rows of thin, needle-like teeth that glistened with saliva.
But her eyes…
Even without the mask, they were wrong. Multiple pupils vibrated inside each socket, twitching and shifting as they tracked something invisible.
Tracked me.
More specifically—the pulse beating weakly beneath my skin.
"The blood of a Lunarian…" she giggled softly, her mask tilting as if in delight. "Seasoned by the scars of a Marine Admiral."
Her tongue clicked against her teeth.
"It's so bitter… yet so powerful."
"Let… go…" I wheezed, my voice barely escaping my throat.
"Oh, I can't do that," she replied sweetly. Her long, serrated nails traced slowly along my spine, stopping just short of the wound. "My threads are already wrapped around your heart. One twitch from me, and your pulse stops forever."
Through the rising steam, two figures approached. One moved with calculated stillness, lifting a blowgun to his lips. The other advanced like a walking fortress, metal plates groaning softly with every step.
The man with the blowgun reloaded, sliding in a jagged black dart that hummed faintly with dark energy.
"Finish it, Arachne" he ordered coldly. "We don't need him alive. The World Government only needs his death."
The girl pouted, her smile stretching wider as she looked back at him. Arachne's many pupils vibrated faster, almost excited.
"But he's so fun," she complained. "I've never had a puppet with Lunarian blood before."
She tilted her head.
"Trigger… can I keep him?"
The shooter didn't hesitate. He leveled the blowgun directly at the center of my skull.
"No."
My body was still locked in place, my nervous system hijacked by her venomous threads. Panic pressed against my chest—tight, suffocating.
Then…
something changed.
A faint warmth stirred in my left hand.
Pandora was moving.
She divided herself. A small, sparking ember slipped free, gliding toward my ear like a living flame.
"Don't shout, lizard," she whispered, her voice flickering with heat.
I blinked once.
It was the only thing I could still control.
The main body of her flame drifted to my right shoulder. Without warning, she plunged straight into the dead tissue of my right arm.
WITCH!
I screamed internally as my body went rigid.
Then I felt it.
Blood—rushing back all at once.
My right arm, which had been nothing more than a cold, gray weight, suddenly throbbed with violent, agonizing heat. Not the warmth of flesh returning to life—but the roar of a furnace being reignited.
Fire erupted from my back—right where the wound had been torn open.
It flickered wildly, unstable and feral. One moment it burned a dull orange, the next it flared into a piercing, brilliant blue.
My teeth clenched so hard I tasted blood.
Arachne recoiled with a shrill cry, stumbling backward. Trigger and the Vanguard reacted instantly.
The shooter fired.
Clang!
The bullets never reached me. Some melted mid-air, vaporized by the sheer intensity of the flames. Others struck my scales and fell harmlessly to the ground, flattened and useless—leaving behind nothing but faint scratches.
The half of Pandora still in my left hand flared brightly.
"Boy," she snapped, "ignite the fire around yourself! It's the only way to burn away that girl's threads!"
"YES!" I roared.
My voice finally broke through the paralysis.
I didn't just release fire.
I became it.
A dome of heat exploded outward from my body, turning me into a living torch. Snow within five meters didn't melt—it vanished, turning instantly to steam and revealing a charred black circle carved into the white wasteland.
Arachne screamed, clutching her hands as the heat raced back through her invisible threads, burning straight into her fingers. She was forced to sever the connection.
"WHOOOO—SH!"
Two massive axes suddenly tore through the steam, spinning like deadly propellers. They slammed into the Vanguard, who barely managed to cross his arms in time. Sparks burst into the air as deep, jagged gashes were carved into his forearms.
Heavy footsteps echoed across the clearing. A shadow emerged from the mist, broad-shouldered and relaxed, a confident grin visible even in the dim light.
"Well, well," Gaban said, catching his axes as they flew back into his hands.
"It seems the guests have arrived again."
He glanced at the scorched ground, then at me.
"And here I thought we were the only ones crashing this party."