Emil was standing between that demon and his sister.
Emily was trying to get a hold of herself, trying to stand up.
The blood ran warm across Emil's brow, slipping into his eyes in slow, steady streams.
He didn't blink.
The world didn't blur.
Instead, it sharpened.
Each drop that should have clouded his sight only seemed to peel something away. The night stretched open before him—edges crisp, shadows no longer hiding but folding neatly into place. The trembling leaves above him stilled in his vision, every vein visible. A bead of blood slid past his lashes, and he watched it fall—watched the way it curved through the air, slow… deliberate… as if time itself had loosened its grip.
His breath hitched.
At least, that was how it felt.
Something behind his eyes had shifted—quietly, completely.
The strain that should have been there wasn't. No sting. No blur. Just a strange, effortless clarity, as if his vision no longer belonged to the limits of a human body.
His gaze drifted—then narrowed.
The distant treeline pulled closer without him moving. Bark, cracks, the thin crawl of something along its surface—every detail surged forward, as though the space between had been erased. Then it slipped away just as easily, the world stretching back out, obedient to a thought he hadn't realized he'd made.
And there—
Movement.
Far beyond what his eyes should have caught.
A shape tore through the darkness, too fast, too wrong—yet it didn't escape him. It dragged itself across his vision in pieces, each motion laid bare. Muscles coiling. Limbs striking the ground. The air itself bending around it.
Fast.
But not faster than his sight.
'Maybe we have a chance to survive, this ability, maybe I can...'
The abomination had started walking towards them. It seemed that the blast had significantly affected his speed. It was not able to move at that superhuman speed; it was more like a human.
Which was a chance, a chance for the siblings to survive.
Emil forced himself to look back.
The distance shrank the moment he measured it.
Not far.
Not nearly enough.
His gaze flicked to his sister. She was trying to stand straight, trying to hide it—but her foot faltered the moment she put weight on it. The ankle had already swollen, skin stretched tight, angry. When she shifted, a sharp breath slipped past her lips before she could stop it.
She wouldn't last.
Not like this.
His own legs felt wrong—heavy, unsteady. Warm blood still traced down the side of his face, dripping from his jaw, each drop stealing something from him.
He looked back again.
The thing was moving.
Too fast.
But not to him.
Each stride it took stretched wide in his vision, clear enough to count—the flex, the push, the ground giving way beneath it.
One.
Two.
Three—
Emil's fingers curled.
That was all it would take.
No more than a handful of steps before it reached them.
Running wouldn't buy time.
He scanned his surroundings and found a log. It was not too long, not too heavy.
Of course, that thing couldn't have had any effect if it had been hit with it. But it seemed that Emil couldn't think of anything else.
His gaze locked onto its legs.
And the world narrowed.
What had seemed whole a moment ago came apart under his focus—fiber by fiber, flaw by flaw. The creature's stride wasn't clean. It dragged, just slightly. One limb struck the ground a fraction too late, the joint bending at an angle it shouldn't, the muscle beneath twitching out of rhythm.
Broken.
Not yet fallen—but close.
Each step strained it further. He could see it—the way the weight traveled wrong, the way the limb shuddered under pressure, as if it were already splintering from the inside.
It wouldn't take much.
One clean hit.
Right there.
His fingers tightened, nails biting into his palm.
The space between them, the timing, the angle—everything began to fall into place, sharp and precise.
But it all balanced on a single moment.
Miss it—
And there wouldn't be another.
He looked back at Emily, who was pale from the approaching monstrosity in front of her.
"Hey, Emi, you're not that annoying." Emil smiled at her.
Emily froze.
For a heartbeat, nothing moved. Not the wind, not the blood slipping down his face, not even her breath. Then something in his eyes—too calm, too certain—snapped it all back into motion.
"No—"
She lunged.
Her fingers caught air.
If she could just hold him—just for a second—if she could lock his feet to the ground, force the moment to stay—
But he was already gone.
A single step—
Then another—
And the distance between them broke.
Across the clearing, the abomination shifted.
Its body coiled, snapping toward him with a violence that tore through the stillness. Ground split under its weight as it launched—
And the two of them moved at once.
'One strike that is all I have...don't miss it, king.'
The ground hammered beneath his feet, each step jarring his bones, each breath cutting sharp through his chest. The world had narrowed again—no trees, no sky, no past—only the distance between him and the thing rushing to meet him.
Closer.
Closer.
The abomination surged forward, its body unfolding with brutal force. Its ruined leg dragged—but not enough. Not nearly enough. The rest of it compensated, driving it faster, claws tearing into the earth, flinging dirt and splinters into the air.
Its pincers rose.
Wide.
Waiting.
Emil saw it all.
The angle. The timing. The moment it would strike.
His grip tightened around the broken log in his hands—splintered wood, rough and uneven, barely something you could call a weapon.
One chance.
That was all this was.
The creature lunged.
The world slowed.
Its pincers snapped inward, fast enough to crush bone like paper—
Emil dropped.
His knees slammed into the ground, body folding low as the air screamed above him. He twisted, dragging every ounce of strength he had left into his arms, and swung—
The log crashed into its leg.
For a fraction of a second—
Resistance.
Then—
Crack.
Not the leg.
The wood.
The log split apart in his hands, fragments bursting outward, the force of the impact shattering it uselessly.
Emil froze.
A hollow breath escaped him.
Then—
He laughed.
Short.
Broken.
Of course.
Of course, it wouldn't be that easy.
The weight of it all settled in at once—the blood, the pain, the certainty of what came next. The plan, the one moment, the one strike—
Gone.
He let the splintered remains fall from his hands.
The shadow of the abomination loomed over him, its massive form blotting out everything else, pincers rising again, ready to end it.
Emil exhaled.
And didn't move.
He looked once towards his sister, as if trying to say sorry. Then closed his eyes and waited for it to end.
SLASH!!
Emil's attention cracked.
He looked above from where the drops of blood were falling on him.
The abomination.
It was gone. Its head was flying, and with a thud, it dropped.
In the moonlight, he saw a beautiful, thin, weightless fabric that seemed to reflect the moonlight itself.
The one wearing it was flowing through the air just like her waves of eternal-light hair. Her face seemed to radiate every single ray from the moon.
With that, by circling in the air once. She elegantly stood on the abomination's slit throat.
The elegance, the power, yet the kind, moonlike eyes.
She didn't feel like something that had come to save him.
She felt like something that had decided he shouldn't die yet.
Like an angel of death.