The ruins of Oakwood were no longer a village; they were a stage.

  Virelle remained suspended in the soot-heavy air, her lavender skirts billowing around her like a thundercloud. Below, the vampire snapped his fingers again, and a dozen purple-glowing chains erupted from the earth, lashing upward like starving vipers.

  Virelle didn't even flinch. With a thought, she expanded a shimmering violet sphere around herself. The chains struck the barrier with the sound of shrieking metal, sparks of dark energy showering the ash, but they could not find a single crack in her defense.

  "Is this truly the extent of your harvest?" Virelle asked, her voice dripping with a bored, melodic disdain. She idly adjusted a translucent sleeve. "I have found more tactical depth in a puddle of cave slimes. At least they have the decency to be consistently slimy. You are merely... repetitive."

  The vampire’s eyes flickered with a brief, sharp irritation. "A sharp tongue for a creature that doesn’t even have any memories"

  "I have the only memories that matter," Virelle countered. She raised her hand, and six blades of pure, concentrated mana materialized in a halo behind her. "The memories with my Master."

  With a flick of her wrist, the blades blurred through the air. The vampire didn't attempt to block; he simply blurred, his body becoming a streak of crimson mist as he wove through the projectiles with predatory speed.

  "Still too slow," Virelle whispered.

  She snapped her fingers. High above the smoke, the sky itself seemed to open. A massive, cylindrical pillar of white mana—wide enough to swallow a cathedral—roared down from the clouds. It struck the center of the square with the force of a falling moon.

  The vampire’s scream was cut short as his body was vaporized, turned into a mangled, scorched husk in an instant.

  Virelle drifted down as the light faded, her expression cold. "Havoc," she murmured. "I did promise."

  But the charred remains on the ground began to twitch. With a sickening, wet crackle, the black ash of his body began to reform. Crimson sinew knitted over scorched bone, and within heartbeats, the vampire stood again, his clothes somehow as pristine as they had been before the blast.

  "This is going nowhere," the vampire said, sighing as he straightened his collar. "You are wasting my time, and I am running out of patience. Just come back with me. The Master is waiting."

  Virelle’s orb flared a dangerous, pulsing crimson. "I have no memory of any Master other than the one I just sent to safety. And there is no going back with anyone except him."

  The vampire let out a dry, mocking laugh. "The Master? That filthy human? He is nothing but an uncalculated variable who took you away. A glitch in the system. You don't belong to a handicapped clerk who can barely hold a pen. You belong with—"

  A bolt of lightning-fast mana lanced through the air. The vampire’s head vanished, his sentence cut off by the sheer violence of the blast.

  "No one," Virelle hissed, her voice trembling with a rare, raw fury, "speaks of my Master that way."

  The head sprouted back almost instantly, the vampire’s eyes narrowing. "Stubborn. So very stubborn. You belong with us, little star. It’s why you exist. We carved the runes into your core. You are a masterpiece of our design, not a pet for a weakling."

  "I have no memory of your 'design,' and I have zero interest in your 'us,'" Virelle spat, her orb spinning with a low, predatory growl. "You can tell your boss that I have chosen my path. I am here to protect my Master. That is my only purpose."

  The vampire’s expression shifted. The frustration vanished, replaced by a slow, cruel smile. "Protect him? You think staying by his side is protecting him?"

  He took a step forward, the purple chains around him drooping like dead snakes. "Look around you. This village? These people? They died because we wanted you. Every time you stay with that weak, ordinary man, you are pinning a massive target to his back."

  It hit a nerve. Virelle’s floating form wavered for a fraction of a second, the memory of her own words in the carriage back from Greenhollow—I am the problem—echoing in the back of her mind.

  "I am not even the strongest in the hunt," the vampire continued, his voice dropping into a silky, persuasive purr. "There are others. Ones who won't be as nice and talkative with you as I have. If you surrender yourself to us, the variable lives. He goes back to his boring, quiet life in the lower sector. He stays safe."

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  "Shut up," Virelle whispered.

  "You think you’re the shield and sword he needs?" the vampire mocked, spreading his arms. "You’re strong, yes. But you’re bringing monsters to his doorstep. He struggles, he buys fancy brass gadgets, he tries to tap into that silly dormant power that had saved him once... but it will all be in vain. He will fight, he will suffer, and in the end, he will die in the dirt. All because an elf was too arrogant and stubborn to let him go."

  Virelle’s prismatic orb flickered, the brilliant white light dimming into a cold, uncertain violet. The vampire’s words were a poison more effective than any chain, and for the first time since Aiven had found her, the invincible mage felt the crushing weight of her own existence.

  Virelle moved like a storm of lavender light. She didn't just fire spells; she conducted them. Blasts of raw mana shrieked through the ash, and lances of shimmering white light rained down from the sky, carving deep furrows into the earth of Oakwood.

  Yet, the vampire moved through the destruction with a sickening, liquid grace. He drifted around the mana spears as if he could see the air vibrating before the spells even materialized. When a blast did catch him—tearing through his ribs or severing an arm—the wounds simply hissed and closed before the blood could even hit the ground.

  "You are wasting so much effort on a result that is already written," the vampire taunted, his voice echoing from three different directions as he blurred through the smoke. "We work for a grander cause, little star. A cause that can save this rotting world. What you are doing... this 'protection' of yours? It is not only harming your Master. It is harming the very future of this realm."

  "I do not care about the world!" Virelle shrieked. Her voice, usually a cold line of silk, was shaking—a frantic, jagged sound that she couldn't suppress. Her prismatic orb hummed at a frequency that made the ground beneath her crack. "I do not care if the world falls, as long as my Master is safe!"

  The vampire stopped. He stood in the center of the square, the fires casting long, flickering shadows across his pale face.

  "Safe?" he asked, his smile widening to reveal ivory fangs. "My minions already have the entire forest surrounded. Your Master didn't go to safety. He went to a cage. He is likely on his last breath as we speak, his 'fancy gadgets' broken in the dirt."

  Virelle’s breath hitched. The orb at her side flickered, its light faltering for a split second.

  "This is all because you refuse to walk where you belong," the vampire continued, taking a slow, deliberate step forward. "But I am a man of mercy. Surrender and walk obediently with me. In exchange, I spare your so-called Master. He goes back to his boring life, safe from us. He would no longer be a burden. He would never have to worry about losing another limb for your sake."

  Virelle paused. Her feet, which rarely touched the earth, sank until they were inches from the ash. The logic was a poison she had already been feeding herself. If I am the problem... if I am the target...

  Hesitation flickered in her eyes.

  "That's it," the vampire whispered. "Just one step—"

  Suddenly, a crushing weight slammed into Virelle. It wasn't a physical blow; it was a localized, suffocating force of gravity. She was driven into the dirt, her knees hitting the stone with a sharp crack. She tried to float, her mana sparking in protest, but the pressure was absolute. It felt like the entire mountain was sitting on her shoulders.

  The vampire’s smile vanished. He let out a long, irritated sigh and looked at the ground. "I was very close to accomplishing the mission through diplomacy. Are you trying to steal my spotlight, Sylphaine?"

  The ground beneath him ripples like water. From the dirt, a figure emerged—not climbing out, but passing through the solid earth as if she were an ephemeral ghost. She was slender and pale, with long white hair that cascaded down a dark coat accented with crimson. Her red eyes gleamed with a playful, teasing menace as she looked at Virelle.

  "I was getting tired of your dumb diplomatic approaches, dear brother Valerion," Sylphaine said, her voice a lazy, aristocratic drawl. "It's slow. And you know how I hate being bored."

  "Willing cooperation serves us better in the long run," Valerion argued, though he didn't move to stop her.

  Virelle struggled against the gravity, her purple mana sparking and fizzing against the invisible weight. "You... filthy... leeches!" she spat, her teeth gritted.

  Sylphaine let out a melodic, mocking laugh. "Oh, listen to it bark. Master has bestowed upon us powers that not even the strongest mages can dream of, little elf. We are the evolution you're so afraid of."

  She drifted closer to Virelle, her boots making no sound on the ash. She leaned down, a knowing smirk showing the tips of her fangs. "My brother wants you to choose us. I just want you to be us again. And I have a method that is way more effective than his talking."

  Sylphaine raised her hand. Her slender index finger began to twitch, the flesh melting and reforming into a thin, wiggling red line—a thread of raw, living blood-magic.

  "What... are you..." Virelle’s eyes widened.

  "Shh," Sylphaine whispered. "Let's find the girl underneath the mask."

  The red thread lunged forward, sliding with a wet, invasive hiss into Virelle’s ear.

  Virelle’s world vanished.

  The gravity, the ash, and the vampires were gone. Instead, her consciousness was flooded with a deluge of sensory static. She saw visions of a town consumed by white-hot flames. She heard the screams of hundreds, the sound of stone shattering, and the smell of ozone so strong it burned her throat.

  She saw a pair of hands—her own hands—wreathed in lavender light, reaching out toward the chaos.

  I didn't... I couldn't...

  The images felt like jagged glass, cutting through the void of her missing history. They felt like her memories, and they were filled with a horror so deep that the invincible mage began to scream into the emptiness of her own mind.