The words gnawed at him. Self-preservation is the cause of death. They twisted through his mind, sinking deep, like a splinter too small to remove.
But he couldn't focus on them. Not when his shoulder still ached from her bite. Not when his pride burned hotter than the wound.
She had toyed with him. That was what truly rankled. She had played her little game, smiling her little smile, speaking in riddles and half-truths, and he had been powerless to stop her. She did not kill him, because she could not kill him and that angered him more, for he couldn't discern a bluff.
Half-truths. Half-lies.
He would remember.
The fog had not lifted. The night had not passed. There was no sun, no stars, no moon. Just the endless, unmoving darkness.
El Ritch clenched his jaw.
"Self-preservation is the cause—agh, God dammit!" The curse burst from him, sharp and sudden, startling in the silence. "Why did she have to be such a... bitch!"
The word felt strange in his mouth, foreign and familiar at once, dragged from the depths of his memory. It sat bitter on his tongue, but he didn't regret it.
"She could have just told me the way out, but no~" He threw up his hands, mocking her lilting tone, flicking his fingers with exaggerated flair. "'Trust is the most naive thing a man with a fleeting life can give.' Oh, how profound!"
The den had become suffocating. The air thick, pressing in on him from all sides.
He had to move.
His feet carried him into the forest before he even realized it. The anger in his chest burned away his hesitation, his fear. The cold bit at his skin, the frost crackling beneath his boots, but he pressed on, deeper and deeper still. "A little bit of help couldn't have hurt, oh so mighty beast of the unknown lands...She could've simply pointed me a way out." El Ritch grumbled as he kept walking.
The silence followed him.
No wind in the branches. No rustling in the underbrush. No distant howl of unseen creatures.
Nothing.
Only his own breath, too loud in his ears. His own footsteps, crunching over frozen leaves and brittle twigs.
He was alone.
Truly alone.
A creeping unease settled over him.
Was this it? Was this what she had meant?
Not death. Not pain.
Just this.
The endless quiet.
The solitude.
He turned, meaning to retrace his steps, to find the den again—but the trees had swallowed it. No sign of where he had come from. No way of knowing which direction led forward and which led back.
He was lost.
And the silence was growing.
It would smother him.
It would seep into his bones, into his thoughts, until nothing was left of him at all.
It would drive him mad.
He ran.
Not toward safety, not toward anything at all—just away.
Away from the silence that pressed against his ears like cold hands. Away from the emptiness that coiled around his chest, squeezing, choking. Away from the gnawing thought that whispered, You are already dead.
The wind did not whip at his face. There was no wind. No trees swaying in the periphery. No branches creaking. Only the sound of his own breath, ragged and desperate, and the hollow crunch of frost beneath his feet.
He did not stop.
Not when his legs burned. Not when his lungs clawed for air, like a man drowning in dry land.
He needed to feel something.
Something other than the void curling around him.
He ran until his legs gave out, and when they did, he collapsed to his knees. His chest heaved. His hands dug into the frozen earth. He gulped at the air, but it was thin, flavorless. Empty.
There was no wind.
No sound.
No life.
Nothing.
The only thing that remained was the stabbing pain in his ribs as he gasped for breath. The last tether to his sanity.
And yet—
He did not feel alive.
He knelt there, trembling, and the question wormed its way into his thoughts.
What am I running from?
The answer came swift, unbidden.
Nothing.
He had been running from nothing at all.
This place was not alive. It was not dead. It simply was. A prison with no walls. A grave without a corpse. A lingering, rotting thing that stretched endlessly in all directions.
What foolish hope had he clung to? What illusion had he given himself, that there was something to escape?
He had died.
It was final.
And what power—what right—did he have to defy death?
The forest trembled, blurred. The edges of the world began to unravel.
And then—
There was only darkness.
Perhaps this had been his fate all along.
Had he not already surrendered? Had he not already made his choice, long before his body had given out?
He had willed himself to die.
And now, his wish had been granted.
The weight of it settled over him.
And so, with nothing left, El Ritch did the only thing he could do.
He accepted it.
SAGITTARIUS A
Sagittarius A gasped as her consciousness was wrenched from the limbo, her connection severed in an instant. The fog recoiled at her will, thick tendrils curling back toward her like retreating serpents. She was at the far eastern reaches of the forest, nestled within the safety of her Sanctuary— or so she had thought.
Her mind reeled, fragmented from the abrupt return. Three of her bodies, annihilated. The horned man's chief had done that, she was certain. But he was not the only threat. Two others had entered the fog. Two whose strength rivaled his. Two she could not fight head-on.
The spores weaved and pulsed, a living web of mana that formed the lattice of her Sanctuary. A physical anchoring— crude, perhaps, but effective. Within the fog, she was god. And she would wield that divinity to crush the invaders.
And yet—
They had stepped inside.
Sagittarius A stilled, her consciousness pulsing outward through the fog, tasting the intruders as they breached the veil. Two of them. Both women.
The first had auburn hair, a wild thing of reckless abandon, her mouth split into something between a snarl and a grin, as if the fight itself was a lover she had longed for.
The second bore scars, deep grooves that carved stories into her face. Her eyes, sharp as a blade honed a thousand times, took in the shifting fog with cool calculation.
Sagittarius A did not hesitate.
She called the chimeras.
They moved as she willed them, shapes crafted from flesh and desperation, stitched together from the fallen—participants and students she had been culling like cattle herd. The fog guided them, masking their approach. The first strike was flawless.
The scarred woman reacted first, faster than expected, her blade a flash of steel against the darkness. She blocked the attack. Not avoided. Not dodged. Blocked.
The auburn-haired one staggered, blood spewing from her mouth in thick splatters against the fog, but—
She smiled.
A shudder ran through Sagittarius A, an unfamiliar weight settling in her chest. Not irritation. Not frustration.
Fear.
Something was wrong.
The fog was a Sanctuary, therefore it should have the Sanctuary's sure-hit effect.
The fog bent to her command, the sanctuary's effect latching onto the intruders, constraining their movements, twisting their bodies against them. Their forms faltered, the intricate flow of their movements breaking apart like shattered clockwork.
[The Sanctuary of the unauthorized Beast: Sagittarius A, allows her/it to increase or decrease the voluntary and involuntary movement numbers of any thing that enters hers/its Sanctuary]
It should have been over.
But it wasn't.
The auburn-haired woman coughed, spat blood onto the frost-laced ground, then lifted her gaze with a gleam of exhilaration.
"I told Zana this was a sanctuary," she mused, voice raw yet amused. "She didn't believe me. Now she must feel stupid."
The scarred one chuckled, rolling her shoulders as though shaking off the weight of the mana pressing down on her.
"A sanctuary effect?" she murmured, thoughtful. "I see. The fog conducts mana. Physical anchoring…" She tilted her head slightly. "That's quite stupid and crude."
Sagittarius A's breath hitched.
They understood.
And worse than that—they laughed.
Twin voices, sharp and certain, rang through the dissipating fog.
"{Sanctuary Deployment: Cut a Rug.}" The auburn haired barked
"{Sanctuary Deployment: Boiling Frog.}" The scarred face spoke, smooth.
The air shattered.
Pain.
Pure, unrelenting, mind-splitting pain tore through her skull, drove into her eyes, her ears, her mouth. Her own sanctuary turned against her, the delicate threads of mana unraveling like frayed silk. Blood poured from her nose, her eyes, her lips. She choked on the taste of it.
One chimera—burned, its flesh curling away from the bone in sheets of blackened ruin.
The other—bisected, its head tumbling from its shoulders as though it had never belonged there at all and it's body in half.
The fog fell away.
Sagittarius A staggered.
This—this was impossible.
No. No.
Her limbs trembled, her body struggling to hold itself together. If she stayed here—if she remained standing—they would end her.
She turned, dragging herself toward the pile of bodies she had yet to work on, those still breathing, still waiting. She let herself fall among them, limbs limp, breaths shallow. A corpse among corpses.
If she could not kill them in open battle—
She would do it from underneath. Turn them inside out.