"RUN!"

With her scream and adrenaline pumping through every corner of her body, Tristessa felt herself running faster and faster. Survival instinct and fear working simultaneously, doing everything possible to keep her from falling before that invincible enemy.

"HURRY, REIDEN! OR SHE'LL CATCH US UP!"

She never let go of him. Desperation had won; she could no longer think straight. It was either flee or die, with no middle ground.

"Come with me, Tristessa!"

"What the…?!"

Suddenly, she felt a powerful arm around her waist, and her feet lifted off the ground.

"Shadowstep."

Then, darkness.

Absolute darkness. Imperishable blackness, making her think she had just died. But this wasn't Death, it was something else. She knew this because she retained worldly consciousness, the reasoning of someone who wasn't swimming in the dark waters of infinity.

She was alive, but it didn't seem like she would be for long because in that dark space there was no air. No oxygen. There was nothing.

"...!"

She couldn't scream. She couldn't breathe. She was drowning. She was suffocating. She needed oxygen, and there was none. There was nothing in the shadows. Her brain was burning from the lack of air. Her lungs were about to burst. She needed air… Air, pain, air, pain. It hurt so much. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts…

"That's enough."

Just as when that dark space made itself manifest, it collapsed in the blink of an eye, and the world welcomed Tristessa back into cold air and the smell of wet grass. Air that filled her insides and cleared her thoughts, followed by a whooping cough.

"W-what the fuck was that?!" she yelled at Reiden, who had let go of her so she could breathe freely, both hands on her knees and her head bowed.

"We shared my Divinity. It's normal that you felt that way, it always happens the first time," he explained, his gaze fixed in the opposite direction. "And I'm the one asking myself that same question, Tristessa. What was that thing that appeared out of nowhere?"

"An impossible-to-kill phantom. It'll haunt me…cough!…all damn night, or until we lose sight of her," she explained, straightening up and feeling her legs tremble. "What the…? Did we get here that fast?"

What would have taken ten minutes to travel, they had done in perhaps one or two: on the sides of the Meridion Road, there were already walls of trees. Hundreds of small trunks, so dense that the spaces between them were pitch black, and the abundant, constantly shifting leaves created a gloomy symphony akin to incoherent whispers coming from the darkness.

"Then I think we're safe now," he said, turning his head to look at Tristessa with serenity doomed to be shattered, due to the expression of terror still plastered on her face.

"No, no, you don't understand. She can summon a steed made of shadows and do the same thing you did with your Divinity. We must flee into the forest."

Without letting Reiden convince her otherwise, Tristessa stepped into the darkness where the light of the Twin Moons could barely penetrate given the dense ceiling of leaves overhead.

"Miss Irandell, wait!"

It didn't even occur to her to leave marks on the trees to find her way back. Nor did it even occur to her to possibly encounter dangerous creatures like the palkuriae.

What mattered most to her now was escaping the Dullahan, no matter what. Only with the light of a new day would she be able to relax.

"At least she's not draining my life force yet... If I escape again, I'll be at her mercy," she thought as she moved forward, blind in the bleak veil of thick shadows. "And I'll never be able to escape this loop unless I kill her."

Something impossible to achieve. She had decided to figure out how to deal with the Dullahan after ensuring the well-being of the Mercer-Archeos, but now that the situation had come to an end, she saw no way to do it on her own.

Without knowing how to fight. Without being able to use magic. With only her Divinities at her disposal, her [Divinity of Accursed Existence] being the only one useful in that circumstance… As long as the spiritual strain or the raised undead didn't end up killing her.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

"Wait!" Reiden caught up with her again and stopped her advance just before she fell through the sudden drop in the ground, a depression that plunged the terrain perhaps a meter and a half deep. "Check where you're going, will you?"

"Damn it, Reiden, the Dullahan wants to kill me. You should have left without looking back," she rebuked him, her heart in her mouth as she glared at the mercenary with a terrified look. "She's close…"

"Calm down, miss. You said I'm a hero… And someone with that title would never leave an Imperial citizen on her own against mortal danger."

Reiden jumped down and offered Tristessa a hand to help her descend too, which she reluctantly accepted. The cold was harsh and merciless in that part of the forest, the ground covered in moss, as was the earthen wall that extended for a long distance, where countless tree roots protruded or escaped to the outside.

"We can hide here," he suggested, crouching down next to the wall of roots and waiting for her to join him. "Come. If I use my [Divinity of Shadowstep], your pursuer won't be able to find us."

"And how are you sure of that?"

"Move, quickly!"

In the darkness, Tristessa felt her Nemesis' lurking presence. Fear convinced her to crouch down next to Raiden, who simply took her hand and said with the iron conviction of someone who had faced Death countless times:

"Stay calm and don't make any sudden movements… Shadowstep."

Reiden's Divinity covered her again in that abrupt, invasive manner. It compressed every cell in her body to isolate her from the world; its effectiveness rooted in its static and total lack of movement. Breathing was difficult because not only was her respiratory system forced to work to the minimal degree, but the very air around her was also influenced by that Divinity. Hiding in the dark, imperceptible movement, not wanting to be found.

"I'm chocking… I can't see, Reiden… S-shit…"

She knew the mercenary couldn't hear her, able only to convey her fears by squeezing his hand, wet with perspiration and rough with calluses from years of wielding the sword. Perhaps Reiden noticed her, in the shadows, as he gave her a squeeze too, making her fingers ache slightly.

But it was better to feel that small stab of pain than all the panic converging in the center of her chest, below her Baptism in Ruins. Feeling the haunting presence of the Dullahan.

She heard her hard footsteps against the ground, her armor clanking from the metal-on-metal contact. Amidst the supernatural darkness created by Reiden's Divinity, she could see her head floating like an unholy beacon in the middle of a storm in a starless night. The aura of Discord flowing from the void, spreading its parasitic influence, in sync with that emanating from Tristessa's very soul…

"Stay back. Don't come here. I'm not ready to face you… I'm not, I never will be," she thought, feeling her breathing grow increasingly difficult. "Go away… Please, go…"

Her presence was so close, causing the Baptism in Ruins to freeze her heart inside her chest. The pumping blood turned to ice, each beat an eternity of agony… Slower and slower, echo after echo in the everlasting darkness.

"Go…away…"

It seemed like an entire lifetime of waiting until, without warning, Reiden cut off the influence of his Divinity and the presence of the real world simultaneously assaulted all of the girl's senses.

"That's it… We're safe. Whatever was out there, it's gone."

Hearing that, and the cold darkness of the forest, were a caress compared to the oppressive atmosphere that had surrounded her.

"Yes… Yes! She's gone...!"

She no longer felt the Dullahan's presence, either nearby or manifested in the form of that dark omen that gripped her chest as the dark hour drew near.

"You did it…R-Reiden?" she asked tentatively, her fingers numb in the mercenary's unbroken grip. "Reiden!"

"Yes, I'm sorry…" He released her, and it was thanks to the little moonlight that filtered through the leaves of the natural roof that Tristessa could see that Reiden's mouth and graying, lock-shaped beard were stained with blood. "Give me a second to recover."

"The strain…?"

"Yes… Don't worry. Next to being dead, this is nothing." Before she could even say anything, Reiden got up from the ground and spat out all the blood that had accumulated in his mouth. With a hand on his abdomen, he looked at Tristessa with a hint of guilt in his eyes. "Could you…?"

"Yes, of course."

This time it was her turn to climb that small hill, and she helped Reiden up. He groaned under his breath, his insides riddled with internal wounds from overexerting himself.

"We really outsmarted her," she murmured so her voice wouldn't echo to the most unwanted corners of that dark forest, as she helped the mercenary walk in the darkness. "It was all you, Reiden. Thank you."

"Heh… I'd forgotten what the gratitude of a safe citizen felt like. It made it all worth it," he explained, more blood trickling down the sides of his mouth and forcing him to stifle his cough with the crook of his elbow. "Damn, I'm too old for this. If we run into an ursall…"

"Don't say that!"

The Dullahan had caused any wild beast to flee, terrified by such an unknown entity in pursuit of its prey. So getting back to the road wasn't difficult at all.

Tristessa didn't know how long they'd been hiding in there; Reiden's Divinity had altered both of their perceptions of time. Maybe it was already the early hours of the morning, and with her adrenaline level dropping, she should be on the verge of fainting… But that didn't matter.

They were both alive. The Mercer-Archeos, the other mercenaries, and Madame Luchie too, waiting for them at Derelict Outpost, either having dinner or sleeping.

That didn't matter either. Just that they were safe, away from the danger posed by the Dullahan.

Far from all danger… Both supernatural and mundane, who could sometimes lurk in the shadows, brandishing their knives and full of cruel intentions…

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