She didn't waste a moment. With her heart pounding like a war drum, Tristessa trotted toward the tent, closely followed by the General and Vergil.

"The Mercer-Archeos?!" she thought, hoping to see the light at the end of the tunnel. The fulfillment of the promise she had made to them, and to herself. "Jin…Lucahn, Tiara. The nightmare will finally be over…"

Some of the soldiers who had been resting also approached, but they left a passageway for Zephyr and his companions to pass freely. Even Auron, from the riverbank, had heard the commotion and rushed over.

"Tristessa! What's going on?" The gunslinger called to her from behind the group of soldiers.

"Come on, there's news!"

Inside the tent, the communications technician was working as fast as she could. She adjusted the volume of the machine with one lever and stabilized the static noise with another. Striving for the best possible sound quality.

"Unar lookout, General Nostromos is present with me! Please repeat the message, over!" Hilda requested, activating the intercom so everyone could hear.

Through the static, a woman's voice came through with more clarity than distortion.

"This is Officer Illius, long live the Empire and you, General! I'm pleased to report that the first reconnaissance team has safely rescued a group of men and women kidnapped by the Coven!" the contact on the other end of the line said. "There are seventeen in total, and their leader told us they escaped from a hidden camp in the southeast of the Sea of ​​Trees! They went towards Arkos and then in this direction, aiming to reach Entrana! Over!"

"…What the hell?"

Tristessa analyzed what she had heard for a few brief seconds. It was disappointing that it wasn't news from the Mercer-Archeos, but it wasn't entirely worrisome since there was always the possibility that they had taken the coastal route toward the Hexel Valley.

What was truly worrying—and very disturbing—was the quick and obvious conclusion she drew from what she'd heard. She frowned at Zephyr, who was almost certain to have thought the same thing.

A bad feeling led him to take the metal handset from Hilda and take charge of the situation.

"Officer Illius, this is your General speaking. I'll give you one minute to ensure a private reception of this conversation, starting now." The tension was palpable. Tristessa wanted to hear what the officer on the other end of the line had to say before jumping to conclusions, each one more terrifying than the last. "Listen very carefully and answer this question: how do you know the women in that group aren't witches? Over."

Judging by the speed with which the officer replied, it seemed she had her answer prepared beforehand.

"General Nostromos, I understand your concern. Commander Rykard risked his life by going himself to meet them and ensure that those women aren't dangerous," she explained. "Everyone, both male and female, are all in very poor physical condition. Emaciated, some mutilated, and others very ill. Almost all of them were naked; we had to give them our cloaks and parts of our tents so they wouldn't at least suffer from the cold. And their psychological condition is even worse: the vast majority are in a state of catatonia and extreme fear at the slightest human contact. Over."

Hearing all this made Tristessa's mind turn over a blank page. Everything was confusing; there were reasons to believe that what smelled like a trap didn't seem to be one.

"What do you think, Miss Irandell?" Zephyr asked her, making her feel more pressured by the situation and leading her to take the receiver the General offered her.

"Excuse me, officer? My name is Tristessa Irandell, I'm working for General Nostromos… May I ask you a few things? None of them were armed? Knives, hammers, obsidian thaumaturgical wands?" she wanted to know. "Over."

"A pleasure, miss. Only the leader of the group had a thaumaturgical catalyst in her power. We confiscate it, of course. Over."

"What about the mutilations? Anyone have bandages covering their eye sockets? No eyes, with metal wires into their sockets? Over."

"No… There's one woman whose face is completely disfigured and several with eyes so swollen and bloody as if they'd been beaten repeatedly. But none of them have that kind of mutilation, over."

Tristessa couldn't help but sigh, stunned. She couldn't imagine victims of the Coven escaping their clutches after having lived through the experience of being captured and nearly killed by them. Much less such a large number of people in such poor physical and mental condition.

An escape like that sounded like a colossal mistake from the enemy. A mistake she couldn't imagine someone like Daiana Mercer-Archeos making.

But she also couldn't imagine malnourished, dismembered, and unarmed witches. Or male witches. Even the weakest psychopath among their ranks was someone capable of killing, torturing, and reveling in the massacre of crowds and the kidnapping of children for who knows what sinister reason.

"They're not witches…?" she whispered, knowing she should feel relieved by that and by the fact that innocent victims had escaped. But she couldn't shake the feeling that something was off. Wrong. Terribly wrong. "..."

A hunch that was irrelevant in the face of the facts. That's why she had no other choice. rather than silently hand the receiver back to Zephyr.

"Is Rykard around?" he asked, the severity in his eyes lessening. "Please call him, I need to speak with him. Over."

"With all due respect, I don't think he'll answer your call, General. He's with his fiancée: she was the one leading the group of women, over."

"Is that so? Well, that's some excellent news to hear," the General exclaimed, very surprised, as was Tristessa, by the fortuitous turn of events. "How is his fiancée? Over."

"Better than the others, General. I didn't have many opportunities to speak with her in the past, but I'll never forget a woman as tall and strong as Lorraine. I could swear she didn't have blue eyes… Oh, pardon my digression, General! Over!"

Zephyr chuckled. Not at all annoyed, quite the opposite. Satisfied with the news and reminiscing about old times, he didn't notice Tristessa narrowing her eyes and thinking. Her feeling that something was fundamentally wrong, growing and reaching ever higher in her scale of danger.

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"Lorraine…?" she whispered. She had heard that name before.

"Don't worry, Officer Illius. I'll speak with Rykard later and tell him that the Gods smiled upon him by giving him the opportunity for his fiancée to carry him down the aisle," the General said, laughing. "Please let us know when they send that group in our direction. Over."

"L-Lorraine…" The frozen memories within Tristessa's mental palace began to stir, shaking the frost; peeling away layers of metaphysical ice as if they were new life forms trying to escape their cocoons. They reached the nonexistent past, days ago. Where she knew only absolute darkness and utter pain. "Lorraine… Lorraine…"

"Miss Irandell?"

Hilda did realize something was wrong, seeing the girl's lower jaw trembling. A few bubbles of saliva pressed against her parched lips, against her teeth. Her mouth opened even wider, as her eyes did. Filled with fresh terror brought from a non-existent past.

"What is it, lady?" Auron also approached her, keeping Vergil at bay and worried. "Tristessa!"

An exclamation that Zephyr, overjoyed with the news, didn't register at that moment.

"At your service, General! For the Empire! Over!"

"For the Eternal Shield Against Night and Darkness. Over and out."

The signal died in static the moment Tristessa covered her mouth with both hands, a pure reflex against the flood of horror and nausea that came with the memories of that failed loop. That past only she remembered, in which the Coven invaded the Mercer-Archeos house and the Evil Dream did the same to End-World.

In which Daiana Mercer-Archeos severed her leg with her Umbral Blade and a tall, one-eyed witch carried her in her arms to the Dullahan's birthplace that no one expected.

"No... No, no, no... CALL THEM AGAIN!" Tristessa shrieked, so terrified and breathing so raggedly as if she were about to vomit. "ZEPHYR, PLEASE!"

Formalities no longer mattered, nor did whether her screams drew the attention of the entire camp. Nor did the astonishment of Auron and Hilda at her sudden outburst. Nor the confusion of the General, who still held the receiver in his hand and glared at her with a frown.

Nothing mattered more than warning the Unar lookout post that they were in grave danger.

"Why? What…?"

"SHE! LORRAINE, SHE…!"

Her panicked words carried immense weight. It was the weight of knowledge she shouldn't own. The extreme anxiety of knowing the calamity lurking among them, unnoticed, like a powder keg about to explode in their faces.

A deadly trap. A hidden move. The Dark Queen's gambit on the chessboard, seen by Tristessa solely because she had lost her life and returned through her [Divinity of Death and Resurrection].

"SHE'S A WITCH OF THE COVEN! LORRAINE IS DAIANA'S RIGHT-HAND!"

The truth Tristessa blurted out took precious seconds for the minds of those present to grasp its terrible implications. Zephyr didn't even have to give Hilda the order: she lunged at the machine and cranked the levers necessary to initiate a new transmission.

"Attention, Unar Lookout Post! Attention, please respond, over!" Zephyr exclaimed into the lower part of the handset, all traces of the tranquility and joy the news had brought him crumbling away. Replaced by despair. "Unar Lookout Post, please respond, over!"

Static. A dead signal, no reception, no connection. There was nothing.

"COME ON, VERGIL!"

Tristessa reacted under the pressure of danger and the guilt of having remembered that name very late. A mistake that could cost dozens of people their lives if she didn't warn them. And if establishing a connection with the Unar Lookout Post was no longer possible, the only option left was to go there herself, as quickly as possible.

"Wait, lady!"

"Stop, Tristessa Irandell"

Even if Auron or Zephyr had chased after her, they wouldn't have been able to catch her: Tristessa mounted her aracross as soon as they both left the tent, the surprised soldiers around them moving aside. Without orders or directives, no one dared to stop that beast, which let out a roar of fury before digging its claws into the ground and propelling itself southward. Dodging tents, confused soldiers, and leaping over the barricade that blocked the path to the forest entrance.

"Quickly, Vergil!" Tristessa felt the wind against her face, freezing it and making her feel as if hundreds of tiny knives were cutting every millimeter of her skin. Insignificant in the midst of a massacre. "We have to save them!"

Tristessa's limited experience riding a she-dragoon was enough to keep her from falling off and vomiting up her stomach like she had the first time. At least in the short term, given the breakneck speed at which Vergil raced along the road—a dirt corridor between sprawling trees she knew all too well—after six loops.

"Come on, come on… It's not that far," she murmured, her nervous voice caught by the wind and falling behind.

If she remembered correctly, Janos Youngblood's confidential instructions indicated that the southern lookout post should be established at the so-called Feydra Crossroads, in the middle of the forest: there, the Meridion Road intersected with the Darkwood Path, the road that ran east to west through the forest, like an antimeridian.

Tristessa remembered passing by that point of interest on her way to Entrana, without having given it the significance it held now; the epicenter of the leylines that the trees respected. Away from the paths, not growing above them, as if they deliberately wanted to keep them untouched.

Guiding her almost in a straight line to her destination.

"…"

Looking over her shoulder, she saw only a trail of dust rising beneath Vergil's heavy, swift steps, slowly falling away. No one else was following her, even though Camp Argos had two armored wagons designed to withstand enemy fire and transport infantry, along with four vilecrosses to pull their chains.

"I'm alone, huh…" The thought was terrifying, but it was the price she paid for the decision she'd made without much thought. "What can I do against the witches on my own?"

A question whose only, obvious answer she didn't even want to imagine. And she couldn't have tortured herself with it anyway, since in the distance she saw two empty scaffolds erected on both sides of the road. It's passage blocked by a barricade made of wooden profiles with pointed ends, and…nothing else.

There were no soldiers guarding the entrance, and that was already a bad sign.

"Damn it… Oh, shit, no," she sobbed, as Vergil slowed down until he allowed his owner to get out right in front of the barricades. Tristessa took a deep breath to shake off some of the lingering fear and vertigo from the journey and then stroked the sides of the Aracross's head. "Good work, Vergil. I'm going to need you to stay around here. Hide, okay?"

A howl that escaped through his protruding teeth told Tristessa he wasn't entirely happy about the idea.

"I promise you that at the slightest sign of danger, I'll return and we'll flee as if a dragon were chasing us. Come on, hide."

Vergil seemed to resign and accepted the order, licking Tristessa's right hand before trotting toward the undergrowth and wall of trees. Quickly disappearing into the dense vegetation.

"There are voices... Oh, fuck," she lamented as she stared at the barricades, her own voice echoing in the dark, frozen depths of her mind. Where the invader dwelled, and at that precise moment, decided to catch her attention with a sharp pang of ice-solid pain. Forcing her to stop on the spot. "Nngh…!"

The dark voice that came from the black ice-covered walls of her mind palace now was clearer than before. And yet cryptic; still censoring letters of their message to Tristessa that she could only distinguish as:

"…■ u ■ ■ ■ n ■ e…"

Once the unintelligible message was received, Tristessa was free to move around and stop feeling like her brain was wrapped in a layer of frost.

"Gods damn… I can't deal with that shit right now. One problem at the time," she thought, closing her eyes tightly in order to banish all sensation of grogginess. Balance of her legs recovered, and with weakened hands that slowly regained strength, she passed through the barricades. Finding herself before rows of tents embroidered with the Shield Against the Darkness, she followed the real voices she heard before; those that echoed through every corner of the outpost. "Please, let it not be too late."

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