Astoria Silverthorn bent down to pick up her great-sword and wiped the bloodstains running down the blade with a handkerchief she took from one of her uniform's inner pockets. Then she sheathed it, and perhaps for the first time since the start of the fight against the Ghost Daggers, Tristessa saw her take a deep breath, filling her interior with icy air that undoubtedly helped calm some of the adrenaline rush coursing through her veins.

There wasn't much she could do about the pools of dark red liquid, dismembered limbs, and, broadly speaking, the corpses of the members of that criminal gang.

"Finally, someone put an end to that vile, disgusting rat Krauss," Tristessa heard Auron celebrating.

The dwellers outside the wall, still gathered in the middle of the road and from their tents, watched with discontent. But they had no other choice but keep a fragile silence, interrupted only by the occasional internal whisper or the occasional mother who wanted at all costs to prevent her children from seeing the bloody aftermath.

No one seemed to dare hurl insults at a woman who had just single-handedly killed four bandits and left one so badly wounded that, at that very moment, was crawling on the ground toward the great gate, the only way away from that deadly assassin.

"S-shit... Shit!" the bandit complained, still clutching his broken leg in an abnormal position. "Wha..."

The great gates of the entrance began to open, and from within, an arrow whizzed past at high speed, straight toward the gaping bandit. The projectile pierced his right eye and lodged inside his head, obviously extinguishing his life in the process.

Two Imperial soldiers, wearing light armor, full-helmets, and sheathed with short swords, walked out once the gate was fully open, followed by two unarmed young men and a crossbowman.

The latter wore no armor, but instead wore a cloak covering his shoulder and left arm, displaying the symbol of the Dominion of End-World embroidered on it: a white shield with two crossed swords, gripped from behind by a hand whose only visible fingers were black and white-nailed. A clear reference to the titanic mountains at the southern tip of the continent, beyond the Sea of ​​Trees, called the Fingers of Nekronomika.

"Looks like you had some fun, Blackguard. You've been standing here like a scarecrow for over fourteen hours," one of the soldiers mockingly told the blonde knight once they stopped in front of her. "Go now, we'll take care of the rest."

Without saying anything, Astoria gave a nod and walked past them, heading straight into the city.

Tristessa watched as the soldiers whispered among themselves, and one hit the other's chest, shaking their head and trying not to laugh.

"Come on, people, the show's over!" The crossbowman approached the mass of people while his two assistants talked among themselves, debating which task to begin with: gathering the treasures, or arranging the bodies to one side before taking them to the morgue. "Disperse, now!"

Around them, the helpless men and women were still filled with bitterness, eager to take some of that fortune stained with the blood of both innocent and guilty people. Hunger and being at the mercy of the Gods led them even to put their faith in the words of a known criminal.

And then they uttered poisonous words toward the woman who had just entered the city.

"Because of that damned Silverthorn..." Tristessa heard a man hiss angrily.

"Even if it's just a few soul-jewels. Anything to feed my son," a woman near her lamented.

No one respected Astoria Silverthorn. They laughed at her behind her back. They insulted her and ranted at her like the plague.

What had happened to her family to earn such infamy?

"The city militia will have to investigate to find the source of all those treasures. Knowing how Katriel operated, he must have robbed a group of merchants," the gunslinger guessed, before letting out a weary sigh as if about to address a matter he disliked at all. "So, lady, you said you needed to save the Mercer-Archeos… Lady? Tristessa?"

But Tristessa couldn't hear him. She had both hands on her chest, where her Baptism in Ruins could no longer tolerate the lack of attention. The fear of the night was reaching its peak, the fear of what lurked in the shadows…

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The cold of Death, so close…

"I-I need to get into the city," she whispered, seeing those open gates, tempting her with protection, security, and one step closer to her goal.

But with the changing of the guard already in place, it was almost certain the gates were seconds away from closing, leaving her outside, at the mercy of the Dullahan. Endangering every man and woman there, unaware of the living terror that was coming.

"What do I do?! How can I get through?!"

"You can't: the guards will kill you before you can even set foot inside, even if you start running right now," Auron replied, with no intention of suppressing the truth and shattering what little hope she had left. "You'd better give up, lady."

Tristessa felt a halo of doom fall over her. She had lost hope: time was running out, both to avoid the Dullahan and to save the Mercer-Archeos. If she couldn't make progress on her mission, the three days she had left wouldn't be enough.

She was going to fail, and the future of that family would be written in blood.

"It's a lost cause, really." Without looking at her, more attentive to the guards' movements, Auron ignored the crisis she was going through. He ignored how much he was fueling the flames of destruction within her, finally squandering her resolve in the worst way: "I told you, Tristessa: what you're attempting is suicidal."

That last word was a catalyst, filling the gray-eyed girl's head with thoughts so dark they clouded her vision. An impulse that led her to rummage in her backpack and pull out her hunting knife…

"Are you listening to me…?" Turning to look at her, Auron found Tristessa clutching the knife in both hands, the sharp blade so close to her neck that the slightest contact made fine lines of blood begin to run. "Tristessa!"

"Do it! Do it, do it, do it, do it!"

Weeping and gritting her teeth, the girl ordered her hands to make the necessary move and end it all, to cast that world into darkness. She could no longer fight so much adversity, so many obstacles, and every bad decision that had led so many people to their deaths.

Everything was lost, destined to fail.

In her selfishness, she could end that cycle and restart the world, as if nothing had happened… As if the deaths of Madame Luchie and the mercenaries had never happened. As if Melian's pain and despair that caused him to lose his mind had no reason to exist. As if the hatred Astoria Silverthorn earned that night because of a criminal's lies would never come to be.

All the events caused directly or indirectly by her, erased from the timeline with a new Death and a new use of [Death and Resurrection].

"Do it… Do it, you damn coward… I hate you so much, Tristessa Irandell…"

Her face covered in tears and snot, Tristessa couldn't do it… Not when the fear of Death held her to Life despite seeing no other reason to stay.

She blinked several times, breathing painfully and with her heart racing, and her vision cleared so she could see an example of Death: those corpses in the middle of the road, losing the warmth they had managed to retain inside, and being closely watched by the soldiers' aides.

Seeing those lifeless bodies… Seeing them… It awakened something inside her, suddenly and abruptly.

"Ah…! M-my head…"

Tristessa couldn't help but drop the knife and let it fall, its clinking against the ground, attracting no one's attention except that of a very worried Auron. She brought both hands to her temple, the source of that pain that made her dizzy and nauseous.

"What's going on? What…?" The gunslinger stepped back cautiously, nearly colliding with the wall of people unaware of what was happening. He kept staring at her, as well as at his surroundings, invisible to the untrained eye. "Such a dense mass of Discord…"

From where she stood, she could see Katriel Strauss's body lying on the floor, his neck deformed by the broken vertebrae of his spine, his eyes and mouth half-closed. The absolute stillness, the darkness of Death having taken possession of him…

"I-I can…!" she moaned, feeling her head about to explode, yet detecting something amidst so much centralized pain. Something she hadn't realized before.

She felt she could reach the corpse: extend a hand she didn't physically possess, invisible and intangible, capable of reaching the deepest corner of her being. Hollow, cold, and dark… But with something, a solitary, metaphysical object impossible to interpret as it was.

In her eagerness to give it a form, Tristessa's imagination shaped it into the shape of a light-switch cord, dangling in the middle of nowhere itself. Thus, she was able to extend that invisible hand and enclose the cord between her dark fingers and pull it, activating the appearance of a black, false, and artificial light capable of filling the entire void.

That was exactly what Tristessa did with the first spinnarak she crossed paths with upon arriving in Nekrom. The same thing she did with Gaal. The same thing she did with Jin.

She didn't understand the machinations of that second, nameless Divinity until that very moment.

"A Divinity that allows me to mimic Life and earn the hatred of the dead by bringing them back... A [Divinity of Accursed Existence]."

In the euphoria of understanding something, after a myriad of doubts and uncertainties that plagued her day and night, Tristessa pulled from that metaphorical light switch cord.

And Katriel Strauss's corpse moved.

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