Tristessa could barely contain her excitement and nerves. She was going to reunite with that family after those four long, endless days.

Days that in that world called Nekrom, had the length and weight of entire lifetimes.

Stress ate away at every cell in her shoulders and neck. Every minute she spent out there let the young woman know that Nekrom didn't want her. Hated her. It sought to eliminate her. And if it couldn't kill her, at least drive her insane, with its bloodthirsty and treacherous beasts, gods plotting in the shadows, and a warring Empire guided by a policy of murdering any visitor from another world as quickly as possible.

That's why she couldn't consider Entrana a bastion of security, even with its Evil-Warding Pillar. Though, simultaneously, she could neither consider the Dominion of End-World the pinnacle of hostility.

Verbatim from several Nekromians: that southern region was peaceful compared to what awaited further north.

"Tutorial Land, a place for level 1 noobs, as… Wait, who said that? Fuck, why can't I remember?" she thought, sighing sadly as she remembered playing video games with someone very special for her. Someone, for the moment, unknown. She only knew that this person had taught her about statistics and progressing in her favorite game. "A boyfriend?"

"Oh? You have someone special in your life?" Severus asked, hearing her speak aloud. He wasn't giving directions to Milla, who was jogging as fast as her body and labored breathing allowed. The vilecross was free to take them as far as she thinks she can. "In your world?"

"Maybe…? I can't remember: when I feel I'm about to reach that memory, it slips through my fingers like sand," she complained, growling in frustration. Fortunately her anger didn't last long: she saw an old, familiar structure by the side of the road, bathed in the few drops of sunset light. "Oh, it's the inn!"

"Oh yes, the forsaken Feydra Inn. You said you found traces of Viktor there with your Divinity?" At the nod of the gray-eyed girl's agreement, Severus looked through the darkness of the inn, overflowing from its main entrance. "I knew sending him to explore the Sea of ​​Trees would be dangerous, but since I heard quite a lot about him and his effectiveness… Dammit, I shouldn't have sent him alone. My overwhelming need to know what the hell lurks within that forest claimed a victim."

"…"

Tristessa decided not to say anything. Speaking about the sorrows Viktor Enma had taken with him into the void would not only violate a superlative level of privacy, but would also make Severus feel worse about himself.

In fact, he wouldn't have been able to delve deeper into the subject because, unfortunately, at that moment the red-furred Vilecross had reached the pinnacle of her exertion: the coach stopped when it collided with Milla's back, and she couldn't take another step and ended up falling forward. She tried to stop her fall by holding on with both arms, but with hands that hadn't even been able to continue pulling on the coach's large chains, they were much less able to support the weight of her own body.

"Milla!" Severus went down the driver's seat and rushed towards the demon, whose chest was rising and falling rapidly. With her mouth half open, she was trying to take in gulps of air her lungs could no longer process. "Oh, cutie, I'm so sorry..."

The elf placed his right hand on her head, right at cheek level. Her eyes were tightly closed and didn't seem to open, as if she were enduring a great deal of pain.

"Poor thing!" Tristessa lamented, after following and seeing the beast's suffering expression with concern. "Is there nothing you can do to ease her pain?"

"No… If the rumors are true, the venom those wraiths used is one of the deadliest that exists. It takes a long time in creatures like vilcrosses to take effect, but… In the end, there's nothing I can do but try to give Milla a quick and painless death."

Severus closed his eyes for a moment, gathering the strength to perform what was necessary. Before Tristessa's passive gaze, he broke away from Milla and pointed his wand at her head:

"Ensis Plasmos."

Around his hand, several cuts appeared, allowing an unnatural flow of blood. A glyph appeared in the middle distance between beast and master, originating from all the blood and magic energy Severus had given up. It emitted a beautiful glow as it activated, enchanting as it was deadly.

As the glyph collapsed, in the blink of an eye, Milla's neck was slashed open by the flash of a bloody sword, without mercy or interposition. It was so swift and effective that the Vilecross went into hemorrhagic shock before she even understood what had happened. Soon, Severus and Tristessa's feet got wet by all the blood that Milla's heart had pumped through all those severed arteries before stopping, and with it, her life.

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"Rest in peace, friend... We'll be back for you soon." Severus stroked the vilecross's head; her bestial face, stripped of all pain and torture due to the venom. He rose from the ground as some of the spilled blood returned to him, entering through the open wounds rather than through her mouth. "Are you all right, Tessa?"

His question came from the girl's static expression, and the hand she had unconsciously placed on her neck.

"Y-yes… I'm just a little stunned, that's all," she murmured, unable to stop staring at Milla's body.

And not only because she had witnessed the brutal death of that demon. It was because she recognized that thaumaturgical spell as the same one Severus had used to sever her head in one of the now-nonexistent pasts. To save her from a fate worse than Death.

Her fingers felt the firmness of the skin and everything beneath it, intact and unharmed…

That Death had been swift, compared to the horror she experienced during the Coven's attack. The mad laughter, the flames disintegrating the walls, the carnage and the rivers of blood… It had all been seared into her soul, a wound that would never heal.

"Come on, Tessa," Severus instructed, bringing her out of her brief journey into the nonexistent past. He had boarded the coach and came back, carrying Auron's body wrapped in sheets in his arms. The cloth was covered with several small glyphs that emitted violet glows, evidencing elemental gravity thaumaturgy that lightened the weight. "We have no choice but to continue on foot."

Nodding, she looked one last time at the vilecross's body, regretting not having even interacted with her in any way due to her implicit fear of her.

The abandoned fields, lined with countless yards of rotten and broken wooden fences, gleamed with a certain melancholic beauty in the last rays of light provided by the setting sun.

Tristessa and Severus walked along the dirt road in silence, neither disturbing nor being disturbed by the peaceful wildlife that inhabited the area. The elf continued to carry the gunslinger's corpse in his arms and never complained about the weight or the consumption of magical energy.

The vast majority of the farrosses were already asleep. They were tanding like scarecrows, with their young nestled between their long, skeletal legs. And there were some awake members of the flock that continued to graze with those jaws protruding from within their beaks.

"You know something, Severus? Out of those farross, there's the one who vomited a soul-jewel at my feet on the first day of my journey," Tristessa commented, looking with a small smile at a mother and her cub sleeping near the stockade.

"Is that so? The Saint of Fortune watched your back that day," the blood elf opined. "Otherwise, you would have been killed at the Derelict Outpost, according to your story."

"Exactly. I hope Valdrek will take me into account today and tomorrow. I must survive this night…"

"There's still time to prepare for the Dullahan, don't worry."

Tristessa wanted to take some of the elf's confidence for herself, as it was very difficult for her to think positively as the darkness began its reign. The cold was growing, making her shiver, wearing nothing but the dress she'd used to charm Astoria Silverthorn. It hadn't occurred to her to dress in anything warmer from that mountain of clothes on the now-abandoned stagecoach.

And what was worse was that she still hadn't felt the supernatural cold that announced the arrival of the Dullahan.

"It won't be long now… We'll descend the hills and arrive at the edge of the forest," she thought, seeing the uneven ground ahead, the terrain rising slightly along the horizon. Beyond, the titanic trees formed a dark continental wall, stretching to the cold, glacial peaks of the mountain ranges. "There's the Sea of ​​Trees. Just a little further…"

The Twin Moons had already taken over the firmament. The starry sky, clear of all clouds, was an astronomical spectacle like no other.

Having stray from the abandoned highway, Tristessa struggled to climb and zigzag across the gradually rising terrain. This was not the case for Severus, whose overwhelming need to reach his friends' home was driving him forward more quickly.

It was this upward journey to cut across the path that he dreaded so much, as he didn't know what he would find down the highest hill, given the solitary and dangerous nature of the region.

It was the fear of the unknown. The fear that existed between seeing the lives of his loved ones intact or...

"No..."

Without even reaching the top, Tristessa heard the blood elf whisper that single word and felt like having her stomach ripped open and her insides spilling out onto the sloping terrain of damp earth and stones.

"No, no, no…no, no, no…" Severus quickly left Auron's wrapped corpse on the ground and began to descend the hill, repeating that word over and over again, with increasing desperation. "No, no, NOOOOO!"

The gray-eyed girl, her heart pounding, reached the top, stood beside Auron's corpse, and instantly smelled smoke. Her nose began to sting, her eyes to hurt… She brought her hands to her face, and thanks to the light of the Twin Moons, she saw her palms dampened with sweat and stained black.

Ashes drifted around her, floating in the wind and coming from below. From the house at the edge of the forest, far away, partially reduced to burning rubble.

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