Sera's head lifted slowly.

Her glare was venomous and feral like a wounded animal with nothing left to lose. Her face contorted with rage and anguish twisted into something almost unrecognizable.

Frost mana erupted from her body like a scream made physical, dancing in the air around her, crystallizing her fury into deadly beauty.

Everything in her line of sight began to freeze.

The grass beneath them turned white and brittle. The air itself seemed to crack like a solid.

Even Rune's body, the warmth she'd desperately tried to preserve began to frost over. Ice crept across his chest, across the sword still buried in his heart, encasing both wound and weapon in crystalline preservation.

The avalanche of frost surged toward the Sword King like a tidal wave of winter's wrath.

It didn't reach him.

It couldn't.

The frost simply parted around him as if repelled by an invisible wall, powerless before absolute mastery.

Lydia didn't watch the futile attack.

She'd slid beneath Rune's torso, positioning herself so his upper body rested against her. Her arms wrapped around him from behind, holding him close, feeling the fading warmth of his body seeping into hers.

A smile, genuine despite the tears streaming down her face, despite the soul-deep agony threatening to tear her apart, formed on her lips.

"I'm here," she whispered against his hair.

She pressed his back of the palm to her forehead, trying to feel the fading warmth.

The Sword King reached down toward Blood Raven, still piercing its master's heart.

His aged fingers wrapped around the hilt.

CRACK.. bzz.. Crack..

Crimson lightning flared violently against his hand, wild and savage, the blade itself screaming rejection. The crimson energy danced up his arm, burning, warning, refusing with every fiber of its existence.

The Sword King didn't force it.

Instead, a crescent smile, sorrowful but genuine, formed on his ancient face.

"I appreciate your loyalty to your master," he said softly, speaking to the weapon as one might speak to a faithful hound. "A bond shared for a short span but held stronger than most."

He released the hilt, allowing the sword to remain with its owner.

Even in death, they would not be parted.

"You bastard..!"

Ilya moved like a storm given form.

Her sky-blue A-tier artifact sang through the air, a blade worth more than most noble estates, forged by master craftsmen and imbued with magic that could cut through steel like paper.

Its extreme sharpness acted like a counter to her 'Fragile constitutin', slicing the target clean without even a shred of physcal strain to its wielder.

She poured everything into that strike.... all her rage, all her helplessness, all her screaming need to make something hurt the way she was hurting.

The blade aimed for the Sword King's neck.

His hand shot up with casual, terrible precision.

The sword fit perfectly between his index and middle finger caught like a child's toy between a parent's grip.

He brought the two fingers together.

SHATTER..

The A-tier artifact exploded into fragments, pieces of priceless metal and magic scattering.

Ilya gasped, releasing the hilt just before the violent tremors could travel up her arm and shatter bone.

Even with her quick reaction and trained reflexes honed over years of practice the shockwave still reached her.

Her hand screamed in agony. Bones rattled against each other, threatening to crack from the sudden, impossible pressure.

She landed hard on her back, the impact driving the air from her lungs.

But her eyes still burned with rage.

After all, a cat attempting to roar before a tiger was still just a cat.

Ilya bit down on her lower lip, teeth breaking skin, blood streaming down her chin. She didn't care. Didn't even feel it.

'Cass... I'm sorry.'

The thought was a prayer and a confession all at once. She'd failed.

The ancient form loomed over her, each step measured and final, walking like death incarnate given permission to collect what it was owed.

Then he stopped mid-stride.

His head turned to the side, those wise ancient eyes focusing on something in the distance that the others couldn't yet perceive.

"Hmm~" A sound of interest rumbled from his chest. "So the Sword Saint has finally decided to move."

The words hung in the dawn air.

Then Ilya heard it.

The sound that made her heart leap and break simultaneously—the thunder of Obsidian hooves striking ground, moving faster than any normal horse ever could. The rhythm was unmistakable memory from countless missions.

Closer. Coming closer.

And beneath that sound the screams of shadows being torn apart, echoed through the nimble breezes of dawn.

'Cass.'

'Cass is here.'

Hope and despair crashed into Ilya with equal force, drowning her in contradictions. Relief that reinforcements had arrived warred with the knowledge that it was already too late. Joy at her Duchess's presence battled against the horror of what Cass was about to witness.

The tears she'd been trying so desperately to contain through sheer force of will and duty finally broke free.

She cried.

Not the silent tears of a duchess's right hand maintaining dignity in the face of tragedy.

She cried like a child. Openly, messily, without restraint or shame. Great heaving sobs that shook her entire body, tears streaming down her face in rivers, mixing with the blood from her bitten lip.

Dawn light broke across the horizon behind the Sword King, painting him in gold and crimson.

The ancient warrior looked down at the crying woman before him.

His smile was fatherly. Kind. The expression of someone who'd watched too many young lives end, who carried the weight of every death like stones in his pockets, who mourned even as he killed.

"The living weep," he said softly, "while the dead find peace. Such is the cruel mercy of this world."

The sound of Obsidian hooves grew louder.

The shadows screamed.

And dawn continued breaking, indifferent and beautiful, over the blood-soaked grass where a regressor had finally run out of lives to spend.

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