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Subaru woke up with the feeling of having been used as a ball by a giant.
It wasn't a clean awakening. There was no immediate clarity or smooth return from sleep to consciousness. First came the pain: a heavy throbbing in his chest, a sting in his back, the memory of a red blow that had lifted him off the ground and sent him crashing against a tree as if his body were nothing more than an obstacle in the middle of a battle that had gone far beyond human scale. Then came the smell: damp wood, smoke, washed fabric, bitter medicine, and a mixture of mud and blood that wasn't in the room, but in his head. Finally, the memory arrived.
The forest.
The children.
Meili.
Rem with the white horn.
Link smiling with blood in his mouth.
Subaru opened his eyes abruptly.
The ceiling wasn't that of his room in the mansion. It was lower, made of simple wood, crossed by dark beams. A village house. Through a small window, clean morning light entered, insulting, too calm for someone who had seen two monsters disappear under the moon. Beside him, on another improvised bed, Link was awake.
That was what finally silenced the scream.
Link was lying on his back, staring at the ceiling with a stillness that didn't seem like rest. He had bandages on his torso, one on his shoulder, another around his forearm. Subaru knew that many of those wounds must have already closed underneath. The bandages were more a gesture of care than actual medical need, probably Rem's work, or someone who had wanted to believe that wrapping him would do something. Luci floated near the pillow, with a dim, almost extinguished light, as if even the lesser spirit understood that making too many lights in that room could be disrespectful.
Subaru swallowed.
"Link…"
The Latino didn't turn his head immediately.
"I'm awake."
His voice sounded normal.
That was worse.
Subaru already knew several types of false normality. His own, for example, was noisy, loaded with jokes, desperate to cover the hole before anyone saw it. Link's was different. It was a lid placed over a boiling pot. If no one touched it, it seemed solid. If someone lifted it, steam capable of burning the face could come out.
"Do you remember?"
Link closed his eyes.
The answer took a second that was too long.
"Yes."
Subaru felt his stomach sink.
"Everything."
"Enough."
There was no need to say more.
The blood. The Wolgarms. The way Link had bitten demon beast flesh. The way his body had changed, how his kagunes had become more alive, more violent, more precise. The smile that wasn't his. Subaru didn't know if Link remembered the blow that had knocked him out. He also didn't know if it was a good idea to remind him. His chest still hurt where the kagune had pushed him against the tree. It hadn't been a murderous intent. Subaru clung to that. If Link had wanted to kill him, he wouldn't be waking up in a bed. But the difference between "he didn't want to kill me" and "he could have done it without noticing" was too thin to breathe calmly.
Link finally turned his head toward him.
His eyes were normal.
Human.
Tired.
"I hit you."
Subaru opened his mouth.
"You saved me from a Wolgarm."
"I hit you."
"Both things can be true."
Link looked back at the ceiling.
"That doesn't make it better."
"A little bit yes. On a scale of 'he saved my life but broke my pride and perhaps two emotional ribs,' you're in an acceptable zone."
"Subaru."
The joke died.
Subaru lowered his gaze to his hands. The right one was still bandaged. The puppy's bite was there, under the fabric. Beatrice had removed a curse earlier, but last night's had been something else. Countless fangs. Claws. Bites. Each one a rope. Each one a knot. Each one a promise of death that might still be inside him.
"And Rem?" Subaru asked.
The question came out before he could protect himself.
Link didn't answer.
That was enough for Subaru to feel cold.
"Link."
"I don't know."
"What do you mean you don't know?"
Link sat up slowly. The bandages pulled on his skin. Part of the side bandage barely stained with new red, but the wound closed before the blood could advance. Luci descended to his shoulder, restless. Link didn't look at her.
"I remember covering her. I remember the blow. I remember she was alive against me. After that… nothing."
Subaru clenched his teeth.
"I fell first."
"I know."
"So no one knows where she is."
Link finally looked at him again.
The calm on his face didn't reach his eyes.
"Someone knows."
The door opened before Subaru could respond.
Ram entered with a tray.
Not the blue-haired Rem. Not the soft voice. Not the presence that both, for different reasons, expected and feared. Ram. Pink hair, cold eye, exact expression, impeccable posture. She carried steamed potatoes, water, and a bowl with something that smelled like mild broth. She looked first at Subaru, then at Link, then at the bandages, then at Luci, who reduced her light as if she had been judged by a higher authority.
"I see that the two problem employees have awakened."
Subaru tried to get up too quickly. The pain crossed his chest and almost doubled him over.
"Where is Rem?"
Ram placed the tray on a low table without answering immediately.
That silence made Link push aside the sheet.
"Ram."
She looked at him.
"The gardener should stay lying down."
"I didn't ask that."
"And Ram didn't answer because you both just woke up and have the common sense of a broken chair."
Subaru would have laughed at another time. Not now.
"Ram, please."
The word "please" came out too bare.
Ram held his gaze for a few seconds. Subaru saw something there. Not enough to call it fear. Ram was too good at closing doors on her face. But her fingers, as she released the tray, closed over the edge of the table for a moment longer than necessary.
"Eat first."
Link was already on his feet.
"No."
Ram turned toward him.
"Link."
The use of his name, without "gardener," without sarcasm, hit harder than an order.
But it didn't stop him.
"Where is Rem?"
Ram breathed through her nose.
"I don't know her exact location."
Subaru felt the world tilt.
"Exact?"
"She's alive," said Ram.
Link remained still.
"How do you know?"
"Because Ram would know if she weren't."
She didn't explain more.
Subaru didn't need an explanation to understand that it wasn't a logical sentence, but something between sisters. A certainty born from a connection that no one in that room could touch without breaking it. Ram didn't know where Rem was, but she kept breathing because something inside her hadn't gone out. That wasn't enough. Not for Subaru. Not for Link. But it was something.
Ram pointed to the food.
"Eat."
Subaru looked at the potatoes.
The scene had a strange resemblance to something that shouldn't feel so important. Steamed potatoes. Ram. The village. An awkward thank you. In the canon of that day that Subaru was trying to build blindly, after saving the children, Ram was supposed to thank him, Beatrice was supposed to appear, and then everything would get even more complicated. The memory of other loops didn't give him exact maps, but patterns. And that table, that food, that morning light, were part of one.
"The children," said Subaru.
"Alive," Ram replied. "Asleep from exhaustion. Miss Beatrice removed the curses she could. Their families are gathered in the square."
Subaru closed his eyes.
For a second, the relief almost split him.
"Petra."
"Alive."
"The others."
"Alive."
"Meili."
Ram remained silent for half a second.
"The girl was also recovered."
Link tightened his hand on the back of the bed.
Wood creaked.
Ram looked at him.
"If you break another thing, Ram will add it to the mansion's damage list."
Link released the backrest.
"Sorry."
Subaru brought a potato to his mouth without knowing why. Maybe because Ram was looking at him as if eating were a law, maybe because his body was hungry even if his mind wasn't, maybe because he needed to do something human before running back toward the nightmare. The potato was hot, soft, slightly salty. Something so normal it almost made him angry.
Link didn't eat.
Ram noticed.
"The gardener needs to recover energy."
"I'm not hungry."
Lie.
Subaru looked at him.
Link said nothing more.
Ram didn't insist immediately either, although her eye narrowed slightly. Maybe she had noticed something in the sentence. Maybe not. Link drank water just to close the subject. Luci spun around the broth bowl, then returned to his shoulder.
"Miss Emilia is in the mansion," said Ram. "Puck too. Roswaal-sama has been informed. The villagers are discussing what to do with the barrier and the forest. Beatrice is still here."
Subaru looked up.
"Beatrice?"
"She's in the village. She's taking care of what she can."
The "what she can" didn't reassure anyone.
Subaru pushed the tray aside and tried to stand up. This time he was slower. His body trembled, but he didn't fall.
"I have to see her."
Ram didn't stop him.
That confirmed that she also expected something from that conversation.
Link stood up beside him. As he did, the torso bandages pulled again. One of them came loose a bit. Underneath, the skin was marked by pale lines that disappeared slowly. His body was fixing itself. Faster than anything normal. But his face was emptier than before.
Ram stepped slightly in front of the door.
"Link should stay."
"No."
"Subaru at least has a medical reason to listen to Beatrice's diagnosis."
"I was in the forest too."
"Precisely."
Link leaned slightly toward her.
It wasn't a threat.
It was stubbornness.
"Ram, if Beatrice knows something about Rem, I'm going to hear it."
Ram's fingers closed again.
Subaru saw the tension between them and understood that Ram didn't want to waste time arguing with a wall. She looked away first.
"Then walk behind me. If you fall, Ram won't carry you."
"That's a lie," said Subaru.
Ram looked at him coldly.
"Barusu wishes to test a dangerous hypothesis."
"No, thanks."
They left the house.
Earlham village was awake, but not alive in the usual way. There was no market, no laughter, no children running, no shouts of play. There were adults gathered in small groups, blankets over their shoulders, pale faces, eyes sunken from a sleepless night. Some turned when they saw Subaru and Link. There were awkward bows, murmurs of thanks, joined hands, words too big for a feat that Subaru couldn't accept as victory. A woman started crying when she saw them and thanked them for her son. Subaru tried to respond, but his voice didn't come out. Link lowered his gaze and kept walking.
They hadn't won.
That was what no one seemed to understand.
The children were alive, yes.
But Rem wasn't.
Subaru felt the gratitude like stones in his pockets.
Link felt it like noise.
They crossed the square. The children were inside several houses, cared for by families and by Beatrice. Subaru managed to see Petra asleep under a blanket, with a calm and pale face. His chest tightened so much he almost had to stop. Link looked once toward the window. Then he continued forward with harder steps.
Ram led them to a corner of the village, near a flowerbed protected by a low wooden fence. There, away from the noise, was Beatrice.
The girl with golden curls held her book against her chest. Her dress had no mud, as if the dirt had decided that touching her was a bad idea. Her face, however, didn't have the usual arrogant calm. She looked irritated, yes, but underneath that there was tiredness. Maybe not physical. Maybe of another kind. She had spent the morning undoing knots that no one else could see, pulling curses out of small bodies, trying to save lives that an entire village didn't understand how they had ended up in danger.
When she saw Subaru and Link approaching, she clicked her tongue.
"So the idiots woke up."
Subaru stopped in front of her.
"Thank you for the children."
Beatrice looked away.
"Puckie asked me, I suppose. You don't have to thank Betty for anything."
"Thanks anyway."
"You don't listen well."
"I usually don't."
Link said nothing.
Beatrice looked him up and down.
"And you should be locked in a bed until your body remembers how to behave. Your constitution is disgusting, I suppose."
"Later."
"There won't be a 'later' if you keep exhausting mana like a brainless animal."
Link didn't respond.
Subaru took a breath.
"Beatrice. My curses."
Her expression changed.
There it was.
The canon part, the inevitable part.
Beatrice raised a hand and snapped her fingers. Between her fingers appeared colored threads, like thin ropes that didn't belong to the physical world. One, two, three, too many. She stretched them between her hands and the threads tangled in successive knots, each tighter, each crossing the previous one until forming an almost impossible tangle.
"A simple curse comes undone like a knot," said Beatrice. "Several can come undone if they're not too mixed. But when too many overlap, each pulling the same life from a different point, separating them stops being simple."
Subaru looked at the threads.
He remembered the fangs.
Each bite.
Each body throwing itself on him in the darkness.
"How many?"
"Enough that, if nothing changes, you'll die in less than half a day."
Ram closed her eyes.
Subaru didn't react with a scream.
That surprised even him.
It wasn't that the sentence didn't terrify him. It did. The fear was there, huge, familiar, gripping his lungs from the inside. But after so many loops, after so many ways of dying, after waking up with the memory of his throat open, his body destroyed, Rem dead and alive and lost, one more sentence didn't break him the same way.
It just tired him.
Link did react.
Not with words. With smell.
Subaru couldn't smell it, but he saw how Link's fingers flexed, how Luci moved half a span away, how the Latino's pupils narrowed.
"And mine?" Link asked.
Beatrice looked at him with a strange mix of annoyance and study.
"Your case is disgusting."
"Thanks."
"It wasn't a compliment. The curses try to grab onto you, but your body bites them back. Some closed before activating properly. Others were deformed. Others drowned under that monster blood you swallowed. You shouldn't be alive in such a repulsive way, I suppose."
Subaru looked at Link.
Link didn't look at him.
"Then I'm fine."
"I didn't say that. I said your death isn't ordered like his. Which doesn't mean you can't break in another way."
Link took a step forward.
"Can you save Subaru?"
Beatrice pressed her lips together.
"If I could do it, I wouldn't be wasting time explaining."
The answer fell over the morning.
Subaru exhaled slowly.
"Then the curses remain because the ones who bit me are still alive."
Beatrice looked at him.
She didn't answer immediately.
Subaru remembered the explanation. The curses were rites to feed. If the one who was going to eat died, the feeding ceased. Then the curse could be lifted. The children were alive because some of the Wolgarms that had cursed them had died during the night. He, on the other hand, had been bitten by too many. They didn't know which ones were still alive. They didn't know how many. There was no way to clean all the threads without first cutting the mouths that were pulling on them.
"We have to kill the pack," said Subaru.
"Not you," said Beatrice.
"I'm not asking."
"You're not in a condition to walk to the forest, much less to fight. And neither are you," she added, looking at Link. "Before you try to look useful with that stone face."
Link barely tilted his head.
"I haven't said anything."
"Your stupidity makes noise even when silent."
Ram moved.
"Beatrice-sama."
Her voice was low.
Tense.
Beatrice looked at her.
Subaru did too.
Ram was paler than before. Her neutral expression was still there, but poorly placed, like a mask adjusted in a hurry. Her hands clasped in front of her trembled slightly. Subaru had seen that kind of tremor in her before. In another loop. When the world had ripped Rem away from her and left her with nothing but hatred.
"Where is Rem?" Ram asked.
Subaru felt the air disappear.
Beatrice closed her eyes.
Link stopped breathing.
Ram repeated, softer, more dangerous.
"My Clairvoyance cannot locate her. Beatrice-sama, where is Rem?"
For a moment, no one spoke.
The noise of the village seemed far away. The villagers, the houses, the sleeping children, the grateful families: everything was left outside that flowerbed. Only Beatrice, Ram, Subaru, and Link remained, united by a question that none of them wanted to hear answered.
Beatrice opened her eyes.
"If you were in her shoes, what would you do, I wonder?"
Subaru felt something break before the words finished forming.
"No."
Ram took a step.
"Beatrice-sama."
"She went into the forest," said Beatrice. "With the intention of eliminating the entire pack that lives there. By herself."
Silence.
Subaru didn't understand the sentence at first.
Not because it was complicated.
But because his mind refused.
Rem had gone to the forest. Alone. To kill all the remaining Wolgarms. To save him. To cut the curses. So that he would live. Rem, who had lost control the night before. Rem, who had been knocked out. Rem, who must be injured, exhausted, bitten, perhaps cursed. Rem, who smiled very little and carried too much. Rem, who in another loop had killed him and in this one was trying to die for him.
"Why…?" murmured Subaru.
His voice came out broken.
"Why would Rem go so far for me?"
Ram didn't wait to hear more.
Her pain turned into decision.
She turned toward the forest.
Subaru saw her move.
But Link was faster.
Not to stop her.
To go.
Beatrice had barely finished speaking when Link's body changed.
There was no warning.
There was no conversation.
There was no promise.
The kagunes burst from his back with a wet, violent sound, breaking bandages, fabric, and any illusion that he was going to act like a patient. Four red appendages opened behind him, tense like spears. The horns emerged from his forehead, complete, dark at the base and reddish at the tips, absorbing mana from the air with a pressure that made Beatrice open her eyes wide. The kakugan ignited both eyes, red and black, without smooth transition, without enough humanity to pretend calm.
Luci glowed with panic.
Subaru took a step toward him.
"Link, wait!"
Link didn't listen.
Or decided not to.
Ram also froze for a second, surprised by the violence of the change. Beatrice extended a hand, perhaps to stop him, perhaps to issue an order, perhaps to warn him that his body wasn't in condition. She didn't reach him.
Link was already running.
Not toward the path.
Not toward the orderly exit of the village.
He ran straight toward the forest.
He crossed the square like a red shadow. The villagers screamed when they saw him. Some fell backward. The kagunes moved behind him like living blades, pushing aside fences, jumping obstacles, balancing his body. His boots hit the ground with such force that they left marks. Subaru tried to follow him, but his body failed at the first quick step. The pain from the curses, from the blows, from the night before, forced him to double over.
"LINK!"
The scream didn't reach him.
Or it did and it didn't matter.
Link crossed the edge of the village.
The forest barrier was in front.
The air changed.
He didn't slow down.
For a fraction of a second, Subaru saw his silhouette under the morning sun: horns, kagunes, red eyes, broken bandages, dried blood, Luci trying to follow him like a frightened star.
Then Link crossed the barrier.
And the forest swallowed him.