Lucid's eyes flared with instant dread. He cursed, a silent, venomous sound lost in the thin air.
He saw red. Not the dust-stained red of the mountain, but a living, moving red. A red monster. The color was unmistakable, its meaning going hand in-hand with its threat: S-Grade. A designation of danger that surpassed any Fallen he had faced on Earth. This was an Unfaithful beast, and the sight of it turned his blood to ice.
It was wolf-like in shape, but magnified and mutated. Sharp red minerals, like jagged crystals of blood-colored rock, thrust from its fur. A dense, swirling cloud of crimson particles clung to its head and back, flowing like a hellish scarf. Fighting it head-on was a suicide wish. Outrunning it seemed impossible; its powerful haunches promised terrifying speed.
He breathed in sharply. Ayame, sensing the shift in the air, instinctively moved closer, her small frame pressing against his side.
The beast, a distance away, tensed. Then it leapt, not at them, but into the air, its powerful landing a quarter-mile ahead. The impact sent a shockwave through the unstable ground. A mountain of red snow and rock parted behind it in a great plume, briefly hiding the creature from view.
"Down!" Lucid shouted, his voice raw. He wrapped his arms around Ayame, pulling her tightly against him, and threw himself sideways off the ledge they stood on.
They tumbled down a steep, rocky slope in a jarring cascade of limbs and loose scree. Lucid twisted, taking the brunt of the impacts against his back and shoulders, shielding Ayame as best he could. They skidded to a painful halt on a lower outcropping.
Above them, the massive red wolf appeared at the ledge's rim, its glowing eyes pinpointing them. It stared down, a low, rumbling growl vibrating through the stone beneath them.
Lucid groaned, pain lancing through his body. He pushed himself up, still covering Ayame with his arm.
Ayame stirred in his grasp. She gasped, a sharp, broken sound utterly unfit for her usually indifferent demeanor. It was a flicker of pure, unguarded shock.
Then, in the span of a heartbeat, everything changed. One moment she was cradled against Lucid. The next, she was standing, her posture a rigid line of defiance between him and the beast above.
She looked up, her dark eyes fixed on the monster. Her hand went to her belt, closing around the hilt of the dagger he had given her.
Lucid forced himself to his feet. He could not let her face this alone. He focused inward, and with a surge of will, the Chains of Envy manifested in a flurry of white, shimmering chains. He shot one chain upward, its barbed tip embedding into the rock face high above. With his other hand, he grabbed Ayame's wrist.
"Hold on!" he yelled.
He activated the chain, and it retracted with tremendous force, hauling them both upward in a dizzying arc. He released the chain at the apex of the swing, launching them onto a higher plateau just as the red wolf landed with a ground-shaking *thud* exactly where they had been.
Lucid let go of Ayame, tumbling to the ground and rolling aside as a massive, crystalline paw swiped through the air where his head had been. The displacement of air was like a physical blow.
Ayame landed in a crouch. She saw the beast reorient itself toward Lucid. Her veins, usually hidden, began to throb visibly beneath her pale skin. A wave of invisible pressure erupted from her, so intense it cratered the stone beneath her feet and sent a shockwave of red dust rippling outward.
The wolf's head snapped toward her, sensing a new threat.
It pounced. Ayame did not retreat. She jumped forward, meeting its charge. Her small hand slapped onto the top of its descending muzzle, and using its own momentum, she propelled herself upwards in a vertical line, spinning in the air. The dagger was a silver gleam in her hand, aimed for the vulnerable spot at the base of its skull.
It was a move of breathtaking, suicidal audacity.
The wolf's tail, a whip of muscle and crystalline shards, lashed out faster than sight. It caught her mid-air with a sickening crack. The air left her lungs in a burst of crimson mist, her own blood. She was thrown like a ragdoll across the plateau, crashing into a spire of red rock with enough force to shatter it, burying her in an avalanche of debris and snow.
"Ayame!!!" Lucid's scream tore from his throat, raw and desperate.
The wolf, now focused solely on him, turned. It took a single, earth-crushing step toward him. Lucid, moving on instinct and terror, manifested a thick, interwoven wall of chains in front of himself from the ground. The beast's next paw strike shattered the barrier as if it were glass, the chains exploding into dissipating into bright light. The paw continued its descent toward Lucid's prone form.
It never landed.
A figure intercepted it. It was Ayame, but transformed. She was twice her usual size, muscles corded and swollen, veins blazing with angry red light beneath her skin. Her eyes were pools of bloody crimson. She caught the massive paw with one hand, arresting its descent with a grunt of immense strain. In her other hand, the dagger flashed.
She brought it down in a savage arc, not at the paw, but at the wolf's leg above it. The blade, empowered by her sudden, explosive strength, bit deep, shearing through crystal and flesh in a circular motion that traveled all the way up to the beast's shoulder.
The Unfaithful wolf roared in genuine pain, a sound that split the air. It stumbled back, reassessing its prey. The dagger, never meant for such a task, finally gave way, shattering into useless shards.
This was not a fight they could win. It was a desperate, delaying action.
"Look out!" Lucid cried.
The wolf's tail, that terrible whip, was already in motion, sweeping low to crush them both. Lucid saw it a fraction of a second too late to dodge. He poured every ounce of his remaining will into a final defense, manifesting a dense, domed cage of chains around himself and Ayame.
The tail struck.
The sound was catastrophic. The chain-cage imploded instantly. The concussive force hit them like a mountain falling. Lucid was flung through the air, a sharp, blinding pain erupting in his head before darkness swallowed him whole.
Ayame, still clinging to her enraged state, was tossed alongside him. Their bodies tumbled helplessly in the raging currents of displaced air.
From the corner of her blurring vision, she saw it. The red wolf, standing far across the ravaged plateau, had its maw open wide. A bright, hellish red ball of concentrated energy coalesced in front of it, growing brighter, hotter—a beam of pure, annihilating Fate Essence.
This would erase them. There was no doubt.
Instinct, deeper than memory, deeper than reason, took over. As they fell, Ayame twisted in the air. She reached for Lucid's unconscious form, pulling him to her. She wrapped her body around his, turning her back to the coming blast, cradling his head against her chest. Her own body, swollen and bleeding, would be his shield.
The beam fired. A lance of crimson light crossed the distance in an instant.
It struck them.
Ayame's world dissolved into white-hot agony. A guttural grunt of pain was forced from her, followed by a cough that sprayed blood across Lucid's coat. The force of the impact accelerated their flight, turning their tumble into a violent, uncontrolled projectile.
They hit the first mountainside, punching through rock and snow. The second impact spun them. The third finally robbed Ayame of her last shred of consciousness. The world became a roaring, painful blur until they crashed down one final time at the bottom of a deep, snow-filled ravine, rolling to a stop in a tangled, broken heap.
Silence, profound and heavy, descended. The red wolf, satisfied, did not pursue.
Ayame lay on her back, Lucid sprawled across her, shielded by her body. Her transformation had receded, leaving her once again small and pale, but now terribly broken. Blood stained the snow around her. Every breath was a shallow, wet rasp. But he was alive. She could feel the faint, thready beat of his heart against her. Her job, the inexplicable, desperate need to protect him, was fulfilled. She did not understand why it mattered so much, only that it did.
*Alive*, she thought through the haze of pain. *Alive for another day. To share the oath.*
That was enough.
A faint, familiar green outline flickered at the edge of her darkening vision. Lucid's innate healing, even unconscious, was trying to work.
Lucid twitched. A low groan escaped him. He stirred, then scrambled off her, his movements frantic and pained. He looked down at Ayame's bloodied, broken form.
He gasped, a sound of pure horror. "What happened?" he cried, his hands hovering over her, afraid to touch.
Ayame did not reply. She simply looked up at the mist where his face should be, her own face a mask of serene exhaustion. She had done her duty. She did not understand the 'why,' but she knew, with absolute certainty, that this human deserved everything. As her purpose felt assured, she allowed her eyes to close.
"You idiot!" Lucid's voice broke, tears mixing with the blood on his cheeks. "I am the one who is supposed to be hurt! I can heal!"
He was crying. For her. Someone like him, worrying about a creature like her.
If their paths had crossed under different circumstances, her story would have ended very differently. The word floated through her fading mind.
*Path…*
She surrendered to the exhaustion, for the first time in her life not fighting it. She recognized that Unfaithful. The concentrated red ball of Fate Essence meant it was at least S-Rank. She had known their limits, even for an Oni. And she had exceeded them.
"Stay with me," Lucid's voice begged, growing fainter as the darkness pulled her under. His hands were on her now, the green glow intensifying, wrapping around her wounds in a desperate, tender embrace.
But Ayame was already gone, slipping into a deep, wounded sleep, carried by the strange comfort of his tears and the fading echo of her fulfilled promise.