The Wizard is still alive.
Sealed into the coffin while still breathing.
Because she has to bring him back to her master, to drain the Wizard's life and the very essence of his existence. Precisely because the Evil God Embryo can feed on that existential essence, the Ghost Bride's choices are always carefully weighed—almost every target is a Wizard gifted in some particular field.
Just like the second household.
Also a young Witch, named Aria, skilled in herbs and Healing Magic. She seemed to sense something wrong; the instant she lit a Protective Candle, the Ghost Bride had already slipped through the wall, surging in like smoke.
"Exorcism! Begone!" Aria swung her Magic Wand, unleashing a Purifying Light Blade.
The Light Blade struck the Ghost Bride, yet it was like hitting a phantom, utterly useless. The Ghost Bride raised her hand, five fingers splayed, and a blood-red thread shot from her fingertips, instantly coiling around Aria's neck.
The Witch choked and thrashed, her feet lifting off the ground.
"P-please… I haven't… finished… my potion yet…" Tears streamed down her cheeks.
The Ghost Bride remained unmoved, coldly dragging her toward a corner. Another coffin materialized. Aria was forced into it, limbs folded tight. Before the lid slammed shut, she was still clawing at the inner walls, nails scraping out a harsh "creak-creak" sound—she, too, was still alive; now she could only wait in the dark for the end of her fate.
The third household was a wandering Wizard from the north, named Carl, well-versed in Defense and Counter Curse. He had laid down a triple barrier: Goblet of Fire, Wall of Frost, Soul Barrier. Yet with each step the Ghost Bride took, the barriers shattered like thin ice.
"Who are you?! Who sent you?!" Carl roared, Magic Wand raised high. "Ice Storm!"
A raging gale surged up, countless ice blades howling forth. The Ghost Bride stood where she was, letting the blades tear through her body—but her figure only rippled slightly, like an illusion, utterly unharmed.
"You… aren't corporeal?" Carl's face drained of color.
The Ghost Bride finally spoke, her voice like hundreds of people whispering at once: "Offered to Him… living sacrifice…"
She lifted her hand, fingers curved like claws, and Carl's heart suddenly clenched hard in his chest. He dropped to his knees, vomiting black blood, eyes rolling back. Yet the Ghost Bride did not allow him to die. She injected a wisp of black mist into him; Carl's body convulsed wildly, but he never stopped breathing.
A coffin surfaced. Carl was dragged into it, his hands still braced desperately against the inner lid, nails splitting, blood streaming—he was also still alive, destined to be sacrificed in agony.
The fourth household was a Wizard of the Dark Arts, named Victor, arrogant by nature. He sneered, "A mere ghost bride dares come here? Watch me use 'Soul Fragmentation' to damn you for all eternity!"
He chanted a Spell, and a jet-black wave of energy surged straight at the Ghost Bride. However, the Ghost Bride merely pointed; a blood-red thread shot forth and punched through Victor's brow. His Spell cut off mid-chant; the vicious grin was still frozen on his face, but his body had already gone rigid.
But the Ghost Bride did not kill him. She dragged him into a coffin and sealed it. Inside, Victor's chest was still rising and falling, his eyeballs spinning madly in their sockets.
At that very moment, Kalan was hiding at the mouth of the alley, witnessing everything, his whole body trembling.
"My lord! They're dying! Our kin are dying!"
He almost bolted out there, looking very much the hot-blooded youth—if this young Wizard lived in later times, he'd probably be enrolled in Gryffindor College.
After all, even with his legs shaking, he still had courage to spare.
"Don't go. Magic can hardly harm that kind of special life."
Ian held him down.
"Then what should we do?"
Cam's Magic Wand slipped from his hand and clattered to the ground. Ian snatched it up with quick reflexes and clamped a hand over his mouth. But it was already too late—the Ghost Bride's head snapped toward their direction, her Golden Sand eyes flickering crazily.
"Bridesmaid… hide-and-seek…"
Dragging the coffin, she began to accelerate; wherever the hem of her wedding dress swept, the stone slabs melted like wax.
Ian grabbed the back of Cam's collar. "Close your eyes!"
"Fluorescent Burst!"
The blinding white light instantly flooded the entire street. The Ghost Bride let out a high-pitched shriek, Golden Sand spurting from her eye sockets. Ian seized the chance to drag Cam into a narrow alley.
His Magic Wand laid a chain of trap Spells behind them.
"We have to save those people!" Cam struggled, trying to rush back. "The Hermit Association's creed demands that we…"
"Idiocy!" Ian slammed him against the wall. "Look at this!"
The Magic Wand traced a curtain of light in midair, showing scenes from other districts—there was more than one Ghost Bride. At least seven identical figures were hunting across the city, each dragging a black coffin. Even worse, their routes formed a precise net, driving the surviving Wizards toward the Temple.
"Clone… Clone Technique?" Cam's face went bloodless.
"No, it's Time Overlapping." Ian's pupils shrank to pinpoints. "That Embryo is manipulating local time flow, letting the same entity appear simultaneously in different places."
A thunderous crash of collapsing buildings suddenly rolled in from afar. On the light curtain, a house at the northwest corner was lifted clean off, five Wizards in Star Moon Robes fleeing in panic—it was members of the Dusk Hermit Association branch! They stood back to back, forming a Defense formation, their Magic Wands spraying multicolored Spells, but hitting the Ghost Bride was like sinking stones into the sea.
"It's our comrades from the branch!" Cam broke free of Ian like a madman. "I have to go…"
"Stop!" Ian's harsh shout carried a Magic Power shock that forcibly froze Cam in place. "Watch carefully!"
On the light curtain, an older Witch suddenly shoved a companion into the incoming golden threads, then turned and bolted. The betrayed Hermit Association member was cocooned in an instant, while the deserter hadn't run more than a few steps before another Ghost Bride cut her off. As the coffin lid snapped shut, her figure pounding in despair against the inner walls was still visible.
"How can this…" Cam collapsed to the ground. "We swore an oath…"
The Ghost Brides' hunt grew ever more frenzied. Ian observed that they were not attacking indiscriminately—the Wizards whose Magic Power surged strongest were the first to fall, while those with only a trace of talent were deliberately spared. Most unsettling of all, every captured Wizard had a golden mark emerge on their forehead, identical to the one on the maid's wrist that morning.
"They're screening." Understanding hit Ian like a blow. "The Embryo needs a specific type of Magic Power…"
A scream from just a few steps away shattered his thoughts. At the mouth of the alley, three ragged Wild Wizards were tumbling over each other to escape, a Ghost Bride singing a nursery rhyme in pursuit behind them. When they spotted Cam, malice flared instantly in their eyes.
"Fresh meat over there!" The scar-faced leader suddenly veered, his Magic Wand firing a streak of violet light into Cam's knee.
"Ah!" Cam cried out, crashing to the ground, the wound immediately glowing with eerie gold.
The three Wild Wizards scattered in different directions, one even turning back to grin savagely. "Thanks for taking our place, kid!"
Sure enough, the Ghost Bride changed course, her coffin screeching against the ground. Cam crawled in futile desperation, his eyes full of despair. Just as the golden threads were about to brush his back, the runes on Ian's Magic Wand suddenly flared a blinding red.
"Shadow Shift!"
Cam's figure vanished in an instant, reappearing beside Ian the next second. The Ghost Bride's golden threads slashed empty air, corroding the stone pavement into a web of cracks. She let out a furious howl, Golden Sand spurting from the seven apertures of her face, but soon turned mechanically toward the direction the Wild Wizards had fled, continuing her hunt.
"Wh-why…" Cam clutched his bleeding knee, his voice trembling. "Why would they…"
"Because fear triggers the most primal drive to survive." Ian treated his wound with a blank expression, the tip of his Magic Wand bleeding silver Healing Potion. "Faced with dying nobly, more people choose living basely."
The vision on the light curtain grew ever more horrific. Above the Temple, the black smoke had already condensed into a colossal vortex, and the seven Ghost Brides were delivering captured Wizards toward it. Ian noticed that before each coffin was thrown into the vortex, a wisp of blue light was drawn out—that was the Wizards' distilled Magic Power.
"That Evil God Embryo can't wait any longer." Ian extinguished the light curtain, his voice as cold as stones at the bottom of the Nile River. "Under normal conditions, gestation would take years, but it's forcibly spawning these claws to Plunder nourishment for itself."
Under the Magic's effect, Cam's wound slowly knit together, but the shock in his eyes did not fade in the slightest. "So the Temple was so tense this afternoon… because they've lost control of the Embryo?"
"Or rather, the Embryo has started rebelling against its creators." Ian stared at the distorted sky in the distance. "The first instinct of any life is survival, even an artificially bred Evil God."
The Ghost Brides' singing drifted close again, this time accompanied by the dragging of at least three coffins. Ian swiftly erected a new Concealing Barrier, warding against any approach from the Ghost Brides toward their position.
However.
It did no good.
The Ghost Bride still turned her head once more.
And looked straight at him and Cam.