Alice looked little better. The blood-red current that had swirled around body was gone, frame shrunken back to its usual breadth. She stood bruised and caked in gore, breaths ragged, yet still stood.
“Corin, you’ve lost,” rasped, pride gleaming through the ruin of voice. Corin’s answer was a silent, bitter stare, could only accept the verdict etched across the battlefield.
Disciples from the Sword Sect rushed in, steadying Corin with trembling arms. Rage blazed in their eyes, but despair weighed down every gesture, they all knew that if their master had fallen, their blades were nothing more than offerings to death.
Alice’s gaze swept past them and locked onto Jared, sprawled amid broken masonry. Murder flashed behind pupils.
“Time to finish the last loose thread…”
She took one deliberate step, then another, toward the wounded man. Lyra stumbled into path, knees knocking, but spine held straight. “Y-You can’t touch him!”
Alice barked a laugh. “Out of my way, child…”
With a casual flick of sleeve, a harsh gust hurled Lyra aside, cry swallowed by the rushing wind. Just as palm arced toward Jared’s skull, a strained yet unbroken voice rose from the rubble. “I… I’m not dead… Yet…”
Jared forced himself upright, bones crunching, limbs quivering. Pain twisted his features, but a crooked smile still found room on his blood-streaked lips. “Killing me… Won’t be that simple.”
Alice’s surprise flared into fury. “Stubborn wretch! Die already!”
She raised hand again, swinging it at Jared. No one moved to save him, there was no one left who could. Swordsmen shouted in hopeless anguish, Lyra sobbed into sleeves, and Corin pushed forward an inch only to sag in defeat.
Alice’s power-laden hand descended, a lethal gale shrieking around it, promising oblivion even to a man with nine lives.
At that final heartbeat, a broad-shouldered silhouette burst from thin air and threw itself between Jared and impending doom, placing a sturdy back against Alice’s falling strike.
“Enough!” A deep, commanding shout cracked across the courtyard, its bass notes ringing with a finality that brooked no argument.
Alice’s heavy palm halted less than an inch from Jared, suspended in the air as though time itself had frozen around her.
The murderous blaze in eyes guttered out, first to bewilderment, then to a dawning, almost childlike joy. All around, cultivators stiffened, necks turning in perfect unison toward the newcomer.
It was none other than Kishor, the solitary warlord who had been posted outside the city walls for weeks.
Why is here?
Jared’s mind raced. Just this morning, and Flaxseed had found not even a shadow of the man.
Kishor pivoted, planting himself squarely between Jared and Alice. His gaze remained calm, yet his words rang with iron.
“If you intend to kill him,” said, voice low but immovable, “You will have to kill me first.”
“K-Kishor…” Alice murmured. She stared at the sharp planes of Kishor’s face, and the mask of ferocity wore melted as though it had never existed.
What replaced it was an impossible collage of bashfulness, delight, and long-banked grievance. Her voice softened to silk, utterly at odds with the butcher’s growl from moments earlier. “What are you doing here?”
This sudden change shocked everyone. Jaws dropped, dumbstruck.
