An alien, hungry presence descended on them, centered around Perumah.

  He saw her face tilt upwards, the fury within her abating for a moment to bask in falling scarlet storm.

  He glimpsed up to see where it came from, and noticed the rocky ceiling bleeding profusely.

  His attention snapped forward when the demon-kin opened its mouth wide, a gaping void opening.

  A green spiraling eye opened from the dark, and a second presence descended on them, one equally alien as Perumah’s, but much older.

  The demon stared her down.

  “The spitting image,” Foriatrian murmured, “Though your peripheral appendages differ, you are as arrogantly proud of your visage as ever, Zyz’Ti, to not even remotely alter your face.”

  Perumah’s relief and pleasure at finally attaining her goal evaporated instantly, a cold disdain taking its place.

  The storm intensified, each droplet reverberating off the ground with an unnatural weight, shaking the abandoned village.

  No longer did they pool, floating upwards slightly to form a low mist.

  A gale swirled through the area, and Dei was forced to blink, his eyes burning as the blood damaged them. He subconsciously took note that the demon-kin had closed its mouth, though it appeared more… lively than before. Fortiatrian still inhabited it; yet he, too, began to squint against the thick rain.

  For a moment, Dei’s world became darkness as he tried to clear the irritant pressing into him.

  That lapse in vision was enough, and Perumah disappeared without even a whisper.

  Foriatrian glanced around, and Dei saw the flicker of realization.

  “A feral user. For now.”

  The heavy blood became a roar of pounding stone that drowned out all sound to accommodate the lack of sight. Despite Foriatrian being so close, Dei could barely see him through the haze.

  The Tyrant took a step backwards, and utterly disappeared from his vision. A [Soul Echo] went out, but to his supernatural senses, he, Clever, and Fendrascora were alone in these ruins, Perumah and Foriatrian nowhere to be found.

  * * *

  Perumah melded into the blood, moving seamlessly through the misty dimension as it curled around her, welcoming her as a loyal companion would greet their master after a long day away.

  Her vision was unobscured by the terrain, seeing Foriatrian’s step carry him away. Despite the large size, his puppet moved with a seamless grace, its claws barely touching the ground as it silently fled.

  Perumah wasted no time, darting forward, propelled by the blood. One of the four lethal petals upon her back twitched slightly, altering its angle to gouge his side as she moved close.

  She felt it connect, a rend opening with zero resistance… the stone giving way. She hadn’t attacked the demon-kin, but its shadow, not metaphorically, but the mundane one it had cast against the wall, a blind spot in the crystals creating a single area darker than the space around it

  Her hand touched the ground and she twisted her body upwards into the air. Turning her head to look towards the gargantuan figure casting the shadow, she fought back a burst of disbelief as only empty space greeted her. He was gone.

  But not untraceable.

  Perumah’s eyes were new, a borderline vestigial gift from her ascendance to sapience. She saw with her Heart.

  The blood was not empty, it carried the will of the Crimson Rain, an ancient story of massacre. Tapping into it, her awareness spread throughout the domain encompassing the entire battlegrounds.

  Its mind was deep, but she did not need to delve into all of its secrets to speak its language and read its feedback.

  Several blocks away, a wisp of blood seeped through the shutter of a sealed window, an invisible crack opening a path for it to follow.

  Even with near perfect stealth, the demon-kin could not avoid interacting with the Crimson Rain, leaving a trail leading directly to it.

  Darting through the tunnels, she sought less-tread shortcuts. It did not matter that the spaces within the houses were technically too small for her foe, she didn’t doubt for even a moment that he held a way through them. Even within the houses, the rain fell from the gray ceilings, flowing out to join the greater river below.

  Rather than follow behind, she predicted where would go, cutting forward to intercept.

  Just over two seconds had passed since the beginning of the battle.

  The droplets of blood phased through her, leaving no trace of her presence, but the same could not be said for Foriatrian.

  Slipping through the doorflaps of one room, across hall connecting it to a house on the opposite side of the cave wall, she sensed the divot form on the table of the neighboring house, and pictured Foriatrian leaping along the furniture to avoid the puddles on the ground that would fully give away his location, yet his sharp claws still dealt light damage with each of his steps.

  Still, her quarry would not-

  The dry spot on the ground next to the chair's leg in this room told her that it had recently been moved. He’d already been through here, not in the neighboring house.

  He’d darted forward, done something to the room, then gone back to carve the table intentionally to mislead her.

  A trap.

  In half the span between heartbeats, she was four houses away, but she did not rest. The entire time she ran, a slight distortion would occasionally pass through the mana refracting off the bloody raindrops.

  Her senses could not see the attack directly, but it was there, and it followed, nipping at her heels yet never quite able to catch her.

  She leapt through the mazelike connections of the supposed townhome, kicking off the walls and ceilings, even contorting her body through the connected-yet-empty cabinets left open by those who’d fled in a rush.

  She felt an impending sense of death crawl up her back, and her senses spread into the rain surrounding them, the only force encompassing enough that the spell chasing her could not fully account for it.

  Time seemed to pause as her awareness landed on one spot in particular, one droplet suspended perfectly in this frozen moment to reflect her vision.

  A madwoman greeted her, grinning wildly. She could sense the thumping heartbeat, the excitement held in her gaze.

  ‘Is that… me?’ she realized. She hadn’t even noticed the loss of control over her expression, nor the utter euphoria of an exciting hunt. She liked it when they fought back.

  Suddenly, the mirror image of herself reached out, and they… traded.

  Stolen novel; please report.

  The attack landed on the stranger, the woman foreign to her. She watched the other woman, the one held within the droplet, explode into gory pieces.

  Yet, she was untouched, and as time resumed, the tear of blood continued its course for the ground, joining the stream composed of hundreds of others similar to it, the death of the woman within not even noteworthy enough to cause a ripple to its surface.

  Her- Perumah’s foot came down gently as she made for the exit. These connected houses were likely made for a single extended family, and Foriatrian had walked their halls since the very beginning of the battle.

  She had no doubt he’d left many other surprises for her, it would be foolish to attempt tracking him down in his territory.

  Still, she did not forget to school her expression, nor to keep her emotions in check. Those thoughts… were not hers. If this battle dragged out for too long, she would be utterly consumed, and Zyz’Ti would take possession, puppeteering her corpse.

  At least, until the Golden Order’s Vow activated, and killed her for good.

  Two rooms back, she felt the divot of claws forming on the floor and walls, telling her that her pursuer was close behind. Based on the evidence in the last room he’d tricked her and the distorted blood in the air though, he was much closer- perhaps even inches from her, and she still could not sense him.

  The doorflap approached, and she took control of the blood seeping into it, whipping the bottom upwards to simulate a rushed, perhaps fearful and sloppy, exit; to make Foriatrian believe she was scared, and running.

  In reality, she grabbed the top of the door frame, letting the momentum carry her upwards until her body was parallel to the opening.

  Her pointer finger came away, pointing downwards. At her command, a droplet accelerated down her arm and onto the tip of her nail, remaining suspended for a moment, then surrendering to gravity, far faster than its brethren.

  Past the speed of sound, it punched through the open air, briefly met resistance, and pushed through.

  The [Tyrant Lizard]’s cloak flickered and, for a brief moment, she was met with a surprised gaze that stared towards her general area.

  Even this close, he could not perceive her, the Crimson Rain that encompassed every curve of her figure shielding her from view.

  She saw that the droplet had carved out the tiniest of holes in his scales before it was robbed of his momentum, dealing little real damage.

  They both knew it to be a death sentence in a battle that worked on as narrow margins as theirs.

  With his body and spell damaged, the cloaking abilities were decreased by an amount negligible in any other context- perhaps by a thousandth of a percent.

  Yet, when he leapt to the side, across the street, up and out a window, through one of the crystal prisms that emitted light, and across the ceiling, she could track him perfectly, the small divot providing enough drag against the air to comparatively scream his location to the Crimson Rain.

  Her blood infected the wound, refusing to allow any sort of healing.

  Yet, the demon still would not give in.

  She chased, cutting off his escape from her domain. He attempted to jump between moments to somewhere far away- but he was marked, there were no moments further than she could reach. His path would end here. The Time affinity inherited by Oura and his path were rendered obsolete.

  She felt a feral grin spread over her face, and gave chase.

  A set of synchronized footsteps decorated the ruins as she matched the Tyrant's sprint, each bound carrying her further than his.

  She felt wave after monstrous wave of borderline invisible mana pass over her, trying to do anything to stop her advance. Giving up the lost battle of stealth, Foriatrian now attempted to brute-force victory with overwhelming power.

  Yet her steps never faltered, never broke pace. Her presence masked itself beneath his, her mana’s wavelength vibrating at the exact frequency of the attacks as she retreated just quickly enough to leave the spell’s range or with just enough efficiency to dodge by a hair’s width.

  The pounding of the Crimson Rain shook the cavern, coming down hard enough to raise a non-zero risk of the entire space caving in.

  Yet she couldn’t stop. She hungered, drawing deeply from the wellspring of power within her.

  Surpassing rain, sections came down in drapes of blood, walls forming a mazelike structure that boxed in her prey, each one promising death if he touched them.

  She jumped through them without slowing, rending his side, cutting through the tendons of his legs, gouging his eyes one at a time while ensuring he locked eyes with her a moment before the act.

  None of the wounds healed, and even the supernaturally durable of one so powerful could not sustain them. The cuts ran deeper than simply the meat parted below.

  And still, the demon fought on, not surrendering for even a moment as he navigated his way through her constructed labyrinth, flying rapidly- she did not even notice he always moved towards a particular spot, where their battle first began.

  She left openings for him to run through, always providing a narrow exit, savoring the drawn-out murder.

  The hunger, on the other hand, was insatiable. She could not stall it forever. Eventually, the meal must be consumed.

  She finally noticed the approaching audience, and grinned when presented with the option to provide a show.

  The next opening she provided her quarry was closer to the ground, and his desperation pushed him forwards unthinkingly. He stepped down and pushed forward.

  She was in front of him instantly, a spike of blood forming in her hand as she ducked beneath him and sliced cleanly through, gutting him from tip to tail.

  Her foe collapsed, sliding forward and coming to a complete stop at the feet of her witnesses.

  She intentionally allowed her steps to reverberate through the caves, the rain between them parting just enough to allow her next victims to witness the harbinger of their deaths.

  ‘I applaud your resistance, detective,’ she thought towards the fading corpse on the ground, ‘But blood for blood is my favorite form of play.’

  She felt the quivering shape of mana appear in the air and internally scoffed at the simplicity of the spell. Something like that would never harm her.

  Betraying her expectations, though, it did not attack, but released a distorted voice, her quarry speaking despite its torn throat.

  “I welcome you again, Zyz’Ti.”

  * * *

  In the seconds after Perumah disappeared, Dei could only stand helplessly, barely able to move- until he felt the rain nourishing him. The Crimson Rain, carrying Perumah’s will, curled protectively around and through him.

  His soul strain, the pressure on his body, began to fade. It was something he didn’t even know was possible- perhaps it wasn’t; if it were so easy to alleviate soul strain, Shamans would not have to rely on their staffs to bear the weight for them.

  In this moment, though, the warmth filling him accelerated the recovery of his general soul from months down to minutes, even if certain parts, such as his affinity, were still shattered.

  And therein was his fear.

  Dei needed his affinity to completely stabilize Perumah, but he could feel the broken meaning struggle with parsing its shape. Everything was still there, but it did not have the higher intelligence to “Automatically” know where everything went.

  The blood’s weight fell heavily, quickly turning from a storm to a torrent; it pressed down into him with an unnatural weight, and he would have collapsed if not for the healing it provided.

  But, as time went on, he felt it… shift, slowly moving away from him, as if Perumah’s focus on protecting him faded to the back of her mind.

  “Clever,” he asked mentally, his voice far calmer than he felt internally. “What can you see?”

  “The boundaries of this space and nothing more,” he said fearfully, “No Time leaves.”

  It was the same for Void. The furthest he could teleport still landed within her domain- though only on the edge.

  “Any glimpse of Perumah?”

  “No…”

  A crash broke the silence, and Dei involuntarily took a step back as the dying demon-kin slid to a stop inches away, eyes landing on him with a surge of victory contained within.

  The curtain of rain softened in the distance ahead and the faint splash of Perumah stepping through the blood greeted his ears.

  A cheshire grin split her face when her eyes landed upon him, her unnaturally long canines giving the expression a feral, vicious appearance.

  The Crimson Rain had all but forgotten about him, only the barest of whispers marking him as someone to not kill- for now.

  The cooling vessel of Foriatrian bent the ambient mana one last time, saying “I welcome you again, Zyz’Ti,” before slumping down, dead.

  He felt despair surge through him- until the expression on Perumah’s face cracked.

  The Crimson Rain surged and twisted, confused, as Perumah reached up to her head with both hands, a disjointed, maddened expression bubbling out. Grabbing at the skin under her jaw, she let a bloodcurdling scream rip through the air, fingernails digging into herself before tearing half her face off.

  It was a gruesome action, but Dei didn’t wait a second before lunging towards her.

  Perumah was still fighting.