Carmen’s eyes were fixed on Vi. Her gaze, cold and imperable, burned with a rage that seemed to slither beh the surface, tained but lethal. Her presenihe air, ing it in an aura of absolute trol, as if everything were part of a design already traced in her mind.

  With the arrival of the red-haired servant, the atmosphere ged. The very air seemed to grow denser, charged with a palpable tension, almost suffog.

  Vi, panting, still had one hand on his injured eye, trying in vain to hide even half of his face. His gaze was fixed on her, incredulous, as if he were fag an impossible apparition.

  “Y-You…” his lips trembled, the words barely esg, muddled with fusion. “But how…?”

  Carmen did not answer immediately. Her gaze moved slowly over to Mirac, assessing his state, then quickly returo Vi.

  When she spoke, her voice was sharp as a bde:

  "I had already warned you, Krk... didn't I?"

  The silehat followed was so heavy it felt like the prelude to an explosion.

  Even Mirac, despite the searing pain that tormented him, was frozen, his eyes wide open, uo absorb or process what was happening in front of him.

  ‘Krk? Is that his real name?’ he wondered, as fusion seeped into his mind like a haunting shadow. ‘But how does Carmen know? Was she already aware of it? For how long?! And, most importantly... how the hell did she find us?!’

  Questions piled on top of each other, but Mirac, overwhelmed by fatigue, decided to look for aer.

  In the meantime, in the blink of an eye, almost in sync with his thoughts, Carmen vanished.

  Vi—or rather, Krk—barely had time to widen his eyes in astonishment before she reappeared in front of him, like a lightning bolt cutting through the sky.

  In that brief interval, in a span of time too thin to measure, Carmen had closed the distaween them, moving without making the slightest sound.

  Thus, caught off guard, Krk had no time to react.

  With a fluid aating movement, Carmen drove the palm of her left hand—the o holding the sword—into Krk’s stomach.

  The force of the impact sent him flying backward with brutal violence.

  His body flew like a puppet without strings, crashing through trees along the way. Each broken tru up a cloud of dust and splinters, until Krk vanished among the debris and the shattered vegetation.

  Mirac was breathless, his eyes locked on the spot where Krk had been hurled. His mouth opened in an expression of sheer astonishment, uo prehend what he had just witnessed.

  The speed, the strength, the precision of Carme him pletely disoriented.

  “But… wha-?” he tried to speak, but a gush of blood rose in his throat, f him to silence himself with a muffled groan.

  Carmen, with lethal grace, rose from the position she had assumed to strike Krk: her torso, slightly tilted, straightened, while her bent and spread legs extended, returning to their natural posture.

  Slowly, the servant turowards Mirac.

  When she had first arrived, giving him a quice, Carmen had noticed with relief the magical gauze around the young Prince’s severed arm.

  However, as she turned back towards him, the intimidation she had exuded up until then faded, revealing a flicker of genuine .

  “Young Prince, are you all right?” she asked, her voice firm yet ced with a touch of warmth.

  Mirac hesitated. He tried to formute a response, but the words tangled in his mind, blocked by the fusion aion of the moment.

  When he finally spoke, what he said was not at all the ao Carmen’s question.

  “C-Carmen... h-how did you...?”

  She gently interrupted him, not allowing room for a reply.

  “I would love to answer you now, young Prince, but there’s no time for expnations!” She immediately turned her gaze away from him, already focused on the spot where Krk had been thrown. “I will expihing ter. But for now, please rest.”

  As soon as Carmen finished speaking, a distant sound, the crag of broken branches, signaled Krk’s return.

  He emerged from the dust, advang furiously towards them. Veins throbbed on his forehead, and his face, torted with rage, looked like a mask of pure malevolence.

  His walk was heavy, threatening, and each step seemed to shake the enviro like a war drum.

  “You fug bitch…” Krk murmured, his teeth ched in a fierce grimace. “You never mind your own business, do you?!”

  The atmosphere grew unbearable, dense as an oppressive fog.

  Carmen and Krk’s gazes were locked on each n everything around them.

  They remaihat way for an endless moment, silent, staring at each other with the precision of two predators about to strike.

  Then, suddenly, Carmen broke the silence first.

  “Carmeh…” said the red-haired woman, her voice firm, a solemn intonation in her words. Her hands tightened around the hilt of her sword, preparing for what was to e.

  Krk halted his steps, his eyes burning with rage. With an angry gesture, he grabbed what remained of his gsses and threw them away.

  “Krk Mi!” he shouted, the name pronounced like a roar of defiance.

  Those words echoed in Mirac’s mind like a call to an aradition, a bloody challehat was about to materialize before him.

  In the ti of Armony, as Leonard had taught him long ago, when two challengers spoke their full names, it meant that a deadly duel was about to begin.

  A battle destio end only with the death of one of the batants.

  With the white moon just appearing on the horizon and the sky fading into a deep blue, gently transitioning from the e of the suhe two of them sensed a signal that escaped Miraormal uanding.

  It was just then that, all of a sudden, the battle betweewo began.

  Krk lunged forward, furiously swinging his stiff tie, which seemed to pulse with energy under his grip. With a furious shout, he attempted to strike Carmen, aiming to overwhelm her with a single, devastating ssh.

  But she, with the ethereal grace of a shadow, moved in an instant onto the branches above them. The movement was so fast and fluid that it seemed to almost vanish into the air.

  Krk looked up, his eyes burning with frustration as he watched her leap from tree to tree.

  "Tsk, damn monkey!"

  But while Krk was cursing inwardly, Carmen acted with the speed of lightning.

  Without hesitation, the red-haired woman grabbed a sturdy branch from a nearby tree and, with a decisive motion, hurled it at her oppo with surprising accuracy.

  The piece of wood hissed through the air, but Krk reacted with lightning-fast reflexes: his tie-sword moved with precision, slig the bran two with a blow.

  But before he could even hint at a smile of satisfa, Carmen had already disappeared from his line of sight again, quickly sliding down from the branches and reappearing behind him.

  With a powerful kick to his back, Carme him flying forward.

  Krk nded heavily on his khe metallic taste of blood filling his mouth. He spat a dark clump onto the ground, quickly rising back to his feet with a sudden jerk.

  “It’s pointless, Krk,” Carmen decred firmly, looking down at him with the fidence of one who had already won. “You ’t beat me.”

  “SHUT UP!” he roared, gripping the tie with such fury that it seemed almost alive.

  The slight tremors in his hands betrayed a growing tension as he stood back up and got into position. In his eyes burned an immeermination to kill her.

  “You lied to me!” Krk growled. “How dare you? Because of you, I’ve been stuck here this whole time! And for that… you’ll pay dearly!”

  With a primal scream, Krk charged at Carmen again, the tie stretg out like aension of his fury.

  The forest was filled with the sound of sparks and muffled strikes.

  Carmen, cold ahodical, blocked every attack with surgical precision. Eaent erfect bance of defense and terattack, her steps so light they seemed to float.

  The servant’s clothes she wore didn’t hinder her: on the trary, they seemed to atuate her lethal elegance.

  With his left eye still wounded, Krk tio attack her with brute force, his strikes fueled more by rage than strategy. Carmen, oher hand, moved with icy calm, her eyes like two pieces of ice staring at him without hesitation.

  In a moment of pure instinct, Carmen switched the sword from her right hand to her left and, with her free hand, nded a right hook that struck Krk’s face with a dull thud. He staggered, his body bent backward, and the tie fell limp between his hands, returning to being just a simple clothing accessory.

  But Krk wasn’t ready to give up.

  With a guttural scream, he straightened up, his face twisted with fury.

  “DAMN YOUUUUUU!” he roared.

  From that moment on, with the iion of surpassing his oppo's speed with the uability of his future strikes' trajectories, Krk abahe idea of using his tie as a sword.

  Handling it in its primary form, Krk began to use it like a whip, making it sh through the air with wild trajectories.

  With every blow, he tightehe tie forcefully, so that it would stiffen only at the moment of impact, in a mischievous attempt to catch Carmen off guard.

  The fabric moved in rapid sinusoids, making the air whistle. Each osciltion was almost impossible to follow with the eye, an uable dahat eluded trol, yet Krk—although it was the first time he had adopted such a strategy—seemed to be managing to guide it with precision.

  "What do you think, huh?!" he excimed, a twisted grin on his face as he watched Carmen step back for the first time. "You're not ag so tough anymore, are you?! You thought you were untouchable, but look at you now!"

  Carmen stared into his eyes, her expression unged, but her movements became more cautious. She didn’t respond to his taunts, but the shift in her posture indicated that it was no longer so simple to face Krk with his rategy.

  "Are you still so sure you beat me?" the man asked. "I bet you're not! Yet, you were so fident THAT day..."