Swoosh—

The wind clawed at her ears, rolling with an uneasy sound. Leaves shook and knocked breathlessly against one another. The racket seemed to mimic the sound of her own heartbeat, and Selene swallowed dryly.

She leaned weakly against a tree and gasped for breath. The low, ragged sound that came out was rough. Selene forced her trembling body upright. Her shoulders swayed; she had no time even to brush off the dust. She scanned her surroundings and placed her hand on the bark of the tree. The texture beneath her fingertips was nothing but rough and cold. Selene slowly dragged her hand across the surface of the tree, pouring all her desperation into it.

“Please…. Haaa….”

The furrow of her brow as she strained to concentrate was pitiable. Her fingertips twitched against the tree, but in the end she found no response and let her hand fall limp. Her gaze drifted toward the direction from which the uneasy wind blew, flickering faintly.

The weather was not hot, yet cold sweat dripped steadily down her jaw. At the chill, Selene instinctively wrapped her arms around her own thin body. Her body was gaunt throughout, but one part, strangely, was not. Her lower abdomen, swollen and round. That alone asserted its presence incongruously against her wasted frame. It swelled there atop her frail body like the one thing still alive.

Her hand slipped away from the tree she had been pressing against and moved, on instinct, to rest on her stomach. Unlike the tree, there was a squirming response from within. Still alive. Her face twisted, and she clutched her belly with something like resentment, then let go with a dull, exhausted drop.

“Horrible….”

Selene patted her weary legs. No matter how hard she focused, she could not feel her magic, but she could not afford to stay here any longer. In her hazy state of consciousness, her heart lurched every time a bird beat its wings. She had never been this helpless before, and the fear outweighed even the bone-deep exhaustion. The “sensory blindness” that left her unable to call up even the healing magic she had once cast as naturally as breathing was a terror she had never known in all her life.

She tried a few more times to push out her power, but each attempt only drained her further. In the end, Selene moved forward one step at a time, relying on her hearing and sight like a human, keeping watch of her surroundings. The helplessness cut deep.

“Hah, hah….”

She was running. From the pitch-black of night until now, with the sun overhead. Her body, which had run without rest on only a brief moment of shut-eye, screamed at her. She had started walking again when a pain deep in her belly made her double over. One hand braced against a tree, the other clutching her stomach, she heaved shallow, ragged breaths. Among the exhaustion that felt like her entire body was tearing apart, the sharpest pain was in her lower abdomen.

Her belly throbbed, protesting her flight. The unfamiliar pain was too much to bear, and Selene finally buckled and sank to her knees.

Something trickled down between her legs. The first thing to hit her was the metallic scent of blood. Then red liquid dripped steadily down between her crouched legs onto the ground.

“Ah….”

Her vision went white. She clenched her teeth and endured the pain, but it was unlike anything she had suffered before, and a scream clawed its way up her throat regardless. The skin beneath her eyes flushed red, and the tears that had been welling spilled down her cheeks. The pain came like a blade twisting inside her belly. She bit down on her lip and barely swallowed the scream, when a strange vibration ran through the tree.

Thud-thud-thud. 

Hoofbeats striking the earth. Selene’s body went rigid.

Already. Already… they found this place?

Her fear-filled eyes trembled. She had fled on foot, yes, but once inside this forest, they should not have been able to find her so quickly. This was the witches’ land, bound by the chaos magic of powerful witches. No mere human should be able to walk straight in. She ground her teeth as the sound of hoofbeats echoed through the forest.

‘No, they must be wandering. There’s no way the knights could find this place so easily….’

She forced herself to her feet. Just a little further. Past this great paulownia tree, across the small stream, into the cottage where she had lived, and then into the bamboo grove behind it. Then to the small moonlit pond, and all she had to do was speak the incantation to open the ‘door’…! She pushed aside the thought of her body’s lost magic for now. If she could just reach the ‘door,’ somehow it would work out. She believed that.

‘I can make it. I can go back….’

She fixed her gaze blankly on the path ahead and forced herself to move. She turned her mind away from the pain in her belly, bit her lip, and picked up her pace. One step, then another, faster and faster, searching for the small stream. Following the sound of trickling water, she spotted the far edge of a familiar cottage in the distance.

“Ha, haha…! Ugh, home…!”

She had made it. She had arrived. She had gotten here somehow. It would be all right now. Even carrying this growth in her belly, her sisters would take her in, even as she was. And they would rid her of this small trouble entirely. Her gaze dropped to her swollen lower abdomen. For the first time, a strange pity stirred in her for the thing that rounded out there like a gourd, making its presence known.

Was this what humans called maternal love?

It was a feeling she had no right to have. She thought it a rather human instinct, one that did not suit her at all, and yet a peculiar sentimentality took hold of her. Perhaps that, too, was because the being nestled inside her was something extraordinary. Selene rested her hand quietly on her belly, resonating with the squirming within, then shook her head. She reined in her wavering heart.

Either way, she had lost too much blood. So there was no need to think about this child anymore.

She opened the door of the cottage she had barely managed to reach. The door was unlocked, just as she had left it, and inside she could see the household things with a fine layer of dust settled over them. How long had it been since she was last home? The comfort the place gave her made her want to sink down on the spot, but she kept her ears trained on the sounds outside and looked for the back door.

There was no time. She had to get to the spring quickly.

“Ha, aha…. Ugh…. Ah….”

She could not hold back the dull, grinding pain from her belly, and her body swayed. The moment she felt the room spin, a firm arm came up to support her back.

“Careful—”

A familiar, low voice. In the dim light of the cottage, the shape of a man came into focus. Selene’s eyes filled with horror.

“…!”

A breathtakingly handsome face was smiling softly at her.

Their eyes met. Her breath stopped.

In an instant, all the faint sounds that had filled the small cottage vanished. The chirping of insects, the wind stirring the leaves, all of it was swallowed up by the presence of the man before her.

Before she could even cry out in terror, what broke the silence first was the sound of liquid hitting the floor. Drip, drop. The blood flowing from between her legs struck the ground and made a sound, and the man’s red eyes slowly drifted downward.

“Ah…. Well.”

The man swept his black hair back with an irritated hand. He tightened his grip around her waist and pulled her roughly into his arms.

“…..No, no…! No! Aaah! Stop! Let go! Let go, stop!”

Only then did the scream she had been holding back burst free. Her voice, pouring out alongside the pain, was full of desperation. The screams gave way to cries begging for her life. But the arms holding her did not move an inch.

Selene thrashed and pushed her power to her fingertips. A faint yellow light flickered to life, but the moment it touched his neck, it scattered into nothing.

“Ah, ah. Ah, ugh…!”

At the same moment, a tearing pain surged up from within her belly. As she writhed in agony, the man set her back down. Emil stared quietly at Selene’s face, crumpled with pain, and his brow drew together.

“Tch, did the baby die? Haa…. Why do you do things like this, my love?”