From Vienny’s perspective, it was, at best, questionable. Tilting her head slightly, she replied in a firm voice.

“I am not curious.”

Vienny had joined forces with the demons, but only for her own survival – not to laugh and chat and make friends.

Gentian alone was more than enough trouble for her. If it weren’t for his usefulness, she would have severed all ties and disappeared long ago.

Barely over twenty, Gentian was curious, hot-blooded and overly enthusiastic – a fledgling. Considering the environment he had grown up in, it was almost surprising how energetic he still was.

Of course, his energy didn’t mean that he was a morally upright, well-behaved young man.

“The others are curious about you. Do you know what they call you?”

Gentian spoke in a deliberately ominous tone, his expression mockingly dark.

“Black Ghost.”

Vienny stared blankly at Gentian for a moment before turning away with an indifferent expression and giving a brief reply.

“Nice.”

“Are you serious?” Gentian asked.

“Yes.”

Her utter disinterest made Gentian pull a face of exasperation. Ignoring him, Vienny finished treating the wound on her arm, applied a fresh bandage and stood up.

The hideout was stocked with only the bare necessities, all supplied by Gentian.

Unlike Vienny, who couldn’t easily make contact with humans because of her red eyes, the demons had their own methods. Having lost their nation, they banded together, which naturally put them in a better position than Vienny, who hid alone.

Through Gentian, Vienny received the necessities of life. In return, she gave the demons detailed information about Tempe’s terrain and the locations of the camps where the heretic inquisitors were hiding. It was not a bad deal.

In truth, she had only one wish.

To turn all of Tempe into a battlefield. To burn it all down. To ensure that the scattered witches who had fled after her mother’s death would be drawn into this war.

In essence, her wish had not changed since the beginning.

The demons hated Chiron, and Chiron was determined to use this opportunity to wipe out not only the witches of Tempe, but the demons as well. Tempe burned, no place untouched. Sometimes it was even hard to find a beast to feed on her blood.

“How many days will you go under this time?”

“Three,” Vienny replied.

Gentian had never seen Vienny connect with the beasts. The communion happened while she slept, so she always made sure she was completely alone during it.

Even Vienny didn’t know what she looked like during the communion, and it was better that no one saw her in that state. By now she could roughly predict when the communion would take place, so she gathered the necessary items and made her way to a separate room she had set up inside.

Just as she was about to enter and lock the door, Vienny stopped. She looked at Gentian and spoke in a calm voice.

“In three days we’re packing up and leaving this place. So if you’re not completely healed, make sure you are by then.”

“Leaving? Why?” Gentian asked, confused.

“You said it yourself. He’s back.”

Gentian, who stood there with a confused expression on his face, soon let out a deep sigh. Now that he thought about it, this hideout wasn’t too far from where Vienny had fled from the fanatic obsessed with her blood.

Seeing that Gentian understood, Vienny turned away indifferently. A low murmur escaped her lips, almost as if she were talking to herself.

“…Better to be careful than to regret it later.”

* * *

She had never forgotten the day she fell under the waterfall. On that day, she had forced herself to control the flock of crows.

Forcing her will on the crows was mentally exhausting, and if she wasn’t careful, she risked losing consciousness before she even managed to escape.

But for now, she had no choice but to rely on the crows. Fortunately, the witch hunters had emptied the campsites, and only one soldier had been assigned to watch her.

After dealing with the soldier, she stood in front of the waterfall, desperately trying to find a way to escape. But no matter how hard she looked, there was no way out.

Her leg hadn’t fully healed, and if they came after her on horseback, there was no way she could outrun them. All that lay before her was the towering waterfall.

At that moment, she felt that now was the time to finally let go of this wretched fate. It wasn’t the place she’d imagined, but the idea of willingly plunging into the water was the same.

As she tried to steady herself in the blurring rain, McClart arrived. The witch hunt shouldn’t have ended so soon – how had he known she’d try to escape? Just this morning, when he’d left the camp, he hadn’t even felt the need to bind her.

He was certainly living up to his reputation as the High Priest’s favourite heretic inquisitor. The unexpected encounter seemed to have made Vienny a little emotional.

She remembered feeling a slight sense of disappointment towards McClart. Disappointment, of all things. Even now it was an amusing thought.

“Vienny!”

The last she heard was his angry voice. He had been strangely reluctant to kill her, so to see her attempt something akin to suicide must have provoked his anger deeply.

It would have been better if he had just assumed she was dead. But when she remembered the soldiers who had searched the area tirelessly, it seemed he hadn’t thought that way. Maybe they were even trying to find her body.

But at that moment, it felt like the whole world was on her side. The first to save her life was the flock of crows that broke her fall.

The heavy rain that made it almost impossible to see, Gentian finding her before the soldiers, Gentian’s nearby hideout, and even the High Priest’s angry order for McClart to return, all worked in her favour.

It couldn’t have been more perfect. So what about this time?

Vienny stared silently at the dark ceiling of the cave before slowly closing her eyes. The moisture in the air brought back memories of that day.

To be honest, her heart had been trembling with fear ever since she had heard the news from Gentian. A year was not enough to erase anything from her mind.

What about him? Had he forgotten the Great Witch who had defiantly jumped in front of him? Vienny wasn’t sure.

She still couldn’t believe that all his kindness towards her was just to keep his bed warm. Of course, she had no intention of returning to his side just because she missed this so-called kindness.

While she couldn’t completely rule out the possibility that he had forgotten her, she wasn’t about to become complacent.

Just because she’d been lucky enough to escape his grasp once didn’t mean she expected to succeed a second time. So she would lay low, keep quiet, and flee even further.

She would survive and see Tempe’s final ashes with her own eyes. She just had to hold on a little longer.

* * *

The Heretic Inquisitors of Chiron never reused a camp once it had been set up. Since witch hunting meant exposing witches in hiding, the methods had to become more discreet every day.

As the number of witches dwindled, it became increasingly difficult to achieve results by force alone. Vienny’s main task was to track down the locations of their ever-changing campsites.

Occasionally, when she discovered a witch’s hiding place, she would make sure to remember it by deliberately having a flock of crows circle overhead. Inevitably, Chiron’s scouts would investigate the place.

Perhaps the fact that she had killed a soldier with a flock of crows just before her escape had made a strong impression on them. If she could have used the crows more often, everything would have been much easier than it was now.

Today she woke up with her arm drenched in blood. No matter how many thousands of times she repeated it, the nausea that came upon waking after the connection never got any easier.

Was she turning into a beast herself? She pressed her hand to her forehead. Although she had done nothing, her whole body felt drained of energy.

The last scene she had seen through the eyes of a beast lingered in her mind like an afterimage. In the hideout, heavy with the scent of blood, she panted for air and struggled to rise.

There was no sign of anyone outside the door. Gentian was either asleep or had stepped out for a while.

When she awoke, ten days after he had rescued her, Vienny realised that Gentian was the same demon she had once seen through the eyes of a beast near the corpse dump at Raven Castle.

He had come to the area to avenge his comrades who had been hanged, and planned to attack as soon as the witch-hunt was over. His target was probably McClart.

But as he watched the camp, he found Vienny washed up on the riverbank, throwing all his plans into disarray. He grumbled about it.

Gentian had a carefree and somewhat immature personality, with a lingering innocence similar to that of an immature child.

He was also an impulsive young man, filled with fiery determination, willing to charge into enemy territory out of anger for his fallen comrades and a strong sense of loyalty. Despite the number of Chiron’s soldiers, he had managed to get close without being detected.

“Help me.”

She had been prepared to die, but her survival meant that the fate of the Great Witch had not yet loosened its grip on her. If that was the case, Vienny decided to take the lead again, this time to burn Tempe to the ground.

“My mother was killed by an Inquisitor, and I barely escaped. Please hide me.”

The part that must have moved him was: “My mother was killed by an Inquisitor.” He had also lost his comrades to the Inquisitors.

Fortunately, the heavy rain washed away their tracks easily. After begging Gentian for help, she soon lost consciousness again.

By the time she regained consciousness, McClart had been forcibly recalled. The soldiers were gone, and with nowhere else to go, she stayed in the area.

Fortunately, Gentian took pity on her and offered her his entire hideout. For Vienny, it was an offer she couldn’t refuse.

Since she needed to hide not only from Chiron but also from the witches, joining forces with Gentian was an inevitable choice.

Vienny, having regained some strength, struggled to stand. The blanket was soaked with cold sweat and blood. She wanted to rest a little longer, but her anxious mind wouldn’t let her lie down in peace.

She moved to the door, listening quietly for any sound before carefully opening it. Gentian, dozing in a chair, was startled awake by the faint creaking of metal.

“Ugh…”

He pinched his nose as he opened his eyes.

“How much blood did you lose this time?”

Fortunately, her blood seemed to have a rather foul smell to demons. Seeing him flinch each time was proof enough.

“How long has it been?” she asked.

“Three days. You’re quite accurate.”

Gentian yawned as he rubbed his neck. Vienny gave him a quick glance before roughly wrapping her arm in cloth and starting to gather her belongings.

Even though she lived with only the bare essentials, she realised as she looked around that there was still quite a lot. She chose only those items that were easy to carry, and as she packed, Gentian frowned in confusion.

“You want to leave the moment you wake up? Are you serious? You look like a corpse right now.”

“The bleeding has stopped,” she replied.

“Why are you in such a hurry? Did you see something strange in your dream?”

At this question, Vienny’s face grew even paler. It was already devoid of colour, but somehow it seemed she could lose even more. An astonishing insight indeed.

“Yes, which is why I have to leave right now.”

“What did you see that made you like this?”

By this time, even Gentian had dropped his playful demeanour and turned serious.

Vienny unconsciously bit her lip, something she had been trying to avoid. For the first time in a long time, the taste of blood spread through her mouth.

“McClart.”

Her lip, bitten after such a long time, quickly turned red with blood, as if it had always been that way.

“McClart Hemlock.”