The scent of bonfire lingered somewhere still. The beach before dawn was cold, and only the sound of waves repeated in steady rhythm. The suppression fleet that had departed from Karasagi Fortress was running aground one after another along the coastline of the Demon Continent, and soldiers were stepping down onto the sand. Eight hundred strong. A unit mixing elite soldiers selected from the Karasagi Knights' frontier response specialist division with regular infantry. Aira stood at the edge of the beach, gazing at the gray sky. The outline of the ruined city appeared to sink slightly inland on the horizon. Mist covered its outer edges, and the shapes of buildings were half-dissolved. The light before dawn was still weak, and the boundary between sky and earth was unclear. The wind was cold. The sand beneath her feet made fine sounds. (I've come.) That was all she thought. Not regret. Not sentiment either. Just the fact of standing here fell quietly into her body, and Aira silently accepted it. The burn scar on her right shoulder throbbed beneath her cloak. She could feel the cloth rewrapped last night. The heat she had received in the throne room of the ruined city still remained as real pain. "The supplieeeees!" Suddenly, a foolish shout came from behind. When Aira turned around, a soldier from the supply unit had just dropped a food bag from the edge of a cart into the surf. The bag was swallowed perfectly by the waves and washed ashore covered in sand. The surrounding soldiers had expressions that said "oh no." Vector glanced at the scene while walking across the sand. Vector—the field commander of the Karasagi Knights' frontier expedition, a man in his early fifties with distinctive short-cropped salt-and-pepper hair and a calm gaze, practical in nature—stopped and looked at the sand-covered bag, then said briefly to the entire unit: "Assume you're coming back alive. Including the food." Low laughter spread among the soldiers. The air conveyed that this was the same thing they'd heard at last night's bonfire. Tension relaxed for just a moment, like the tide receding. Aira's lips moved slightly as well. It couldn't quite be called a laugh. But something certainly loosened. That was enough. Everyone knew what lay ahead. If they could relax this much before that, it was sufficient. ──── By the time the unit completed its deployment at the outer edge of the ruined city, the sky was beginning to lighten. Vector calmly deployed each squad while observing the terrain. Heavy infantry with shields on the left flank, archers in the rear guard on the right, elite knights in the center—a standard anti-demon formation. It was clear he was trying to read the internal structure from the outer edge of the ruined city—stone foundations that had once been city walls, now half-buried in grass and gravel. Aira stood in the front line. Beyond that was mist. Black mist seeping out from within the ruined city was slowly spreading forward from the direction of the gate ruins. It wasn't a matter of light. In this area where the density of atmospheric magical essence—the magical power drifting in the atmosphere—was abnormally high, that essence seemed to be transforming into something else. A heavy air. The knights in the vanguard retreated one step, then another. It was oppressive. The sensation of something unseen pressing forward from ahead. A knight who seemed to be an adjutant reported something quickly to Vector, his voice carrying from behind. Aira didn't listen. She placed her hand on the hilt of her sword and looked beyond the mist. In that mist, it was there. She understood. She had come to understand. The nature of the presence was the same as what she had felt in the throne room of the ruined city. ──── The black mist cleared the moment dawn light poured in from the horizon. It didn't clear all at once. Slowly, as if a curtain were rising, the mist contracted inward, and a single figure appeared before the gate ruins of the ruined city. The entire battlefield froze. Standing there, quietly seeping black magical power from its body. The way the cloak hung, the angle of the shoulders, the stance of the feet. It matched the form in Aira's memory. But the eyes were different. Those abyssal blacks she had seen in the throne room—the color where even the whites of the eyes were dyed, unreadable in emotion—were turned toward her in the thin light of dawn, two of them. In the next moment, the atmosphere changed. It was a sensation of being drawn in. The atmospheric magical essence around them was being sucked wholesale toward a single point. Something like gravity began to dominate the entire battlefield, and the gravel at Aira's feet trembled slightly. In the distance, a rear guard knight who had been drawing a bow lost his stance. The Demon King's first wave had come. It wasn't a roar. It was a torrent of force released in an instant as compressed air—a power that gave no time to catch one's breath. Aira saw the vanguard knights blown away. Two, five, ten—sent flying with their shields, rolling across the ground. More than twenty were forced to retreat or fall. Aira ran between the fallen knights. Forward. Only forward. A voice called "Vice-Captain!" from the side, but she didn't stop. She confirmed for just a moment that the fallen knight could live, could stand—then ran again. The sound of gravel being crushed. The edge of her cloak cutting through the wind. From high in the ruined city, Lilia was watching the scene. Standing at the edge of a crumbling tower, the girl with mismatched eyes of pale purple and amber was looking down at the battlefield with an expression so quiet it was unreadable even from a distance. Connected to the ruined city's magical power as a shrine maiden, the girl who should have understood the structure of this battlefield better than anyone present was simply watching. As if waiting for something. As if measuring something. The way personal emotion and something else mixed within that small body—despite the distance—Aira felt she understood. (What that child is thinking doesn't matter right now.) Aira faced forward. The Demon King's black eyes caught Aira. She could feel the next magical wave being compressed. It was coming— It hit from the right side. It was heat more than impact. The remnants of her crumbling shoulder guard flew away, and a burn mark from magical power ran across her bare right shoulder. The same spot where Lilia had given her minimal treatment in the throne room of the ruined city. She had no time to think of the structural irony before her body fell. She caught herself on the gravel with her right hand. Memory came before pain. She had wrapped this shoulder in bandages before. Confirming the heat at the edge of the wound with her fingertips, carefully so it wouldn't stiffen. That strange sensation when she felt the raised scar tissue—the mark where an old wound had healed. The surface of an arm where burn marks from magical power had layered upon each other, touched gently by her own fingertips—Aira still remembered that sensation in the feeling of her hands. (That person was always receiving wounds like this.) Again and again. Repeatedly. Each time protecting someone, wounds accumulated in the same place. She pushed her body up. Using her right hand to push against the gravel, she got her knees under her. Her right shoulder was radiating heat, and the pain sharpened with each movement. Her face was hot. She couldn't tell if it was from the burn or something else. She didn't need to judge. Just standing up was enough. ──── From behind, Vector's voice reached the battlefield. It was a short command. Heavy infantry with shields advanced in two columns. A desperate shield formation—a tactic where the vanguard pushed forward knowing sacrifice, using that pressure to throw off the Demon King's next magical wave's aim—began to deploy. In the stone-heavy air, the sound of armor scraping together covered the battlefield. An adjutant's voice came from beside Vector. "Vice-Captain Aira has gone forward alone." There was a pause. "I'm watching." "Shouldn't we stop her?" A longer pause fell. "Do you think we can?" The adjutant's presence conveyed that he had nothing more to say. Vector himself took up a shield and stood on the front line immediately after. A man in his fifties, a practical administrator, silently holding a shield beside young knights. Everyone in the unit understood what that action meant. No one laughed. No one stopped him. Someone beside him simply raised their shield a little higher, closing the gap. Aira was running. Gripping her sword's hilt again with her wounded right arm, moving only forward. Fallen comrades' armor scattered at her feet. Someone was shouting "Vice-Captain!" The sound didn't make her turn. There was no reason to turn. The distance to the Demon King was closing. Black eyes were watching Aira. That alone was at the center of her vision. Unreadable in emotion, abyssal black. She could feel the next magical power being compressed. The aim was aligning with Aira. That was when it happened. Something wavered in the depths of the black. For just an instant—a moment so brief it could barely be called a moment—a different outline floated up in the deepest part of the abyssal black. It was like that shimmer when something submerged beneath the surface becomes visible for an instant with the movement of waves. It was a habit of posture. The angle of the arm on the armrest. The way the cloak hung. That form she had burned into her memory in the throne room of the ruined city—it was there, certainly, in the depths of the black. Only Aira saw it. No one else noticed. The knights behind had distance between them. Vector was focused on the shield formation. What Lilia was seeing from above was unknown. But Aira—from directly ahead—received that instant. Doubt vanished. Quietly, strangely quietly, it simply vanished. Not fear. Not the sorrow of loss either. Something pulsing in her chest moved once, greatly—then settled. The trembling in her wounded hand stopped. (There.) That alone became certainty. ──── The next magical wave being compressed—that motion stopped. Just for an instant. Because Aira had cried out. It wasn't words. She might have called a name. She might have shouted something. Before the content of that voice, the voice itself arrived—that was the sensation. Something like the magnetic force of a magnetic-fang beast, like a torrent of magical power, but a completely different kind of something was in that voice. The Demon King's motion paused for one beat. In the depths of the black eyes, shimmer arose again. This time longer, clearer. That outline—the form of a composed, calm adult with observant eyes—was trying to float up from beyond the abyssal black. Aira looked directly at it. She wasn't afraid. Strangely, she wasn't afraid. The body temperature of the moment she had grasped Raid's arm walking through the corridors of the ruined city in Chapter 29. She felt she could understand now why Lilia had transferred her in Chapter 30. And last night, when she had answered beside the bonfire that "there's something only I can do," her own voice now held meaning in this place. Here it was. This was that place. Her scarred hand continued to grip the sword. She didn't draw it. But she didn't let go either. In that place between the two, simply holding on. That was all Aira could do now, and she had the certainty that it was enough. From above, Lilia was watching. At the edge of the crumbling tower, the mismatched eyes of pale purple and amber looked down at the scene—and Lilia's lips moved slightly. She was murmuring something. The voice didn't reach. It may have been lost to the wind. No one on the battlefield could know what those words were. Aira took a step forward. The sound of gravel fell into the silence. That moment fro