The smell of blood. No. Not blood. This is the smell of a soul burning——Lira thought. Whenever an entity stitched together from the lingering souls of the dead drew near, the air always transformed like this. A stench that mixed iron, decaying leaves, and something sickeningly sweet—the kind that made your back teeth ache. In the center of the abandoned village, there was an empty space that must have once been a plaza. Withered grass stretched from the seams of the stone pavement, and moss clung to the edges of a collapsed water channel. Until three years ago, people had lived here. Someone had kindled a fire in the morning, someone had scolded a child, someone had laughed. The traces of that remained scattered about in the form of charred beam remnants. Lira stood in the center of the plaza. Five of them. Warriors with translucent outlines——corpse-ring soldiers——were slowly tightening their encirclement. In the depths of their eyes, the terror of the moment of death was fixed an