But Mia… she stood unshaken. Her frosted gaze locked onto the intruders, her expression betraying neither fear nor hope. There was no tremor in her stance, no uncertainty in her eyes. Only an icy calm, as though she had anticipated something beyond comprehension to arrive sooner or later. To her, the battlefield was merely following its inevitable course.
The first to move was the masked one. His sword cut through the air with a voice of its own—a sharp whisper laced with threads of dark energy. The arc of steel did not descend upon the humans, as so many feared, but swept cleanly across the elevated rows where the seated devils observed their feast of slaughter. Three of them—creatures of arrogance and ancient cruelty—barely had time to widen their eyes before the blade found them. They dissolved into black dust, scattered like ash on a windless day.
The sound of their disintegration was soft, almost pitiful, but the silence that followed was deafening.
