The cabin roared. It was no longer a home; it was a funeral pyre.
Nyra staggered out of the treeline, her bare feet sinking into snow mixed with mud. The heat behind her was unbearable, but the cold ahead was deadly.
She stopped for a moment, turning to look back. The roof collapsed in a shower of orange sparks that rose into the night sky, mingling with indifferent stars.
Eijiro was in there.
The man who forged metal.
The man who forged her heart.
Now, he was ash.
Another image overlapped reality:
A burning Victorian mansion.
Screams.
Her mother. Her sister. Alyra.
Her younger self fighting monsters in the flames.
"Again…" Nyra whispered, her throat raw with smoke.
"They took everything from me. Again."
A wave of pure, distilled hatred climbed her spine. She wanted to scream. She wanted to unleash Monster Awaken, her supreme lupine form and become the calamity that would wipe out the entire forest.
She threw her head back. The veins in her neck glowed with electric blue. Power vibrated… then failed.
Her body, drained by childbirth and shock, rejected the transformation. The blue light flickered out, leaving her in darkness. She coughed blood, collapsing to her knees. She wasn't a divine monster that night.
She was just wounded flesh.
But she wasn't empty.
Waaaaah! Waaaaah!
The sharp cry cut through the roar of the fire.
Nyra looked down at the bundle in her arms. She had wrapped the baby frantically in the blue coat Eijiro had made, covering the small head with the thick collar embroidered with lilies. The fabric smelled like him. It was his final embrace shielding his daughter.
"Shhh…" Nyra hissed, not gently, but in panic. "They'll hear you."
Crack.
A branch snapped in the darkness ahead.
They didn't need to hear.
They already knew.
Three Shadow Beasts emerged from the forest edge, blocking her path. They were larger than the ones in the cabin, deformed wolves made of tar and malice. Their red eyes fixed on the bundle in Nyra's arms.
"The offspring…" the middle beast growled, its voice like grinding stones.
Nyra had no sword. No axe. No magic.
She set the baby down in the snow, behind a thick oak root, shielding her from direct view.
"Stay quiet," she ordered, but the child kept screaming at full force.
Nyra stood. She rolled up the sleeves of her bloodstained yukata. Her hands shook, but her claws, the only weapon left, extended.
The beasts attacked.
It wasn't a duel. It was a slaughter in the mud.
The first beast leaped. Nyra didn't try to block; she slid under it, her stomach scraping the dirty ice, and tore open the creature's belly with her claws. Black blood splashed across her face, hot and vile.
The second beast slammed into her side, throwing her against a tree. Pain exploded through her ribs, air blasted from her lungs. The creature clamped down on her left arm.
Nyra didn't scream.
She snarled.
Ignoring the teeth sinking into her biceps, she used her free hand. Her fingers, rigid like daggers, plunged into the beast's eye socket. She felt the gelatin pop. Felt the skull give way.
She pulled, shredding, turning its brain to pulp.
The beast released her and collapsed, twitching.
Nyra collapsed as well, gasping. Blood streamed down her arm, mixing with birthing blood still staining her legs. Her vision blurred. The world spun.
The third beast — the largest — approached her slowly. It knew the prey was nearly finished. It didn't even look at Nyra. It looked toward the root. Toward the crying.
"Fresh meat…" it drooled, ignoring the mother to reach the baby.
Time stopped.
Nyra saw the beast moving toward the black coat.
She saw Eijiro dead. Alyra dead.
She saw her daughter next.
"No!"
Exhaustion vanished, replaced with absolute maternal hysteria.
Nyra didn't stand, she launched herself.
Like a projectile, she slammed onto the beast's back.
She didn't use technique.
She used savagery.
She wrapped her legs around its waist and her arms around its neck. Then she bit down.
Her human jaw, strengthened by her lupine lineage, clamped onto its throat of smoke and rotted flesh.
The taste was vile — death and sulfur — but Nyra didn't let go. She shook her head violently, like a wolf finishing off prey, growling through flesh that tore under her teeth.
The beast thrashed, slamming itself against trees to crush her, but she clung like a furious tick.
With a wet snap, the creature's trachea gave way.
The beast collapsed.
Nyra rolled off to the side, spitting chunks of black flesh into the snow. She tried to stand but couldn't. She crawled.
She reached the blue bundle. Her bloody, trembling hands pushed aside the leather collar.
The baby was there, face red from crying but alive. Unharmed.
Nyra lifted her, holding her so tightly she feared she'd crush her. She turned back.
The cabin was now only a skeletal frame of embers. The fire was dying, just like her old life. There was nothing left there. Only bones and ash.
But the forest was full of eyes. More bats were arriving. Howls echoed from deeper in the woods. Dracula's guard would not stop.
Nyra forced herself upright. Every muscle screamed, every nerve burned. She pulled the hood of Eijiro's coat over her head, hiding her face and the child's in shadow.
She turned her back on the fire and faced the snowy darkness of the forest.
"We're going to live," she whispered to her daughter, her voice broken, but hard as diamond.
"And one day… we're going to burn their world."
She began to run. Not the swift run of a warrior, but the heavy, relentless trot of a wounded wolf carrying the future in her teeth.
Snow fell harder, erasing her footprints as she vanished into the white night, leaving behind a trail of blood and the smoke of a love that became legend.