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The shot left the Loot House sunk in an impossible silence.
It was not a real silence, because the echo was still bouncing between the beams, splintered wood was falling in small knocks onto the floor, and more than one stolen object had ended up rolling off the shelves. But for Link, for a couple of seconds, everything was suspended in a kind of thick void. The shotgun still smoked between his hands. The recoil had struck his shoulder hard, but his body barely registered it beyond a dry shove. In front of him, the warehouse entrance was marked by fragments of broken wood, floating dust, and a black line opened in the wall where the pellets had bitten into the world.
Elsa was not where he had aimed.
That was the first thing he understood.
He had not killed her.
He had not even truly stopped her.
The woman in black had retreated with inhuman grace, twisting her body just enough to avoid the center of the shot. Some splinters and fragments had reached her. A thin line of blood was drawn over the pale skin of her side, visible through a cut in her black clothing. It was not a mortal wound. It did not even seem like a serious wound. For any normal person, the roar of that weapon would have meant confusion, fear, the instinct to take cover, perhaps escape. For Elsa, instead, it seemed to have been a pleasant surprise.
Her amethyst eyes slid first toward the shotgun and then toward Link.
There was no recognition in them.
Only curiosity.
"What a violent sound," she said in a soft, almost pleased voice. "I have never heard a weapon roar like that."
Link did not answer immediately. His throat had closed up. His finger was still near the trigger, and he had to force himself not to shoot again out of pure panic. He did not have a clean shot. Subaru was too close to the silver-haired girl. Puck floated in front of her with his fur slightly bristling. Felt was off to one side, rigid, with the pistol Link had given her half hidden between her hands, not knowing whether she should aim, run, or scream. Rom had raised his club, and his enormous shadow occupied half the room.
The silver-haired girl, pushed out of the attack's path by Subaru's warning, had fallen to her knees and was looking at Elsa with wide eyes, barely processing the idea that a stranger had just tried to split her in two. Subaru was beside her, his face pale and his breathing uneven, but his eyes did not leave the assassin.
"She aims for your stomach!" Subaru shouted, as if he still needed to convince everyone of what they had just seen. "Don't let her get close!"
"Stomach?" the silver-haired girl repeated, with a mixture of confusion and alarm.
Puck wasted no time asking questions. The small creature floated in front of her, and a barrier of ice formed in the air just as Elsa moved again.
Link could barely follow her.
One instant she was by the entrance; the next, her black silhouette crossed the dust like a shadow with an edge. The curved blades in her hands shone in a low arc, aimed at the girl's abdomen. Puck's ice clashed against the steel with a sharp, crystalline sound, and the force of the impact made the air itself seem to crack. Elsa retreated without losing her smile, pushing off with the tips of her feet as if the defense had not been an obstacle, but the beginning of a dance.
"Well," she murmured. "This has become more interesting."
Puck, floating with dangerous calm, tilted his head slightly.
"I don't usually receive compliments from people trying to cut my daughter."
"It was not a compliment," Elsa replied, barely licking her lips. "It was expectation."
The silver-haired girl stood up, one hand near the crystal hanging from her chest, the other raised to invoke magic. She did not seem to understand the entire situation, but her body had entered combat with a speed Link did not expect from someone so delicate in appearance. The air around her cooled, and small bluish lights began to form around her fingers.
Link took a step back, not from immediate cowardice, but because the room was becoming a hell of crossed trajectories. Ice, knives, wood, people. The shotgun, which a few seconds ago had seemed like a guarantee, now felt like a dangerous animal in a room full of allies. If he shot badly, he could kill Subaru. He could tear half of Rom's body away. He could destroy Felt. He could hit the girl everyone was trying to protect.
"Shit..." he murmured, lowering the barrel slightly.
"Why are you lowering that?!" Felt shrieked from one side, without taking her eyes off Elsa.
"Because I don't want to turn you into a strainer by accident!"
"Then aim well!"
"I'm not a soldier, I'm a Latino with trauma and a shotgun!"
"That doesn't reassure me!"
Subaru, still beside the silver-haired girl, turned his head for a second.
"Nobody is calm! That is the central point of the situation!"
Elsa's response was to attack.
The warehouse exploded into motion.
Puck launched a barrage of ice projectiles. They were not simple improvised chunks; they were born in the air with sharp, clear, shining shapes, and shot toward Elsa with terrifying precision. The woman in black did not try to block them all. She turned, bent her body, used her coat like a dark curtain to deflect some, and cut others with her kukris. Every clash produced flashes of frost and metal. Link saw fragments of ice lodge into shelves, split bottles, and bounce off wood. One passed so close to his ear that he felt the cold burn his skin.
Elsa moved among them as if she had been born to fight in enclosed spaces. Where any other person would have been trapped by the number of attacks, she found minimal gaps, tilting her head by centimeters, stepping on clean spots between fragments of ice, using the negotiation table as support to leap and fall from an impossible angle. It was not brute force. Not only that. It was experience. It was instinct. It was such a deep understanding of combat that every object in the room became an extension of her body.
The silver-haired girl joined the bombardment with a tense expression. More ice appeared before her and shot out in quick lines. Elsa spun a kukri and deflected two projectiles toward the ceiling. Another grazed her shoulder, cutting black fabric, but not skin. The assassin smiled as if the brush had been a caress.
"You fight well," Elsa said, looking at the girl with grotesque courtesy. "It is a pity you seem so worried about not destroying the place too much."
"I have no intention of hurting those who are not my enemies," she answered in a firm voice, though Link noticed her fingers trembling a little.
"That must be inconvenient."
Elsa launched herself forward.
Puck created a wall of ice between them. Elsa's blade bit into it from the side, not trying to pierce it completely, but using it as support to change direction. Her body spun around the wall and appeared on the right flank, closer to Subaru and Felt than Link would have liked. Subaru raised the pistol with trembling hands, but he did not shoot. He could not. Elsa was too mixed in with the others. Felt did react, aiming with a growl, but her finger stayed rigid over the weapon, unable to decide whether to pull the trigger while Subaru was in the way.
Link saw Elsa turn toward Felt.
His body moved before his head.
"Felt!"
The shotgun roared again.
This time the shot did not aim for Elsa's body, but the space in front of her. The wooden floor exploded between the assassin and the blonde girl, raising a cloud of splinters that forced Elsa to stop for half a step. Only half. It was enough for Felt to jump back and for Subaru to grab her by the shoulder to pull her away.
Elsa looked at the destroyed area of the floor and then at Link, as if she had just discovered a new game.
"That weapon does not cut," she said. "It tears."
"Stay away from her," Link growled.
Elsa smiled.
"What a protective tone from someone who trembles so much."
Link could not deny it. His hands were trembling. His arms were trembling. His entire chest was trembling. The memory of his own death was not a distant scene; it was an animal clinging to the back of his neck. Every time Elsa tilted her knives, his body remembered his hand separating from his wrist, his abdomen opening, his head rolling. And yet his feet did not move backward.
Felt looked at him from the floor, where Subaru had pushed her.
"I don't need you to protect me," she said, but her voice sounded less firm than she wanted.
"Shut up and stay alive," Link replied.
Rom advanced then, tired of waiting. His club swept through the air with a violence that made the warehouse vibrate. Elsa jumped back, narrowly avoiding the blow. The wooden floor creaked when Rom's weapon struck where she had been. Stolen objects jumped off the shelves, and several glass items shattered.
"Don't let her move however she wants!" Rom roared. "If we corner her, even a rat with knives has to bleed."
"Old man, I appreciate the enthusiasm, but she hears metaphors as if they were invitations," Subaru said, dragging Felt toward a less exposed area.
"Then let her come!"
Rom attacked again. Elsa dodged him with the ease of someone who perfectly understood the weight of a large weapon. Every blow from Rom could turn an ordinary person into minced meat, but every blow needed space, trajectory, and recovery. Elsa only had to not be there when the club fell. Even so, Rom's presence changed the rhythm of the battle. It was no longer only magic against speed. The old giant cut off routes, forced Elsa to change angles, and prevented her from launching herself directly at the silver-haired girl.
Puck took advantage.
Dozens of ice fragments scattered across the floor, mixing with the remains of broken projectiles. Elsa broke them when they were in the way, stepped on them, kicked them, used them as support. Link did not understand the purpose until the woman in black tried to take a sidestep and her right foot was caught.
The ice closed around her ankle.
Elsa looked down.
"My foot..."
Puck floated on the shoulder of the silver-haired girl, his black eyes narrowed.
"You didn't think I was leaving all that ice there just for decoration, did you?"
Link felt a small, immediate, dangerous hope.
"Now!" Subaru shouted.
Puck gathered a mass of bluish energy between his paws. It was not a simple ice projectile. It was something denser, brighter, a concentration of cold and force that filled the surrounding air with frost. The silver-haired girl held her position, pale from the effort. Rom moved aside with a grunt, and Link pulled Felt back by the collar of her clothes without asking permission.
"Hey!"
"Don't get in the line of fire!"
The light shot forward.
It did not cross the warehouse like a beam; it transformed it. Everything in its path was covered in white. The table, the counter, the stolen objects, the floor, the walls, even the air seemed to freeze around that trajectory. If Elsa took that head-on, there would be no assassin left, only a cold and silent statue.
But Elsa did not take it.
Link saw her do something his brain took a moment to accept.
With grotesque speed, Elsa cut the sole of her own trapped foot, freeing herself from the ice at the cost of leaving blood on the frozen floor. Her body bent out of the attack's path, and Puck's energy passed through where she had been an instant before, blasting open the door and sending a wave of cold outside.
Felt stopped struggling.
"She's insane..." she whispered.
"Yes," Link answered, without looking away.
Elsa fell outside the frozen line, barefoot on one foot and bleeding profusely. Any person would have screamed. She did not. She merely looked at the wound with disturbing satisfaction, as if the pain confirmed something intimate. Then she pressed the cut sole against a piece of ice and used the cold to stop the bleeding. Her breathing shuddered, but not from ordinary suffering. It was pleasure, relief, excitement.
Subaru brought a hand to his mouth.
"That's disgusting..."
Link said nothing. His fear had just evolved. Before, he feared Elsa because she could kill him. Now he feared her because she did not even seem to obey the basic parts of being human.
Puck shone weakly.
The silver-haired girl looked at him immediately.
"Puck..."
"I'm sorry," the small spirit said, and for the first time his voice had lost part of its lightness. "I overdid it a little. If I keep going like this, I'm going to disappear from lack of mana."
"Rest. Thank you."
"If something happens, call me. Don't hesitate."
Puck's body began to dissolve into small particles of light. Elsa watched him with almost childish disappointment.
"Are you leaving already? How sad. The show was only just starting to improve."
Puck did not answer her. Before disappearing completely, he looked at the silver-haired girl with a tenderness that did not fit that field of death. Then he vanished into the crystal, leaving the room colder, emptier, and much more dangerous.
The balance shifted.
Link felt it before anyone said it.
Without Puck, the silver-haired girl could still fight, but Elsa no longer had to divide her attention against that constant bombardment. Rom was still strong, but he could not reach her. Subaru was brave, but useless in combat. Felt was fast, but she was not made to face a professional assassin. And Link had weapons, abnormal strength, and enough fear to fill an ocean, but none of that resembled knowing how to fight Elsa.
"This is getting ugly," he murmured.
"Only now?" Felt said.
Elsa advanced.
The first clash was against the silver-haired girl. She raised an ice shield just in time, and the kukri struck it with a dry blow. Elsa spun on her healthy foot, using the other carefully because of the improvised ice shoe she had created, but even injured she still moved with absurd speed. The girl retreated, freezing the ground in front of Elsa to slow her advance. Elsa leapt sideways, using a shelf as support, and landed on a broken table, from where she launched herself again with a calm smile.
Rom intervened, his club descending diagonally.
Elsa ducked beneath the blow and slid one blade toward the giant's arm. Rom stepped back just enough to avoid having his tendons cut, but blood opened a line on his forearm. The old man growled and answered with a kick that forced her away. Link tried to shoot, but once again he had no angle. Subaru was behind her. The silver-haired girl was in front. Rom was too close. Felt was moving along the edge.
"I can't shoot!" he roared.
"Then do something else!" Felt shouted.
Link put his hand into the bag where he kept the flashbangs.
His heart hammered.
He was not sure how much it would help. He was not sure if he could blind the others. He was not sure if something designed by soldiers from his world could work the same way in that frozen, magic-filled warehouse. But he had no time for manuals, morals, or doubts.
"Close your eyes!" he shouted. "Now!"
Subaru, by some miraculous reason, obeyed without asking. The silver-haired girl hesitated half a second, but closed her eyes upon hearing the desperation in his voice. Rom turned his face away. Felt looked at him as if she wanted to argue.
"Felt, damn it!"
She closed her eyes and covered herself.
Link threw the flashbang toward the center of the warehouse, away from the silver-haired girl and close enough to Elsa to force her to react.
The blast was brutal.
Not like the shotgun. Not like a blow. It was compressed light and thunder, a white explosion that filled the inside of the Loot House and, for an instant, turned reality into a shapeless flash. Even with his eyes almost closed, Link felt needles of light pierce his eyelids. The sound struck his ears like an enormous bell. Several objects fell. Someone screamed. Felt cursed in a high-pitched voice. Subaru let out a groan that sounded like a soul escaping through his nose.
Link opened his eyes through tears.
Elsa was on her knees.
Not completely incapacitated.
But surprised.
One of her hands covered part of her face. Her eyes blinked rapidly, trying to regain focus. It was the first time Link had seen her lose, even for one second, her perfect predator calm. That second was enough.
"Felt, move!" he shouted.
She needed nothing more. She jumped back, moving away from the attack line. Subaru followed her clumsily. Rom raised his club with both hands and attacked, taking advantage of the opening. The blow did not connect fully; Elsa rolled aside despite the daze, but the end of the club grazed her shoulder and sent her crashing into some boxes. The wood split beneath her body.
"Good!" Subaru shouted, too soon.
Elsa emerged from the wreckage like a wounded shadow.
The smile had returned.
"What an unpleasant tool," she said, her voice a little lower. "It stole my sight for a moment. That was not polite."
"File a complaint," Link spat.
She looked at him.
And then she decided he was a problem.
She did not lunge at the silver-haired girl. Not at Subaru. Not at Rom. Her eyes fixed on Link, on the shotgun, and on the bag where he kept the grenades. The distance between them vanished in less than a heartbeat.
Link tried to raise the shotgun.
Elsa arrived first.
Her knife struck the barrel from the side, deflecting it. The shotgun fired into the ceiling, tearing beams and a rain of splinters away. At the same time, the second kukri cut toward his abdomen. Link stepped back by instinct, but not enough. The blade opened his shirt and the skin beneath, a hot line crossing his stomach without disemboweling him. The pain was immediate, clear, unbearable compared to the blows his body resisted. Elsa could cut him. Elsa could pierce that absurd resistance.
Link let out a grunt and used the shotgun as a club, swinging at her head. Elsa dodged by leaning aside, almost lazily, and opened his left forearm with a quick cut. Blood came out in a red line. Link gritted his teeth, twisted his body, and launched a low kick. This time he reached her, not with full force, but enough to make her slide across the frozen floor.
Rom took the chance to stand between them.
"Don't stay alone against her, idiot!"
"That wasn't my plan!"
Elsa recovered her balance, and her gaze returned to Felt.
There was no announcement. No phrase. She simply saw a route, a possibility, and took it.
She launched herself toward the blonde girl.
Felt, still with the pistol in her hand, aimed and fired once.
The roar was smaller than the shotgun's, but just as violent inside the enclosed space. The bullet did not hit. Elsa moved her torso, and the projectile shattered a bottle behind her. Felt opened her eyes, surprised by the recoil and by having missed. That instant of shock almost killed her.
Elsa was already on top of her, and Link threw himself between them.
Not with technique. Not with elegance. With pure terror.
The blade that was going toward Felt found Link's body. The kukri pierced his left side, entering beneath his ribs with a coldness that stole the air from his lungs. The second blade descended toward his shoulder. Link raised his arm to block and lost two fingers from his left hand in a flash of steel. They fell to the floor with a small sound, absurd, almost insignificant amid the chaos.
The pain arrived like white fire.
Link screamed.
It was not a heroic scream. It was pure, animal, shameful pain. The shotgun slipped from his hand and fell to the floor. Felt remained behind him, her face splashed with his blood, eyes open in horror.
"What did you do?!" she screamed.
"I told you to run!"
Elsa tried to pull the blade from his side, but Link grabbed her wrist with his mutilated hand, slipping in blood. His remaining fingers barely closed, but his abnormal strength compensated for what was missing. Elsa looked at him with genuine interest.
"Your body is resistant, but not enough. How curious."
"Shut up..." Link gasped, blood between his teeth.
Rom arrived like a storm, forcing Elsa to release the kukri embedded in Link in order to dodge the club. The blade remained in his side. Link fell to his knees, feeling the metal move inside his flesh with every breath. Subaru reached him, pale.
"Link!"
"Don't touch me!" Link roared, more out of panic than logic. "Get Felt out!"
"I'm not leaving!" Felt shouted.
Link turned toward her with a fury that made him forget the pain for one second.
"Look at my hand!"
Felt froze.
Link raised his left hand. Two fingers were missing. Blood ran down his wrist, hot, far too red. His eyes burned, not only from pain but from rage.
"This was for you! That cut was for you! So don't come at me with pride now, because I swear that if I get torn to pieces protecting a brat who stands still, I'm going to come back from the grave just to yell at you!"
Felt clenched her teeth so hard her jaw trembled.
"I didn't ask you to—"
"Nobody asks for these things!"
Subaru, his face tense, grabbed her arm.
"Felt, move. Now. It's not surrendering. It's looking for help."
"Help?" she repeated, as if the word made no sense in her mouth.
Rom and Elsa clashed again at the back. The silver-haired girl tried to support with ice, but Elsa pressured her whenever she could, forcing her to defend more than attack. Puck was gone. The warehouse was breaking little by little. The door had been destroyed by the previous attack. Outside, dusk was falling over the slums.
Subaru looked toward the exit. Something crossed his eyes. Not exact future knowledge of how salvation would come, but a desperate decision born from the only thing he could still do.
"Run through the slums," Subaru told Felt. "Shout. Find anyone. A guard, a knight, whoever. Make noise. A lot of noise. You're fast. Faster than us. If you stay, Elsa kills you. If you run, maybe you bring help."
Felt looked at Rom.
The old giant was bleeding from one arm and one leg, but he was still standing, using his club to prevent Elsa from crossing toward them. His breathing was heavy. His face was red from the effort.
"Old man..." she murmured.
Rom did not look at her. He could not afford to. But he spoke.
"Listen to him, Felt."
"But—"
"Listen!"
The old man's order broke something in her.
Felt took one step back. Then another. Her eyes were bright with fury and fear. Link saw how she closed her fist around the pistol, then clumsily put it away because she understood it would not help her if she had to run. She bent down, picked up the insignia from where it had fallen during the chaos, and pressed it against her chest.
Elsa turned her head.
"I will not allow that."
She moved toward Felt.
Link stood up.
He did not know how. The blade was still embedded in his side. Blood filled his clothes. His left hand was a disaster. His abdomen had an open cut and his forearm burned. But he stood up. He grabbed the shotgun from the floor with his right hand, not to shoot, but to use it as a barrier, and threw himself at Elsa just as she tried to pass.
Elsa cut him.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
The first cut opened his chest diagonally, superficial only because he leaned back in time. The second tore a chunk of flesh from his shoulder. The third crossed his thigh and nearly made him fall. Link felt each wound as a separate explosion, but he kept blocking the path. He was not capable of defeating her. He could not even properly follow her with his eyes. He could only get in the way. Become a wall. Become flesh that bought seconds.
Elsa stopped in front of him, eyes shining.
"How stubborn."
"Latino," Link gasped. "There's a difference."
He did not even know what that meant in that context. It did not matter. He needed to talk so he would not scream.
Felt passed behind him.
Elsa leaned forward to launch herself.
Link thrust his right hand into the bag and pulled out another flashbang.
Elsa saw the movement.
This time she had learned.
Her kukri cut toward his hand before Link could throw it. The blade opened his palm and almost made him drop the object. Desperate, Link closed his fingers over the grenade and turned toward Felt, covering the girl's movement with his own body. Elsa took advantage of the turn to drive a kick into his injured ribs. Something cracked inside him. Link crashed into a table, breaking it under his weight, but managed to throw the grenade toward an opposite corner before hitting the floor.
"Eyes!" he managed to shout.
The second blast was messier than the first. Less perfect. Closer. Link felt the world become white and noise. His head struck the floor. His ears filled with an unbearable ringing. But between the light and the pain, he saw Felt's silhouette rush out through the destroyed door, small, fast, alive.
Elsa saw her too.
The assassin took one step to follow her.
Rom stood in the way.
Subaru grabbed Rom's fallen club—or tried to, because the weight almost defeated him on the first pull—and positioned himself as best he could in Elsa's path, legs trembling, face white, eyes wide with pure terror. The silver-haired girl, breathing with difficulty, gathered another layer of ice in front of them.
Link was on the floor, trying to get up and failing.
"No..." he gasped. "Don't follow her..."
Elsa looked toward the door through which Felt had escaped and then toward those who still remained inside. The decision seemed to amuse her. The small prey was running, but the interesting obstacles were still there.
"I suppose I can take a few more seconds," she said.
Subaru lifted the club with ridiculous and desperate effort.
"Come... come after me if you want, fourth-rate Bowel Hunter."
"Subaru," the silver-haired girl murmured, alarmed.
"I'm improvising," he replied, without taking his eyes off Elsa. "Improvising badly also counts."
Link let out a choked laugh that turned into a bloody cough.
"You're... an idiot..."
"I know," Subaru said. "But this time, the idiot is buying time."
Elsa advanced toward them.
The Loot House was destroyed, filled with ice, smoke, blood, splinters, and the metallic smell of weapons from another world. Outside, Felt ran toward the slums with the desperation of someone who had just understood that living could also be a way to obey the dead and the living. Inside, Link tried to plant his knee on the floor to stand once more, but his body answered with a violent tremor. The wound in his side remained open around the embedded kukri. Every breath cut him from within.
He could not defeat Elsa.
That much was already obvious.
But if he could keep breathing for a few more seconds, if he could keep being one more thing between her and the door, maybe those seconds would be enough.
Elsa raised her blades.
Subaru tightened his grip on the club.
The silver-haired girl prepared her magic.
Rom, bleeding, forced himself back onto his feet beside them with monstrous stubbornness.
Link, from the floor, closed his remaining fingers around the shotgun's grip and dragged the weapon toward himself, leaving a line of blood across the frozen boards.
"Felt..." he murmured, without knowing whether he said it as an order, a plea, or a promise. "Run... fast."