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The world inside the Loot House had been reduced to smoke, broken ice, blood, and splintered wood.
Link tried to stand up once more, but his body no longer obeyed with the same impossible arrogance as before. His knee slipped over the frozen boards, his mutilated hand left a red trail on the floor, and the kukri still embedded beneath his ribs moved slightly with the effort, tearing from his throat a choked sound like a broken growl. The shotgun was close, too close and too far at the same time. He could see it between fragments of ice and splinters, its metal stained with his blood, but when he tried to reach it, he felt something inside his abdomen twist around the embedded blade and steal the air from his lungs.
The silver-haired girl was still standing, though her breathing was growing heavier. She had used magic several times since Puck vanished, and each spell seemed to tear away a visible portion of her strength. Even so, she did not retreat. Her violet eyes were fixed on Elsa, with a mixture of fear, concentration, and stubborn will. Subaru, pale as wax, held Rom's club with both hands, though it was obvious he could barely hold it. Rom, wounded and covered in cuts, remained standing through pure giant's pride, muscles tense and jaw clenched as he tried to place himself between the assassin and everyone else.
Elsa stood before them, intact in a way that felt offensive.
Not completely unharmed, no. Her black clothes had cuts, a line of blood marked her side, one of her feet still showed the consequences of having freed herself from Puck's ice in the most disturbing way possible, and her hair, once perfect, now fell in messy strands over her face. But none of that reduced the threat emanating from her. On the contrary. Every wound seemed to make her more real, more dangerous, more alive. She did not fight like someone cornered. She fought like someone who had just discovered the night could be more entertaining than expected.
"How stubborn you all are," Elsa said, moving one of her kukris with almost affectionate delicacy. "First the spirit, then the giant, now the boy with the club, the silver-haired girl, and you, the one with the noisy weapons. I wonder if the blonde child will still be running after I finish here."
Link lifted his head.
The phrase did not hit him immediately. It passed over his pain like a cold shadow, and for one second his brain failed to catch it. Then the meaning arrived, clear and poisonous.
Felt.
Elsa tilted her head slightly, as if she had seen the exact instant the word pierced his chest.
"Ah, that expression. So you do care. How adorable. The little thief ran away with such energy, but this city has narrow alleys, dead routes, and children who sell information for less than a hot meal. After I open everyone here, I'll look for her. If she keeps holding that insignia so tightly, perhaps I can keep one hand as a souvenir."
Something inside Link stopped.
It was not fear. The fear was still there, enormous, damp, animal. It was not pain either, because the pain was still biting his flesh around the blade, the lost fingers, the opened shoulder, the battered ribs. Nor was it courage. Link did not feel heroic music ignite in his chest, nor any noble light lifting him from the floor. What he felt was a rage so pure that, for an instant, it did not even have a temperature.
Subaru said something. Maybe his name. Maybe a warning. The silver-haired girl also moved her lips, but the voices came from very far away, sunk beneath the heartbeat that began pounding in his ears.
Elsa was going to go after Felt.
After everything. After making her run. After forcing her to live. After watching her leave through the door with the insignia pressed against her chest and her legs moving by pure instinct. After Rom shouted at her to obey. After Subaru tried to buy time with a club he could barely lift. After Link himself let himself be cut, mutilated, and pierced so that unbearable brat could keep breathing.
Elsa was going to go after her.
Link placed his right hand on the floor. His fingers closed over the frozen wood. The boards creaked beneath his grip.
"No."
It was a small word, hoarse, almost lost in the noise of the warehouse.
Elsa looked at him with a faint smile.
"Pardon?"
Link lifted his head. Blood ran from his forehead to his cheek; he did not know when that wound had opened. His eyes, still human, were injected with pain.
"You're not going to touch her."
Elsa opened her eyes with soft curiosity, as if a wounded animal had just tried to speak in an understandable language.
"You have a charming way of saying impossible things. I like it."
"Link, don't move!" Subaru shouted, but his voice no longer reached him.
Link tried to stand, and his body failed. His cut leg trembled. His mutilated hand could not support him properly. The embedded kukri dug deeper when he moved and tore a spasm from him. Any person would have fallen again and stayed on the floor, waiting for death to come quickly. Link wanted to do that too. A part of him, the most honest, the most cowardly, the most human, wanted to surrender and let everything end.
But Elsa had said she would go after Felt.
Then something answered from beneath his skin.
It was not a sound. Not at first. It was pressure. A thick pressure in his lower back, near his waist, as if something had awakened inside his spine and was pushing outward with fingers without nails. Link opened his mouth to scream, but the air remained trapped when a wave of heat rose from his stomach to his chest. It was different from the pain of the cut. It did not burn like a wound. It burned like boiling blood.
The silver-haired girl was the first to feel the change in the air. Her eyes shifted toward Link, and for an instant her concentration broke. The icy magic she had been forming in her fingers flickered weakly. She did not understand what she was seeing, but something around him was twisting. An invisible current, heavy and strange, began to swirl around his body, not with the orderly clarity of a spell, but with the raw violence of something instinctive that knew no language or form.
Rom took a step back.
"Boy..."
Subaru swallowed.
"Link... what's happening to you?"
Link could not answer.
The first limb emerged from his back with a wet, brutal sound.
It did not pierce his clothes cleanly; it tore them from within, opening the fabric and emerging from the rear of his waist as a dark red mass, flexible, covered by an organic shine that looked like flesh and muscle compressed into an impossible shape. It extended backward, long, serpentine, with a clumsy and spasmodic movement, striking a stack of boxes and smashing them against the wall. The second emerged half a second later, more violently, curving over his shoulder like the tail of a beast. The third came out with a pull that bent Link forward and finally tore from him the scream he had been holding back.
Subaru stepped back, horrified.
The silver-haired girl brought a hand to her chest.
Rom tightened his grip on the club with both hands.
Elsa stopped smiling for the first time in truth.
Not out of fear. Not yet. Out of surprise.
"Oh," she murmured. "Now that is new."
Link fell onto one knee, panting. The three red limbs moved behind him as if searching for balance without understanding the room. One of them dragged itself over the floor, leaving a wet mark over the broken ice. Another rose and struck a beam, splintering it. The third curved close to Link, trembling as if responding to his breathing.
Then his eyes changed.
The white disappeared, swallowed by absolute darkness. His irises ignited in an intense, shining, inhuman red, and the veins around his eyelids marked themselves with a violence that sent a chill down Subaru's spine. It was not only a physical transformation. It was as if someone had turned off the human light behind those eyes and left a hungry ember watching from within.
Link felt the change and, for one absurd instant, remembered.
Kagune.
The thought crossed his mind like lightning.
"This..." he gasped, bringing a hand to his face. "This is like..."
He could not finish.
Something hard began pushing from his forehead.
Two protrusions grew beneath the skin, forcing their way through with painful pressure. They were not long like antlers, nor elegant like fantasy ornaments; they were short, curved horns, dark at the base and reddish toward the tips, emerging from his forehead with horrible naturalness, as if they had always been waiting for permission to exist. Link felt them before he saw them. He did not recognize them. That scared him more than the tentacles.
"What... what the fuck...?" he stammered, touching one of the horns with trembling fingers.
The wound in his side began closing around the kukri.
Elsa raised an eyebrow upon seeing it. Link's flesh, which moments before had been open and bleeding, began to tighten around the blade's metal as if his body were trying to expel the invader. He screamed when the pressure pushed the weapon outward centimeter by centimeter. The kukri finally fell to the floor with a metallic sound, covered in blood. The wound sealed behind it with repulsive speed, not leaving perfect skin at first, but red tissue closing, fibers joining, muscles reconstructing beneath the torn clothes.
The cuts on his chest closed. The open line across his abdomen contracted. His torn shoulder stopped bleeding. The missing fingers of his left hand slowly reconstructed, first bone, then tendon, then flesh and skin, while Link watched the process in horror. There was no hunger. That also unsettled him. Somewhere in his memory, that kind of monster came with devouring hunger, an unbearable need for flesh. But he did not feel that. He felt rage. He felt heat. He felt a wild impulse to protect. He felt something pulsing around his horns, something he did not understand, as if the air itself were entering his body and feeding an internal fire.
The silver-haired girl took one step back, not out of rejection, but because the pressure coming from him scraped against her skin like badly formed magic. Her eyes opened wide, and for the first time since arriving, she did not look at Elsa as the greatest concern in the room.
"That isn't..." she whispered, but did not finish the sentence.
Subaru was pale.
"Link... you're still you, right?"
Link barely turned his head toward him.
For one second, Subaru doubted.
Link's eyes were black and red, but there was something recognizable behind the trembling. Pain. Confusion. Terror. And a rage that was not directed at them.
"Take her..." Link said, his voice deeper, rougher, as if he had two throats overlapped. "If Felt comes back... take her far away."
"What?"
"Take her far away, Subaru!"
The shout came accompanied by a burst of pressure. The three red limbs opened behind Link, striking the floor, the walls, the air. Elsa slowly smiled, recovering the pleasure surprise had stolen from her.
"So you weren't human after all."
"I don't know what I am," Link replied, standing up.
The movement was unstable. His body was no longer only his body. He had three new limbs that weighed, moved, and responded with a strange delay to his impulses. When he tried to straighten, one of them dug into the floor to support him, another struck a table, and the third bent near the ceiling. Link felt all of it as if they were arms that had suddenly awakened from sleep: clumsy, sensitive, far too strong.
Elsa took a step toward him.
"I would like to find out."
Link attacked.
He did not think of a technique. He did not know how to use that. He only saw Elsa in front of him, remembered Felt running, and let rage pull on the new limbs. The three tentacles launched at the same time, not with precision, but with devastating violence. The first struck the floor where Elsa stood, bursting boards and ice. The second swept the room at mid-height, forcing Subaru, Rom, and the silver-haired girl to duck. The third curved from above and fell like a crimson whip.
Elsa dodged the first two.
The third grazed her shoulder.
It was not a clean cut. It was an impact. The force threw her against a wooden column with enough violence to make the structure creak. For the first time, her body collided in a way that did not seem like dance. The column cracked behind her, and a line of blood appeared on her mouth.
Subaru stared with wide eyes.
"He hit her..."
Rom bared his teeth in a fierce smile.
"I like that better."
The silver-haired girl did not smile. She watched Link's movements with growing concern.
Elsa wiped the corner of her lips with her thumb. She observed the blood, then observed Link.
"What indelicate strength. You have no idea how to move those things, do you?"
Link breathed heavily. The three limbs writhed behind him, one trembling near his shoulder, another resting on the floor, the third swaying from side to side as if it wanted to attack before receiving the order. She was right. Elsa had seen it in seconds. Link did not control it. He was barely holding it.
"Enough to break your face," he growled.
"I hope so."
Elsa moved.
This time she did not go toward the others. She did not try to pass around Link, did not seek Subaru or the silver-haired girl. She accepted the duel head-on, with an excited smile and her kukris ready. Link launched one tentacle toward her torso; Elsa jumped over it, placing one foot on the red surface as if stepping onto a branch. Link felt the contact in the limb, and the sensation distracted him for half a second. Elsa took advantage of that instant to run across the organic mass, closing in on him with absurd speed.
Link tried to knock her away with another tentacle, but the movement was too wide. It struck a wall, tearing off boards and dust, and Elsa slid beneath the arc. The kukri sought his abdomen.
Link blocked with the third limb.
The blade cut.
The kagune did not split completely, but the knife sank into the red mass, tearing out a dark spray and a discharge of new pain that made Link scream. It was not like losing skin. It was as if an exposed nerve that ran directly along his back had been cut. The tentacle contracted by reflex, striking Elsa from the side and forcing her to retreat.
She laughed softly.
"They bleed too."
Link gritted his teeth and attacked her with all three at once.
The Loot House began to die around them.
The tentacles destroyed shelves, split boxes, pierced the counter, and opened cracks in the floor. Elsa moved among them with a mixture of evasion and counterattack, cutting when she could, jumping when she had to, letting herself be grazed by fragments of wood and ice without losing balance. Link was stronger. Much stronger. Each of his blows could crush a normal person. When one of his tentacles struck a wall, the wall gave way. When it dug into the floor, the boards lifted. But Elsa was precision. Elsa was experience. Elsa read the chaos.
Link was not fighting her. He was fighting his own body while Elsa took advantage of every mistake.
Subaru tried to move to help, but the silver-haired girl grabbed his arm.
"No. If we go in now, he could hit us by accident."
"But she's cutting him!"
"I know," she replied, her voice tense. "But look at him. He can barely control those... limbs. If we interfere badly, we'll distract him more."
Rom growled, frustrated, because he knew she was right. The old giant was wounded, but not dead, and even so, the fight before him had become something else. His club was useless in the middle of that storm of red flesh and curved blades. If he approached, he would get in the way. If he stayed back, he could only watch a boy who had appeared out of nowhere become a monster to protect a girl who was not even there.
Link roared when Elsa managed to get close enough to open a cut on his thigh. The wound began closing almost immediately, but not without cost. Each regeneration stole something from him. Not hunger. Not a need to eat. It was wear. Excessive heat. Heartbeats too strong. The invisible pressure around his horns increased, entering and leaving his body without order, like a breath that was not his. His muscles responded with tremendous force, but the edges of his thoughts started to grow slow.
He saw red.
Not only because of his eyes. Because of rage.
Elsa ducked under an attack and launched a kick directly at Link's knee. He did not fall, but the blow knocked his stance out of alignment. One of the tentacles responded late and swept toward her when she was no longer there. The blow reached a pile of stolen objects, sending them flying through the air. A rusty sword spun near Subaru, who ducked with a shout.
"Hey, Link! Watch the monstrous friendly fire!"
"I can't...!" Link gasped, digging one limb into the floor to avoid falling. "I can't move them right!"
Elsa appeared on his left.
Link turned too late.
The blade opened his cheek almost to the ear. The wound closed, but the pain made him retreat. Another kukri cut one of the red limbs near the tip. This time the fragment fell to the floor, twisting like a severed muscle before dissolving into a dark mass. Link screamed, and the tentacle grew back, shorter, irregular, trembling.
"You're not used to pain in those parts," Elsa observed, fascinated. "Your face shows everything."
"Shut up!"
Link jumped forward.
That was his first truly big mistake.
His human body advanced, but the tentacles did not follow the same intention. One remained dug into the floor, another tangled against a beam, the third tried to attack from the front. The result was a clumsy, split, uncoordinated movement. Elsa saw it immediately. She did not block. She did not retreat. She entered the dead space Link's own body had created.
Her knee struck Link's stomach.
The air left him.
Then the handle of the kukri struck his temple.
Link's eyes unfocused for an instant.
Elsa spun behind him with terrifying smoothness and cut one of the red limbs at the base, not deep enough to tear it off, but enough to break his control. The tentacle violently jerked and struck the ceiling, splitting a beam. Dust and fragments fell over everyone. The silver-haired girl raised a small wall of ice to protect Subaru and Rom from the debris.
Link fell onto one knee.
Elsa gave him no time.
She kicked him in the chest and sent him crashing into the destroyed counter. The wood split beneath his back. Link tried to stand using the tentacles, but two responded late and the third struck the floor off to one side, missing the support. His body tilted clumsily.
Elsa approached, walking.
"What a beautiful disappointment," she said sweetly. "You have a wonderful body, absurd strength, and regeneration I would like to test more calmly, but you are like a child trying to walk with three new legs."
Link gritted his teeth. His vision was closing at the edges. He could not breathe properly. He did not know if it was from exhaustion, from the previous blood loss, from the power, from the pressure in his horns, or from everything at once. The kagune kept moving, but it no longer obeyed clearly. It was like being drunk inside his own nervous system.
"You're not... going... to Felt..."
Elsa smiled.
"After you, perhaps."
That was enough to make him stand again.
Link's scream shook the warehouse.
The three limbs rose like crimson whips and struck at the same time. Elsa jumped back, but this time Link did not try to strike where she was. He struck around her. One limb destroyed the floor to her left, another closed the right exit, the third fell from above. For one second, Elsa was trapped between impacts. The third tentacle struck her fully in the side and hurled her toward the destroyed door.
The assassin crashed through the remains of the entrance and rolled outside the Loot House.
The dying dusk light entered through the open hole.
Subaru was speechless.
Rom took one step forward.
"He threw her out..."
Link advanced after her.
"Wait!" the silver-haired girl shouted. "Don't go out alone!"
But Link did not listen. Or could not listen.
He crossed the destroyed door with the tentacles moving around his body, leaving marks on the boards and on the ground. Outside, the air of the slums was loaded with smoke, dust, and dampness. Elsa was slowly getting up among the debris, with one hand over her struck side. Her smile was wider, but now there was something new in her expression: real tension in her eyes. The blow had hurt her.
"That was close," she admitted. "If you had a little more precision, perhaps you would have broken something important."
"I'm going to break everything."
"I would like to see that."
Link launched himself at her.
Out in the open air, his limbs had more space. That made him more dangerous, but also more out of control. The tentacles lashed through the alley, splitting barrels, lifting stones, tearing pieces from walls. Elsa dodged, but no longer with the same ease as before. One blow grazed her leg and made her lose balance. Another ripped part of her coat. Link used one limb to propel himself forward and threw a punch with his human body. Elsa blocked it by crossing her kukris, but the force pushed her several steps back.
For an instant, Link believed he could win.
That thought condemned him.
He trusted too much in strength. Elsa saw it. When the next tentacle launched toward her, she did not dodge it completely. She let it graze her, spun with the blow, and used the momentum to close in on the base where the limb emerged from Link's back. Her blade descended diagonally.
The cut pierced red flesh and opened a deep wound in the rear of Link's waist.
The pain was so intense that his legs gave out.
The three tentacles contracted at the same time. One struck a wall, another dug into the floor, and the third wrapped around his own body by reflex, squeezing his torso. Link lost balance, and Elsa entered his broken guard. She struck his chin with her knee, then his chest with her elbow, then cut the upper part of one of the tentacles with a quick slash. She was not trying to kill him immediately. She was dismantling the rhythm of his new body piece by piece.
Link tried to regenerate.
The wound closed halfway.
His vision failed.
His horns burned as if they had been placed in fire. The invisible current that had been feeding him for a while became chaotic, too large, too fast, and his body did not know what to do with it. His muscles tensed too much. The tentacles moved without order. His black-and-red eyes flickered, losing focus. He was not hungry, but he did feel a terrible emptiness in the center of his chest, as if every regeneration were collecting a debt he did not know how to pay.
Elsa watched him stagger.
"Ah. So that is your limit."
Link tried to respond, but only blood came out of his mouth.
Subaru appeared in the doorway of the Loot House, the club raised in a ridiculous and desperate way.
"Link!"
The silver-haired girl came out behind him, holding a sphere of ice between her hands. Rom also advanced, limping, with his club ready. Elsa glanced at them and smiled.
"Do not interrupt. I was about to learn how far he can regenerate."
Link saw Subaru. He saw the silver-haired girl. He saw Rom. He saw the alley where Felt had escaped. The world swayed, but the idea was still there, embedded.
Do not touch her.
Do not let her pass.
He tried to stand one last time.
The three red limbs rose behind him, trembling, half-reconstructed and covered in cuts. Elsa prepared to dodge. Subaru shouted something. The silver-haired girl launched her magic, creating a barrier to prevent Elsa from passing toward them. Rom charged from one side, though his wounds made him slower.
Link attacked.
The first tentacle fell one meter away from Elsa, missing completely and opening a hole in the ground. The second was too high and cut the air above her head. The third did go in the right direction, but lost strength halfway through, as if the body could no longer sustain it. Elsa slid underneath, crossed the distance, and struck Link in the abdomen with the hilt of her kukri, right where the wounds had just closed.
The force was not the worst part.
The worst part was that Link's body did not respond.
His legs bent. The tentacles fell to the ground with a wet weight, twitching weakly. His black-and-red eyes remained lit for a few more seconds, then flickered irregularly. Link tried to grab Elsa by the arm, but his hand passed close without strength.
"Not yet..." he murmured. "Felt..."
Elsa struck him again, this time at the temple.
The world tilted.
Link fell sideways onto the alley dirt, and the three red limbs collapsed around him like agonizing serpents. His horns remained there, his eyes were still abnormal, but consciousness began to loosen. It was not death. He knew that somehow. It was not the cold of the reset nor the definitive darkness. It was absolute exhaustion. His body had survived, regenerated, fought, absorbed something he did not understand, and now it was simply shutting down from the inability to continue.
Subaru ran toward him.
"Link! Hey, Link, answer me!"
Elsa took a step toward them.
Rom stood in the way with a growl, though he could barely hold himself upright. The silver-haired girl raised her hands and formed another ice shield, weak but firm. Subaru gritted his teeth and placed himself in front of Link's unconscious body with Rom's club trembling between his hands.
"You're not going to touch him."
Elsa looked at Subaru with cruel tenderness.
"You're going to protect the monster too?"
Subaru breathed with difficulty. The club was too heavy. His arms trembled. His face was full of fear. But he did not move.
"Yes."
"What a generous night. An owner chasing an insignia, a thief fleeing, a giant who doesn't know how to fall, a monster who doesn't know how to use his body, and a weak boy who stands in front of everyone. If I open you in order, perhaps I can understand what makes your insides so beautiful."
Subaru felt his legs try to give out.
Even so, he raised the club.
The silver-haired girl placed herself beside him, pale from the effort.
"You are not alone."
Rom let out a deep, pained laugh.
"Don't forget me either, brats."
Elsa smiled and lowered her center of gravity, ready for the next attack. The air tensed. Subaru saw the blade move. He knew he would not be able to follow it. He knew that if Elsa decided to end the fight in that instant, his body would once again know that terrible heat in his abdomen. But he did not retreat, because behind him Link was breathing, unconscious, strange, monstrous, and alive. Because Felt was still outside. Because Rom was still standing. Because the silver-haired girl had not yet recovered what belonged to her.
Then a voice cut through the night.
"That is enough."
It was not a shout.
It did not need to be.
The phrase fell over the alley with such clean authority that even Elsa stopped moving for an instant. From above, a reddish light split the darkness of the slums. Something descended with a force that made the air vibrate and raised dust around the remains of the entrance. The roof and upper wall of the Loot House creaked, pierced by a presence that seemed to carry with it the heat of a flame.
Subaru turned his head, eyes wide.
Amid dust, broken wood, and reddish radiance, a figure appeared standing with impossible calm.
Red hair. White uniform. A sword at his waist. A presence so overwhelmingly different from everything in that alley that, for one second, even the unconscious monster behind Subaru seemed less impossible.
The newcomer looked over the scene: Elsa with her kukris ready, Rom wounded, the silver-haired girl exhausted, Subaru holding a club too large for him, and Link lying on the ground with horns on his forehead, his eyes slowly dimming, and three red limbs extended like living shadows.
Then his gaze returned to Elsa.
"I am glad I arrived in time," Reinhard van Astrea said, with a calm that did not belong on that field of death. "Now, please lower your weapons."