Behind him, Eliana coiled around Ethan like a venomous snake. Her body moved with supernatural fluidity, evading the currents of wind he tried to stop her with. She laughed mockingly, her voice cutting through the screech of the flames: "Another fool hiding behind futility."
Her dagger pierced Ethan's left arm from behind—tearing through the muscle down to the bone. He heard a crack before the pain. Then the pain exploded like fire in his veins. His torn flesh dangled, and blood dripped onto the burning floor with a hiss.
"It's fine... it wasn't my favorite arm anyway," Ethan said with a smile—but his smile was broken, half pain and half madness. Blood ran from his mouth—he had bitten his tongue without realizing. Then he summoned all his remaining strength and unleashed a violent gust of wind that pushed Eliana back for only a moment.
But she suddenly raised her hands. She muttered strange words, then floated into the air. Her hair spread out like serpents.
From the ground sprouted pink arrows. They weren't made of wood or metal—but of solid light, shimmering like molten glass mixed with blood. They shot toward Ethan at a speed the eye couldn't follow—the first pierced his left knee roughly, and he heard the pop of cartilage tearing. The second embedded in his healthy shoulder, piercing through the muscle until its tip emerged from the back. The third, fourth, and fifth followed mercilessly, stabbing into his hip, his foot, his left side.
But the worst part was that the arrows didn't remain rigid. They began to spread under his skin, like the roots of a poisonous tree searching for his bones to crush them, to coil around them like snakes. Ethan screamed—but the scream didn't come from his throat—it came from every pore of his body. He saw the pink arrows glowing from under his skin, illuminating his veins like fiery maps of agony. Then he lost consciousness, his body convulsing on the burning floor.
Maria screamed, even though blood covered her eyes and her vision blurred: "Niklaus... Ethan..."
Niklaus's eyes widened for a moment. He saw Ethan unconscious, pink arrows piercing his body from inside and out, his blood flooding the floor. Then he looked at Marcus.
Marcus was supposed to be dead. The dagger was still embedded in his skull up to the hilt, and his brain should have turned to liquid mush. But Marcus's fingers twitched. Then his arm moved. Then he opened his eyes—but his eyes were no longer as they were. They had become completely black.
Marcus slowly raised his hand and grabbed the dagger embedded in his head. He pulled it out with terrifying ease, without any sign of pain. Blood still flowed from the wound, but not as profusely—as if his body had begun closing the wounds on its own, in an inhuman way.
Then Niklaus saw the tattoo.
It didn't appear suddenly—it grew from under the skin. As if black worms were crawling from the bones of his face, searching for a way to the surface. A thin line began on Marcus's forehead, then branched and split, coiling around his eyes, then descending to his cheeks. The final shape was the mark of the end—a broken circle from within, wrapped around a blood-twisted dagger. Beneath the mark, seven small red dots, like drops of blood falling from a wound that wouldn't heal.
Niklaus looked at the tattoo coldly. He looked at the man who should have died. "What is this disgusting thing now?" he thought coldly.
Eliana screamed, still floating in the air, her eyes fixed on Niklaus's crimson eyes. In her gaze was hidden fear, and a hint of hesitation, as if she had suddenly realized something she had been ignorant of.
"Marcus! Don't kill him... we need to take him alive. The boy with the crimson eyes... the Leader will reward us for bringing him."
Niklaus didn't understand what she meant, nor did he care. His body was bleeding, and Ethan was dying behind him. It was no time for questions.
But before he could move, he saw something from the corner of his eye: Maria, lying on the ground, reaching her trembling hand toward her pocket. She pulled out a small vial and hurled it toward Niklaus with desperate force. The vial fell on the ground beside him, rolling slightly before stopping.
"Niklaus! Take it!" Maria screamed, her voice hoarse with blood.
But Marcus was closer. He stepped toward the vial, his hand reaching to crush it before Niklaus could reach it.
In that fraction of a second, Niklaus didn't hesitate. He didn't think. His body lunged before his mind could command it. He rolled across the burning floor, dodging a falling flame from the ceiling, and slid with his bleeding hands toward the vial. His right palm was still bleeding from the blade wound, his fingers barely obeying him. But he grabbed the vial.
In the same motion, he kicked Marcus's back foot hard—not superficially, but with all the strength he had left. He heard the crack of the ankle bone dislocating. Marcus wobbled but didn't fall. His body had surpassed human limits.
Niklaus didn't wait. He jumped onto Marcus's back, wrapped his legs around his neck in a swift motion—primitive, violent, more like an animal than a human. He began choking him with his thighs, pressing on the arteries, while Marcus thrashed and tried to pull him off. Then, with his free hand, he pulled out a piece of the burning wooden chair—a sharp, charred edge, still retaining some hardness.
He plunged it into Marcus's heart.
It wasn't an ordinary stab. He buried it deep, twisted it, and pushed until he felt the tip emerge from the man's back. Marcus's blood seeped out slowly, thick and black.
Marcus slammed against the wooden wall from behind, leaning against it. His black eyes widened for a moment, then the tattoo on his face began to fade, then vanished as if it had never been. His body fell to the ground, this time motionless. Finally.
In the same second, before Eliana could attack him, Niklaus threw the vial—the one Maria had thrown to him—directly at her.
The vial exploded in the air an arm's length from Eliana's face. A thick liquid sprayed all over her body, sticky as glue, then suddenly ignited with a white fire that wouldn't go out. Eliana screamed—not an ordinary scream of pain, but a scream as if her very soul was burning with her body. The pink arrows embedded in Ethan suddenly vanished, as if their source had been cut off. Eliana fell from the air, her burning body thrashing on the ground for a few minutes, then fell silent.
Nothing remained but the sound of the flames, the creak of burning wood, and Niklaus's ragged breaths.
He turned to Maria. She lay on the ground, her face pale as snow, her eyelids almost closed. The blood that had covered her head had stopped flowing—not because the wound had healed, but because she no longer had enough blood left.
Maria opened her eyes and smiled weakly. She looked at him in silence, then murmured in a voice barely audible, as if fighting death for one last second:
"Get out... of here... quickly... the place is going to explode... Adele... protect her... and promise me."
Niklaus didn't look at the paper stuck to the wall. He knew what it was—an instant explosion charm, one he had learned from Maria over the past few days. One of her final lessons. He realized now that she had been planning this from the start. She knew she wouldn't leave alive.
A moment of silence. Then a faint voice emerged, with no tone, no emotion:
"I promise."
The promise was enough. Maria closed her eyes, and a final smile formed on her lips—faint as moonlight behind clouds.
Niklaus didn't look at her anymore. He quickly opened the closet door.
Adele was curled up in the corner, trembling, her tears silent. When she saw him, she didn't wait. She jumped, clung to his black cloak, and buried her face in his chest.
Niklaus didn't move for a few seconds. Then his bleeding arm rose—firmly, roughly, yet tender in its own way—and embraced her small body. He didn't say anything.
Then he lifted Ethan onto his back. Ethan's body was lifelessly heavy, his breathing shallow, but he was still breathing.
He walked through the burning debris, his steps heavy on the charred ground. He avoided a ceiling about to collapse, jumped over a smoldering ember. Behind him, the charm stuck to the wall began to glow orange, then white, then...
Explosion.
The flames devoured the entire inn in an instant. A powerful tremor slammed into Niklaus's back and pushed him forward, and he fell to his knees in the snow outside. Hot wind mixed with ash and smoke surrounded him. He heard screams from afar—probably the villagers.
He didn't look back. He walked through the falling snow, carrying Adele in one arm and Ethan on his back. A safe distance away. Then he stopped, and looked at the flames consuming the inn.
His words came out cold, empty of any tone, yet heavy:
"How strange you were, woman... even in your death."
Then he noticed a distant shadow, under the pine branches covered in snow. Standing there, watching.
Rin.
Niklaus didn't see him clearly, but he recognized him. He didn't move toward him. He just stood looking for a few seconds. Then Rin disappeared among the trees.
Niklaus didn't follow. He didn't have the luxury of pursuit.
Niklaus focused on crawling through the white sea of snow. Every step was a battle against gravity, which had become a thousand times heavier. The morning that had begun in snowy peace... had turned into a morning stained with blood and ash. On his right shoulder, little Adele swayed, her silent tears flowing like frozen pearls down his neck, salt dissolving into his wounds. On his back, Ethan lay like a lifeless corpse, heavy without breath, his blood flowing with Niklaus's blood, bleeding from wounds he no longer had the energy to feel. They were painting the snow beneath them a deep crimson, a trail of pain and survival drawn across the pristine white. The road ahead stretched to the horizon—no end, only crushing whiteness under a gray sky whose sun was about to fade.
His mind was a cauldron boiling with questions that would never be answered. Why did that "organization" want him? Was that organization perhaps the same one mentioned as the cause of the demon outbreak on the continent? Its name never appeared in the novel—it was always described as "the organization" without a name. Even on that distant day when he picked up a random volume and skimmed random pages, he found only vague references to "Niklaus" cooperating with demons that suddenly broke loose across the continent, as if a magical seal had been undone.
Demons? They weren't present at the beginning of the story. Monsters and strange creatures were the threat. There was certainly a great secret here. For some reason, the original Niklaus had searched for them, and because they themselves wanted him, this had to do with the organization. That novel was full of holes, but he understood now that those holes weren't just gaps—they were puzzles, entire enigmas. He hadn't cared to solve them then.
And now, his mind was about to explode: What reason made the real Niklaus seek out the organization? Who wrote the letter? And why, in all this hell, did he keep walking? Why did he return to Maria? Why did he accept her dying wish? Why was he carrying Ethan, that annoying chatterbox? Why didn't he stop? Why didn't he leave them to die here and die himself in the snow? Life had never been worth the trouble...
Perhaps he understood why he kept walking. He always pushed forward in a way he didn't understand. Perhaps because he never accepted defeat, no matter what.