Loud snores echoed so intensely it sounded like a fat dragon recovering strength after burning down fifteen villages in a row and eating the entire party of the chosen hero.
The origin of the sound: a human woman, half her body shoved inside a pet-friendly cage. Yes. Among bow-wearing cats and well-brushed purebred dogs. If the passengers’ pets could speak, they'd file a communal complaint to ban her from traveling anywhere.
The sweet sway of the trip wasn’t the only thing knocking her out. Her fingers, moving in a sleepwalking reflex, brushed the empty rum bottle she had stolen from some random suitcase.
Drooling. Mouth open. Snoring like a hereditary curse.
“Ngh…”
She groaned when she felt soft taps on her cheek.
“Buttons… no…” she muttered, turning over like a lazy corpse. “Just gimmie five more minutes, please…”
But the tapping continued.
With motor coordination worthy of second-hand embarrassment, she crawled like a caterpillar toward a larger cage. She didn’t fit inside of it. That didn’t stop her in the slightest.
A sigh was heard. Footsteps walking away. More footsteps returning. The sound of a water bottle opening. And then: a personal downpour crashing onto her face like a deserved punishment.
“AH—BUTTONS—SHIT!”
The blonde woman—short and messy hair covering half her face, biker vest, worn jeans, and boots begging for mercy in a wash—shot upright.
THWAMP!
“OUCH!”
She smacked her head against the top of the cage.
A strangled whine escaped her, teeth grinding, tears leaking involuntarily from the shock. The impact was strong enough to wake every animal in the car, who—surprise to absolutely no one—had better manners than she did.
Rubbing her forehead while groaning in pain, she looked at the culprit: a living plush bear, fluffy, with a deadpan face worthy of final judgment. Her lifelong partner.
“You fucking idiot!” she grumbled, sticking her index finger where it didn’t belong. “Ugh, I think water got inside my ear!”
The disappointed bear lifted a little sign it did NOT have one second ago.
“We have to go.” New sign he pulled from a pocket on his back that did not exist. “Don’t sleep in the cages. Again.”
She stretched like a dehydrated cat, yawning. She didn’t bother hiding the rum bottle wrapped like a luxury gift. The suture scars marking her face glimmered for a second under the train’s cold light. Marks of a thousand fights, a thousand mistakes, a thousand lives broken and stitched back just to keep going.
Inseparable partners: her, and her mute bear.
“I know, I know. I just couldn’t resist… that little bottle flirted with me so damn hard,” she murmured, ignoring the judgmental stares of the bow-wearing cats. “Did you see any uniforms walking around?”
The bear shook his head. Raised another sign.
“Everything is very quiet. Pretty strange.”
“Huh. Well, I guess that’s what you get on a long trip. Larion is like fifty damn years away.”
Another sign. This time annoyed.
“If you weren’t banned from airports we’d already be there.”
She tilted her head, arched a brow, and shrugged with total indifference. It wasn’t the time to remember the incident at Ukestein airport: the arrest, the chaos, the miraculous release thanks to a lawyer who owed her an unpayable favor.
Wherever there was liquor, food, or trouble, she appeared. Vans had called her a couple of days ago.
“Vansy, what’s it poppin’? It's been a long time.”
“Listen. I don’t have much time. I need your help–”
“Everyone does, sweetheart. What is it?”
“It’s important, something big. Don’t tell anyone, and I’ll pay you well.”
“Yeah, yeah. Got it... spare me the details once I'm there.”
If that detective with zero sense of humor said it in that tone… it was serious. Too serious for her own taste.
They had worked together years ago, on a suicide mission to take down the Vittore mafia. An operation so risky that the higher-ups already counted half the squad as dead before starting. She not only survived: she wrecked everything.
They fired her afterward, of course—though not without paying every cent promised—because she disobeyed absolutely every order and went in alone (dragging Vans behind her), knocking out every member of the mansion: guards, lesser bosses, cousins, uncles, even the chef who crossed her path and got slapped with a salmon.
She didn’t kill anyone that day. It was never her style, really. She preferred leaving enemies unconscious, or with a dangling arm, one or two broken legs, or their dignity shattered… but not lives extinguished.
That had always been the seal of the dynamic duo: Buttons and her—violent, yes, but with a moral line they never wanted crossed.
BOOM!
A loud explosion thundered from the front cars. The roof shook. The animals woke in panic, dogs barking and canaries flapping against the bars in desperation.
She and the bear looked at each other. She grabbed her weapon—a huge needle, sharp as sin—and held it like a sword. The little bear cracked his neck and fingers, shadowboxing to warm up.
No words were needed.
They walked toward the next train unit and found all the passengers… collapsed, minimal breathing, glassy-eyed, unfocused. She checked the pulse: alive. That was what mattered. She sighed in relief.
The bear’s nose twitched a few times like a natural radar, then he immediately covered it with his paw.
“Sleeping gas…” read the sign he held up. The woman barely lifted her eyebrows, surprised but not worried.
"Huh, who could have said sleeping in the pet's car would help us for once."
She put on her right black glove. The celestial runes began to glow.
"Alteration Style: Mild Environmental Adaptation"
For a brief second, a transparent bubble surrounded their heads; the spell protecting them from the odorless toxins of the place.
BAM! KRASSSHHHH!
The car trembled so hard several windows cracked instantly. She rolled her eyes. Buttons sighed.
“When the hell are we ever going to have a normal trip for once…?”
Chaos had begun, and not even in her worst moments did she hesitate to jump into the fray.
...
...
...
On the roof.
SHNK!
An ice dagger buried itself deep into Amon’s leg, sliding between muscle and tendon with a crystalline crunch. The freezing impact should’ve crippled anyone else—but he only growled, a low, guttural vibration rippling through his mask. It wasn’t pain, merely irritation, like an elephant swatting away a wasp.
His pristine white suit—tailored, immaculate, the uniform of someone important—was already ruined. Splattered with blood, carved with slashes, torn by force and frost. Every new wound turned the fabric into a chaotic mural of violence.
A ruined canvas painted by the suicidal persistence of the young man before him.
Amon charged his fist like a demolition hammer. Hex energy boiled around his arm—swarming, snarling, a whirlpool of purple and black, dense and alive. It swallowed the light around it, amplifying the viscous, corrosive anger that had been consuming him since the fight began.
“Fucking brat!”
“Gah!”
Fwip!
Gerard barely had time to dodge. His feet skidded across the metal roof, his body bending backwards with unnatural flexibility. The gloved fist brushed through his white hair, close enough for him to feel the hot wind of the impact graze his scalp.
This wasn’t like any battle he ever had.
The young man with diamond eyes looked like he’d been dragged through a battlefield. Clothes shredded. Skin cut open in several places. A smear of blood crept down from his mouth. A bruise spread across his temple like spilled ink. Even his dignity—normally sharp as his family’s ice—was wobbling under the constant threat of annihilation.
A few microseconds more and his head would’ve flown off his body like a human projectile.
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Every attack was an execution attempt.
Every defense, a death evaded by the width of a snowflake.
Every ice shield he summoned shattered into a thousand glittering fragments before he could complete its final shape.
But it worked. Those broken fractions of seconds—those fragile, desperate interruptions that gave him just enough space to breathe, to counter, to endure.
Amon was brutal. Relentless. A demolition force on two legs, built for blunt endings.
But he wasn’t light.
Gerard, raised in the Frostweaver discipline, trained in the monastery of Elerya, moved like a blade dancer. Every step was wind. Every pivot, precision. He carved ice into weapons with a flick of his wrists, wielding them with a practiced grace, striking like a stinger seeking fresh flesh.
“I need to hit critical points…!” he thought, breath ragged. “In two…! Two at once! Throat and heart!”
A single wound wouldn’t be enough. Amon could regenerate everything. Torn muscle, ruptured veins, shattered bones—meaningless to him.
Negative miracles.
Profane cures that corrupted light and turned it into dark restoration. The ancient, forbidden tactic of warlocks incapable of relying on blessed mana for survival. He had read about them. Shadow-healers that stitched their flesh back together using twisted inversions of divine spells.
If his father hadn’t sent him to the monastery of the Goddess Elerya, Gerard would never have learned miracles of light—never learned to channel purity to heal himself—and above all, he would never have survived this long.
One hit. Just one. And he would’ve died long before this rooftop became their battleground.
The stories about dark magi who could twist healing magic had always been old, terrible, whispered at duelists’ academies like ghost tales meant to keep students awake at night. Forbidden. Taboo. Proof that some knowledge existed only to corrupt.
And yet here he was, watching those forbidden feats unfold not in theory—but in front of him, in the flesh, in the shape of a monster wearing a man’s suit.
The train sped forward with a velocity that tore through the air. Wind howled around them, ripping at Gerard’s coat, flattening his hair, numbing his fingers. His shoes slipped on the heated metal roof, struggling for purchase.
Amon, when he wasn't attacking, walked forward with monstrous calm—hands still buried in his pockets as if strolling through a park. He tilted his head slowly with each ice arrow Gerard shot at him, dodging with the patience of a hunter who knows the prey has already burned through its last reserves.
It happened fast. Too fast.
A matter of carelessness.
A mistake.
A late blink.
Amon grabbed him by the dark blue coat with one hand. Just one. Inhuman strength lifted Gerard effortlessly, as if he were no more substantial than a wet pillow. The grip crushed through fabric, through breath, through balance.
Then—A movement so swift the wind couldn’t drag behind it. Amon slammed him against the roof of the train, breaking it with a deafening crack.
They fell.
They both crashed through the ceiling into the car below, the impact shattering windows and twisting metal. Shards sprayed like snow, light flashed like lightning. Anyone conscious would’ve screamed. Would’ve run. Would’ve trampled each other in fear.
But the passengers were limp bodies. Unconscious witnesses to their private war. Heads slumped. Mouths slack. Helpless in the storm of violence.
The metal gave way. So did Gerard.
Amon landed atop him, crushing him into the mangled seats and bent supports. His enormous hand wrapped around the boy’s neck, fingers locking like a steel trap.
Gerard felt the world darken instantly.
Under the mask, the giant’s breathing turned into a metallic growl—inhuman, cold, resonant, vibrating through Gerard’s bones.
“You’re lucky Carmilla wants you alive.” His tone was irritated, almost bored, like this was an inconvenience. “If it were up to me, I would have killed you and your damn sister by now. ”
Gerard kicked desperately, wild, raw instinct. His gloved fingers scraped against Amon’s arm, fighting for leverage, for breath, for anything. The world blurred—colors blotching into black drops of ink. The edges of the car melted, shapes collapsing into a tunnel.
The sky-blue runes on his catalyst gloves flared. Desperation ignited them, not trained skill.
He searched for mana—anything, any trace—to freeze the massive hand crushing his throat.
But it wasn’t enough. Not nearly.
The spell fizzled uselessly against Amon’s overwhelming force, who just delivered a direct punch to his abdomen. The blow drove the boy into the floor of the car as if he were made of clay. Gerard felt the air break inside his chest, as if something had torn. He coughed saliva and blood: a phantom vomit fighting to come out but blocked by pain.
He lifted his gaze one last time.
The sun entered through the hole in the roof in a perfect, almost sacred beam. And in his mind, barely a thread of prayer managed to form toward the gods:
Please… don’t let them hurt Miria.
Amon tightened his grip on the boy’s neck, making him gasp through spasms of agony.
I beg you—
Suddenly, a nearly inaudible whistle emerged from the entrance of the car.
Amon, without taking his gaze off the boy crushed beneath him, lifted his left hand and caught in the air—in less than a blink—a needle the size of a sword.
He released the boy’s throat. Gerard collapsed to his side, coughing, rubbing the reddish marks burning like hot iron. He rolled among broken glass, trying to regain his senses.
Amon stood slowly, raising a brow at the weapon that had nearly pierced his shoulder.
He blinked twice, frowning. Standing before them was a blonde woman with suture scars on her face and body, dressed in what looked like a cheap biker cosplay… if that cosplay had survived ten explosions and a prison riot.
“Hey you, baldy old man.” A feminine voice, careless.
Before Amon could process the absurd interruption, the woman pulled her hand back. Golden threads, tense like living veins, retracted the weapon to its hilt in one clean, elegant, almost theatrical motion.
She grinned with shameless confidence. At her side, the plush bear drank from a juice box as if they were at a picnic.
“Leave the little girl alone, will you?”
Amon clenched his jaw, irritated—muscles shifting beneath the mask like tectonic plates preparing to crack. A faint vibration rippled through the car as negative mana pulsed around him, an instinctive reaction, like a predator bristling.
“There wasn’t supposed to be any other mage on board…” he muttered with a low, simmering fury, each word grinding out like metal against metal. “If you interrupt me, I’ll smash your skull, you stupid damned woman.”
She didn’t flinch. Not even a single twitch.
Instead, she smiled—lazy, confident—and in her brown eyes bloomed that dangerous spark only possessed by adrenaline addicts, immortal idiots, and geniuses with a death wish.
It wasn’t bravery. It was thrill.
“Oh no…” she gasped dramatically, placing a hand on her chest as she feigned horror. “I’m sooo terrified! What’s next? A hex to make me bald too?”
Her voice dripped sarcasm. Amon’s aura darkened another shade.
Behind them, Gerard coughed hard—blood splattering onto the broken metal floor, the red stark against the steel. He barely managed to get on his knees, his body trembling like wet paper. Amon didn’t look away from the stranger, not even for a heartbeat. His arm groped blindly toward Gerard, fingers curling like a vice ready to drag his quarry through the wall and escape with brutal efficiency—
THWACK!
Something hit him. Hard.
Amon reacted on instinct, arms crossing like reinforced shields. Even so, the sheer force of the blow made him stagger half a step back—unthinkable for someone of his monstrous power.
And then he saw it.
A plush bear. A damn plush bear had just rocketed into him with a punch that felt like a miniature meteor strike.
Amon’s eyes widened, genuinely surprised for the first time in the entire fight. A shockwave of confusion cracked through his perfect composure.
The woman didn’t waste a single atom of that opening.
Using her hand like a whip, she flicked her wrist toward Gerard. Golden threads—thin as spider silk and shimmering with an inner pulse—shot out and wrapped around the boy’s torso. With a violent, precise pull, she ripped him completely out of Amon’s reach.
Gerard nearly flew through the air. The woman caught him effortlessly by the collar, like rescuing a kitten from a burning house.
“Girl, you okay?” she asked, tone serious, though her eyes never left Amon—not for a moment. “Why are you fighting Caillou on a train?”
Buttons rotated atop his shoulder and raised a little sign:
“I think he’s a boy.”
She tugged Gerard closer, inspecting him as if he was a stray cat picked from the street on a rainy day. He gasped, wincing, dazed beyond logic.
“…Oh! Sorry, kid. I thought you were your sister. Damn, you Frostwalers all have the same face or what?”
“F-Frostweaver…” Gerard rasped, correcting her with a broken voice. Dangling many centimeters above the ground, he swallowed the pain. “It's Frostweaver… W-Who are… you…?”
BAM!
Buttons came flying back toward them like a furry cannonball after taking a hit. The woman, without even glancing, extended a hand and caught him midair as if intercepting a casual pass in a basketball game.
“I’m Grace!” She said with a charismatic smile that contrasted violently with the carnage around them. “And this little rascal here is my dear partner Buttons.”
The bear casually waved at him, head still held by her hand.
Before Gerard could say anything—anything at all—Grace dropped him like a sack of potatoes. He thudded onto the laps of a pair of unconscious passengers who, thankfully, were far too unconscious to complain.
Badly injured and disoriented, he leaned against the seat back.
"Who...is this woman? How can she have a live teddy bear? How can she not be afraid of that man?!"
He didn't have the strength to support himself; he could only try to stand, but Buttons held him by his legs. Gerard looked up at the plush toy, which shook its head in a serious and determined manner.
"Let us handle this," read its sign.
Crack.
Amon flexed his fists. The metallic rasp of his breathing deepened, colder, darker—like a furnace inhaling before an eruption.
“Those golden threads are the same as Glorthamiel’s,” he growled. “You must be a Spellborne.”
“Ex.” she corrected sharply. “Ex-Spellborne. And yeah, Smiley taught me a couple of his old tricks before I abandoned the unit.”
Grace placed Buttons gently on the floor—like setting down a weapon disguised as a toy—and gripped her needle-sword again. She pointed it at Amon with a smile that was half challenge, half party-craving chaos.
“Judging by your fancy suit, you must be a big fish. Buttons, price?”
The bear dove into his nonexistent “pockets” with theatrical determination. He pulled out: knives, empty cigarette boxes, an unlit dynamite cartridge and a mountain of crumpled papers…
Until he finally found the right one. He held it up with raised eyebrows.
Grace whistled loudly when she saw the “wanted criminal” sign.
“Holy hells… I knew you looked familiar— W-WAIT, WHAT?! FIVE MILLION LARENS?! FUCK, BUTTONS, WE’RE GONNA BE RICH!”
The two idiots—an alcoholic woman and a mute teddy-bear—grabbed hands and did imaginary little hops, lost in fantasies of blowing the money on the most irresponsible purchases known to mankind.
Amon had enough.
“HEX STYLE: AFFINITY!”
He thrust both palms forward. A dark mass erupted from his hands—twisting skulls of flame spiraling within it—expanding like a monstrous shadow-heart ready to consume the world.
Grace didn’t step back. Didn’t blink. Didn’t breathe differently.
She simply held up her hand toward the oncoming curse.
“Summon..."
Her voice came firm, serious.
"Medusa.”
The floor split. A gigantic rectangular mirror surged upward with explosive force, its upper frame sculpted into the face of a woman whose hair was a crown of serpents carved in silver.
The cursed mass slammed into the reflective surface—and ricocheted back with identical ferocity, shooting straight toward Amon.
“Summoner…” he scoffed, dodging with a casual hop, hands still in his pockets as his own spell tore through the wall and door of the car in a perfect heart-shaped-hole of destruction. “The bear must be one of her minions…”
Grace strode forward with the certainty of someone who had already won the argument, if not the fight. She held the needle upright, her grip steady.
“Buttons, watch over the boy and the passengers.” She shifted into a combat stance, her smirk sharp enough to cut steel. “Let’s dance on the roof, big guy.”
She lifted the needle-sword.
And her grin—bright, wild, and brimming with violence—stole the breath of the entire car.
Even Amon hesitated for a brief second.
But, behind that mask, he smiled back...
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