After the practice from last night and during this road trip, Yuzuriha’s astris sight functioned in a much more practical sense. At least in her perspective.

  Her vision wasn’t a crystal clear image, yes. Far from it really. It was just colors and textures. Smudges of light and movement. A warped kaleidoscope painted in gradient. Somehow she made that work.

  She knew what each color stood for now.

  Red meant heat, motion, and aggression. Blue was stillness, structure, or rest. Yellow meant emotion, often agitation. And that’s about it for now.

  What most people saw with their eyes, she reconstructed as a living map of sensation and tone.

  That’s how she was able to spot them. Before their presence became known to anyone, she picked up movement from a couple of meters from the leading horse drawn carriage.

  There were at least sixteen, fifteen were crouched low but poorly hidden while one of them stood at the center of the road.

  ‘...Bandits?!’

  She exclaimed internally. If she wasn’t as exhausted as she was, she would have probably jolted up at her seat. Although she felt tired physically, she still could keep going mentally.

  Yuzuriha’s focus narrowed and painted outlines over the figures as the carriages got closer to them. All she saw from these figures were machetes, crude blades, an old crossbow, and ill-fitting armor.

  They had poor equipment, but weapons nonetheless.

  Most of them were behind cover, crouching low among the thick roadside bushes. The one who stood upright in the middle of the road was the one who held a crossbow.

  Yuzuriha didn’t understand but for some reason, desperation clung to their motions like smoke.

  To her, they seemed like amateurs, but they had numbers. They weren’t moving either, rather, they were waiting for the carriages to approach.

  Now comes the difficult part, should she say something? Tell Marcille now before it was too late?

  After pondering for a bit, the answer hit her like a spark catching dry parchment.

  ‘Of course I should tell her. If I can prove that Azure Ooze is useful, then maybe big sis might see it as something worth keeping. Yeah, I’m a genius!’

  Patting herself on the back, her lips parted but closed back up immediately.

  ‘Wait! What if those men out there are after me?!’

  The thought that those roadside dogs were here because of the Sacrament inside of her made her feel as though ice was poured down her spine. How could they have known so soon?!

  ‘I know word travels fast but not this fast! We've barely left Gray City for crying out loud. Unless…’

  No, that was absurd. Wasn’t it?

  Yuzuriha had the Azure Ooze for only a short while, yet the idea that it could draw danger like blood in the water frightened her…it was not impossible.

  Still, how did they find out so fast?!

  She bit the inside of her cheek, and the sting of pain calmed her thoughts down.

  ‘Okay, Yuzu. Don’t be absurd. Calm down. You’re letting paranoia play games with you’

  No, wait…another spark of a brilliant idea.

  This right now could be an opportunity. If she could prove that she could take care of herself, then maybe Marcille would let her keep it.

  That idea was the same as the first one but different still. And by tossing the thoughts aside before they tie her in knots again, Yuzuriha resolved herself to talk to her older sister.

  She shifted her weight slightly, tilting her head off Marcille’s lap just enough to speak without looking like she was about to leap up. Opening her eyes out of habit and normality, she spoke in a low enough voice that only her sister would hear.

  “Hey, Marcille…there are men up ahead. Sixteen of them. One is standing in the middle of the road, and the rest are hiding poorly by the roadside. They have weapons too, though a bit shoddy”

  Yuzuriha gave her findings about the situation. In response, she felt Marcille’s thigh tense beneath her cheek before the elder sister replied.

  “...I know”

  The nonchalant certainty in her voice caught Yuzuriha off guard, especially that answer.

  “You…know?”

  Marcille’s hand stilled in her hair for a moment before resuming its slow strokes.

  “From the moment we left Coffin & Crown I had [Aura Sense] active at all times. I saw them as soon as we rounded the bend”

  Yuzuriha’s mouth went dry. She had thought she was bringing in new, helpful information, but her sister had already been one step ahead.

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  “Arthur is on watch. He can handle it”

  And just like that, Yuzuriha understood why Marcille had been quiet, and cold the entire time. Part of it was because they were going to leave Willow and Leo alone for 3 days to their fellow tenant Miss Mary.

  The other one was the fact that she had been focusing as well. Keeping watch in her own way. This sparked a new question from the little sister.

  ‘The ability she is using, is it a Sealed Technique? What is a Sealed Technique?’

  No, no, this wasn’t the time to be thinking of stuff like that. There was bigger fish to fry here.

  The carriages slowed, then stopped. Outside, she heard the sound of hooves shifting on gravel and a low voice greeting from the man in the road.

  When she shifted her attention, Yuzuriha noticed that nobody seemed alarmed. Even Marcille sounded too casual for someone about to be robbed.

  Duskfall wasn’t leaping into arms, just like her with Marcille, the twins were both sprawled on Temperance’s lap fast asleep. Agnes was still leaning against the side wall while hugging her giant hammer to her chest. Tobias was out cold as well.

  Arthur really was handling it.

  He exchanged words with the man on the road in one moment. Then the next, a fight had broken out with Arthur dealing with all sixteen men at once, effortlessly no less.

  Before she could focus on the fight, Marcille’s hand brushed through her hair again, gentler this time.

  “Go back to sleep, Yor. The ones at the front are not the real enemy”

  Yuzuriha frowned.

  “What do you mean? They’re right in front of us”

  Marcille turned her head toward the carriage door which gave a long, slow creak as someone outside began to open it.

  “Yor, go back to sleep”

  Marcille murmured in a low voice, instructing the blind girl to ignore everything happening outside and sleep.

  Sleep? As if that was going to happen now, not when her older sister’s sharp eyes were fixed on the same thing she was.

  The carriage door was opening slowly. The sound of the latch unlatching was soft, but the subtle rasp of wood brushing against the hinges grated at her nerves. A small gap opened, and from it, a shadow slinked in.

  That shadow jerked its nose and two gleaming black beads of eyes.

  “A rat?”

  It froze just past the threshold and rose slightly on its hind legs. Its whiskers twitched, snapping its head left and right in short sharp movements as if testing the air.

  Both sisters watched it with open distaste, but for different reasons.

  Marcille’s reasons were unclear but with Yuzuriha? She had never liked rats. No, “never liked” was putting it far too gently.

  She loathed them in fact.

  The greasy fur, the twitching nose, the filthy little paws, their rapid unpredictable movements, and the way their bodies moved like bags of wet meat with bones rattling inside. Her skin prickled in revulsion just by looking at it, the form of astris in the shape of one. It was as disgusting as she could have ever imagined.

  When it took a couple of steps toward her, she recoiled so quickly that her head bumped against the carriage wall. She raised her hands up in a fright and let out a short yelp.

  “Ugh…!”

  With that, it got frightened and scuttled randomly under the tight spaces of the chairs. As Marcille attempted to comfort her, Yuzuriha went into full panic.

  “Gross, gross, gross, disgusting, disease carrying little monster! Why do you even exist?! Get away, get away!”

  She would be flapping her arms violently or throwing stuff randomly if it wasn’t for Marcille calming her down. There was a flicker of sympathy and confusion beneath her composed mask as she patted her hair.

  “Yor, it's ok. The rat’s gone, you can stop now. Stars Above, I didn’t know they frightened you this much…”

  But her attention returned to the door just in time for it to swing wide with an almost polite creak. And from it, a strange man entered the carriage.

  “How terribly rude. To treat such an innocent little fellow like that…”

  The rat dashed from under the seat and hopped onto the leg of the man. It scrambled upward, curling around his sleeve until it perched in his hand.

  “Harmless little thing, really. Well trained, too. Is that any way to treat a guest, Mar-Mar?”

  “Remy Oswald”

  Marcille pronounced each syllable with the distaste of someone speaking the name of a disease. She glanced quickly at Yuzuriha, as if making sure her little sister was unharmed, then went back to the man.

  The man in question was an ugly mosaic of sensations in Yuzuriha’s eyes. A sickly green haze clanged to his edges like mold, there were flashes of crimson threading through his outline, pulsing slow and lazy like rot creeping through meat.

  She couldn’t even see him clearly as well. The texture was worse, sticky, and foul. She had to clamp a hand over her mouth to keep her stomach from turning.

  “Always a pleasure to see my favorite plaything"

  He let the rat crawl to his shoulder while his eyes flicked lazily over the carriage’s occupants. This guy was clearly an enemy and yet, for some strange reason, Tobias and Agnes remained slumped against the wall, still asleep.

  “You’re not really here. Coward”

  “Coward? My dear Mar-Mar. Why risk one’s own neck when one can send an echo instead? I value self preservation more than anything. You know this”

  Marcille scowled. Her hand hadn’t moved from Yuzuriha’s hair. Through that, the blind girl could feel the controlled tension running through her.

  “What do you want, you gutless wrench?”

  Remy let out a small raspy chuckle.

  “You want to talk business already? It’s been a while since we had the chance to meet like this, face to face…or near enough. I admit, I was curious to see the girl for myself.”

  He drifted his focus toward Yuzuriha and she felt as though a bucket of cold sludge had been poured over her.

  “Keep looking at her like that and I’ll gouge those filthy eyes out and feed them to your vermin, got that?”

  Her low and dangerous tone earned her another short chuckle from the man.

  “Foul mouthed as usual. You haven’t changed. Fine, we will talk business instead”

  He stepped closer, the color in Yuzuriha’s astris vision congealed into a tighter and more oppressive mass.

  “Your time is running out, Mar-Mar. Chunjiheti’s patience isn’t infinite. The debt’s still there, and the clock’s ticking”

  “I know. I’m working on it right now”

  “Are you? Because if you aren’t ready to pay…well…there are other forms of compensation”

  His gaze slid back toward the little sister.

  Noticing that, Marcille moved instantly and placed herself between him and Yuzuriha, her cloak shifting just enough to reveal the faint gleam of her spear’s tip.

  “I’m not going to warn you again, you vermin”

  There was a brief pause before Remy said…

  “A young, pretty thing like her could fetch a fine price. Or be put to work in other ways. The Grand Maul has unique…appetites”

  Marcille’s anger boiled over, Yuzuriha could feel it. Not in just the way her older sister’s shoulders squared or tremble in her skin, but in her astris. It pulsed with hot, violent crimson came off her body like a storm about to break.

  The spear’s tip was now leveled directly at his face.

  “Be very careful where you point that thing, Mar-Mar. Wouldn’t want you to—”

  Before Remy could finish, the world split open with a deafening crack and the carriage lurched violently. A sudden shockwave of air slammed into them, rattling every loose hinge and sending their hair to flutter across the wind.

  The horses outside screamed, hooves pounding erratically against the dirt as the wind from the impact sent the smell of dust and hay swirling through the air.

  Where Remy had been standing a heartbeat ago….there was nothing.

  Nothing except a gaping hole where the carriage door used to be, swinging uselessly with half broken wood and hinges.

  Where Remy had been a moment earlier, lingered a hammer of monstrous metal slab. And at the end of it, stood Agnes.

  “You talk too much….pest!”