Dragon Call! Grounding!

It was a pressure ordinary people could not sense.

Only Sorcerers with sharp senses jolted awake in terror, feeling the suddenly appearing presence that seemed to press down upon the entire city. Like an ancient ferocious beast, it knocked upon the gates of the world, or perhaps like a silent guiding bell ringing for the arrival of some existence.

Following some instinctive pull, everyone saw the monster that had inexplicably appeared in Ban Ard City.

Yes, a monster.

Its skull wore a rusted helmet, blue-gray flames burned in its hollow eye sockets, and its tattered cloak billowed in the wind.

Apart from the skeletal horse draped in ragged barding, it looked exactly like those legendary monsters in the sky.

Yet some people knew that it was definitely not one of the Wild Hunt.

"Is that... Ailin?"

Vilgefortz's eyes widened in disbelief as he stared at the Skeleton Knight that had suddenly appeared before Lydia's gallery.

Lydia van Bredevoort blinked as well, leaning forward until she nearly poked her head out through the narrow window of the bell tower.

If they had not known that no second person could possibly have walked out of the gallery at this moment—

They would never have connected the Witcher Ailin, dressed in dark red leather armor with twin swords and blue eyes, to the monster before them, whose blue-gray ghostfire burned within pale bone sockets and whose rusted armor clung tightly to its skeletal body.

Otolan likewise did not believe it was part of the Wild Hunt, though not because he knew Ailin's identity.

On the contrary.

He had no idea why a monster with the same appearance and attire as his enemy had suddenly appeared in the upper city.

He did not believe it because the Skeleton Knights galloping through the sky seemed