Starlight spilled down, falling over her bloodstained white robe and dim halo. The whole scene was so bleak it made one's chest tighten.
Vados paused, leaving her words hanging in the air. Her eyes, like a bottomless icy pool, slowly turned toward Chen Feng. "And... I truly don't want to become your enemy."
Chen Feng stood motionless. The wind tousled the loose strands over his forehead, while dust rose from the ruins behind him, only making his figure stand out all the more clearly.
The air was so still that time itself seemed to stretch out. Only the occasional collapse of distant broken walls echoed, as though reminding everyone that this place was not yet completely dead.
At last, he nodded, his voice low and decisive. "Fine."
Vados said nothing more.
She raised her right hand, and the staff suspended in midair seemed to answer her summons, turning into a thin streak of light that shot into her palm.
The crystal atop the staff lit up. Its soft golden glow, like a lunar halo, coated her bloodstained fingers and tattered sleeves in a gentle radiance.
She gave Chen Feng a deep look, then her figure flickered—without a sound of wind or an afterimage, as though she had been swallowed by light—and in the blink of an eye, she appeared beside Champa a hundred meters away.
Champa had been filled with fury, but the moment he saw Vados's condition, his face froze.
A long tear ran across the shoulder of her angel uniform, exposing bruised skin beneath; energy had burned through the cloth at her waist, leaving its edges blackened and curled; a lock of silver hair, stained with blood, clung to the side of her neck, and there was still uncleaned blood at the corner of her mouth.
Most striking