Ellen kept backing away.
Instinctively, she searched for one last refuge, just as she had after killing her parents—but the demon cat Lu Xiu had pinned beneath her foot had somehow turned into a puddle of black water and vanished without a trace.
Even the demon that had guided her and given her power had abandoned her!
"Got you."
Lu Xiu had no intention of stopping because of anything she said.
She grabbed the false Viola by the collar and hauled her off the floor.
"Let me go! Ah!"
As Ellen screamed in despair, Lu Xiu dragged her to the back of the foyer and shoved her beside the purple-haired girl.
At last, the two bodies whose souls had been exchanged were forced to face each other in all their misery.
One had a healthy young girl's body but held a tormented, decaying soul. The other had a horrifying, broken body but held an innocent, pure soul.
"Game over."
Standing before them, Lu Xiu gripped the Soul-Severing Blade's hilt with both hands and raised it high.
As she moved,
the purple patterns along the blade began to flow, giving off a faint, ghostly glow.
Lu Xiu stabbed downward.
The dark-red thread of soul-bound cause and effect, invisible to ordinary eyes and twisted around itself,
was severed in a single stroke.
"Aaaaaah!"
Ellen let out a piercing scream the instant the thread was cut.
Viola's healthy body convulsed violently, as though struck by lightning.
Then a decaying shadow was forcibly wrenched from it!
At the same time, the purple-haired girl gave a pained grunt. Her soul was pulled free in an instant, tracing a glimmering arc through the air.
Drawn by magic, both souls returned to the bodies that belonged to them.
Then
the healthy young girl's body gave a slight