Don't Look Back?

"Don't look back."

Ella cried out those three words.

Bai Zhu stopped on the transparent trestle bridge.

Not because he wanted to.

It felt as though someone had grabbed his neck from behind and was slowly twisting it to the right.

Milluki's voice exploded through the comms.

"Bai Zhu! Don't listen to her! Don't you fucking turn around for real!"

The sound reached his ears as if muffled by a layer of water.

Milluki was still shouting, Shalnark chimed in with a few words, and someone seemed to be smashing a wall in the rear, but those sounds grew farther and farther away.

The flames of Ryujin Jakka in Bai Zhu's hand shrank back into the blade.

The heat along its edge was fading too.

He blinked once.

Ella was still standing at the end of the trestle bridge.

White clothes, long hair, a Black Gold ring bound around her wrist, and the golden eye in the center of her forehead slowly closing, then slowly opening.

She was trembling as she cried.

"Don't turn around..."

Bai Zhu wanted to curse.

But the words reached his throat and would not come out.

His chin had already turned half an inch.

There was something behind him.

He could not look.

The system panel was unnaturally quiet.

That only irritated Bai Zhu more.

"You piece of crap system, playing dead at a critical moment?"

He bit down on his tongue, trying to force the movement back with pain.

It did not work.

His neck was still turning.

At the edge of his right-side vision, the kneeling Gray Crow Squad began to blur.

Raven's stitched face was lowered, and the iron box behind Bell Crow had fallen silent.

They did not move.

They did not attack.

It was as if they were waiting for