Hawkins Arrives Uninvited

A sound so faint it was almost imperceptible cut through the air. Between the despairing sisters and the soldiers eyeing them with ill intent, the air seemed to ripple, and a tall figure appeared out of nowhere.

The instant he appeared, an invisible yet overwhelmingly domineering aura surged outward from him like a tidal wave.

As it swept over the soldiers, their leering faces went slack. Their eyes rolled back, foam spilled from their mouths, and they dropped to the ground without a sound, unconscious.

Strangely, the sisters standing closest to him seemed to be in the eye of the storm. A breeze stirred their hair, but they were otherwise untouched. They could only stare at the blond man before them, as though a god had descended from the heavens.

Dawn slowly crouched, easing the pressure of his towering height.

He brought his gaze as level with the shaken sisters' as he could and gave them a gentle smile, utterly unlike the domineering presence he had shown moments ago.

"Are you two all right?"

"...Y-yes. Thank you... Thank you for saving us."

Monet, the older sister with long, pale-green hair, was the first to recover from her shock. She instinctively shielded her younger sister, Sugar, behind her. Her voice still trembled, but she managed to express her gratitude.

The man before them was powerful beyond imagination, yet his smile gave them a strange sense of safety.

Dawn studied the sisters' features. The last of his uncertainty vanished. They were the ones he had spent so long searching for—Monet and Sugar.

Relief washed over him. All those days of searching had not been wasted.

Dawn kept a faint smile on his face as he fell back on the approach he had long since mastered when taking in girls with nowhere else