Ⅳ
Moonlit shadows, white robes.
The instant Jimte and Carral saw the two figures standing before St. Joan's Girls' Academy, they stopped in their tracks.
Under the moonlight, white should have been sacred.
Yet Jimte and Carral smelled blood.
Faint, but lingering.
Like a nightmare at midnight.
Or...
The demon beside your bed.
It watched you in your sleep, listened to your breathing, and stretched out its cold, sharp claws, starting at the crown of your head and passing over your hair, forehead, nose, lips, and chin.
Then it seized your throat.
You were attacked without warning in your sleep.
Awake in an instant.
You were terrified.
You were suffocating.
You wanted to fight back, but you were powerless.
That made it laugh uproariously. It opened its mouth and began tearing the flesh from your face. As you trembled in pain, the sound of flesh ripping naturally filled your ears, fine tearing sounds mingled with sucking. Your blood excited it even more. No longer satisfied with that patch of flesh, it turned its attention to your eyes, nose, and ears.
Amid the crunching, death began to descend.
And you no longer resisted.
You had long since lost the strength to resist.
But its game continued.
This time, it targeted your organs.
The pain of your belly being ripped open, and the strange sensation of your heart, liver, spleen, stomach, and kidneys being pulled out, drew your final moan before death-a moan that satisfied it.
Jimte and Carral quickly shook their heads.
Both instantly broke free of the almost tangible hallucination.
Mystic Art?
Talent?
They speculated, their gazes fixed unblinkingly on the two figures before them.
The robes that should have been white took on a bloody hue in their eyes, as though countless living beings had wailed and stained those