There was no reluctance in her eyes, nor any grief.
Only a bone-deep calm.
She no longer held any hope for that calamitous past, because what had destroyed everything she had was this... jealous heart cradled in her hands.
The Pighead Butcher watched her. With a slight twitch of his fingers, the heart was in his hand.
He sniffed it and said flatly:
"Excellent quality."
Blood Saw immediately felt the unnerving aura enveloping them slowly fade away.
He couldn't help inwardly breathing a sigh of relief, though his expression remained grave.
"Alice..." Lynn frowned and gently rested his hand on her shoulder.
Alice shook her head and gazed into the distance. "There's nothing worth clinging to... she was both my birth mother and the source of my hatred. I won't hold on to any affection for her."
Whoosh-
Right there in the Pighead Butcher's hand, an elongated, shadowy black face was pulled from the heart with a shriek.
For a moment, agonized wails echoed all around them.
"Alice!! Alice!! My daughter! You can't trade me away! You can't! You can't!!"
That shrill, harrowing voice kept ringing out from the distorted apparition.
Lynn and Alice both turned to watch.
But Alice's eyes showed no trace of emotion.
Amid the piercing screams, the face extracted from the heart slowly condensed in the Pighead Butcher's hand, finally becoming a pitch-black bead.
Holding the marble impassively, he sniffed it, then slipped it into a cloth pouch at his waist. A crisp clinking sounded as the beads struck one another.
Then he gave Lynn a long look from above, shouldered his cleaver, and turned to walk into the darkness.
"We will meet again."
Silence fell over their surroundings.
But before he had taken more than a few steps, Blood Saw suddenly reached out and said