Faster, faster... I couldn't die like this!
The human girl with long black hair fled desperately through the mountain forest, her eyes full of panic and the reckless despair of someone with nothing left to lose. Her lips were pressed tightly together, her cracked skin marked by painful bites as she gritted her teeth and endured. Dust, dirt, and blood covered her once-delicate face, and her once-smooth fingers were already riddled with wounds from pushing aside the bushes in her path. Branches scraped across her cheeks, leaving deep, bloody furrows, but she felt no pain at all, only a dull numbness.
When she emerged from the bushes, the view before her suddenly opened up. Without realizing it, she had fled onto a mountain road. But what did it matter if she was on a road? Those people would never let her go-those executioners who had slaughtered everyone in her village! The flames of vengeance flared in her eyes, yet her feet grew heavier and heavier beyond her control, and her vision gradually dimmed. Her body felt so weak. She wanted so badly to collapse and fall into a sleep from which she would never wake...
Yet the clamor of pursuit behind her kept her from stopping. The voices growing ever clearer, and the sounds of blades hacking through the trees, heralded her death! They drove her to keep running!
As the human girl fled along the mountain road, she saw two silver-haired figures approaching. The man was cold and handsome; the girl, lovely and delicate. These were... demons! Their hair and eye colors, so unlike those of humans, and their strange, splendid clothes made their inhuman identities unmistakable. Ordinarily, she might have screamed and hidden behind her older brother, but now she had no one left to rely on, and