Yuzu moved like a shadow stitched from silk and fire. Her bck hair whipped behind her, tied loosely with a crimson ribbon that fluttered like a second bde. Strands framed her heart-shaped face, her sharp ink-bck eyes sparkling with a mischievous light even in the middle of battle.

  Her dark cloak clung close to her small frame, rippling with every movement, revealing fshes of a simple bck tunic and tight, durable pants tucked into well-worn leather boots. Around her waist, a belt full of small scrolls and throwing knives clinked quietly with every precise step.

  She lunged forward, her katana gleaming, a bde so polished it caught the purple glow still crackling from me. Chiisana snarled in response, batting the katana away with the ft of her cw, her scorpion tails whipping dangerously overhead.

  Chiisana herself looked less and less human by the second. Her silver-white hair streamed down her back in tangled waves, tossed wildly by the scorched wind. Her eyes, those eerie, mismatched orbs, one deep crimson, the other a glowing amethyst burned with manic hunger.

  A long, jagged slit tore up the side of her mouth, splitting her smile too wide for a normal face. Her dress, once resembling something elegant, was now a torn mess of bck silk and bone-like armor ptes clinging to her arms and legs, as if she had grown her own armor from her skin. The four massive scorpion tails arched above her, dripping venom thick enough to sizzle when it hit the ground.

  At the same time, the white-haired girl charged in, swinging her greatsword like a titan from old myths.

  Her appearance was striking: short, almost pixie-like, but her presence was immense. Her snowy white hair framed a delicate face with sharp, stormy blue eyes that watched everything with cold precision. Her white cloak billowed, reinforced with runic stitching along the hem that glowed faintly with each motion. Beneath it, she wore silver-pted armor that somehow didn’t weigh her down, almost shimmering against her pale skin. A symbol was burned into the chestpte: a stylized dragon swallowing its own tail.

  With a grunt of effort, she brought the greatsword around in a brutal sweeping arc, aiming to cleave through Chiisana’s defenses.

  Chiisana ducked low, her scorpion tails striking upward like spears. One tail nicked Yuzu’s shoulder, but the bck-haired girl twisted gracefully, absorbing the gncing blow and retaliating with a vicious upward ssh that sliced clean through one of the barbed tips. Bck venom sprayed across the battlefield, burning tiny craters into the dirt.

  The white-haired girl shouted, her voice clear and fierce:

  "Yuzu, on your left!"

  Yuzu didn’t hesitate. She dipped low, spinning her katana into a tight defensive circle just as Chiisana tried to rake her cws across Yuzu’s side. Sparks flew again as steel met cw.

  Meanwhile, the white-haired warrior pnted her feet, raised her greatsword overhead, and channeled a pulse of magic into the weapon. The bde fred white-hot and she brought it crashing down in a hammer blow aimed directly at Chiisana’s center.

  Chiisana snarled, her body blurring into afterimages as she barely escaped the crushing strike, her tattered dress snapping behind her like torn wings.

  Breathing hard but grinning, Chiisana hissed through sharp teeth, "This is much better! Don’t die yet, little fox. I’m enjoying this."

  Yuzu fshed me a quick, reassuring smile over her shoulder, an unspoken stay back before returning to the fray, her katana fshing like a shard of midnight.

  Just as Yuzu and the white-haired girl closed in for the finishing blow, the ground shook.

  A deep, bone-rattling rumble split the air, cutting through the haze of smoke and sparks. Before anyone could react, a massive, cwed hand, bck as obsidian and veined with molten crimson, smashed down between them, cracking the earth like broken gss.

  From the shattered ground rose a towering figure, easily three times my height, wreathed in choking, sulfurous smoke.

  The demon’s body was grotesquely muscur, every inch of him carved like a living weapon. Jagged horns curled from his forehead, and his mouth, filled with serrated teeth, split into a predatory grin. His eyes glowed a sickly gold, radiating raw malice. Thick iron chains hung from his wrists and ankles, broken and cnking with every slow, deliberate step he took. A ragged bck cape, torn at the edges, fluttered behind him, barely clinging to his hulking frame.

  Chiisana immediately stopped moving, the excitement in her expression shifting into something more calcuting, almost reverent.

  "Oi, Chiisana," the demon rumbled, his voice like boulders grinding together. "Your time’s up. We got what we came for."

  Chiisana pouted dramatically, flicking a speck of dirt off her cwed finger, but didn't argue. She gave one st gnce at me, at the swirling purple lightning still sparking weakly around my body with something that looked disturbingly close to affection.

  "Next time, little fox," she whispered, voice dripping with promises.

  The demon didn’t wait. He simply grabbed Chiisana around the waist with one massive hand like she weighed nothing, swung his other hand in a wide, brutal arc to keep Yuzu and the white-haired girl at bay and with a burst of bck mist, the two of them vanished into the shadows, leaving only the sound of rattling chains and burning embers behind.

  The forest was deathly still.

  Only the heavy breathing of Yuzu, the white-haired girl, and me filled the smoky clearing. I stared at the pce they'd disappeared, heart pounding so loud it hurt.

  The smoke slowly thinned, carried away by the broken winds. The trees crackled softly where the fire had licked them, the embers casting long, flickering shadows across the scorched clearing.

  Yuzu sheathed her katana with a sharp click, gncing back at me with a bright, relieved grin.

  “Mashiro, bery oki!” she chirped, cheeks puffed out proudly despite the lingering danger.

  Before I could even stammer out a reply, the white-haired girl stepped forward, brushing ash from her pale cloak. She looked about my age, slender and lithe, with the same delicate fox ears twitching atop her head. Her hair was stark white, almost silvery, tied into loose, low twin braids that swung gently as she moved. Beneath her cloak, her outfit was stitched together from white and silver leathers, designed for fast, powerful movement rather than looks.

  Her eyes, cool, clear blue like winter rivers locked onto mine with a steady, almost serious gaze.

  She brought a fist to her chest in a short, disciplined salute, her oversized greatsword still resting easily on her back.

  “Name’s Shirakawa,” she said, her voice light but firm. “Code name: Zero-Seven.”

  The wind stirred her cloak as she smiled slightly, a softer, more genuine smile than her formal posture suggested.

  “I’m part of Yuzu’s special support unit," Shirakawa added with a little grin, thumbing proudly at the insignia stitched into her white cloak, a small emblem shaped like a tiny fox paw.

  I blinked, still struggling to catch up. “You… were looking for me?”

  “Un!” Yuzu nodded so fast her bck hair whipped into her face. She shook it off with a puff and pnted her fists determinedly on her hips. “Bery nnai random adventurers came to guild panicky and bery say Mashiro in trouble.”

  Her fox ears flopped comically with the motion, their tips drooping as she spoke. The expression on her face shifted quickly, from proud to pouting like a storm cloud rolling in on a sunny day.

  "Even though..." Yuzu’s cheeks puffed up adorably, "Yuzu bery gib message to bery stay at the inn till Yuzu come back..."

  She stomped her tiny foot once against the scorched ground with a soft pomf, sending up a little puff of ash. Her bck eyes gleamed with the exasperation of someone whose carefully id pns had been completely and utterly ignored.

  I scratched my cheek sheepishly, my tail curling low behind me. The ember-light still clinging to my fur made it sparkle faintly with purple sparks, like a guilty campfire.

  “S-Sorry...” I muttered. “It just happened...”

  Shirakawa snorted, amused. “Don’t be too hard on her, Yuzu. Look at her.” She waved zily at me. “She’s already halfway to becoming a tragic overhyped romantic novel protagonist.”

  “Yuzu try warn!” Yuzu insisted, puffing up even more like a tiny furious balloon. “Stay put, Yuzu say! Danger, Yuzu say!”

  Shirakawa’s smile widened just a fraction, but her eyes stayed sharp.

  "You have something inside you," she said simply. "And a lot of bad things are going to come crawling for it."

  She tapped the hilt of her greatsword once, almost zily.

  "That’s why we’re here. To protect you."