Enid fired a firebolt at the demon leader charging her.

  The leader raised its curved blade and swatted the bolt aside.

  It expected the flames to fizzle out.

  They didn’t.

  The fire clung to the weapon, raced up its arm, and crawled over its body.

  The instant it touched flesh, the leader learned what it meant to hurt like your soul was burning.

  Enid’s fire aspect was converted straight from the mana she drew from nature.

  The demon’s body, packed with corrupt mana that stood opposed to nature, made it an especially good target.

  Compared to most creatures, the fire tore into it far more effectively.

  After the firebolt hit, the whole thing was over in less than two seconds.

  A scream, then a hoarse roar, frantic struggling, collapsing, and finally the body crumbling into dust.

  The other demons surrounding Enid froze, shaken by magic they couldn’t make sense of.

  Before any of them could react, the water swirling around Enid’s other hand split into several blades and shot forward.

  By the time the demons understood what was happening, their heads had already separated from their bodies.

  As their awareness faded, they couldn’t grasp one thing.

  How did this mage cast two different spells so fast, back to back, without chanting.

  Once the immediate threat was gone, Enid reached out with her senses again.

  The air still reeked of corruption, but after her “cleanup,” she could finally pick up a faint trace that wasn’t demonic.

  She closed her eyes and sank into a short meditation.

  Then she released a large-scale nature spell.

  Enid lifted one hand, and wind and flame gathered together, compressing until they became a towering fire tornado.

  The massive vortex split into several smaller twisters, then moved on their own, hunting down demons hidden in the shadows and those farther out.

  For a moment, the burning village ruins filled with screams and animal-like shrieks.

  Then, gradually, everything went quiet.

  When Enid could no longer sense even a hint of that foul presence, she focused on listening to the wind, trying to find Antonio through the flow of air mana.

  No matter how many times she searched, she couldn’t catch the living breath of a single person.

  "If the wind won’t answer me," she murmured, "then what about the earth."

  She pressed both hands to the ground and listened for the response of soil and stone.

  Finally, beneath one section of rubble, she felt it, a pulse of life.

  Enid cast a earth-aspect spell at once, shifting soil and rock to lift the collapsed debris away.

  Underneath, she found sixteen children.

  She recognized them, the children of Flowerdew Village.

  They recognized her too.

  A few who were still conscious burst into tears on the spot, overwhelmed with relief at the sight of hope.

  Enid carried them out one by one, but Antonio wasn’t among them.

  She asked the oldest child if they had seen Antonio, the red-haired half-elf young man.

  The child said Antonio had hidden them in the church basement, then left, saying he was going to try to save more people.

  Not long after that, the church collapsed, and the children were trapped underground.

  Once Enid understood where Antonio had likely gone, she formed a giant golem from earth, planted it beside the children, and ordered it to keep them safe.

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  Then she sprinted in the direction Antonio had taken.

  It didn’t take long before she found his herb satchel on the ground.

  The scene made it clear a group of people had clashed directly with demons here, and Antonio was likely part of it.

  As she pushed deeper, she began to find scattered remains of villagers and demon bodies.

  Enid guessed the villagers had tried to flee the village to seek help, the demons caught them, and the fight broke out while they ran.

  There were casualties on both sides, spilled along the path.

  At last she reached an open patch of ground.

  It was littered with torn flesh and fragments of bone, human and demon alike.

  You didn’t have to imagine much to know how brutal the battle had been.

  The good news was Antonio was there.

  The bad news was he was down, gravely wounded, unconscious, and it was impossible to tell at a glance if he was dying.

  "Antonio!"

  Enid rushed to him.

  She found a thread of breath, faint but there.

  Then she began checking his injuries.

  Enid’s talent for nature magic was extraordinary, but elemental magic, as she understood it then, had no spell that could close wounds and knit broken bodies back together.

  At that time, the only magic she knew that could heal flesh and soul belonged to priests, their holy rites.

  True healing magic as its own discipline would not appear until centuries later.

  Antonio’s eyes fluttered open.

  When he saw it was Enid, he coughed up blood and forced the words out.

  "Kh… cough… Enid… Miss Enid… I’m… sorry… I couldn’t… take them down… those demons…"

  Enid dug into his blood-soaked pocket, found an emergency herb pouch, and started treating him on the spot.

  "Don’t talk. Stay with me. Don’t fall asleep."

  Her voice stayed steady, but urgent.

  "I’m going to deal with your wounds. You’re going to live."

  She crushed the herbs with magic, mixed the powder with water, and slowly fed it to Antonio.

  After he swallowed it, his condition improved a little.

  He tried to push himself up, teeth clenched.

  But the damage was too severe.

  There wasn’t much of him that wasn’t broken.

  Enid forced him back down.

  She wove a simple stretcher from wood-aspect magic, lifted it with wind, and started back toward Flowerdew Village.

  She still had to pick up the surviving children and get them somewhere safe.

  Because Antonio’s injuries were so severe, Enid didn’t dare move too fast.

  On top of that, the heavy spellcasting stirred an old condition she had carried since the ancient war, pain that had never fully left her.

  Now it crept back, biting deep.

  The bone-deep ache was nearly unbearable.

  Enid clenched her teeth and kept the magic running anyway.

  Cold sweat soaked through her, but she couldn’t stop, not even for a moment.

  On the road, she kept talking to Antonio to keep him awake.

  Antonio forced himself to answer, clinging to consciousness.

  He knew about Enid’s old condition.

  When he saw how pale she was, he understood how much pain she had to be in.

  "This is on me," he whispered.

  "...What are you talking about," Enid asked.

  "I’m useless. I keep causing trouble for you." His voice shook. "If I were worth anything at all…"

  Before he could finish, Enid tapped him lightly on the forehead and said softly, "Don’t talk about yourself like that, Antonio. You saved those kids."

  She kept her tone steady, the way you spoke to someone you couldn’t afford to lose.

  "And while you were searching for help, whether you meant to or not, you drew the demons’ attention. I could feel it. A lot of people managed to get out of the village. Most of that happened because of you."

  Antonio stared at her, like he couldn’t believe it.

  "Really," he asked. "I actually mattered. I actually did something."

  "Don’t doubt it," Enid said. "You’ve never been useless to me."

  Then her voice dropped a fraction.

  "If anyone is to blame, it’s me. If I’d sensed it sooner… maybe it wouldn’t have ended like this."

  Enid’s face still didn’t show much.

  But the sadness was real.

  So was the faint sting of guilt.

  Those villagers… they looked after us. They were kind. They were good people.

  I watched them, but I never thought about protecting them.

  They could have kept living.

  Antonio fell quiet for a while.

  Enid was about to check if he’d passed out when he spoke again.

  "Enid… I have a favor to ask. It’s not really my place, but… would you hear me out."

  "Say it," Enid replied. "I’ll do what I can."

  Antonio coughed a few times, then pushed through.

  "I always thought I could live my whole life as a herbalist, but… I was wrong."

  He swallowed, eyes unfocused with pain.

  "When I recover, will you teach me how to use magic."

  Enid was surprised.

  Antonio had never shown much interest in magic before.

  But she understood immediately.

  In a world like this, the powerless were lambs waiting for the knife.

  If you wanted to live, or protect anyone else, you needed strength.

  "Of course," Enid said. "But first you heal. You focus on getting better, and then we’ll talk about everything else, okay."

  "Kh… thank you," Antonio murmured. "You’re the same as ever. You’ve always been… kind."

  Kind.

  A broken flash of déjà vu cut across Enid’s mind.

  Short-lived people praising her nobility and power, then turning around and calling her selfish, vile, an evil thing.

  Her throat tightened.

  "...If I were truly kind, none of this would have happened tonight. Maybe the demons came because they sensed my presence."

  She said it so quietly that Antonio didn’t hear.

  When Enid went silent, Antonio assumed his compliment had embarrassed her, and he let it go.

  After a while, Enid finally carried Antonio back to Flowerdew Village.

  By then, the sun was already up.

  A relief unit had arrived in response to the call for help.

  When the surviving children saw Enid return with Antonio, they rushed to tell the soldiers who they were.

  The soldiers took over immediately, carrying the makeshift stretcher into a temporary medical tent.

  Other survivors were treated as well, one by one.

  And at last, Enid was able to sit down and breathe.

  "Ugh… cough…!"

  The moment she let her guard drop, a brutal pain tore through her chest.

  Blood came up as she coughed.

  Her vision dimmed, and darkness flooded the edges of the world.

  She slipped, slow and agonizing, into unconsciousness.

  In the distance, the earth golem collapsed as soon as it lost the elemental power she’d been feeding it.

  People nearby noticed at once.

  "The curse," Enid rasped, trying to stay upright. "Of course… I pushed too hard this time…"

  Another cough.

  Then Enid crumpled to the ground.

  The last thing she saw was people running toward her.

  Their faces were tight with panic, worry, grief.

  Not like the faces in her memories, not twisted with disgust, hatred, and greed.

  Being worried over felt strange to Enid.

  She didn’t think she deserved their concern.

  And yet… it wasn’t bad.

  "Getting worried over once in a while," she thought, as her consciousness slipped away, "is kind of nice."