The time was the dead of night, at the ragged edge of a national border—

  “Alright, everyone, line up. Keep your hands where I can see them. Be good boys now.”

  A man, his clothes tattered but his eyes sharp as razors, struggled to remain upright. He stared down a squad of armed men, less than ten in total. Objectively speaking, despite their small number, if these men had raised their weapons and fired in unison, they could have dropped him in a heartbeat.

  Yet, not a single one of them had the courage to try.

  The man’s appearance was a mess; the sleeve of his right arm had been torn away, and the limb hung limp and useless at his side. But his left hand was held high, gripping an unlit signal fre with a white-knuckled intensity.

  None of them were willing to bet that he wouldn't ignite it. More importantly, none of them were willing to bet that the spark from their own muzzles wouldn't trigger the cloud of garlic dust still hanging heavy in the stagnant air. If that fre was struck, every soul present would be vaporized in a massive dust explosion.

  The very weapon they had intended to use against their targets had now become a stumbling block they couldn't circumvent. Furthermore, the "shock education" they had received only moments ago had left them reflexively terrified to open fire. The "target" they thought they could easily apprehend had, in a single stroke, turned over half of a fifty-man elite special operations unit into mangled fragments scattered across the dirt. It wasn't the aftermath of a battle; it was the result of a systematic dismantling.

  Nearby, their original commander y in a heap of refuse, having soiled himself before losing consciousness from sheer terror.

  The man holding the fre was wearing a smile—one he had deliberately mimicked from that very commander. It was a mirthless, skin-deep smirk, an insufferable expression that he used to pin them in pce. He was determined to let these men feel exactly what it was like to be stared at with such a look. It wasn't just to vent the resentment of the past few days; it was to settle the score for his former subordinate.

  He stared at them, his voice low but cutting through the silence like a bde.

  “You treated her like a tool. An experimental subject. Something that could be sacrificed whenever it suited you.”

  He slowly panned his gaze, ensuring that every man met his eyes.

  “Now it’s my turn to look at you with that same gaze—how does it feel? Does it feel good?”

  No one answered. Some of the soldiers began to tremble visibly.

  The man had known this new subordinate for less than a month, yet she had already left an indelible mark upon his soul. He shifted his eyes slightly, finding his true focus.

  In the distance, two female figures were moving. One supported the other as they crossed the wire fence at an inhuman speed, putting distance between themselves and the chaos. Their silhouettes were strikingly simir, both adorned with long, lustrous bck hair.

  However, one possessed hair of a pure, absolute bck that seemed to swallow the surrounding light, while the other—the one being supported—bore hair that shimmered with a faint, silvery luster under the moon.

  As their figures began to vanish into the night, the man suppressed the sudden, fierce impulse to chase after them, to leave all this rot behind and stay by their side. Instead, he whispered under his breath:

  “Run... just run... I’ll hold this fre until you’re safe.”

  The fre remained high in his hand, steady and unshakable, without even a hint of a tremor.