Though the sky was only spotted with the occasional cloud, water drizzled around Adah as she touched down at the center of the intersection. The streets were cracked and cratered at various points, where the hydra heads had fallen to the ground after Clair decapitated them. Rika’s railgun had left behind the largest crater of all—her bullet had broken through the concrete and burst part of the city’s water line. It was this water that sprayed about and dampened the streets.

  In just about every sense, the mission had been a disaster. Yet, the damage done to the city was the least of Adah’s concerns.

  She walked over to where Iris and the twins had already gathered, by the boy who lay amongst the rubble.

  Adah had been hoping the damage to his body would look less severe up close, like how the blood that first escapes from a cut can appear more frightening than the wound itself.

  But Ekki looked even worse up close. His right arm was completely missing from the shoulder down. The steel pauldron on that shoulder looked like a piece of paper sent through a file shredder. His crow mascot had already covered Ekki’s wound with the same kind of magic gauze that Emi’s mascot had used to protect her from the wolf’s bite. The magic field had managed to stall but not reverse the decay of Ekki’s body—along his collarbone and all down the side of his body to the bottom of his ribs, the scraps of flesh that had drifted from his body remained suspended in the air.

  His eyes were still and lifeless. He had no expression on his face whatsoever—his lips were slightly parted and all his muscles were relaxed. If there was a way in which he differed from Emi after her injury, it was that. There was no sign of a human life within his body.

  Iris was kneeling on the left side of his body, holding his remaining hand in her own. Her head was pressed to his chest. Although tears streamed down her face, she didn’t sob or cry out. She spoke quietly to no one in particular.

  “He’s cold,” she said. “His heart’s beating, but he’s cold. Why? I can hear it beating. He shouldn’t be so cold.”

  Rika and Clair landed close behind Adah, softening the sound of their feet hitting the ground as best they could. No one said anything as they watched over Ekki.

  Iris soon lifted her head and looked at Clair.

  “Go into his mind,” she said. “Find out if he’s okay. See what’s going on.”

  Clair shook her head and said, “I don’t think I should.”

  “I do,” Iris said. Her voice was snappy but still weak.

  The girls stared at each other. Clair was the first to avert her gaze, glancing down at the ground.

  “Have faith,” Ekki’s crow said. “The boy is strong, and I am doing all that is possible to aid him. Casting spells upon him may interfere with my own efforts. The best support you can provide is to speak to him. Speak to him as only you would, so that his mind may hear it and know you. He will hold on to you.”

  At the crow’s words, Iris pressed her head against Ekki’s and began to whisper. The words were indiscernible to Adah, and she felt she shouldn’t try to hear them anyway. She stepped away from Ekki’s body, along with the other four magical girls.

  While walking away, Adah realized she was still holding onto her scythe. The final moments of this battle had been a blur to her, but some images flashed through her mind. Eighteen hands stretching out until their arms were as thin as Adah’s own, reaching for their targets without Adah having to so much as issue a command. The power within the scythe had known what she needed it to do, and had executed it without her involvement.

  Though she did nothing to aim the hands, and expended no energy to make them hold their targets in place, they each still felt like a part of her. Perhaps it was merely a hallucination brought on by the stress of the moment, but she swore she had felt the scales of the hydra against her own palms.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  The sensation was gone now, though, replaced with the warm metal of her scythe’s handle. In the panic of the fight’s final moments, Adah hadn’t noticed her weapon’s heartbeat. She had learned to judge the amount of power contained within the scythe by the intensity of its beating and—out of curiosity—she decided to test it now.

  She focused on this idea—wanting to feel the scythe’s power rather than destroy some opponent—and the weapon responded. However, instead of unveiling its smoky blade as it normally would, it sent a surge of energy straight into Adah’s palms.

  She felt the heartbeat in her hands first, then in her chest. As if it were her own.

  Her focus broke immediately from the shock of the sensation, and the power left her body.

  That must have been the second function of Beleth’s Bloodletter. Surpassing her limits, as the weapon description had said. Great, even more strange interactions to get used to.

  For now, she’d confirmed what she’d intended to. The scythe’s essence reserves had depleted significantly, but not entirely. Judging by the intensity of the heartbeat Adah had felt, unleashing all those hands had burned through roughly two-thirds of the weapon’s stored energy. It was a useful benchmark—overwhelming a B-Rank would cost several weeks worth of farming C-Ranks.

  Adah let the scythe dematerialize, then looked around at the faces of her teammates and Clair. They were all downcast, weighed down by a combination of exhaustion and stress.

  “What do you think, Emi?” Ami asked. “I mean, I thought maybe you’d understand something the rest of us couldn’t.”

  Emi glanced back at Ekki’s body. She shook her head.

  “I don’t remember anything from when I was out,” she said. “But if he comes back, then we should all be there when he does. He’s going to want to see people. Humans.”

  If his essence as a human was being torn away, it made sense. Adah remembered how Emi had been when she first woke up—she had been distant, but still eager to talk and listen. It was a way to feel human and properly alive again. It probably had also helped her forget about the pain that she still had trouble describing.

  “He could have left me sooner,” Clair said as she kicked a loose chunk of rubble across the street. “I didn’t need all his help, that fucking…”

  Instead of finishing her thought, she simply kicked the rubble even harder, sending it skipping to the far end of the intersection.

  From afar, the sound of sirens arrived. Now that the hydra was defeated, the police would need to cordon off the area until the streets and sidewalks could be repaired and cleared of debris. Protecting city property hadn’t been a primary concern during this mission, and the destruction around Adah was hard to ignore now that she stood in the middle of it.

  Still, she would have been happy to level some of these buildings if it had kept anyone from getting hurt. Ekki’s empty eyes were far more disconcerting than some hole in the street.

  Mixed in with those police was surely the siren of an ambulance. The sooner Ekki made it to a hospital, the better his chances of returning would be. Human medicine couldn’t combat the essence draining effects of a Cruelty injury, but could provide the necessary life support to stabilize his body and treat the physical aspect of his wound. Then, his mascot could focus his magic on preserving Ekki’s essence. The healthier his body, the easier it would be for him to return, or so Adah hoped.

  The approaching sirens reminded Adah of a fact she’d nearly forgotten: the public was watching this battle. This whole time, they’d been watched and filmed. Drones, cameras perched on rooftops, even phone footage captured at a distance—all of those recordings would be shared online and in the news. While the corporate media might refrain from airing any footage of Ekki’s injury, any random person who had managed to capture that scene would surely spread it.

  Even if, by a miracle, no one saw video of the attack, the public would still learn what happened to Ekki. There were too many eyes on this mission to keep any part of it private. Both DreamRise and the Last Light would have to contend with the aftermath. People would ask questions. Others would make up rumors. Everyone—even people who didn’t usually care much about magic users—would form some kind of opinion on what had happened today.

  Even after fighting for their lives, and possibly losing one, they would still be subjected to this PR game. And Adah had a feeling that the man who had forced them into this position wouldn’t be first in line to apologize.

  If the girls were lucky, the cops would keep the press away from the battlefield, at least until Ekki was transported away. After that, they could fly out before any news crews got close. Now wasn’t the time to take interviews—not that Adah could think of anything to say anyway.

  That was a luxury that would only last so long, though.

  They were stuck in this game whether they liked it or not, and it was Adah’s duty to play it for her team. While everyone else processed what had happened to Ekki and dealt with the aftermath, Adah needed to be thinking. The best thing she could do for him was the same she had done for Emi.

  Adah would find a way to turn this tragedy on its head and push both teams forward. To help Ekki, to prevent their struggle from amounting to nothing, and to step toward their goals.

  Was that not the very resilience Twilight Heartbreak was meant to represent?

  As the sounds of sirens drew closer, Adah looked to the darkening sky and set her mind in motion.