Natsuki Subaru's face was a storm of shock and fury. Beside him, Emilia had clapped both hands over her mouth, her violet-blue eyes wide with disbelief and alarm.
"Perfect timing — my dear audience."
Elsa's voice was honeyed and sweet, yet carried the bite of a blade in winter. She gave the badge in her hand a little waggle.
"Look what I found. Lost and found, anyone?"
Natsuki Subaru and Emilia hadn't even had ti to respond.
Without warning, a dense, thunderous rhythm of boots and clanking armor erupted from the direction they'd co — and it was closing fast.
"Halt! Royal Capital Guard! We've received a report — everyone drop your weapons, now!" The bellow rang out with the full force of a man who was used to being obeyed.
Far from looking surprised, Elsa's smile only deepened — becoming sothing stranger, more satisfied, as though every piece were falling exactly where she'd expected it to.
"Ti for you to go, little girl. Oh, and take this with you!"
With a casual flick of her wrist, Elsa sent the royal selection badge sailing through the air toward Emilia without a mont's hesitation.
Emilia didn't spare it so much as a glance. She let it hit the floor and roll to a stop.
"Isn't that what you ca for? You got it — now get out!"
Elsa's voice dropped to sothing cold and hard the instant she saw that. She spoke it like an order. Then her gaze locked onto Natsuki Subaru, who stood rooted to the spot, his expression shifting through a dozen things at once.
"And him — he stays."
She ran her tongue slowly along her lip. The look she fixed on Natsuki Subaru was saturated with a possessiveness that defied description — and sothing that bordered on fanatical anticipation.
"We're going to run through the script one more ti, and then…" she murmured, her last few words barely above a whisper, like a lover's secret — yet carrying the chill of an abyss. "You'll beco the man I rember. The one who made a promise with ."
The soldiers had encircled the Loot House like an iron ring, their cold armor catching the last dim gold of the setting sun.
The squad leader's eyes swept across the scene — and the mont they landed on Elsa's unmistakable violet-black dress, his pupils snapped to pinpoints.
"The Bowel Hunter! Move in! Take that woman down — priority target!"
The order had barely left his mouth before several spears shrieked through the air, driving straight for Elsa's back.
A flicker of impatience crossed Elsa's crimson eyes. She was already beginning to turn, already reaching for the movent that would open every last one of these nuisances from navel to throat —
BOOM.
The ceiling of the Loot House exploded.
Rubble and splinters rained down like a storm, and through the chaos a crimson figure descended with the force of thunder and wind — dropping from above with terrifying, unerring precision, landing squarely between Elsa and the soldiers.
Steel scread against steel. Sparks burst and scattered.
A single ordinary longsword — and yet it held firm, catching Elsa's curved blade dead in its tracks.
As the dust rolled and billowed, a tall, unmistakable silhouette resolved out of the haze.
Reinhard van Astrea. His deep sapphire eyes still held that trace of unextinguished crimson deep within — like embers that refused to die — and they were locked, unblinking, on Elsa.
The impact of that sudden, overwhelming force drove Elsa back half a step. The shock travelling up through her blade left her wrist tingling.
The unsettling smile on her face froze for just an instant — then thawed into sothing closer to amused curiosity.
"The Kingdom's Sword Saint? You're quite a bit earlier than the script called for."
Elsa had assud she was his only target — that she was the reason the Sword Saint had co.
But Reinhard's gaze lingered on her for no more than a heartbeat.
Those eyes — burning with a cold, implacable fire — snapped away as though drawn by a magnet.
They landed on Natsuki Subaru, who stood at Emilia's side, frozen in place by sheer disbelief.
"——It's you!"
The words tore from between Reinhard's clenched teeth — a low, snarling sound drenched in bone-deep cold and towering fury.
This was not the anger of a man facing the Bowel Hunter. This ca from sowhere deeper: from the vision of a Royal Capital swallowed in fla, from the screams of the sacrificed, from the all-consuming hatred that had welled up from the very soul of that other "him" — a hatred that could burn the world to ash.
The longsword in his hand let out a high, keening hum. A halo of flowing mana light bled across the blade.
Reinhard turned away from Elsa completely — she might as well not have existed — and his body beca a streak of crimson light that tore the very air apart.
One target only.
Natsuki Subaru.
The sword ca straight for the black-haired young man's throat — carrying with it the absolute, irrevocable resolve of a man cutting through fate itself.
"Reinhard!"
From the mont Reinhard had appeared, Natsuki Subaru had only managed to call his na twice.
The first was a murmur — bewildernt at Reinhard's presence, and at the soldiers who had appeared with him.
The second was shock — raw, unfiltered shock — as Reinhard bore down on him with unconcealed hostility, looking every bit like a man who intended to cut him down where he stood.
"Everything's gone sideways. All of it."
Natsuki Subaru let out a short, bitter laugh. How could he not understand what was happening?
"Both Elsa and Reinhard — like Emilia — they must have co from so twisted, divergent tiline!"
"Elsa sees as an ally… probably. And Reinhard sees as an enemy!"
Subaru felt the last of his composure beginning to fray.
"Just what in the hell happened to in that other tiline?"
He exhaled sharply. No plan survives contact with reality.
He'd thought his enemy was the Bowel Hunter. Now he was staring down the Sword Saint.
This loop — he might have to abandon it.
Except…
Natsuki Subaru bit down on his lower lip, a stubborn unease coiling through him that he couldn't shake loose.
Because even now, he couldn't see a way out.
With Reinhard in play, there was a very real chance he'd keep dying — over and over, until the loop itself beca a dead end with no exit.
And while Natsuki Subaru was sweating through every possible angle, searching desperately for so kind of solution —
Beside him, the smile on Elsa's face vanished completely — wiped away in an instant and replaced with pure, incandescent outrage.
"What?!"
"Reinhard! Your opponent is !"
It was the first ti she had ever thrown her composure aside and scread like that.
She swung her blade at Reinhard's back without a second thought, throwing everything she had into stopping this utterly unforeseen, lethal change of course.
She would not allow it. She would not allow Natsuki Subaru to be cut down by anyone — not before he grew into the man she rembered.
Especially not by this Sword Saint, whose eyes burned with a hatred so fierce it sent even her heart stuttering.
The curved blade fell with urgent, shrieking speed — but Reinhard seed to have eyes in the back of his head. His longsword ca around in a reverse grip and caught it cold.
The clash rang out like a thunderclap, and a visible shockwave detonated outward, hurling the surrounding guards off their feet.
Reinhard's body checked for just a fraction of a second. He frowned, then bellowed:
"All guards — fall back imdiately! This is not a battlefield for you!"
In the sa instant, Elsa felt a force hit her like a wall — irresistible, absolute.
She was launched bodily across the room, crashing through a heap of clutter and bringing it down on top of her.
Reinhard didn't pause for a single heartbeat.
In the sa motion that sent Elsa flying, his silhouette ghosted forward — and he materialized directly in front of Natsuki Subaru.
Subaru stared up at him, face coated in dust, forcing himself to hold Reinhard's gaze with a steadiness he didn't feel.
And in that face, Reinhard saw it — overlaid like a double exposure — the weeping, unhinged Sin Archbishop from the vision of the future, screaming that everything he had done was for the sake of killing him.
"It ends here!"
Reinhard's voice was the cold of the deepest pit. His arm rose high.
The terrible concentration of mana gathering on that blade painted the entire Loot House a stark, sickly white. The sword tip leveled at the point between Natsuki Subaru's brows.
The power was so imnse that the very air seed to seize and stop.
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