Sensing the tension that still gripped Nix’s body, Evangeline didn’t let go.
She leaned gently against his back, a soft lody spilling from her lips.
Her unhurried lody echoed through the bamboo house, and it seed as if the darkness itself grew less dense.
Nix found his breathing unconsciously syncing with her lody, and the tension in his body slowly eased.
The lody faded. Evangeline released her hold on Nix, took him by the wrist, and turned toward the bamboo bed. Her voice was tinged with the weariness of her depleted Spiritual Power. "It’s late. Ti for bed."
She was beginning to understand the pattern governing Nix and Loras’s appearances. It was the moonlight.
Nix was like a shadow that had crawled out of the rotting Abyss, swallowing all the pain that Loras had cast aside.
But the primary personality in this body was still Loras—the soul who belonged to the light.
Two people. One living in the light, the other dying in the shadows.
Lying on the bamboo bed, Evangeline was growing drowsy when she suddenly heard Nix’s hoarse critique: "That sounded terrible."
"Terrible?" Evangeline mumbled, as if in a dream.
Nix’s Adam’s apple bobbed. He was about to retort with a cold sneer when he heard the sound of her even, deep breaths.
His violet eyes watched her quietly. This female, so bewitching she was almost dangerous, was now sleeping defenselessly before him. Her long lashes cast faint shadows on her eyelids, looking peaceful and natural.
’Even knowing what I’m thinking, she still dares to sleep so soundly, so unaware?’
His slender fingertips gently crept toward her throat. With just a little pressure, this fragile body would die, and he, in turn, would be liberated.
A dark mist filled Nix’s violet eyes. His fingers trembled, clenching and unclenching.
In the end, he closed his eyes, and his hand fell, gently brushing against her cloud-like hair.
Suddenly, the clouds were swept away by the wind, and moonlight stread in through the cracks in the window lattice.
For a mont, Nix’s expression went blank. Then, a more fragile soul took control of the body.
Had Evangeline been awake, she would have discovered that the person lying beside her now had gentle eyes, yet they were perfectly clear, with no trace of madness. His gaze was fixed on her face.
The moonlight traced his charming eyes and brows. The Nine-star pattern at the center of his forehead was already shattered.
He exuded an aura as pure as moonlight.
Loras.
His violet eyes were as clear as water, his gaze slowly tracing the vermilion mark between Evangeline’s brows.
Loras’s voice was so calm it was unsettling. "You couldn’t bring yourself to do it. Let help you."
’He’s not the only one who wants to be liberated.’
When his fingertips were just three inches from Evangeline’s heart, Loras’s arm suddenly froze.
His face twisted. In the moonlight, veins bulged on his skin like countless vines growing madly through his bloodstream.
"...Heh." Loras squeezed a laugh through his clenched teeth. "Did you go soft on her?"
The mont the words left his mouth, his trembling hand suddenly changed direction, and his five fingers plunged viciously into his own chest.
Blood splattered, and a dark fragrance filled the air.
*
Evangeline opened her eyes as the first ray of dawn shone into the bamboo house.
The thick scent of blood filled her nostrils. When she turned her head, the space beside her was empty, save for a half-dried pool of blood that had a strange, greenish tint.
"Nix?"
Evangeline called out, her brow furrowed.
’My Spiritual Power was depleted last night, and I was exhausted. I put up a Protective Body Restriction before falling asleep, so... did Nix actually try to attack and get hit by the backlash?’
Evangeline got up and left the bamboo house. After searching a wide area and finding no sign of Nix, she had no choice but to head for Blackwater Swamp.
Before she was even close, she heard a piercing clamor.
"So High Priest he is! He’s just a monster who tricks us out of our Beast Crystals!"
"Kill him! Kill him! Now’s our chance, dig out his Beast Crystal!"
"Yeah! He’s badly injured and can’t fight back! Kill him! This is the Beast Crystal of a Nine-Marked Beastman—"
"..."
Evangeline’s pupils contracted. She pushed aside the reeds.
In the fetid swamp, Nix’s body was sinking into the mire. A dozen or so Beastn from the Blackwater Tribe had pierced his limbs with steel forks, and greenish blood seeped from the wounds.
His violet eyes were unfocused, yet they showed no sign of pain. He was simply smiling.
A cold glint flashed in Evangeline’s eyes as the Cold Frost Whip materialized in her hand. She cracked it through the air, and its afterimage, wrapped in a fierce gale, lashed out at the Blackwater Tribe Beastn. "Get lost!"
The Blackwater Beastn scread as they were all sent flying, their steel forks falling into the mire.
Without the steel forks to prop him up, Nix sank abruptly, and the putrid swamp instantly subrged him to his neck.
Evangeline tapped her toes, vaulting over the reeds and gracefully flitting toward Nix. Surging Spiritual Power flowed from her palm, forming a shimring white ribbon that wrapped around Nix’s waist and pulled him from the mire.
"What in the world are you doing?!" Evangeline seethed, glaring fiercely at Nix.
He was covered in sludge, the stench overpowering the dark fragrance that usually clung to him.
As if oblivious to her anger, Nix’s mud-stained fingertips uncontrollably clutched the hem of her clothes. A faint, cold emotion swirled in his violet eyes. "It hurts."
Evangeline froze, her gaze falling to his chest.
There, on his mud-caked chest, were five grueso claw marks dug so deep into his flesh that she could even see his heart beating within.
"You..." Evangeline’s fingertips trembled. ’This isn’t from the backlash of the restriction.’
Nix’s blood-stained hand caressed her face, his voice impossibly hoarse. "Had to... protect you."
Evangeline looked up, gazing into his eyes.
In the depths of those violet eyes, usually so cold and lifeless, a faint glimr of light seed to have broken through.
It was like a tender sprout breaking through the soil of a desolate wasteland—slender and fragile, almost laughably so, yet stubbornly piercing through the filth and darkness that had trapped it.
In that mont, even Evangeline, who was only there for her mission, couldn’t help but feel her heart soften at his obstinacy.
Evangeline lowered her gaze, concealing the storm of emotions within her.
Without a word, she took out so Spiritual dicine and poured it into the wound over his heart.
Nix’s body suddenly went rigid. Washed over by the Spiritual Power, his heart gradually began to beat more strongly.
"Nix, whatever happens, you have to protect yourself first."
Evangeline held his hand and ford a seal with her fingers. Spiritual Power washed over him like a clear spring, and the stinking sludge clinging to his body fell away like a receding tide, revealing pale, clean skin.
Evangeline’s slender eyes swept over the area. Intimidated by her gaze, the Blackwater Beastn dared not approach.
She looked away from them and held Nix firmly by the waist.
"Hold on tight."
With a tap of her toes, she took to the air, riding the wind.
The drizzling rain was reflected in Nix’s violet eyes, and the wind howled in his ears.
Evangeline’s scent was close, inches away. The wind swept past, tangling their hair together.
His long eyelashes fluttered slowly. As if moved by so unseen force, he reached out and gently touched the side of her face. With her there, it seed that even the stench of the swamp had faded away.
’So, light does have warmth.’
Back at the bamboo house, Evangeline carefully treated Nix’s wounds.
She stared at the dried blood on the bamboo bed and mused, "Was it Loras who did this?"
Nix kept his eyes downcast, his voice low, hoarse, and calm. "I told you. They all want to kill you."
Evangeline’s lips parted as if to speak, but Nix had already looked up at her.
His androgynous face was pale, his deep violet pupils like two pools of stagnant water, reflecting not a single speck of light. "You said... you would take with you..."
Nix’s Adam’s apple bobbed, and his voice seed to drift from a great distance.
"Do you still an it?"
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