Cutie turned his head slowly, his eyes locking onto the healer with a gaze so sharp and cold it felt like a knife slicing through flesh. Every inch of the room seed to shiver under his stare.
The healer’s composure faltered. A shiver ran down his spine, his body betraying him in ways he could not control. One thought clawed at his mind like a frantic rat: Is this man really just a rabbit beast-man? No—this presence, this suffocating, almost physical weight pressing against his senses, it was sothing far more dangerous. A re rabbit beast could not make his instincts scream with this intensity. Yet, every fiber of his being scread to flee, to vanish, to put as much distance between himself and Cutie as the world allowed.
But Cutie’s attention had already returned to Kaya. Kneeling beside her, he pressed two fingers against her wrist with careful precision, seeking the fragile rhythm of her pulse. It was faint. Too faint.
He drew in a deep, steady breath, as if forcing his own inner storm to still itself, before rising to his feet. Without a single word, he moved toward the healer’s workroom, each step asured and deliberate, his presence a suffocating shadow.
Inside, shelves groaned beneath jars, bowls, and pots. The air was thick with the tallic tang of preserved organs, a scent that made the healer’s stomach churn. Cutie’s blue eyes swept over every object until they settled on a single shelf. He reached out, lifted a jar, and pried it open. Inside floated a heart, suspended in murky liquid, an object of morbid fascination.
He brought it close to his nose, inhaled once, then clicked his tongue sharply. "Useless."
The jar clattered back onto the shelf. Cutie reached for another. And another. Each ti, he lifted, sniffed, and dismissed the contents.
"Useless. Useless. Useless," he muttered, each repetition colder and sharper than the last, his movents quickening with a mounting impatience. The room seed to shrink under his disdain, the air itself quivering with the silent judgnt he passed on every object.
The healer froze, dumbstruck. Watching his painstakingly gathered herbs and carefully preserved organs treated as worthless scraps tore at sothing deep inside him. Each jar, each heart, each ticulously crafted concoction—treasures he had bled and sweated for—dismissed in a heartbeat.
But in Cutie’s eyes, they were nothing more than detritus.
At last, when nothing of value was found, Cutie’s gaze shifted slowly to the healer. His eyes cut like a blade, and his lips curled into a low, quiet growl.
"Are you even a healer?"
The words struck sharper than any knife. Without waiting for an answer, Cutie strode out, leaving the healer frozen in a combination of awe, fear, and disbelief.
Outside, beneath the dim shade of a tree, Veer slouched, head drooping, eyes half-shut as though slipping away from the world entirely. His body swayed faintly, on the brink of collapse, trembling with exhaustion.
Cutie approached, his shadow stretching over Veer. "Are you dead or alive?" he asked, voice calm, almost surgical.
In an instant, Veer’s eyes snapped open. They were no longer human; deep red flooded them, overwhelming the whites, as though blood itself had claid his gaze. Cutie’s lips curved into a small, approving smile. "Good. You’re alive."
From a pocket, he produced a small, smooth orb, its surface gleaming faintly like a captured shard of moonlight. Without hesitation, he pressed it into Veer’s mouth.
Veer jerked violently, his hand twitching to strike, his throat working to spit the object out.
But Cutie’s calm, clipped voice stopped him in mid-motion. "It’s dicine. It will recharge every ounce of energy in your body—for three hours."
Veer froze, his narrowed eyes eting Cutie’s unflinching gaze.
Cutie leaned closer, his tone shifting, commanding. "I need you to bring to certain places. There are herbs I must gather—herbs to save her."
Veer’s knees hit the ground as the dicine pulsed through him, fire igniting along his veins. The animal inside him cald, brittle yet controlled. Pushing upright, he glared, and his words cut like shards of steel. "Listen, you damn rabbit—if anything happens to her, I’ll kill you. I’ll tear you into pieces and scatter them across the land. I’ll make you feel what hell truly is. I’ll make you beg for death."
Cutie observed him with the sa unblinking, quiet stillness. When he spoke, his words were flat, precise, deliberate, like a verdict delivered without malice or rcy. "Don’t worry. If anything happens to her, I won’t be living anyway."
Veer’s glare burned the air, a promise and a threat entwined. Without another word, he spread his wings. Feathers sliced the wind like knives. In one fluid motion, bones stretched and cracked as his form shifted, transforming into a massive vulture, shadowed against the sky. His claws seized Cutie mid-air, talons locking around him with rciless strength, unlike the gentler hold he reserved for Kaya.
Cutie’s gaze remained serene, eyes fixed on the ground below. Calmly, almost lazily, he issued the command: "Snake Valley."
Veer hesitated, not from fear, but from knowledge of the ancient enmity between vultures and snakes—a predator and prey relationship older than mory. To fly into the valley was to step into a pit of fire, unshielded, unarmored, exposed. Yet he obeyed.
As they descended, the valley unfurled below like a nest of living venom. Hundreds of serpents coiled, scales catching faint light, fangs glinting. The air itself seed charged with anticipation, hissing and shivering with latent aggression. Without warning, the snake tribe lunged—speed and precision in lethal harmony. Veer twisted mid-flight, narrowly dodging strikes that could have torn feathers and flesh alike.
But the onslaught was relentless, too fast, too many. Fangs snapped inches from his skin, each strike sharper than the last.
"Now," Cutie said, voice cold, laced with amusent.
Veer’s wings flexed, and in one swift, precise motion, he released Cutie. The world dropped away beneath him. Mid-fall, a smirk crept onto Cutie’s lips. "Damn bastard," he muttered, eyes flaring with blue light.
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