Curses and Will Chapter 19: Chapter 3: The Silence That Answered

Read chapter 19 of Curses and Will by Simply No One on NovelPedia.

No answer came from the blade. Just silence, heavier somehow than the air pressing in around the beast in front of me. Damn it. I was alone this time. The beast lunged before I'd finished processing that fact. I dodged, countered with a slash that it deflected without much apparent effort. I struck again. Again. A whole barrage of blows that it parried like it was swatting at something irritating rather than dangerous. Then its tail whipped out faster than I could track, piercing clean through my thigh. I screamed. It lifted me off the ground like I weighed nothing, blood dripping freely from the wound, my vision starting to blur at the edges. Pain roared through my skull loud enough to drown out almost everything else. Then, a flash of black mist. "Run!" I shouted, the word tearing out of me. "Annya, run!" She didn't listen. Of course she didn't. Instead she stood her ground beside the chaos, eyes burning with something fierce enough to cut through her usual composure. Her hands moved through a pattern I'd never seen her use before, shadows twisting and gathering around her until they formed a dome of absolute, total darkness. "Shadow Den," she whispered. A forbidden spell, I understood somehow without being told. A torrent of black shadow burst outward, swallowing the area whole. I couldn't see anything inside it, yet I wasn't afraid, because I understood instinctively that the shadows weren't meant to blind us. They were hers to command, a domain built around her will alone. From somewhere inside that darkness, a bolt of green light cracked like thunder. Something moved through it, too fast to properly follow, and a punch landed with the force of something closer to divine judgment than human effort. The beast staggered. I dropped to the ground, gasping, pain screaming through my leg, but I forced myself back onto my feet anyway. Gritting my teeth, I raised my sword and rushed forward for one final strike. A sound tore out of me that didn't feel entirely human. The blade found its mark, driving clean through the beast's neck. Black blood exploded upward like a geyser. It gave one last shudder and collapsed. Silence settled over the road. I dropped to my knees, the adrenaline finally letting go of whatever had been holding me upright. A hand touched my back gently. I looked up. The fox-woman knelt beside me, smiling despite the tears still standing in her eyes, her expression soft in a way I hadn't seen from her yet. "My name," she said gently, "is Amilia." The world spun slightly, whether from blood loss or relief I couldn't entirely tell. And for the first time since Jonathan had died, I found myself smiling too. After that terrible night, the journey continued. The following two days passed without incident, no beasts stalking us, no members of the Devil Banishers emerging from the shadows to finish what the others had started. For once, the road's silence felt closer to mercy than threat. On the morning of the fourth day, the walls of a town came into view, wooden gates catching the early light. Henbō Toshi. A quiet, unassuming place tucked between rolling hills and rivers that caught the sun like threads of silver. Children chased each other through narrow streets, merchants called their morning prices, and the air carried a faint trace of incense. But the calm felt false to me, at least. The moment I crossed the gate, something inside me twisted hard. A weight pressed down across my chest, heavy and primal in a way that had nothing to do with the soldiers or villagers around us. It was hunger, an unseen presence carrying the purest, most distilled intent to kill I'd encountered since arriving in this world. The feeling seeped through the streets like invisible smoke, and for a moment I thought my knees might genuinely give out under it. No one else reacted. Annya's face carried open relief at finally reaching somewhere familiar. Amilia looked simply curious about the new surroundings. The villagers moved with easy, ung