A dull crack shot through the air. Just barely loud enough to startle. Familiar sigils and arcane lines gave off a lavender light that bathed the mountain cove, catching the copper strands of a lone girl’s hair. The glaring purple spell ring etched into the air above gave off a pulse. A light breeze tugged at her clothes, drawn towards a mana-induced pressure change, accompanied by the soft rustle of grass and foliage.

  —Isn’t that…

  Although she had no direct experience, she knew enough to recognise this sort of magic by its distinct purple hue.

  a summoning spell?

  While not forbidden, it was a type of magic most considered dark and unpredictable.

  The girl’s eyes darted about her surroundings, yet couldn’t commit to turning her head in search of the caster. Surely, they had to be nearby? These things can’t occur spontaneously, can they? That would make this a targeted attack. But then, why? She wasn’t anyone important. All those uncertainties were troublesome to mull over, but still less pressing than the immediacy of what was being summoned to join her.

  A gaping black void opened at the circle’s center, swallowing its own violet glow.

  And from the inky darkness, something dropped. Ebon blobs, viscous and ethereal, clung to its form for the briefest of moments before the shape thudded to the ground with a rumble. The girl flinched. Her basket fell from her arm, tumbling to the grass with a spill of freshly plucked leaves.

  The circle dissipated, winking out of existence.

  Leaving her to contend with a minotaur.

  The thing towered over her. Twice, if not thrice her size. Two twisted ivory horns jutted from the beast’s skull, its whole muscled frame clad thick in bristly brown fur from head to hoof. Countless scars decorated its form, an array of trophies from battles past. Most notably, however, was the bleeding ooze stemming from milky eyes embedded in its skull. Diseased? Drugged? It wasn’t immediately clear, but the creature was decidedly abnormal.

  The young woman’s heart thumped as a few stray glimmers of green bled from her skin. Dread-fuelled instinct had her healing magic preemptively clinging to her body in sheer anticipation.

  She backpedalled a single cautious step.

  Should she run? This thing looked to be on a hair trigger; that would surely incite a charge? That’s what minotaurs did, right?

  The beast shook its head in an irritated frenzy. Giant hands brushed at its face as if to swat away some unseen nuisance before a fist thumped the ground. It, too, looked about as confused as the girl did.

  Then, with a swivel of its head, its attention locked onto the diminutive little human with a prompt snort. Fresh out of time to think any further, the girl’s heel dug into the soil as she pivoted into a sprint.

  Just a few strides in, and a roar forced her head to duck in a flinch. Then her face was in the dirt. A swipe had knocked her leg. She scrambled onto her back, thrusting her hands out to conjure up a silvery dome that shouldered the oncoming slam of a fist.

  Sparks shot off from her ethereal sanctuary, fractures splitting through it like glass. The minotaur pounded away with inexplicable rage, hunched over the veil of magic protecting its prey.

  Any mage could tap into the magic of the remaining two types that didn’t match their intrinsic affinity, albeit at a far heavier cost. And with her appalling affinity for disruption magic, the strain burned her arms. Wisps of raw, silvery mana wafted into the open, lost in the casting process. Holding the barrier too long would be dangerous.

  But she clearly couldn't outrun the thing.

  Plan B.

  Her wall faded on the next upswing; in its place was a fiery ball that condensed. Once more, she wasted mana on extrinsic magic. Smaller and smaller the orb squeezed, erupting to deflect the next strike of a fist, but most importantly…her own body as well.

  The blast hurled her backward, and she tumbled into a clumsy roll along the ground that left her dazed. Cloaked in a light sprinkling of regeneration, the burns on her fingers and the grazes all cleared in no time. But as she swiftly clambered to her feet, the creature seized her by a leg.

  “Dammit!”

  She rag-dolled a second time. Thrown back into the cove and away from the mountain trail like an unwanted plaything. She hadn’t even come to a full stop when a force pinned her body.

  A concussive shockwave swept the area; the girl’s waning momentum arrested by a fist that now had its knuckles firmly anchored into her gut. Her eyes widened, a sharp, coppery tang bathing her tongue as a crimson spray erupted from her lips. Ribs cracked, organs flattened, and blood drained from her back where the pressure tore her skin apart. Pain was notably absent, denied by the sheer severity and shock, leaving only an urgent sensation of breathlessness and a chest that felt…wrong.

  As the beast let out a grunt and drew its fist back with a fussed shake of its head, the faint emerald glimmers caressing the girl’s skin flared into a full-blown aura. This was the magic she was supposed to cast, the most efficient use of her mana. Divine magic had muscle tissue weaving back together, bones grating against one another, and skin stitching closed. In a few moments, all that remained were the fresh red stains seeped into the whites and blues of her clothes.

  She gasped and let out a sigh, catching her breath after those few fleeting seconds without functioning lungs. The minotaur abruptly hunkered down at the sight, irate at its own seemingly fruitless attack, and let out an enraged roar directly into the girl’s face.

  Her arm swung on reflex, slapping the side of the minotaur's cheek to little effect. Yet, it was seemingly so unexpected that it opened a fleeting moment of confusion.

  Plan C?

  She scrambled backward and to her feet in another hasty attempt to flee—that saw her back hammered into the ground again. Punished with not one punch. Not two. Or three.

  Fists struck over and over.

  The minotaur had flown into an even wilder frenzy of discordant strikes, upset that this fragile little thing was so resilient.

  Each blow struck indiscriminately. Crushing limbs and ripping muscle from bone, all countered and frenetically willed back together. The shock had worn off. The agony of having her body tenderized was as sharp as it ever could be. Coupled with having only a few precious seconds between blows to restructure her lungs, her concentration was rapidly deteriorating.

  Panic crept up her spine, soon forced to direct all healing efforts toward maintaining only what she needed to remain alive.

  Her legs were now out of order.

  This is bad. Real bad. Badbadbad…

  A slam landed squarely on her sternum, shattering the gem in her brooch that clipped her capelet together.

  The sudden spike in mana consumption hit her immediately. No longer able to filter her mana through a sparkstone, casting grew vastly more taxing, and now—she had a few seconds left to her name at best.

  Handfuls of sludgy soil and grass filled her palm, tossed up like an animal backed into a corner. She hit an eye, but all it did was piss the beast off more.

  She let loose a few grated cries.

  Teeth gritted, face scrunching into a scowl. In a desperate effort of dwindling resolve, the waning green that cloaked her doubled down. Like a spark to blastpowder, she tried to brute-force her magic through raw casting, no matter how inefficient or clumsy it was. All or nothing. Flowery green fought against each blow of a rugged fist, trying to outheal the damage. A flicker of hope burned in her eyes.

  Just a little more and…a creeping tremor took hold of whatever muscles still functioned, a surefire sign she’d just spent every drop of her magical energy and was now sapping her vitals.

  That slight falter allowed the next strike to snuff her resistance out.

  Exhaustion gripped her in an instant. A blinding wave of fatigue closed in on her vision, silencing the valley.

  Nonononono…!

  The glow of her magic fizzled out to nothing but traces of feeble green glitter.

  She fell limp, jerking lifelessly as the brazen assault continued, regardless.

  Her body refused to move, mind morbidly counting the strikes as they landed just to confirm her consciousness hadn’t completely faded.

  A silent fury burned up from her core. All her efforts to keep a low profile and avoid her magic and nevertheless, she’d wound up dying an adventurer’s death.

  She’d sorely misjudged how intense managing injuries of this caliber would be. Perhaps dedicating more time to honing her magical abilities would have been a wise choice, but now it was regrettably too late.

  Frustration twisted her face into a weak sob as the chill of blood loss grew ever more prominent.

  Just a few minutes.

  That was all she’d managed to buy herself, for all the good it did her. No help arrived.

  Of course not.

  Who the hell out here would be stupid enough to run towards a summoning?

  The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  And stupid enough to intervene…

  If she’d come with her teammate, would they have survived this together?

  Maybe.

  Of all the days to split up…

  “H…el…p…”

  With her last breath, she called for someone, anyone.

  The feeble word bubbled from her lips, inaudible even to herself.

  Like the final nail in her coffin, she felt a sharp jab. A shard of broken rib punctured straight into her heart, granting her a split second of clarity with how jarring it was.

  And just a moment before the spark of life burned out in her eyes, the brutalized girl only had ?a half-second to savor the sweetest bit of respite. A blurry, dark figure fluttered into view, cutting the beast off from further mangling her near-lifeless frame. A solo, fading audience looked on as a red flash of electrical energy reduced the minotaur to nothing but thick viscera cast over the narrow valley.

  Just a few moments too late.

  Glassy, dead eyes continued to stare blankly up at her would-be savior.

  And cradled in a gruesome crimson depression—Sierra’s corpse now lay.

  This thread had been severed.

  Pulled out of the Goddess’ tapestry and discarded.

  But the girl had one last move up her sleeve. A trump card she’d learned months prior, cast on herself, and forgotten since. One that served no purpose beyond situations like the one she now found herself in. A spell that could just as easily prolong her suffering as much as it could offer her a second chance.

  Conditions were currently prime for the latter.

  She couldn’t have asked for a better time for the charm etched onto her soul to burst into a verdant wave of light that enveloped her form. Like divine intervention, a spell ring drew itself into the muddy dirt and trodden grass. And the moment those interlocking lines connected and completed, a flourishing pulse swept the valley. Every broken piece of bone and muscle snapped back into place, cuts knitted. All in one fell swoop. And in an ultimate act of defiant endurance, she choked out a cough to clear her airways of bloody ichor.

  Her chest inflated, lungs flushed with a dire supply of oxygen as the glow faded.

  Ruby eyes—the first thing she saw upon resurrection, a glaring gaze aimed down at her. Watching as she clawed herself right back out of death’s maw.

  The redhead scrambled onto all fours, breaking into a cold sweat as the residual panic and phantom pain of her assault were still oh-so raw on her psyche.

  And it hit hard.

  Every tendon trembled.

  She could barely control her body.

  Muscle fibers erratically convulsed as if to jumpstart after having been in a state of decay for what must have been just a few seconds. Between her hacking came a set of choked, manic laughs.

  Cathartic laughs.

  “I forgot about…” She coughed through the spit draining from her mouth. ”Oh my god…Ha…Haha…Urkh…”

  An adrenaline rush born of fresh trauma swept through her like a tidal wave, culminating in a visceral heave that emptied the contents of her stomach with a messy splatter. Frenetic hyperventilation puffed her lungs up and down, shuddering at the foul taste of bile at the back of her throat.

  “Are…you alright?” The stranger nonchalantly asked.

  Really? Does this lady not have eyes? What an absurd question.

  The foreign voice was calm, all things considered. But Sierra hadn’t the clarity to respond.

  She staggered to her feet.

  Taking a single, death-drunken step, she splattered back onto her knees.

  Her legs felt so brittle.

  She’d assumed coming back from the dead wouldn’t be the most pleasant experience when she studied that damn book. But feeling it firsthand was far more potent than she ever could have imagined.

  With a bit of time, Sierra regained a shred of composure. She patted herself down, examining for wounds that were, of course, no longer present. God, she was dirty though. So grimy. Glistening rust-colored fluid slathered most of her frame. It made her skin crawl.

  “I…I think I’m…okay?” Sierra slumped in her place as the post-mortem rush finally subsided. “—What happened?”

  “You died.”

  “Y-Yeah…But what about the minotaur?”

  “I took care of it.”

  That much should have been obvious, considering it was notably absent. But she had no recollection of it. Where was the body? Dazed eyes scanned the area to the best of her current ability. The minotaur’s remains, it seemed, were everywhere. Utterly eviscerated, now a patchy sludge giving off a fetid vapor that stung the back of her throat.

  “Um, thank you?”

  “My pleasure.”

  The stranger extended a hand. Bare, clean, smooth. So out of place in the backdrop of gore and soon to be sullied by a clutch caked in filth and coagulated blood that, strikingly, didn’t appear to bother her in the slightest.

  “I’m Ria.”

  “…Sierra.” It caught her a little off guard. Given her dreadful condition, most would likely prefer to keep their distance, much less offer a hand. And she wouldn’t fault them for it. She certainly wouldn’t. Yet this woman did so with a kind of casual nature that made it difficult not to wonder if she’d grown accustomed to sights like…this.

  But what was even more bewildering was that despite the stranger’s face being exceedingly deadpan, the eagerness in her motions gave this strange impression of…exhilaration?

  It gave her pause.

  Single-handedly wiping out a minotaur might do that, she figured.

  Regardless, with an aided heave, she rose to her feet, still mildly regulating her breath to soothe jittery nerves as she gave the other girl a once-over.

  Likely not much older than Sierra herself, the woman was a mage through and through, no doubt about it. Her face lay hidden in the shade of a wide-brimmed witch hat, framed by blunt black bangs. A thick tome hung from a belt around her waist; her short dress trimmed with gold. A similar black cloak flowed off her shoulders, featuring yet more ornate embellishments and fur accents, with an interior lining of maroon velvet.

  All those primarily dark shades were in stark contrast with her porcelain skin, forming such a monochromatic palette that the regal red of her eyes appeared all the more vibrant.

  —Definitely upper class.

  “May I ask what happened?” The witch asked.

  “Um. I was…” Sierra clamped her eyes shut; the throbbing in her head made thinking a chore.

  Strange.

  Her memory of the past few minutes was spotty. Was that just her shock or a side effect of the spell…or her death? All of the above?

  The basket lying on the grass nearby caught her attention.

  “Right, I was…and then…” Her face darkened, piecing together her own fragmented thoughts one at a time. She abruptly turned to scan over countless vantage points overlooking the valley. “—Someone summoned that thing…”

  “Hm. That’s what I suspected.”

  Trailing blue eyes dipped down to the ground, back turned to her rescuer.

  Sierra gazed at the crater painted with the same fluid that flowed through her veins. A spot she very well should have been rotting away in. Saved only by the magic she often refused to acknowledge.

  She stared and stared, irises dilating, vision? hazing over the more she allowed her mind to consume her focus. A slow drip bled off her fingers, digits twitching while the recollection of the assault ate at her.

  A few times she’d faced situations that highlighted her inability to rely upon herself, but this was the most agonizing experience yet. Why did divine magic feel as if it were only supposed to be used in service of others and not herself?

  This resurrection charm, in contrast, seemed like a complete personal win. Something that finally worked solely for her benefit.

  At least, that’s how it looked on the surface. The more the thought lingered, the more she came to realise that it likely increased whatever ‘value’ she had. What self-righteous, perfidious, and predatory sleazeball wouldn’t want to make use of someone capable of defying death for their own benefit?

  Her breath rattled in her throat.

  Sierra spun back around with insistent haste. “You can’t tell anyone about this, okay!?”

  Ria recoiled ever so slightly, head jerking back at the sudden outburst.

  “Sure…I had no intention of disclosing any of this to anyone. You have my word.”

  The red-haired girl dropped into a crouch. Knees to her chest, head hung, fingers interlocked over the back of her head with a frustrated hiss of a sigh.

  “Would you mind if I accompanied you for a while?” Ria cut the girl’s ruminating off before it could spiral any further.

  Scruffy red hair lifted as the healer perked up. “Huh?”

  “I’d like to accompany you, if you don’t mind.”

  Sierra’s eyes promptly narrowed with blunt suspicion.

  “What for?”

  Ria cocked her head a little.

  “It looks to me like someone has designs on your life, wouldn’t you agree? It stands to reason they’ll try again.”

  “I…guess? But—why do you care?”

  “I should help if I’m able, shouldn’t I? I’d also like to find out to what end someone would resort to such an elaborate scheme for a murder.”

  “Uh huh. So I’m bait for your mystery?”

  “That’s not what I meant…”

  Rejecting such an offer would normally have come naturally, but it was too late to hide anything. Not only had Ria witnessed her magic, but it was in a way that betrayed not only her intrinsic affinity but now a very sensitive specialty to boot. Perhaps she could have played it off with someone less magically inclined, which Ria certainly was not; that much was plainly obvious.

  The apprehension was hard to dismiss, but Ria seemed sincere as far as she could see. Besides, she’d be dead if not for the help. That had to be worth something, right?

  The woman in black deflated a little but continued, “If you’d prefer to decline, I won’t—”

  Sierra shook her head. “No, no. Sorry. I mean…never mind. It’d be stupid of me to turn down any help right now, so…happy to have you? I suppose.”

  “Thank you.”

  A drained sigh passed the healer’s lips; she didn’t have the energy to press any further. “Anyway, I’m heading back to town. I’m…exhausted.”

  Perhaps the largest understatement of her life. The weakness in her body was no doubt caused in part by having burned through some of her vital mana; the resurrection charm did nothing to replenish that.

  “Will you be okay to travel?”

  “I’ll be fine. Keldia’s not too far.”

  “If you’re sure, I’ll take your lead.” Ria unfastened the brooch clipping her cloak, pulling it off with a flutter before she proffered it. “Though you might want to put this on. If anyone sees you in that state, they may very well hazard a good guess that you’re a divine mage. I assume you’d prefer to avoid that?”

  Quite shrewd she was.

  Those with healing magic tended to develop a bit of a habit of treating their injuries with nonchalance. Seeing a mage torn up and bloody, yet seemingly unharmed, was a solid hallmark of a healer. Sierra suffered from this to an extent herself, having grown marginally more reckless over the years given she can undo any cuts and scrapes with minimal effort. But she rarely engaged in combat, and if she did, it was in the company of a close friend, who was a capable fighter and defender in her own right. She rarely ran into issues that would press her magic enough to come out looking as rough as she currently did.

  “Won’t it get all dirty?”

  Ria simply gave her cloak another thrust. “It’s not a problem. Take it.”

  “Alright, alright.”

  Sierra wrapped herself in the velvet-lined cloak. It luxuriously cradled her skin. Comforting. Like a warm hug. Though soiling something so nice was an awkward guilt.

  She meandered off, flashing Ria a fragile smile as she passed by to scoop up her basket and re-collect as much of the leafy spillage as she could.

  It’d fallen a short way away from the bulk of the chaos, thankfully. Only a few leaves flecked with little red splats. She abruptly jumped back to a stand, struck with a critical realization. Hastily snatching up the tattered leather bag resting on her hip, she flipped it open and…sure enough, everything was in ruin.

  Her snacks were soggy, and her fieldbook was marred. A cocktail of predominantly sapphire-blue alchemical fluids sloshed about and leaked between the seams. All of it dusted in a crunchy mess of shattered glass from the slim bottles previously fitted into custom-tailored slots lining one side.

  This was her bag no longer; this was a trash pile.

  What a pain. Just recently she’d looked into what materials she could use to strengthen her phials. And now her it'll-be-fine-for-now laziness had resulted in a severe setback. Figures. But adversity breeds innovation, no?

  Ria leaned in from one side, peering down alongside her. A little “ah…” was the extent of her input.

  A deflated whine spilled from Sierra’s lips. “Let’s go…”