"What did you say!"
Suzune couldn't help but cry out in shock. The usually cool girl's loss of composure drew sideways glances from other magical girls.
Just moments ago, Hoshino Yume had stumbled in with difficulty, carrying an unconscious figure with a slightly rising chest on her back.
It was Momo, who had been unconscious since losing her core!
"Momo!" Several other magical girls immediately exclaimed and gathered around, helping to settle Momo down with their combined efforts.
Momo and Aoi had been missing for an entire night.
Now Hoshino Yume, who had gone to rescue them, returned carrying Momo whose life or death was uncertain—how could this not make people anxious?
"Where's Aoi? Hoshino Yume! Where's Aoi?!"
"Momo! What happened to her core?"
"Who exactly did this!"
The barrage of questions pierced like sharp icicles toward Hoshino Yume, who had just caught her breath.
"Was it... that group of witches?"
"Or... were they attacked by magical creatures?!"
Just then, a magical girl responsible for checking Momo's condition raised her blood-stained hand, looking up with a grave expression: "Momo's vital signs are very weak... and... there are no external injuries, but her magic core..." Her voice trailed off, the implication clear.
Suzune immediately pushed through the crowd, crouched down, and quickly and precisely checked Momo's carotid artery and magic circuits with her fingertips.
According to normal circumstances, having lost her magic core for so long, Momo's vital signs should have been near death long ago.
As expected.
This familiar technique and emergency treatment—it was definitely her senior's work.
But why... if her senior was there, why didn't Aoi come back!
"Where's Aoi!"
"Aoi... Aoi didn't make it back."
Her senior's mistake? Or something else.
If her senior saved Momo, there was no reason to leave Aoi behind alone.
She suddenly looked up, her ice-blue eyes sharply staring at Hoshino Yume, her voice particularly cold and hard from forcibly suppressing her emotions: "Where's Aoi? Her senior... where is that traitor?"
Hoshino Yume was amazed that Suzune had immediately guessed that "traitor's" involvement, but still hurriedly spilled everything she knew.
Magical Girl Ember.
That was Pale's magical girl code name.
Everyone called her a traitor because she always showed mercy to magical creatures and witches or came to tease the younger girls.
Upon learning it involved Magical Girl Ember, every girl was filled with righteous indignation.
They arbitrarily attributed Aoi's disappearance and Momo's unconsciousness to Pale.
A tide of malicious chatter swept through the crowd.
"Enough!"
Suzune forcibly stabilized everyone's chaos.
"Where is that traitor now?"
"She... she said... to have us prepare magic stones to exchange for Aoi… I don't know where she is either."
"Tsk."
○
The night was ink-black.
Suzune used her own magic power to sustain Momo's vital signs according to the treatment method Pale had once taught her.
She believed in Pale's strength and character.
Her senior would never harm her juniors under any circumstances.
The only possibility was that her senior had encountered an extremely dangerous, powerful enemy and needed to draw others away.
Damn it.
She still had that magic-suppressing collar around her neck!
That stupid senior—didn't she promise to let her retire?
Why couldn't she just obediently listen!
"Boss, are we really going to use so many magic stones to satisfy the traitor's unreasonable demands?"
Hoshino Yume really couldn't understand her boss.
Usually reliable and strong, calm and silent—why did she become so rash whenever it involved that traitor?
Suzune knew her senior had no magic power in her body and couldn't autonomously recover magic power, only relying on magic stones for transformation.
She didn't know if that magic stone she deliberately gave her senior last time was enough.
Pale needed power.
Using these magic stones through her senior was the most cost-effective and reliable option.
Only her senior possessed such reassuring, reliable power.
Suzune was Twilight's leader.
She didn't need to explain her actions to anyone.
"Following me is enough. No need to ask why."
Suzune sensed the magical trace her senior had left behind.
Damn it!
She had to catch up—senior, you can't act recklessly!
Blue and pink magical girls merged into the night sky.
○
The yellow wind had dispersed, the sky was high with a bright moon, and stars twinkled.
Pale's torn, blood and sand-stained white shirt was erased as if by invisible hands, and a solemn pitch-black Gothic dress instantly covered her entire body, its layered lace skirt like a flower blooming in the dark night.
The girl's youthful curves were carefully sculpted as if by invisible hands, instantly becoming graceful and alluring, filled with the seductive charm that only mature women possessed.
Her slender waist was tightly outlined by the dress's corset, forming perfect body curves with her suddenly full, perky chest and beautifully arched hip line.
Pale's core had connected with Momo and Aoi's cores within Elara's body.
Just like using magic power from magic stones.
Pale drew upon Momo and Aoi's magic power, creating magic threads to connect with her own body.
Her slender hand passed through, blood flowing like a river.
Elara had fallen.
After being corrupted... was even her blood black?
How could someone like me... be worthy of that her?
People today cannot see the ancient moon, yet today's moon once shone on ancient people.
At this moment we gaze but cannot communicate, I wish to follow the moonlight flowing to illuminate you.
Pale's hand, covered in black lace gloves, was now deeply embedded in Elara's decayed chest cavity, her fingertips feeling the cold, viscous, tar-like filthy tissue texture.
Black, viscous, corrosive blood surged out like gushing oil, instantly soaking Pale's lace-covered slender forearm, saturating the dress sleeves, dripping onto the sand below and forming a rapidly expanding pool of filthy ink.
"Ugh..."
Elara's massive body shook violently, her head covered in bone spikes and filth lifting with difficulty. In her turbid amber eyes, the madness, possessiveness, and obsession that had burned for hundreds of years, like extinguished wildfire, rapidly dimmed.
Elara could clearly feel the "calamity" filth entrenched in the depths of her soul, gnawing at her will, now letting out intense, unwilling shrieks and struggles as their host neared death. They were like an enraged swarm of venomous snakes, frantically writhing and biting at Elara's last nerve endings, desperately draining her disappearing life force, trying to forcibly control this body for one final counterattack.
They drove Elara's remaining limbs to rise, her bone-spike-covered claws slightly convulsing, filthy energy gathering in the depths of her damaged throat, making hoarse, strange sounds.
"Cough..."
Elara suddenly coughed up a large mouthful of pitch-black, foul-smelling blood clots. Her body twitched unnaturally under calamity's forced control, stiffening. That claw trembled, seeming ready to desperately grasp at Pale's cold face so close at hand.
"Please... kill me."
However, at this moment, Elara used her last, and only remaining willpower... she gave up resistance.
Not only did she not struggle to retreat and create distance, she instead used her last strength to suddenly thrust her body forward.
Squelch!
Elara's movements suddenly stopped. That claw attempting to attack fell powerlessly.
Once upon a time.
They had also faced each other under the moonlight, roasting by a campfire and singing grassland songs. Elara missed those beautiful days.
The darkness before Elara's eyes disappeared, replaced by swaying orange-red light.
The incessant shrieking and struggling noise in her ears vanished, leaving only the cheerful crackling of burning wood and the continuous, gentle rustling of night wind blowing through green grass.
Before her eyes, that face stained with filthy blood, cold yet beautiful, surprisingly overlapped in her trance with the face from hundreds of years ago—softened by campfire light yet still unsmiling.
Back then, Pale still wore that garish yet incredibly cute pink-white puffy dress, with grass debris and ash on the hem, looking somewhat inappropriate yet so real.
She sat cross-legged there, carefully stirring the campfire with a branch, occasionally glancing at her helplessly.
Moonlight poured down like mercury, gently enveloping them and this quiet grassland.
The campfire's warmth dispelled the night's slight chill. Elara felt warm and drowsy all over, every hair freely stretching and fluffing.
"I want... to be with you... again..."
"So warm..."
"The Wolf King duel... you won..."
"The yellow magical girl... is at the very top of the Ferris wheel..."
"Grassland... I've come home..."
"I'm sorry... Pale."
The core in Pale's hand absorbed magic power from the yellow and pink cores, gentle light flickering as the decayed flesh on Elara's body gradually dissipated and faded.
"Goodbye, Elara."
Elara's tense body completely relaxed, losing all strength entirely, like a boneless puppet, falling forward. Her head heavily rested against Pale's slightly heaving chest covered in cold lace fabric.
Her hollow eyes, washed by turbid tears, forever lost their luster.
Moonlight coldly illuminated this deathly amusement park, also illuminating that pool of rapidly congealing filthy black blood.
That last trace of insignificant moisture brought by Elara's tears quickly evaporated and dispersed on Pale's cold black lace collar, leaving no trace.
As if that final brief beauty had never existed.
Only endless, filthy darkness remained, and the cold, heavy, charred and broken bones in her arms.