[POV Liselotte]

The Whispering Forest no longer whispered—it screamed under the weight of our mana. The air, saturated with the witch’s sweet, purple mist, shattered into a thousand pieces when Leah and I claimed the center of the clearing. As I landed beside Chloé, I felt the earth tremble, a resonance of pure corruption trying to crawl up my boots—but the absolute cold emanating from my core repelled it like oil against water.

“Are you alright, Chloé?” I asked, never taking my eyes off the woman in the black robe. I could feel Leah’s warmth at my right, a white flame anchoring me in the middle of this darkness.

“Better than ever now that the cleanup crew’s here!” the wolf growled, spitting a trail of bitter blood as her claws extended with a metallic snap. “That woman’s got dirty tricks, Lotte. Don’t let her talk too much or she’ll mess with your head.”

The woman in black stepped back, her once pale, perfect face beginning to crack like old porcelain. Her eyes were no longer human—they were two wells of toxic violet, pulsing with desperate fury. With a scream that tore through the air, she raised her hands, and the shadows of the forest came alive. Dozens of lesser demons and frenzied soldiers emerged from the undergrowth, a tide of flesh and hatred rushing toward us in a final attempt to overwhelm.

“Chloé, take care of the trash! Leah, cover my back!” I ordered, letting my dark crystal sword coat itself in frost so dense the metal seemed to glow.

“On it, boss!” Chloé shouted, launching herself like a gray projectile into the front line of demons.

“Sacred fire, purify this path!” Leah cried, and a wave of white flames swept through the clearing, disintegrating the ghouls trying to flank us.

I focused solely on the woman. She hurled strands of shadow toward my throat, but my movements were precise, efficient. Every step I took permanently froze the ground, creating a path of ice that nullified the runic traps she tried to trigger beneath my feet. She was a puppeteer, a manipulator of essence—but I was a force of nature that did not recognize her strings.

I surged forward in a burst of speed. She tried to dissolve into smoke, but I didn’t strike her physical body. I drove my sword into the ground and released an expansion of absolute zero. The purple smoke crystallized midair, trapping her in her semi-gaseous form and forcing her to rematerialize, coughing and staggering.

“No… you shouldn’t be able to do this! This world has rules!” she shrieked, her voice splitting into many, as if a thousand people spoke through her throat.

“Your rules don’t apply to me,” I replied, my voice like the cracking of a glacier.

I reached her in a heartbeat. She tried to drive her shadow claws into my chest, but my left hand caught her wrist. The cold of my touch was so intense her skin began to fracture instantly. In one fluid motion, I drove my dark crystal sword into her abdomen. There was no red blood—only a flow of dark energy that evaporated upon contact with the freezing air.

The woman stiffened, her violet eyes dilating until they consumed her entire gaze. Around us, Chloé and Leah finished off the remaining minions; silence returned to the forest, broken only by the hiss of the witch’s magic dissipating.

“Tell me… who is the merchant?” I whispered, bringing my face close to hers.

She didn’t answer with words. She let out a dry laugh, a death rattle, and her body began to crumble into black ash—just like the demons in the academy. Within seconds, the black robe fell empty to the ground as what remained of her essence vanished among the dead trees.

I stood there for a moment, sheathing my sword as the cold within me began to stabilize. Leah approached and placed a hand on my shoulder in comfort, while Chloé crouched nearby, sniffing the remains of the robe with curiosity.

“It’s over,” Leah said, looking toward the recovering soldiers who were beginning to rise—confused, but free from mind control. “We’ve saved the convoy.”

“Yes… but that woman was just another puppet,” I replied, feeling a hollow knot in my stomach.

Just as I was about to move and help Valerie tend to the wounded, something caught my attention. From within the folds of the woman’s ashen robe, a small piece of paper slipped out and fell gently onto the ice I had created. It shimmered with a strange texture—different from the common parchment of Whirikal.

I crouched down and picked it up carefully.

When I turned it over, my breath caught.

It wasn’t a drawing made with ink or charcoal. The paper had a smooth, almost laminated surface, and the image it displayed possessed a terrifying clarity.

It was a portrait. In it, the woman we had just killed was smiling, her expression full of tenderness—impossible to reconcile with the monster we had faced. Beside her stood a broad-shouldered man with his arm around her, and in front of them, two small children—a boy and a girl—laughed while holding what looked like wooden toys.

But what froze my blood wasn’t their happiness—it was their features. All four had subtly gray skin, small bony protrusions at their temples hinting at the beginnings of horns, and amber irises with vertical pupils.

They were demons.

An entire demon family, posing with the natural ease of any human family from my former world.

“What is that, Lotte?” Leah asked, leaning in to look over my shoulder.

“It’s… a portrait,” I said, my voice unsteady.

Chloé leaned in as well, wrinkling her nose. “How did they paint that? The colors are too real… it looks like it could move. And look at those details—you can even see the threads in their clothes.”

I remained silent, running my thumb over the surface. My memories of Earth—of my life as Edward—flared instantly. This wasn’t a painting. The light, the focus, the captured instant…

This looked far too much like a photograph.

But in this medieval world, something like that should have been impossible.

“How did they make this?” I murmured, a spark of suspicion forming. “Is it illusion magic fixed onto paper… or something else?”

I looked again at the children’s faces. They seemed so innocent, so full of life. Was this why the woman had obeyed the merchant? To protect this family? Or were they the ones in danger?

The image of a happy demon family shattered everything the Church and the Kingdom had taught about demons as soulless monsters. And the existence of a technology—or magic—capable of creating a “photograph” suggested the enemy possessed not only greater power than we imagined, but knowledge that did not belong to this era.

“Keep it, Lotte,” Leah said seriously. “If it belonged to her, it’s a clue. Maybe Elliot knows if there’s any artifact capable of capturing images like that.”

I slipped the portrait into an inner pocket of my tunic, close to my heart. The forest had grown quiet again, but my mind was anything but. The woman in black was no longer just a villain—she was a mother with a secret. And the merchant controlling her was someone capable of manipulating not just magic… but perhaps the very laws of reality.

“Let’s secure the convoy,” I said, turning to my companions. “We need to get these supplies to King William. And then… we need to find out who took this photo—and why this family matters so much to the shadows.”

We walked toward the supply wagons, leaving behind the ashes of an enemy who, in her final moments, had given us more questions than answers.

The war in the north awaited us.

But the mystery of the demon photograph had just changed the board forever.

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