The taut air snapped—cut clean through by a sudden roar.
The standoff that had seemed as though it might stretch on forever between Masumi and the man in black broke at once, forced to halt.
The sound was like an explosion. The floor shook. Masumi’s hips and back—pressed into the sofa—truly lifted, for a split second, from the cushions. An earthquake? Startled, she darted her eyes about—and in that instant, the man in black had already moved away from her.
He was staring at a single point.
“Well, well.”
He gave a low whistle. Then, slowly, he applauded; the measured claps echoed through the room.
Masumi followed his gaze—and froze.
The door was gone.
Surely not, she thought, rubbing at her eyes, but it was no illusion: the large door that had led into the sitting room had been blown apart. The decorative glass set into it had been smashed to fragments, scattered across the floor. Dust billowed thickly, clouding the air.
Squinting through the haze, Masumi saw who stood there.
Kasumireaz.
He stood like a guardian statue—immovable.
His longsword still hung at his waist. So the door had been punched out, or kicked in; either way, the fury rolling off him was suffocating.
“As expected of the captain of the guard,” the man in black drawled. “A reinforced door doesn’t even slow you down.”
His tone was insolent, but his face was tight.
Kasumireaz stepped into the room with unhurried authority, the careful posture of a man walking into a battlefield.
“Why so surprised?” he asked, voice calm and low. “Was it beyond your expectations that I would be the one to appear?”
From Masumi’s vantage, Kasumireaz stood to her right; the man in black to her left. Even as Kasumireaz faced the intruder, his gaze flicked once to Masumi. Bound though she was, she bore no obvious wounds. Having confirmed that at a glance, he returned his focus to the enemy without pause.
The man in black shifted—one step back, weight lowered.
Behind him was a wide window. From the way he had moved when he abducted her, Masumi had no doubt he could vanish through it in the blink of an eye.
“Mm. So the Supreme Commander is rather… enamored,” the man in black mused.
“Stall if you wish.” Kasumireaz’s voice hardened. “It is pointless. I will not negotiate. Return her—she is the exclusive musician of His Highness, our Fourth Order’s Supreme Commander, Arclestave＝Albualse＝Canova.”
He closed the distance without another word.
At some point—Masumi hadn’t even seen the motion—Kasumireaz had drawn steel. The longsword cut the air; a silver afterimage flashed through the space the man in black had just occupied.
The first strike missed.
With a single kick off the floor, the man in black’s body snapped to the wall near the entryway—where Kasumireaz had been standing. He wasn’t running; he was choosing to stand and fight. Rose-colored light swelled in his hand.
But blue lightning snapped across the room and swallowed the rose.
The two colors collided, burst, and scattered like sparks.
Despite being indoors, the two men traded fierce blows, steel ringing in rapid succession as flashes of magic flared between them. Yet it was Kasumireaz who pressed forward—his swordwork clean and merciless, driving the man in black backward, step by step.
An attack grazed the man’s throat; he slipped away—
—and his back hit the wall, as if Kasumireaz had planned it.
THUD!
Kasumireaz’s longsword flashed past the man’s right cheek and slammed into the wall behind him.
Not wood—a plastered wall. It should have held some strength, and yet a deep crack spidered outward at once. The shock was so violent the blade shuddered, biiin, trembling audibly.
The man in black stared at the longsword with only his eyes.
A dagger rested at his throat.
The gap between them was unmistakable. Masumi, able only to watch, felt her spine go cold. When Kasumireaz had captured her before, he truly had not been serious.
Even now, she couldn’t tell how much power he was using.
The man in black was breathing hard. Kasumireaz wasn’t even changing his expression. He had been drinking plenty, too—yet he moved like this, with bottomless reserves.
Having seized complete control over life and death, the captain of the guard spoke, voice as low as an executioner’s.
“You will regret, in the underworld, the foolishness of laying a hand on our Supreme Commander’s musician.”
Not a shred of mercy.
Kasumireaz’s arm tightened. It was the moment that looked, to any eye, like the end.
Then—
“Impudent thief. In truth, her ownership belongs to Raytea.”
“…What?”
A violent burst of light exploded between them. A rose-colored lion sprang forth, lunging straight at Kasumireaz.
“—!”
Kasumireaz jerked back a half step and turned his face away, evading by a hair’s breadth. A younger knight would have taken the blow head-on.
Vivid rose fangs cut empty air.
The lion kicked off the floor, twisting mid-leap, its claws arcing toward Kasumireaz’s back.
Dropping to one knee, Kasumireaz met it head-on. His right hand thrust forward.
A blue bird burst into being—wings spread wide like a shield.
A long tail, elegant flight-feathers. It resembled a peacock in form—yet it tore with a savagery that belied its beauty, cleaving the lion—nearly twice its size—clean in two.
Masumi didn’t even have time to breathe.
The sudden violence had left her blank, stunned. What yanked her mind back to the present was a dry, sharp sound—
crack.
Her eyes snapped toward it.
The man in black—who should have had no retreat—had one foot on the window frame. The window itself had been kicked open; night wind slipped in, cool against the skin.
“I cannot give up on you,” he said, looking at Masumi over his shoulder. “We shall meet at the Bugaraku Gathering.”
Moonlight behind him, he held her gaze.
Before Kasumireaz could bark an order—before Masumi could even draw breath—the man’s silhouette melted into the night and was gone.
＊ ＊ ＊ ＊
As Kasumireaz rose, the floorboards groaned.
The shattered window. Beyond it, the great white moon hanging in the night. Masumi had been caught by that image—until, at last, she returned fully to herself.
Kasumireaz swept the room, searching for presence and intent. It seemed there were no hidden accomplices. Only then did he exhale and stride to Masumi’s side.
“Forgive me,” he said. “I was late.”
Even as he apologized, his hands moved swiftly, undoing her bindings.
Relief flooded her limbs as circulation returned. Masumi shook her head.
She had no clock, but surely it hadn’t been three hours since she’d been taken. There had been… a great deal of unnecessary conversation in the middle, on both sides. Even so, it hadn’t been long enough to become despair.
If anything—how had they found her so quickly, when she’d been dragged to an unknown location?
It had to be Kasumireaz’s competence. And Arc’s support, too, could not have been small. A kidnapping resolved within hours—so inhumanly fast, it felt possible only because those two were not made on the same scale as ordinary people.
When Arc’s face surfaced in her mind, Masumi’s brow furrowed.
Yes. That had been personal spite.
The man in black had poured out the Fourth Order’s past as though he had the right. So many musicians “used up,” he claimed—yet he wasn’t even a musician. He had no place speaking as though he sat in judgment.
Had one of those musicians been someone close to him? Or—
Something complicated flickered at the edges of what he’d said. And yet Masumi couldn’t accept his conclusion—that “because people break, the whole thing is evil.”
“Does anything hurt?”
Mistaking her frown for pain, Kasumireaz’s face darkened.
Masumi waved both hands quickly, emphasizing that she was whole, uninjured.
“No, it’s nothing. I was just… spacing out.”
“You must have been frightened. I should not have left you unattended.”
Kasumireaz pressed a hand to his forehead, his expression pained.
“Unattended? This isn’t something that normally happens, is it?” Masumi tried to keep her tone light. “I mean, yeah, I was surprised—but you came. Don’t beat yourself up over it.”
“….”
“Hey. Why is that where you go silent?”
Kasumireaz looked unmistakably awkward. He didn’t avert his eyes, at least—so perhaps a shred of sincerity remained.
Masumi recognized the pattern.
Oddly honest as they were, when these men hesitated, it was almost always because something terrible was about to be said.
“Don’t tell me exclusive musicians get kidnapped as a matter of course.”
“I would not call it an everyday occurrence,” Kasumireaz said carefully. “…But it is not rare.”
“Wait—”
Hey.
The retort died in Masumi’s throat; it became a scream inside her head instead. Her cheeks went stiff, the color draining from them.
Exclusive or not, she’d already agreed to work as a musician. It wasn’t as though she could now declare, “Actually, I quit.” In truth, she had nowhere else to go regardless.
She had thought she was becoming “just a musician.”
Apparently, she needed more than one life for the role.
Do they pay hazard compensation? she thought blankly.
Perhaps reading her face, Kasumireaz set his jaw.
“Do not worry. I was careless this time. I will devise countermeasures.”
He looked serious—devastatingly so, in a way that only made him more infuriating. The content was unacceptable, but the man delivering it was, regrettably, far too handsome.
“I will protect you. Therefore—”
“It’s fine.” Masumi cut him off, waving grandly. “I’m not saying I’ll quit. But come up with those countermeasures fast, okay? If I’m getting abducted every other day, I can’t do my job.”
Kasumireaz blinked at her, eyes widening.
He must have been expecting something closer to Are you out of your mind?—and honestly, she wanted to shout it too.
But she had decided. And more than that, she wanted to wipe that man in black’s smugness off his face. The things he’d said, so freely, had lit a slow, simmering anger in her veins.
If she didn’t run, that would be enough—wouldn’t it?
If she could truly support the Fourth Order as a musician, she could clear their name.
The path she’d once abandoned—the life of a professional. She couldn’t, now, call herself a pure violinist. But if the effort she’d piled up all these years could help someone, then perhaps the past she’d thrown away might be redeemed, if only a little.
Kasumireaz, knowing nothing of that shift inside her, wore an uncharacteristically softened expression.
“…You’re surprisingly straightforward.”
“There are… various circumstances.” Masumi rose from the sofa, brushing dust from the hem of her dress. “I’ve got a lot I want to ask, and a lot I want to say. Let’s go home.”
Kasumireaz started to nod—
—and then his gaze stalled. They were facing each other, but his eyes didn’t meet hers. His focus had landed somewhere near her neck.
“Hm? Do I have something on me?”
She patted at her cheek, her neck, her collarbone. She’d been slammed into stone, thrown around—she might be dirty.
But Kasumireaz frowned and shook his head. “No. It’s… not that.”
Then what is it? Masumi tilted her head—
—and Kasumireaz reached up and removed his white cloak, wrapping it around her without warning.
The cloak was made for his tall frame; if she wore it normally, she’d drag the hem across the floor. To prevent that, he wound it a few times at her neck, gathering and adjusting the length with practiced efficiency. It looked far better than simply bunching it in her hands.
Though it was summer, the night had deepened.
The wind blowing through the broken window was cold. For Masumi, in a single dress, the warmth was welcome.
“It’s better than nothing.”
“It’s more than enough. Thank you.”
Kasumireaz’s shoulders were broad; the cloak swallowed her whole, front and back, as though she’d stepped into his shadow.
“…Let’s hope so,” he murmured—oddly hesitant.
Masumi didn’t think much of it. She simply set off with him.
＊ ＊ ＊ ＊
The man in black—Lyno＝Terrast—ran on his own two feet through the deep, lightless night.
He believed pursuit was unlikely. Even so, the aftershock of having clashed with the strongest captain of the guard in history still burned in his chest, and impatience drove him onward: faster, further—get to safety.
He had never expected that caliber of opponent to appear.
Lyno had once been a knight. For this mission, he had trained as a spy until he trusted his skill. But his magical reserves were merely average; in raw standing, he was no more than true-knight class.
There was no world in which he could trade blows evenly with that monstrous captain of the guard—the pinnacle among holy knights.
Worse, his panic had been read.
In that instant, he’d abandoned the musician. He lowered his goal to survival alone, and he escaped—barely.
“Not even fit as a plaything,” he muttered, self-mocking—and felt a chill creep up his spine.
If the musician’s safety hadn’t been the highest priority for the enemy, Lyno would never have fled. Before swords even crossed, Kasumireaz could have used his vast magic like a shield and erased the entire house without leaving a trace.
The gulf in power made him shudder.
And yet, Lyno had never had the option to retreat.
There was someone he had sworn to protect with his life. And that musician—whether by accident or fate—had been called into this world by the one to whom Lyno had offered that vow.
Past the highway, into the forest drowned in night, he went. At last he climbed high into the branches of a tall tree and allowed himself a single breath.
The moon was bright.
Somewhere far away, a nocturnal beast gave a low cry.
“I have found you, Anastasia,” he whispered into the dark.
By coincidence, the thing he sought had been lying in the most unexpected place.
His hand had not reached Arclestave—the greatest threat to his second homeland, Raytea. But he had pinpointed the location of the summoned musician—the next most important target.
That alone was enough to call the night a success.
Resting for only a moment among the branches, Lyno steadied his breathing.
That musician had feelings—strong ones.
Only a few days had passed since she was summoned. Lyno didn’t know what had been said between her and the Fourth Order, what bargains or bonds had formed. And yet, for someone who claimed she’d merely been caught up in it all—who, in truth, had—she had defended them far more fiercely than he’d imagined.
But Lyno, too, had a conviction he would not yield.
His abandoned homeland and his present one overlapped in his mind, flickering behind his eyelids.
He shook his head hard, banishing it.
Then Lyno ran again—because he had to deliver this good news to his master as quickly as possible.
