The girl moved a second later.

One moment, she was standing atop a slain monster, and the next, she was right in front of them with her longsword midair.

CLANG!

Damon’s sword met hers with a practised ease.

’She’s fast,’ he noted. She was genuinely fast, the kind that came from ability rather than just pure stats, the kind that would have ended most fights before they started.

Unfortunately for her, this wasn’t one of those fights.

Damon stepped between the shadows and reappeared quickly behind her. He struck the guard of her sword before she could react, then with one swift motion, he grabbed her wrist with his free hand and threw her over his shoulder, knocking the air out of her lungs from the impact.

"Flinch, and I’ll reunite you with your little friend over there", Damon said as the blade of his weapon pressed tightly against her neck, promising to send her to wherever the monster she killed was if she moved a muscle.

He allowed a moment of silence to let the words settle before he spoke up.

"Are you from the citadel up there?" he glanced toward the clouds, which visibly caught her off guard. The girl didn’t reply, but she didn’t have to.

"She is," Hana cut in, reading her mind to confirm.

The girl’s eyes widened in realisation, not the panic of someone caught, but the particular stillness of someone recalculating every word they’d thought about since the moment they arrived, wondering what had already been taken from them without permission.

"That’s right," Damon began to explain. "She can read minds, so there’s no point trying to remain silent."

"What’s your name?" Nyla asked, trying to be a good cop in this interrogation.

The girl hesitated, but as her black eyes landed on Hana, who was staring at her as if she could see right through her, because she could, she realised staying silent was useless.

"Ning Xiaoyu," she finally said.

"Why’d you attack us?"

"We’re at war, aren’t we?"

The simple reply caught each of them slightly off guard. Despite knowing it well, despite reading it through the quest description, hearing it from another human felt a bit... shallow.

"If you’re going to kill me, just do it already," Ning Xiaoyu said, no hesitation in her eyes, the kind of stillness that didn’t come from not being afraid, but from having already made peace with the possibility long before this moment.

"Who’s the leader of your citadel?" Damon asked, ignoring her request completely.

The girl’s lips pressed shut, but she didn’t have to say it.

"A woman called Aria," Hana replied for her, reading right through her thoughts, in which she tried her absolute best not to say it and failed miserably.

"How many of you are there?"

Ning Xiaoyu stopped her desperate attempts to avoid answering their questions. With Hana present, there was no point in doing so.

"Few hundred."

The reply was brief and imprecise, but it was good enough. Damon only wanted a rough estimate, and he got just that. Their numbers were significantly lower than theirs. Even if accounting for the debuff, unless there was someone on par with him up there, he doubted they could stop a siege if they were attacked.

"Dismiss your weapon," Damon suddenly said, taking a small glance at the longsword beside which was most certainly a Relic. "You will be coming with us."

The girl hesitated for a long moment, long enough that the outcome felt genuinely uncertain.

Then something shifted in her expression, a decision was made and accepted in her head almost simultaneously as she dismissed her longsword and allowed it to disappear without even turning her gaze toward it.

"Where are we going?" Ning Xiaoyu asked.

"We’ll give you a tour of our citadel," Damon replied.

The girl paled at the words, which would’ve seemed impossible on her already pale face.

***

With the girl as their prisoner, the small group moved quickly back toward the citadel. The walk took a while, but luckily, other than occasional evolved undead humans, it was rather uneventful, which, given that they were escorting a prisoner from a hostile citadel through a ruined city filled with monsters, was rather welcome.

By the time the moon had risen across the horizon, they finally reached it.

They were surprised to see a small commotion inside the grand hall, clusters of people speaking in low voices about something they clearly missed.

And it wasn’t until one of Ivy’s attendants found them and told them to head to the council meeting room that they would find out why.

Nyla took Ning Xiaoyu to Damon’s room, keeping an eye on her while Damon and Hana went to check what was going on.

As they entered, Ivy’s slightly surprised expression immediately landed on them, but it wasn’t her that they focused on. Theodore, Victor and a figure they didn’t recognise were also there.

A lanky man with messy brown hair and steel armour, wearing the particular expression of someone who had rehearsed what they were going to say several times and was hoping they’d get the chance to say it.

Ivy’s surprise at their sudden arrival only lasted a second before she visibly snapped back into her leader role. "This is Edmund, he is from the citadel in the city’s outskirts."

Damon’s brow rose.

"We stumbled upon him halfway toward their citadel, we almost killed him, but he quickly dropped to the ground," Theodore chuckled as he explained, clearly reminiscing and enjoying the memory of Edmund dropping to his knees in fear.

Edmund stood up, giving Damon and Hana a small nod before speaking. "I was just explaining how our leader sent me to seek terms with your citadel."

"Terms?" Damon echoed the word out loud, his gaze shifting to Ivy for a second before moving back to the man.

"He offers a truce..." Edmund quickly explained. "The system requires only one leader to die... and so he wants us to team up against the third citadel."