"Yuki."

Arlott’s voice cut across the courtyard, sharp and clear.

"Take Leon and leave. I’ll handle the rest."

Yuki didn’t respond.

She wasn’t looking at Arlott. She wasn’t looking at Vane or the paladins or the two S ranks flanking the High Cleric. She was looking at Leon’s face.

Just his face.

He was exhausted in a way she could read better than anyone, the particular stillness of someone who had pushed past their limit and simply stopped. She could feel it through the contract, faint but present, that thread of his existence running quieter than usual.

She brought one hand up and brushe tod the hair back from his face.

Slowly. Without looking away from him.

"Hand him over," Vane said again.

The threat in his voice had graduated. It wasn’t a request anymore and it wasn’t pretending to be.

Yuki still didn’t react.

Vane’s patience, which had started the evening as a professional and carefully maintained thing, was running noticeably short. He was a High Cleric. An S rank. A man who entire institutions adjusted their behavior around.

This beastfolk attendant hadn’t so much as glanced at him.

His jaw tightened.

"Seize them," he said coldly, to the two figures at his sides. "Both of them."

They moved.

"Don’t you dare touch—"

Arlott was already stepping forward when Vane’s voice cut across him, carrying the particular authority of someone reading from a document that had already been signed.

"The boy has committed a blatant act of treason against the royal family," Vane said. "The girl has defied the church directly, which constitutes an act of heresy." He looked between them both, expression unmoved. "Both will be taken into custody. This is not a negotiation."

---

This was ridiculous.

Utterly ridiculous.

She had made the contract out of curiosity. That was what she’d told herself. A fascinating anomaly had walked into her forest and it’s existence alone was what piqued her interest nothing

So why.

Why was she standing here feeling like this.

She looked at his face.

Instead of an assistant, she had been nothing more than a burden for him, he was the only one she could nag to, he was the only one she could take advantage of his kindness, it was weird considering his power, it was strange why he was always being looked down on by other humans who couldn’t hold a candle to him, that was why she was elated, to see her master shine in the festival, yet right now,

’Yes,’ she thought. ’I’ll admit it.’

Her eyes stayed on his face.

’He is everything I needed. Everything I wanted. Without even trying to be.’

’And I have taken a liking to him.’

’That is why.’

The two cloaked figures closed the distance between them and Yuki.

And then the aura came down.

Not directed. Not aimed. It simply descended on the entire area the way weather descends, without asking anyone’s permission, without distinguishing between targets. Everyone in range hit the ground. The paladins. The bystanders still lingering at the edges. The two S rank escorts who had been standing with the confidence of people who had numbers on their side.

Even Vane’s knees buckled, his body locking up against his will, teeth clenched with the effort of staying upright.

The two cloaked figures who had reached Yuki first didn’t get that far.

Her hands closed around their heads.

Both of them. One in each hand. Their feet left the ground.

"Considering your actions," she spoke, looking at them with something past anger, something older and quieter and considerably more final. "You two deserve a fate worse than death."

Purple flames appeared, It wrapped around her hands and climbed, consuming both figures from where she held them, and they screamed, briefly, before the screaming stopped being possible.

The flame continued until there was nothing left.

She lowered her hands.

Ash drifted.

The courtyard was completely silent except for the sound of it settling.

Yuki adjusted Leon in her other arm and looked up slowly, her golden eyes moving across what remained of the gathered opposition until they found Vane.

He was still upright. Barely. Every muscle in his body visibly straining against the weight pressing down on him, his composure finally, completely gone.

She looked at him the way she had looked at the two figures before she’d made her decision about them.

Then she spoke.

"Next,"

Vane was shaking.

He couldn’t stop it. He was aware of it happening and couldn’t do anything about it, which was its own particular humiliation on top of everything else.

Two S ranks.

Gone.

Not defeated. Not incapacitated. Gone, reduced to ash in seconds, by a flame that his entire understanding of power told him shouldn’t exist in the hands of anything that wasn’t divine.

Which put her where, exactly?

Above S rank?

The thought arrived and sat in his chest like a stone he couldn’t dislodge.

He had felt reverence before. For the goddess, for her light, for the institution he had devoted his life to. He knew what reverence felt like, what it did to the body, the warmth of it, the certainty.

This wasn’t that.

This was fear.

Plain, cold, animal fear, the kind that bypasses every layer of dignity and training and accumulated authority and speaks directly to whatever part of a person is just trying to survive.

He was looking at something that could end him and had already decided whether it was worth the effort.

Yuki shifted Leon in her arms, adjusting him into a more comfortable position, and turned.

She looked at Vane.

Then at Arlott.

Then back at Vane, and raised one finger, pointing at him with the casual precision of someone identifying something they want moved.

"You," she said.

Her voice was level. Completely level. Which was somehow worse than if she’d been screaming.

"Go tell that foolish king of yours."

Her aura rose.

The ground cracked. The surrounding stone crumbled at the edges. The air pressure dropped suddenly enough that several people still conscious at the far edges of the courtyard stumbled.

"If anyone." Her eyes swept the area. "Anyone. Dares to harm my master."

She paused.

"Or the Silford clan."

She turned her back to them both, which was its own kind of statement, and a portal opened in front of her, edges ringed with that deep violet light.

"This nation." She stepped toward it. "No. This continent."

She didn’t look back.

"Will burn to ash. Again."

The weight of it settled over the courtyard like a physical thing.

She stepped through.

And then, just before the portal closed, Arlott saw it.

His breath caught.

He’d known Yuki for a year. He’d assessed her, accepted her, formed his understanding of what she was. Two tails. Immense power. Ancient. More than she appeared.

But what he was seeing now.

The tails weren’t two.

They multiplied in the instant before the portal sealed shut, spreading wide behind her, white and luminous in the violet light.

Not two.

Not four or six.

Nine.

The portal closed.

The courtyard was absolutely silent.

Vane stood frozen, one hand halfway raised toward nothing, his face the color of old parchment.

Arlott didn’t move either.

One thought was running through both their minds simultaneously, cutting through everything else like a blade through paper.

She had been the Calamity Fox this whole time?

...

From a rooftop overlooking the courtyard, two figures watched the portal close and the remaining people below stand around like men who’d just had the ground removed from under them.

"Well," one of them said.

"Indeed," said the other.

They were wearing cloaks, which in retrospect had been a questionable decision given that the horns were visible regardless, jutting out from beneath the hoods at angles that rather defeated the purpose of concealing anything.

Fortunately nobody had been paying attention to rooftops.

"I suppose it’s time," Veth said, slowly reaching up and pulling his hood back.

Coryn did the same beside him, the cloaks dropping from their shoulders.

Then he spoke.

"Coryn, would you look at this, this continent sure has a remarkable talent for digging it’s own grave don’t you think".