Olfric was no expert, but he could very well feel the dissonance of conflicting energies in the small chamber they had entered. The floors and walls were lined with the same seals he’d discovered earlier on his way down here, and if he understood them correctly, they were drawing energy from something, emitting mana, and then reconverting that back into something else.

Crudely put, it was an energy cycle.

Although he had no idea what it was for, one thing was certain. Whoever— or whatever —had constructed this place did so with impossible amounts of power and skill.

And if there was one thing Olfric Bergott could respect, it was power.

Which was probably why Tanya pissed him off so much.

As a member of Asukan nobility, Olfric was a firm believer in the supremacy of Asukan lineages, lording his genealogy over ordinary bremetans and hybrids alike. He had received the best education, the best resources to work with, and a high-quality kami to serve him as his spirit-familiar. Anything that annoyed him would either be humiliated or outright purchased.

Tanya was an exception.

The blonde-haired girl, a no-name freelancing bremetan from Karnegrug, had taken Haviskali by storm and spurned all of his efforts at getting her to serve him.

He had first tried intimidating her with his authority as a noble, but the girl seemed to get her kicks by spitting on his views— she then went on to become the youngest Bronze-plate the town had seen in over two centuries. Then, he’d tried purchasing her, but he was soundly rebuffed instead. Even worse, she was recruited just a week later by the Blues— the premier adventuring group in town.

It was almost poetic how that piss-poor band met their sticky ends not long after that. Tanya had been detained from the adventuring business for three months, but apart from that, she’d gotten off relatively scot-free.

And now, she was in a team.

Under the Governor’s banner, no less.

With Zuken Banksi of all people.

“Get in,” the soldier grunted, interrupting him from his musings.

Olfric looked at the wooden door ahead of him, more specifically at the large sigil engraved in its center. He tried remembering whether he’d seen the sigil somewhere before, but he couldn’t make heads or tails of its design.

The soldier marched ahead and pressed his palm against the sigil, and the door immediately cracked ajar with a soft creak. Immediately, the leashed, uneasy atmosphere of violence that gripped him dwindled and vanished, as if it was never there in the first place.

Olfric cautiously took a step forward.

Like his earlier prison cell, the room was mostly spartan. Like every other surface in this damn place, it had sigils engraved on its surface, indicating that this plain-looking room was a lot less empty than it looked. On the far end, the black-haired beauty— the leader, he presumed —was seated on a rickety chair. A few feet away from her sat a large, sprawling table with a dog laid spread-eagled on top of it.

A dead dog. With blank, glassy eyes that shone with an unnatural malevolence.

The sight gave him pause.

“Is that an… inugami?” he ventured cautiously, hoping for once that he was wrong.

Inugami were vengeful wraiths trapped within dead animals and forced to follow commands through the use of certain forbidden rituals. The Bergott family tomes didn’t disclose any more than that, but like most other products of necromancy, they were generally bad news to deal with.

What he did know, however, was that the makers of inugami— puppeteers —were a malicious bunch and rather prevalent in the pre-Asukan Era. Did that— did that mean this black-haired woman was one?

Enthrallment, Dazes, cursed wounds, and now this?

Just who the hell were these people?

“Hah!” The woman lifted her head and met his gaze head-on. “It is, but I’m surprised someone like you knows of them.” The manner in which she spoke to him made him feel like the scum at the bottom of a pond, but he wisely decided to hold his tongue. For the moment.

“Come. Sit.”

Not seeing another chair anywhere else in the room, Olfric frowned.

“Where?”

The woman arched her eyebrow as she gestured towards the floor.

Had this damned half-breed really brought him here to just humiliate and degrade him like that? Did she really think he’d debase himself to such a level by a lesser being?

“Maybe you didn’t hear me the first time. Sit.”

A powerful force physically pressed down on his neck and shoulders. Despite his struggles, he was forced to bend his knees and quietly sit down. He grit his teeth, unable to fight against her commands.

“This land,” she spoke, her voice calm yet stern, “is our land. Tell me, Asukan, why you have dared to tread our grounds.”

“I already told you,” Olfric replied, keeping his tone as composed as possible. “I’m an adventurer. My team, and several others, have come from Haviskali to locate an anomaly.”

“And once you locate this… anomaly,” she asked, her tone filled with a lazy curiosity, “what happens then?”

Olfric snorted. It was clear that whoever this woman was, she was unaccustomed to the practice of anomaly extraction, which only further legitimized her non-bremetan lineage in his eyes. Either that, or she was good at keeping a poker face.

Stranger yet, he couldn’t decide which was worse. There were no communities left in the world that remained ignorant of Asukan laws and traditions. Unless these people were living under a literal rock—

He considered his surroundings.

Alright, I’ll bite.

“After the anomaly is found, the adventurers were— are supposed to send signals to the Northern Wall, who will send machines to carry whatever ingredients and metal deposits we might find inside the anomaly back to Haviskali.”

“And then?”

“Then…” Olfric trailed. “Then they’d release information about the anomaly’s existence to Cyffnar using official channels. Cyffnar is—”

“I know what Cyffnar is,” the woman snapped.

Well, you could have fooled me.

Technically, what he told the woman thus far was the truth. The ideal truth.

In reality, Cyffnar likely had spies hidden in Haviskali, keeping track of everything that was going on. And important news like a newly discovered anomaly on their border would spread like wildfire. He wouldn’t be surprised if a troop of Cyffnarian soldiers were already looking around the desert for the anomaly.

“Then, after that,” he continued his monotone explanation, “there would be an official accord between the two towns. Conditions about how best to share the anomaly’s resources, since it lies on no-man’s land.”

“More Asukans,” she growled.

He winced at her bluntness. But she had a point.

And wow was she pretty.

“That’s right,” he replied, a smile on his face. “More Asukans.”

“Asukans are forbidden from entering our hallowed lands,” the woman imperiously replied. “The land’s wrath should have been enough to keep your kind at bay, and yet you keep coming.”

The land’s wrath?

Olfric frowned. Was she talking about the so-called curse of the desert? Surely she didn’t think that limiting all modes of transportation to nighttime would have completely prevented them from entering the desert? The very thought was absurd.

“It seems this anomaly is to blame,” she went on. “It encroaches upon our hallowed lands, and now disturbs our natural barriers. For generations, this land has played hearth and home to me and mine, but now the very presence of this anomaly invites trespassers.”

Olfric itched to point out that her hallowed lands technically fell under Asukan control, but something about her disposition told him that it would be in his best interests to keep that to himself.

“My people have wished it gone for centuries, but it keeps growing,” she murmured. “And it shields itself well. Puts us on edge. Every time we have tried to enter, its hallowed guardian has repelled us.”

Hallowed guardian? Was she referring to what he thought she was?

“Do you mean… the genius loci?”

Every anomaly in existence had a powerful guardian, one that ruled over all the monsters the anomaly spawned. A ‘boss monster’ of sorts. One that didn’t waste time hunting prey like the rest of the rabble, but single-mindedly focused on the safety of the anomaly core.

It was like a protector.

A guardian spirit.

A genius loci.

However, unlike other monsters, merely entering an anomaly didn’t even register to the guardian. It only registered your presence when it perceived you as a viable threat to the survival of the anomaly itself.

Which meant—

“You were trying to destroy the anomaly?” Olfric asked, bewildered beyond all belief. Destruction of an anomaly meant an immense loss of resources. Even to uncivilized bohemians, resources had to mean something.

Right?

And yet, the black-haired beauty gave him an affirmative nod. “But ever since this anomaly has grown, it has pushed us away. Forced us to limit ourselves within these very walls.”

“I see.”

He didn’t.

“There is one thing I don’t understand. Anomalies don’t repel people away, it’s counterproductive to their very nature.”

The woman cocked her head. “Is that so?”

“Obviously,” he drawled. “It’s an anomaly’s nature to consume and grow. The more people who come in, the better off it will be.”

“True,” she purred. “But then again, we aren’t quite people, are we?”

…

Olfric had a sneaking suspicion that there was more to her words than what he understood.

“What do you—”

“That maledictus on your neck,” she interrupted, abruptly changing the topic. “How does it fare?”

“Maledictus?” Olfric wheezed, his fingers crawling to the site of injury. This was a maledictus? A blood curse that lasted until the victim didn’t have a single drop of blood left to spare?

He’d once heard about them from Maude. Medically speaking, suffering from a maledictus was synonymous with being a dead man walking. And no amount of blood transfusion helped— it just prolonged the suffering as the person continued to bleed out the new blood along with their own.

“That’s right,” she purred again. “That wound will slowly bleed you dry, unless you get the antidote in time.”

Antidote? Olfric wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry. Maledictuses had no antidote.

“This is a cursed wound,” he raged, “not some paltry infection. No antidote is going to—”

“Death of the caster,” the woman replied casually, as if she was talking about the weather. “A maledictus is unmade by the death of the caster.”

“Yes, and it was you who put this curse on me.”

She smiled. It was a wicked thing. “I did. And I fully intend to let you leave as healthy as a bicorn, if you do one thing for me. For us. As compensation for entering our hallowed lands.”

He scoffed. “I wasn’t born yesterday, woman. You said it yourself. If this truly is a maledictus and you cast it on me, then you’d need to die to get it unmade.”

The woman lifted her head and laughed. She laughed and laughed and laughed, and the very action sent shivers down his spine. It was a confusing feeling— he very clearly remembered feeling awash with lust and passion at the sight of this woman during her previous visit. But now, standing before her, all he felt was a dread and hollowness.

“Oh, you Asukans,” she chuckled. “It’s amusing how much of a fuss you make over physical death. Death is a part of you, villager.”

Olfric bristled at that.

“It is a phenomenon woven into the very fabric of your being. Dead flesh adorns you. Your nails. Your hair. Your skin is a constant cacophony of the dead and the newly reborn. Had your forebears actually understood what death offered, you’d have fallen to your knees and begged us to light the way.”

As she spoke, Olfric felt a sudden tightening in his scalp. It felt like he was standing on top of a precarious precipice. As long as he didn’t take another step, he’d be safe— but the moment he did, a world of pain awaited him.

Just what did this woman do to him? Was it the curse?

“No need to fear me, boy,” she purred. “I always leave one of my prey alive to tell the tale. To remind the world that we exist. To let them remember why they once feared us.”

“Just who are you people?”

“Who are… we?”

She gazed into him, and for a moment, Olfric felt like he had just died and come back. There was a strange, ethereal coldness numbing his body, and a mindless hunger on the verge of consuming his sanity.

It was becoming impossible to breathe.

“Your ancestors called us Outlanders. Strangers. Walkers from the Other. We came from the sky, settled on these lands, and made them our own. Your forefathers worshipped us. Feared us. Welcomed us. Embraced us. But deep down, they resented us.”

Her face looked solemn.

“And then they betrayed us.”

Olfric felt an icy feeling spreading across his chest, her words invoking all sorts of dangerous thoughts in his mind. “Did you say… the Other?”

“The Other is of the ethereal, boy. What is visible is Sight. That which is beyond Sight, is the Other.”

Olfric tried to stand up, but he couldn’t. A sudden urge to run away overwhelmed his mind, but his body simply wouldn’t listen.

“That which can be heard is Sound. That which is beyond Sound, is the Other.”

Every passing second evoked memories of some tales he’d once heard at his grandmother’s knee. About existences that roamed the continent before the Empire settled in. Existences that had been pruned from the world by the very Gods themselves.

Existences that were now little more than subjects of myth and fantasy.

“That which pumps lifeblood is the force. That which is beyond it, is the Other.”

The black-haired woman met his eyes once more, her gaze sparkling with a deathly glow. Suddenly, something translucent and spectral rose up from her body, as her physical form dropped to the floor like a marionette with its strings evered. The spectre soared and swooped around him like a wraith, its very presence feeling like Death.

It rose, and met his gaze one last time, its ethereal eyes shining with malevolence.

“We are of the Other.”

The wraith drew closer to him, and Olfric felt a breath of cold air down his nape.

“We are… Yokai.”