Chapter 3
It was dawn when Illaria reached the River Ameys, the place where the Banshee had last been sighted. On any other day, killing a superior beast like this would draw dangerous attention—but today, she wasn’t worried. The common folk of Tyria had likely never seen her face. They might recognize the princes and princesses of the West, but she doubted most of them even knew the Southern Kingdom had a princess at all.
The only ones who could possibly recognize her were members of Tyria’s ruling noble house—the First Noble Family of the West. But from what she had heard, all the important figures had already departed for Nightsong over a week ago to prepare for the Festival of Aris. Those left behind were mostly workers, guards, and household managers.
That made her plan simple. Kill the Banshee. Collect the reward. Leave immediately.
Even if the remaining officials refused to release the bounty and insisted she wait until the festival ended and the noble heads returned, she had alternatives. She could take the beast to an auction house and sell its parts instead. A Banshee of Venom was rare—merchants would compete for its body, its scales, its core. She could easily trade it for transportation bombs.
The fact that this job had been posted for six months without anyone claiming it was proof enough of how dangerous the creature was.
Illaria followed the riverbank until the current slowed, spreading wide and still—so calm it resembled a lake more than a river. Here, the Ameys stretched nearly a kilometer across, dotted with small islets and extending endlessly toward the horizon.
She narrowed her eyes. A perfect hiding place. She knelt at the edge of the river and pulled a medicinal herb from her pouch, crushing it lightly between her fingers before letting it fall into the water. The crystal-clear surface darkened instantly, blooming into an ugly shade of purple.
Illaria exhaled slowly.
“As expected,” she thought. “The water here is heavily poisoned.”
If an ordinary person drank from this river, death would follow within ten to twenty minutes at most. That explained the absence of footprints along the bank—no fishermen, no travelers, no animals. The river had been abandoned ever since the beast appeared.
Good.
That meant no interruptions. No witnesses. And no reason to hold back. Illaria rose to her feet, her hand tightening around her sword. If she wanted to kill a Banshee of Venom, she would need to fight at her absolute best.
Illaria lifted her hand and reached for the wooden pin holding half of her long hair in a tight bun. With a small twist, she loosened it and let her hair fall free down her back. She had always fought better this way.
Ever since she had picked up her first sword as the Southern princess, she had felt most comfortable with her hair loose—unrestrained, moving with her body rather than pulling against it. Once, it had been a bright, unmistakable gold. She had loved that about herself.
She was glad it wasn’t anymore. In the North and the West, most people had dark brown or black hair and light—almost pale—skin. In the South, golden hair and warm brown skin were common. Even a child could tell, at a glance, which land someone belonged to.
After she had woken in Kelzar following the War of Betrayal, one of the very first decisions she had made was to dye her hair. It hadn’t been vanity. It had been survival.
For all her life as a princess, Illaria had shown little interest in beauty, literature, or the arts—the things noblewomen were expected to excel at. She had always found them dull, hollow, and meaningless. Only after the war did she curse herself for that indifference. Not because she suddenly cared for elegance—but because knowing how to alter one’s appearance could mean the difference between life and death.
Illaria had always wanted something else.
She wanted her own army to command. She wanted night hunts, criminal trials, justice delivered with steel and will. She wanted to fight, to protect, to restore order where chaos thrived. Love and beauty neither amused her nor gave her satisfaction.
Her mother used to smile softly and say that Illaria was more a warrior than a royal lady. Before Illaria’s first journey to Kelzar, her mother had still tried. She had insisted Illaria attend those tedious lessons meant to mold her into a proper noblewoman. Royal servants demonstrated endless techniques—how to lighten or darken one’s skin, apply makeup, dye hair, dress to impress.
Illaria never paid attention. She never thought she would need any of it.
Not until after the War of Betrayal, when she learned that surviving the world sometimes meant becoming unrecognizable within it.
After losing her Auren—her spiritual core—Illaria had become defenceless in more ways than one. It wasn’t just the beasts of Kelzar she had to fear anymore, but the generals and warriors who came here to train. After the War of Betrayal, her head would have carried a bounty high enough to tempt even the most disciplined soldier.
When she woke, she had no idea how long she had been trapped in that coma-like state. If it had only been days after the war, Kelzar would still have been mostly empty—few warriors, few generals. But as time passed, life would return to its rhythms. Training would resume. People would come back.
She prayed it hadn’t been long. Her prayers went unanswered. On just the second day after waking, she nearly collided with someone—likely a soldier from the Northern army. Somehow, she escaped unnoticed, but that moment was enough to terrify her.
From then on, for nearly two months, she lived like a shadow. She hid during the day and moved only at night, slipping between rocks and trees, keeping far from any prying eyes. Her long golden hair was the biggest problem—irrefutable proof that she was from the South.
So she experimented.
Every few days, while training, she tried different plants to dye her hair. Most failed. Some were disasters. Once, she managed to turn her hair a vivid shade of blue.
It didn’t fade for an entire week.
Here she was, trying desperately to stay hidden, to draw no attention at all—and her hair glowed like a beacon. That week felt cursed. As if the world itself had decided to mock her survival. After two long months of trial and error, she finally found the right plant. The color it gave was natural. Permanent. Safe. That alone had felt like a victory.
“Focus, Illaria,” she told herself now. “That’s all in the past. Kill the Banshee. Get the money. Take revenge.”
She removed her overcoat and drew her sword, the familiar weight settling into her palm. She let her suppressed spiritual energy flow freely and carefully stabilized her meridians.
“I can’t let this poisoned water enter my body,” she thought. “So fighting underwater is out. And I absolutely cannot come into direct contact with the beast’s poison.”
She frowned. “If I remember correctly, wounds from its fangs don’t just corrode the skin but also—”
She paused.
“What else was it?”
The answer slipped just out of reach. It had been years since she had sat peacefully in her room at home, studying beast records and annotations late into the night. The memory struck her like a blade.
She forced it away.
“Doesn’t matter,” she muttered. “The point is clear.”
She lifted her gaze toward the river.
“I need distance. I need land. And I need to drag that thing into my domain.” Her grip tightened on her sword.
“I’ll set traps,” she decided. “And I’ll make it come to me.”
Illaria surveyed her surroundings with care. Before her stretched a wide river, its surface deceptively calm. Scattered across it were small islets—some crowned with tall green trees, others marked by massive, steep stones that jutted upward along the mountain slope she had descended.
“I know what to do,” she murmured. “This should work.” She moved quickly, purposefully, preparing her trap. With a sharp motion, Illaria drove her fist into a nearby wide tree. The trunk split with a violent crack. She broke off a section and fashioned it into a crude boat, using one of its longer branches as a makeshift oar. Pushing off, she rowed toward the central stretch of the river.
Once there, she dropped another small herb into the water. The clear surface twisted into an even uglier, darker hue.
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“Time to lure my prey out,” she thought.
Raising her sword, Illaria unleashed a controlled spiritual shockwave into the river. The energy rippled outward, disturbing the water below.
She waited. A full minute passed. Nothing.
“The beast is probably sleeping,” she muttered.
She leapt lightly onto one of the floating islets and stomped down hard on a massive rock. It split cleanly in two and sank beneath the surface.
Still nothing.
She repeated the process—sending vibrations through the water, cracking stone after stone—but the river remained silent. Her frustration flared.
“Damn it,” she growled, sheathing her sword as she dropped back onto the boat. “This lazy beast doesn’t even care that something’s happening in its territory.”
She sat there, scowling, forcing herself to think.
“Last time it attacked us immediately,” she murmured. “What’s different now? Am I missing something?” Her mind drifted back seven and a half years—to that day beside the same river Ameys. To Marcus. To her emerging out of water and seeing Marcus smile but then drowning. At the moment everything went wrong.
Her eyes widened.
“Yes. That’s it.”
Blood.
“Human blood,” she whispered. “That’s what lures it.” People rarely came near this stretch of the river anymore. Of course the beast wouldn’t respond to noise alone. It must have grown starved for flesh. Illaria lifted her sword and cut into the skin of her left thumb. Without hesitation, she lowered her bleeding hand into the river.
“This is my last hope,” she thought. “Come out.”
For a long moment, there was only silence. No movement. No sound. Just as disappointment began to creep in, the surface of the river trembled. A faint ripple spread outward.
The ripple suddenly exploded outward. Illaria leapt onto one of the nearby floating islets just as the river erupted behind her. She turned—and there it was. A massive beast surged from the water, nearly six meters tall. Its body was wrapped in dark black scales that glistened wetly, each one thick and dense like forged armor. Its yellow eyes burned with excitement and rage, locked onto her with terrifying focus. This was not a creature an average Auren user could simply cut down—its body alone was tough enough to shrug off most direct attacks.
The river descended into chaos as the beast emerged. Waves crashed violently in all directions. Her makeshift boat—the split tree trunk—was swallowed instantly, dragged beneath the poisoned water and lost.
Illaria didn’t hesitate.
She began hopping from islet to islet, her movements swift and precise, never lingering long enough to be caught. Behind her, the Banshee followed, thrashing through the shallows, maddened by the faint taste of human blood.
She ran like that for three full minutes. Then, suddenly, she did the one thing the beast never expected.
She spun.
A sharp one-hundred-and-eighty-degree turn—and she charged straight toward it. The Banshee faltered, startled for a split second by the reversal. That single moment was all she needed. Illaria ducked low, slipping beneath its line of sight. As she closed the distance, she gathered her Auren and drove her fist upward—four meters below the beast’s head, straight into its exposed belly.
The punch landed with explosive force. Spiritual energy detonated on impact, and the beast was launched backward, its massive body hurtling through the air before slamming into a mountain ridge with a thunderous crash.
Under normal circumstances, it should never have been thrown so easily. But the Banshee had been reckless—too focused on chasing her, too intoxicated by bloodlust to notice that she had led it into a far narrower section of the river, where the ridges stood barely a hundred meters apart.
That was exactly what Illaria had intended. She didn’t give it time to recover. The beast roared in fury and pushed itself upright against the ridge—and in doing so, triggered her trap.
Before entering the river, Illaria had struck every major boulder, tree, and slab of stone along these ridges. She hadn’t moved them, hadn’t displaced them—only weakened their balance, leaving them poised on the brink of collapse.
Now, as the Banshee shifted its weight, the ridge gave way. Trees snapped free. Massive boulders tumbled. The mountainside collapsed in a deafening cascade. The beast was crushed beneath the falling debris, pinned under what had to be close to a thousand kilograms of stone and wood. It thrashed violently, but the weight held firm.
The river was barely five meters away. So close. And yet completely unreachable. Illaria exhaled slowly as she approached, her sword already in hand.
“So near,” she thought, eyes cold, “and yet so far.”
She stepped closer, steady and unhurried.
“Now I just need to end you,” she murmured. “Then it’s off to Nightsong.”
Her grip tightened.
“I’ll start by bursting your head.”
But then something she had not expected happened. The beast broke free.
Boulders, trees, and slabs of stone were hurled into the air as if gravity itself had lost control. Illaria reacted on instinct, forcing her Auren outward in a violent surge, forming layered barriers just in time. Rocks slammed into the shields and shattered. A single direct hit would have meant instant death.
The Banshee let out a shrill, high-pitched screech—furious, wounded, but far from finished. Scratches marred its scaled body, shallow marks where stone and wood had scraped against it, yet there was no blood. No real injury. And worse—its eyes were sharp now. Alert. It would not fall for the same trick again.
In a blink, it charged.
Its massive body moved with terrifying speed, long venomous fangs aimed straight for her torso, enough to tear her apart in less than a second. Illaria twisted aside just in time, feeling the wind of its movement slice past her. What followed was pure chaos.
It became a relentless chase—predator and prey tearing across the riverbanks and ridges. Illaria ran, leapt, slid, dodged. She struck whenever she found an opening, her sword flashing with Auren, but every blow scraped uselessly against those hardened scales.
Too fast.Too tough.
All she was doing was burning through her energy. “This is bad,” she thought grimly. “I can’t keep this up. I’ll run dry.” Retreat would be the logical choice. But logic had no place here.
Marcus had killed this beast before. If she couldn’t kill it now—then what right did she have to believe she could kill him?
Her jaw tightened. There was one option left. She didn’t want to use it. But running would only drain her further.
Illaria suddenly pivoted, sprinting toward the beast’s tail. The Banshee followed instantly—
And the world exploded. A violent shockwave tore through the air as Illaria forced a massive burst of Auren out of her body all at once. The ground cracked. The air screamed. The blast slammed directly into the beast.
It shrieked in agony. Illaria screamed too. She had turned herself into a living bomb. The Banshee’s body was built to resist blades and precision strikes—but against raw, concussive force, it had no defense. The explosion ripped through its scales, tearing into flesh beneath.
But the cost was brutal.
The energy she was forcing out burned her from the inside. It felt as though every vein in her body was bursting, every meridian tearing under the strain. The shockwave didn’t spare her either—its recoil battered her own body mercilessly.
The pain was unbearable. Illaria had known pain before—deep wounds, broken bones, near-death agony—but this was different. This was absolute. It felt like her organs were being ripped apart one by one. Tears streamed down her face as her body trembled.
Still, she clenched her teeth.
“I have to do this,” she told herself. “This pain is nothing compared to what my family felt when they were murdered. Nothing compared to losing them.”
She leapt. Landing a meter higher on the beast’s massive body, she detonated again.
Another explosion.
Another scream—both hers and the beast’s.
“I don’t care,” she gasped through the pain, blood trickling from the corner of her mouth. “Five times. Ten times. As many as it takes.”
She climbed again. And exploded again.
And again.
And again.
Each blast tore more flesh from the beast—and more strength from her.
But Illaria Longsword did not stop. She would kill this creature. She would take her revenge. No matter what it cost.
The beast wailed in agony, its cries raw and broken, too stunned by the relentless assault to even defend itself anymore. Its massive body trembled beneath her, muscles spasming uselessly as Illaria pressed on without mercy.
As another scream tore from its throat, Illaria made a decision that bordered on madness. She climbed straight toward its open jaws. The Banshee’s fangs—long, venom-coated, lethal—loomed inches from her body. One reflexive snap would have ended her life instantly.
She did not hesitate. The pain, the fear, the danger—none of it mattered anymore.
“And with this last explosion,” she whispered hoarsely, her voice shaking yet resolute, “you will fall. And I will finally become the warrior I was always meant to be.”
Illaria unsheathed her sword. Then she detonated herself one final time. The explosion was catastrophic.
A violent surge of Auren tore through the beast from the inside, blasting Illaria backward with terrifying force. Her sword flew with her, driven forward by the explosion, piercing straight through the Banshee’s skull from within.
The top of its head erupted. Flesh, bone, and scales scattered across the riverbank as the beast’s massive body collapsed lifelessly, its final cry cut short forever. Illaria crashed onto the shore, her body slamming hard against the ground. She lay there, unmoving, staring at the sky as her breath came in ragged gasps.
Slowly, she turned her head. The dark, sickly hue that had poisoned the river earlier was fading—vanishing entirely—until the water returned to its natural, clear flow.
A faint smile tugged at her lips.
“At least,” she murmured weakly, “the people can use the river again.”
She closed her eyes for a brief moment, letting the ground steady her spinning senses. Then, with effort, she pushed herself upright and stood facing the fallen beast.
“I’ve burned far too much spiritual energy,” she thought. “I’ll need to meditate tonight… recover… and sell—”
“Hey.”
A sharp voice cut through her thoughts.
“Young lad. Who are you?”
Illaria stiffened.
“Did you kill this Banshee?”
Her heart lurched.
She pulled her mask back over her face instantly and turned around. Her blood ran cold.
Standing before her was Amarin Tyria, son of Lorg Rong, the king of Tyria—heir of the First Noble House of the West. Behind him stood nearly a hundred armed guards, their armor bearing the unmistakable insignia of the Tyria household.
But that wasn’t what terrified her.
Behind Amarin—
Was Marcus.
Marcus Neor.