Dusk arrived.

  In the clearing where the conflict over the radio had taken pce, several humans stood in a circle around a patch of dark crimson blood. The edges of the stain smoldered and evaporated the moment the stray rays of the sun touched them. These men were not hikers; they were united by their tactical gear and the various firearms they carried.

  One of them knelt, using the tip of a knife to probe a dried section of the blood.

  "...This isn't just surface-level blood," he said, his tone hesitant. He lifted a bit of viscous, dark residue that caught the dim light with a faint, oily reflection. It didn't evaporate as quickly as ordinary blood. "There are tissue fragments in here."

  He frowned. "The pigment concentration is extremely high... it doesn't look like skin. It looks more like—" He didn't finish the sentence.

  The team leader, standing behind him in full tactical gear, already understood. "Ocur tissue," he said ftly, confirming a pre-calcuted result. "A hit to a vital spot, yet it didn't kill her."

  The youngest member of the squad, his voice trembling with nerves, spoke up. "...And she could still flee that far?"

  "A Gold-eyed vampire," the leader said, exhaling a cloud of smoke from his cigarette. "You can't judge them by the standards of normal biology."

  "Boss, what's the pn?" the rookie asked.

  "Nothing changes. We keep tracking. We've been on her tail for days—ever since 'Canary' squad retreated from the southwest sector. This one is a prize fish." He lit a fresh cigarette.

  "Wait—are you talking about the Gold-eye that scared off the Canary unit in the derelict complex?"

  "Obviously. Gold-eyes are rare enough as it is. One that's already wounded? We’re catching her. We can't keep losing out to those bastards across the border."

  A third man chimed in. "I heard that organization across the border had a major internal shake-up recently. Word is they lost their Ace—don't know if she resigned, fled, or was KIA."

  "Is that so? No wonder they’re desperate for results, taking contracts even for border weather stations." The leader blew a rge smoke ring.

  The man inspecting the blood stood up, his eyes following a trail that was nearly invisible to the human eye, yet left an "unnatural void" in the ndscape. "She’s bleeding. And she hasn't fully recovered."

  "Then we—"

  "We hunt," the leader said without hesitation. "Before she returns to her peak form." He turned to his men. "And it’s a good time to test the loot we seized from our competitors. High-command wants to replicate it, but they need field data first."

  The leader pulled out a sealed auto-injector, looking at the liquid inside. It reflected the light with a sickly, unsettling shimmer.

  The three girls were preparing to leave the gas station for their next destination. Saliya suddenly snapped to a halt.

  It wasn't a sound. It wasn't a scent. It was the sensation of being targeted from a great distance. Her shoulders tensed, and her fingertips reflexively curled.

  "...We’re being followed," she whispered.

  Lenka blinked. "You’re sure?"

  Saliya nodded. "These aren't ordinary people. They are following the 'parts of me' I left behind." She didn't specify which parts.

  Ana’s expression darkened. "The blood?"

  "Not just blood," Saliya said softly. "They know I was wounded."

  The words sent a jolt of anxiety through Lenka’s chest. In that exact heartbeat, she felt an incredibly uncomfortable throb. It felt as though her calm mind had been violently stirred by an unseen hand. It wasn't a sense of danger, but a misaligned resonance.

  Lenka grimaced, pressing her hand against her temple.

  "Lenka? What is it?" Ana noticed immediately.

  "I don't know," Lenka’s voice was weak. "That feeling just now... it was like when you two use your power. But different." She struggled to find the words. "It’s messy. Not vampire, and not human."

  Saliya and Ana exchanged a look. They both remembered the enhanced troops they had encountered before crossing the border with J.

  "The Serum," they said in unison.

  "I didn't think they’d have it here," Saliya added.

  Lenka’s breathing quickened. The chaotic sensation didn't fade; it left a lingering afterimage inside her—as if something was being forcibly pulled into alignment but couldn't find the right rhythm. For the first time, she realized with terrifying crity: If that stuff were used on me... I don't know if I'd still be me.

  Saliya turned, her gaze lingering on Lenka. "If you feel anything else is wrong... you must tell me."

  Lenka nodded, but she kept one truth to herself: she was starting to lose track of whether that agitation was coming from the outside, or from a corner of her own soul that had finally been pried open.

  The hunter had originally just wanted to confirm the serum's effects. His comrades said they had scavenged it from the bodies of the neighboring country's units after the weather station disaster.

  There was no pain when the needle went in. Instead, it was an unnervingly clean coldness, like water spreading along his nerves.

  "...I don't feel anything?" he murmured.

  Three seconds ter, the world became too bright. It wasn't that the light intensified; it was that the contrast of every boundary was dialed up to the maximum. It was as if a sonographic sonar had been overid across his vision.

  The blood on the ground was no longer just a color, but a void; he could see the individual yers of tree bark; a distant reflection of "crimson" was stretched into a guiding line. His heart didn't speed up, but every beat was impossibly clear. He knew where he was. He knew where the target was going. He knew she was wounded.

  "Found her," he said with such certainty it startled even himself.

  The leader gave him a nod, not stopping him. The hunter began to move faster. He cleared obstacles with ease, brushing aside thick branches or rocks that would have exhausted a normal man. The faster he went, the simpler the world became. There was only the act of the "Hunt."

  Catch up. Tear open the throat. Drink.

  "—What do we do, Sister? Keep running?" Ana stared at the path they had taken, which was now a roadmap for the enemy. Her expression was one of mounting impatience. "If they’re using the serum, they have senses simir to ours. They’ll be hard to lose."

  It wasn't simple scent-tracking anymore. It wasn't experience or tracking skills. Saliya stood up, looking into the wind. Then, she negated the thought.

  "...It's not that I'm being 'hunted'," she whispered.

  Rather, someone was being "pulled by the scent of the blood." That kind of pursuit didn't need to know what she looked like. It didn't need to distinguish between Pureblood or Hybrid. It didn't even need to understand regeneration. It only needed the blood to "respond."

  She turned toward Lenka, her pupils contracting. If the pursuers began to sense "two response points" simultaneously, the next step wouldn't be a choice of who to follow.

  It would be a matter of who lost control first.

  Saliya tightened her fist. "...They are more than just hunters now."

  The injected hunter sensed something wrong as he ran. It wasn't a mistake or pain, but a g—a dey that shouldn't exist. He instinctively turned toward the "crimson line," but the guidance in his vision was half a beat slow. It wasn't that he couldn't see it; it was as if he already knew the answer but was only allowed to confirm it a second ter.

  He frowned, not stopping. The serum was working—working too well. The world remained sharp and clear. He could still smell the blood, still confirm the target was radiating the scent of a fresh wound—healed, but exhausting.

  Suddenly, the target felt... divided. The line was branching.

  One path remained vivid, a constant leak of tearing scent. The other was... fractured, incomplete, like a sentence cut short. He instinctively chose the former.

  But the moment he leaped over a slick rock—the second line suddenly surged into his blind spot. Like an afterimage that shouldn't exist. Like an incorrect answer being shoved into his mind.

  His breathing hitched. "...?"

  For the first time, the serum gave him an "answer" without an "expnation."

  Lenka’s hand moved to the space between her colrbone and throat. It wasn't fear. It wasn't intuition. It was a realization: Someone in the wrong pce has 'responded' to my existence.

  She leaned against an empty shelf, panting slightly. That familiar yet foreign heat in her chest hadn't exploded. No shadows. No blood mist. Her fingertips were quiet. But she knew: something had just "aimed" at her.

  It wasn't a gaze. It wasn't a lock-on. It was as if while someone was chasing another target, her silhouette had been briefly "overid" into their perception.

  "Dammit..." she hissed. She looked through the window into the depths of the forest. There was nothing there.

  But her heart began to resonate with a rhythm that wasn't her own. It wasn't a power awakening; it was the prelude to being forced to hear the heartbeats of others.

  The sound became gargantuan. Ordinarily, when she calmed her mind, she could hear her own heartbeat or the pulse of nearby creatures, but it was just part of the environmental noise. Now, it was a booming roar. With every thrum, her vision was dyed a deeper shade of red.

  Lenka felt a primal dread. She covered her ears to block the sound—it was useless. She knew whose heartbeats they were. Her logic told her clearly: These two beings are my companions. They have fought beside me. They have protected me.

  Their names, their voices, their faces were all in her mind. But her body... her body disagreed entirely.

  She wanted to warn them, but she could only feel two massive, deafening heartbeats from their direction—presences like bottomless abysses. Her blood was shivering. Not from fear, but from a primitive arm.

  Danger. Oppression. Do not approach.

  The heartbeats were too close. Too whole. Too "alive." They were like two borderless wells, opening silently. They weren't watching her; they were merely permitting her to exist within their reach. The thought made her stomach churn.

  "...No," she told herself repeatedly. Not enemies. Not prey. Not threats.

  She forced herself to remember Saliya’s gaze when she spoke, and Ana’s quiet protection at her side. Those images were real. She knew it. But her body didn't understand the nguage. Her muscles tightened on their own. Her breathing began to synchronize with those two heartbeats. Everything in her vision was re-marked as "Distance" and "Angle."

  Too close. What if they move? What if they lunge?

  "Stop," she whispered to herself. She wasn't commanding her body; she was pleading with it.

  But the impulse from her blood was merciless. As long as those two "abysses" were breathing, she could never truly rex. She didn't want to attack; she wanted the threat to vanish. Even for a second.

  Her fists were trembling. Not because of overflowing power, but because she was using every ounce of her strength to pin herself to the floor, to keep her cws from extending. She realized then: it wasn't a loss of power. It was her right of judgment being stolen from her.

  If those heartbeats shifted even a fraction more, she would lose the thread of "reason" entirely. Her blood felt the overwhelming threat of the two beings beside her—a paradox of being looked down upon by kings.

  It's too loud. Shut up— She wanted the noise to stop, or she would go mad.

  "—Lenka!?" Saliya barely dodged a punch. It was a blunt fist, not a cwed strike, but it still shattered the metal shelf into fragments.

  Saliya and Ana saw it immediately. Lenka was wrong. Her jaw was cmped so tight it looked painful. The whites of her eyes were nearly entirely red, burying her golden irises.

  Saliya nded soundlessly. She didn't counter. She didn't even take a defensive stance. That punch had been too fast, too straight, too clean—so clean it didn't look like anger. Saliya understood the moment she dodged.

  This wasn't an attack. Not against her. There was no intent to harm a specific target. It was a rejection response triggered by over-stimution. Her body was screaming: Get away from me, or I'll die.

  Saliya’s heart constricted. "Lenka," she whispered, her tone cautious, not daring to step closer.

  She saw it. Lenka’s shoulders were hunched at an unnatural angle, her back arched like a beast driven into a corner, forced into a permanent state of retaliation. Her breathing was chaotic. Too much information was flooding in, and she had no way to turn it off.

  Lenka knew. She knew these two "abysses" were her friends. The companions she had finally allowed herself to accept. She recognized the rhythm of their aura, their familiar silence. She even recognized the sense of relief her blood felt when they were near.

  Her logic hadn't vanished. Her "priority" had. Her instincts were screaming a more primal signal: You will die. Approach and be torn apart. These are not kin. These are predators.

  Two judgments were held in her mind simultaneously. And she couldn't choose between them.

  "Don't... come near me..." Her voice didn't sound like it came from a throat, but like a squeezed resonance from deep within her chest. She gripped her fists until her knuckles were white. She didn't want to hurt them. But she was more afraid that if she heard those heartbeats again, if she felt that pressure, she would act before she could think.

  Ana stood at a distance. She didn't approach or call out. Her gaze lingered on Lenka for a heartbeat before turning toward the growing gloom outside. She felt it too. The approaching presence wasn't "tracking" anymore. It was being pulled. The serum was dragging the hunters toward them like a magnet.

  "If this continues, the ones outside will be led straight to us," Ana said calmly. Her voice was steady, as if they weren't discussing life and death. "Once they arrive, it will turn into a massacre."

  Saliya didn't look back. Her eyes remained locked on Lenka. "I know," she whispered.

  Ana took a breath. It wasn't hesitation; it was a final confirmation of her own lucidity. "Then someone has to lead them away." She began to walk toward the exit. Her pace was slow but unyielding.

  "Ana—" Saliya finally turned her head.

  Ana didn't stop. "You can't leave her right now." She looked back over her shoulder, a tiny, almost invisible smile touching her lips. "And to be honest—" Her eyes turned cold. "I’m much better at dealing with things outside that have already abandoned their human dignity. I'll leave her to you, Sister."

  The night wind whistled through the broken window, carrying away the scent of blood and Ana’s silhouette. In the remaining space, there were only two of them. And a soul on the brink of colpse, struggling to hold onto who she was.

  "—I promise, Ana," Saliya whispered. She turned slowly, carefully, back toward Lenka.

  "Lenka," she called again. It wasn't a command. It wasn't a comfort. It was a decration that she was still there.

  Lenka raised her head. In that moment, the red in her eyes had nearly swallowed the gold entirely. She saw Saliya. And she saw the one being she least wanted to call an enemy.