You are Noel Tiberius di Hazaran, and your blade sweeps cleanly through the neck of the awakened being known as Rafaela. It’s not just an appropriate decision given how dangerous the former number-two warrior can be, particularly with her sister nearby to coordinate with, but because she was once a half-blooded warrior the same way you are. Like all the rest she allowed her body to be hybridized with the flesh and blood of a yōma, a monster that preys on human beings like wolves among sheep. Although the premise was largely false, you and the others of your order still believe in your initial mission to wipe out those monsters on behalf of the people who cannot fight for themselves.

And it’s because Rafaela was once a warrior that you believe she shouldn’t be allowed to suffer like that, blinded, confused, and partially-eviscerated. You always hated the line of thinking that it’s best to put an awakening warrior out of her misery, or to execute an awakened being as some form of recompense for failing to stop her from awakening in the first place. That’s especially true now that you’ve met more than a handful of them who chose to distance themselves from their primal, inhuman urges when presented the first opportunity to do so.

But even if Rafaela chose the path of conflict, even if she turned her back on humanity, you figured you could at very least treat her with the same basic dignity a hunter affords even the least of animals. You don’t let prey suffer. That’s a rule.

“Rafaela!” Constanzia demands, eyes still healing slowly as they have to force bits of brick out as they regenerate. “Rafaela, stop hiding your yōki already and synchronize with me!”

“Constanzia,” your mother Sabela, another ‘abyssal one’ like Constanzia is, speaks up. “Your sister won’t answer. She’s gone.”

“She wouldn’t just leave -”

“She didn’t,” Sabela interrupts. “She’s dead, Constanzia. Killed quickly to keep her from suffering any more than she had to.”

“Killed?” Constanzia repeats flatly, her yōki already surging. “Killed? By who, by you? Don’t make me laugh, none of you could possibly have killed my sister.”

“You can’t sense her yōki anymore,” Salem points out. “You said that yourself.”

She just... doesn’t want to see the truth. Both literally and figuratively.

Eventually Constanzia finds something, fumbling blindly with her hands, that convinces her. And in that moment, you wonder whether you made a mistake in killing Rafaela first.
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