The scene blurred and changed.
The sunlight remained as bright as before, yet it still carried a faint, icy chill.
Raine found himself standing in a town market entirely different in style from Mottled Town. The surrounding buildings were mostly constructed from heavy bluestone, and the streets rose and fell with the mountain terrain. It was clearly a mountain town.
He quickly spotted Winnie in the crowd.
She was holding the hand of a gentle-faced middle-aged woman beside her, walking shoulder to shoulder.
From the occasional smiles the woman directed down at Winnie and the content of their conversation, Raine concluded that this kindly woman was Winnie’s mother.
At this time, Winnie was about twelve or thirteen years old, already reaching her mother’s shoulder in height.
She wore a longer, thicker, coarse dress, seemingly trying to hide the shape of her tail.
She had also let her hair grow out, attempting to tie it into a bun to conceal the black horns on her head. However, the effort yielded little success; the vast majority of the horns remained clearly visible.
Despite her best efforts to cover her Tiefling features, the strange looks cast by the people still pierced her like steel needles, leaving her breathless.
Clutching tightly to the hem of her mother’s clothes, she kept her head down as much as possible. She seemed to regret coming out with her mother.
The two soon arrived at a fruit stall.
As her mother haggled with the stall owner, the vendor grumbled in dissatisfaction, "Being so stingy... raising a Demon brat, all your money must have been spent on her, huh?"
These words made Winnie bury her head even lower, but her mother gave her an encouraging look.
Just as her mother was about to argue with the stall owner, an old woman at a neighboring stall suddenly screamed, "My coin purse! My coin purse is gone!"
In an instant, the eyes of everyone on the street focused on Winnie.
The old woman pointed at her as well, speaking with absolute certainty. "It’s her! It has to be her! I just saw her disgusting tail waving around my basket!"
"Search her!"
"Tieflings are born thieves!"
Whispers of anger and suspicion surged like a tide, and the crowd quickly formed a circle around them.
Winnie’s face turned deathly pale. Hiding behind her mother, she pleaded in vain, "I didn’t! I really didn’t..."
"On what grounds are you saying it’s her? My daughter didn’t do it!" her mother argued fiercely on her behalf, but she was clearly outnumbered and unsupported, her entire body trembling with anger.
Yet, the onlookers remained relentless, their voices of doubt growing louder.
Raine watched anxiously, unable to communicate directly with Winnie.
Left with no choice, he grabbed a stack of empty bamboo baskets from a nearby stall. Taking aim at those who were shouting the loudest, he accurately slipped the baskets over their heads, covering them completely—not even sparing the fruit vendor.
"OUCH!"
"Who is it?! What is this!"
The sudden darkness sent the ringleaders into a panic. Their shouts quickly turned into confused whimpers, causing the wave of accusations to die down significantly.
Soon, someone found the "lost" coin purse right under the old woman’s own vegetable basket.
The old woman awkwardly fell silent, and the crowd dispersed sheepishly, without a single word of apology.
The fruit vendor finally managed to pull the basket off his head. Shoving a handful of Copper Deer change at Winnie’s mother, he waved his hand in disgust as if shooing away a fly. "Hurry up and take her away. Don’t ruin my business here."
Raine stepped forward, just about to try communicating with Winnie again, only to see her being hurried away by the woman.
However, he could clearly feel that the invisible barrier wrapping around Winnie seemed to have thinned a bit more. It appeared his efforts had not been in vain.
At the same time, he sharply noticed that the mother’s hand gripping Winnie’s was trembling slightly, almost imperceptibly. This kindhearted woman was evidently enduring immense social pressure as well.
KABOOM!
A sudden clap of thunder resounded by Raine’s ear.
This time, he found himself in a dilapidated and cramped attic.
Outside the window, it was pitch black. Dense raindrops continuously battered the thin roof, making a loud PITTER-PATTER sound.
It was a cold, rainy night. Raine could feel that this space was practically an ice cellar, far worse than the previous scenes, making him shudder uncontrollably.
By the faint lamplight filtering up through the cracks from downstairs, Raine saw Winnie huddled in the darkest corner of the attic, completely motionless.
She was a bit older now, dressed in that brown robe with the oversized hood. She had clearly realized that long hair couldn’t hide her horns and had ultimately chosen to conceal herself entirely.
Aside from a worn-out wooden bed, a table with a broken leg, and a small chair, there was almost nothing else in the attic. The walls were covered in mildew, and rainwater was even slowly seeping in through the corners.
This was clearly Winnie’s living quarters.
Downstairs, suppressed voices were faintly drifting up. Winnie was holding her breath, listening intently to the commotion below.
"...What else can we do, Marina?" A middle-aged man’s voice sounded, filled with the exhaustion of being crushed by life. "Can’t we... can’t we just send her to be an Apprentice at the workshop in the neighboring town? I heard the Johns are hiring!"
"What nonsense are you talking about?!" Winnie’s mother’s voice rang out, carrying an anxious urge to protect her daughter. "She’s only fourteen! Besides, the Johns are notorious. Have you thought about how they’d treat her? How is that any different from throwing her into the fire!"
"What about me? What about us?!" The middle-aged man sharply raised his volume, accompanied by the muffled THUD of a fist slamming heavily against a wooden table. "Look around you! Old Tom explicitly told me today that because of our ’family situation,’ he won’t be hiring me to tend his orchard anymore starting tomorrow!
"Marina, we’ve lost all our income! This is already the third job I’ve found this month! The people in town are becoming increasingly unable to tolerate a grown-up Tiefling!"
A suffocating silence spread downstairs, freezing over Winnie’s heart in the attic as well.
Raine saw her hand gripping the hem of her robe suddenly tighten, her teeth biting into her lower lip until it almost bled.
"I know, I know she is sensible, and I know she suffers..." The man’s voice lowered again, carrying a sense of powerlessness, as if completely defeated. "But what about us? We have to live too! Every time we go out with her, those stares are like knives! I’ve had enough! Did we adopt her back then just to turn ourselves into the town’s plague?"
Adoption?
Raine keenly caught that word.
So that middle-aged woman was Winnie’s adoptive mother, and the speaking man was naturally her adoptive father.
"No matter what, she is our daughter!" her adoptive mother, Marina, cried out tearfully.
"Is she?!" Her adoptive father’s retort was like a poisoned dagger, piercing through the thin floorboards and stabbing into Winnie’s riddled heart. "We have done everything we could for her! We gave her food and clothes, but what has she brought us? Only dirty looks, ostracization, and endless poverty! Sometimes I think we never should have..."
He didn’t finish his sentence, but the unspoken meaning instantly froze Winnie’s blood.
—never should have taken her in.
Winnie’s body trembled violently.
Raine noticed in surprise that a faint, barely visible flame of Magic flashed in the air before her with a POOF, extinguishing instantly. Even she was startled by this unconsciously leaked Power.
Immediately after, the harsh CRASH of a clay pot being fiercely smashed to the ground came from downstairs, along with her adoptive mother’s suppressed, despairing sobs.
Raine gazed at Winnie, his heart filled with mixed emotions.
He understood that her final safe haven—the only emotional anchor she had carefully maintained—was collapsing from within at this very moment. He saw Winnie’s nails digging deeply into her palms, faint traces of blood seeping out. Yet, she still bit her lip fiercely, not daring to make a single sound.
What she was feeling in this moment was perhaps a bone-chilling despair.
"They’re right. I am a monster.
"No matter where I go, I only bring Curses. I only bring misfortune to others.
"Now even Father and Mother don’t need me anymore. No one wants me anymore.
"If my existence only brings pain to people, if no one needs me... what value is there in my existence?" Winnie muttered to herself in a small voice, as a "rain" began to fall on the floor in front of her.
DRIP. DROP.
On the mottled floor, one icy splash of water bloomed after another, then swiftly froze.
For a moment, it was as if the entire space began to freeze over, a bone-piercing chill quietly spreading.
"Of course your existence has value, Winnie." Raine crouched down in front of her, gazing firmly into her teary, azure eyes.
"Without your Colorful Ball, we couldn’t have broken through the Stone Golems’ blockade.
"Without your Arcane Force Field, it would have been absolutely impossible for us to break out of the Sea of the Dead.
"You were the one who deciphered the Secret-Keeping Ink and unlocked the Magic Barrier. You were also the one who provided the light to illuminate the darkness for us."
He didn’t know if she could hear him, but he continued to speak regardless, word by word.
CRACK.
The barrier around her fluctuated violently, emitting a crisp sound like shattering ice.
She could hear him!
Raine’s spirit roused, and his tone became even more steady and forceful. "Your unyielding nature, your wisdom, your bravery—these make up the real you! It’s the you we have seen with our own eyes and felt for ourselves as we fought side by side! We all need you, Winnie!"
Winnie’s head jerked up, her azure eyes filled with unbelievable shock. She saw Raine.
"But, do I deserve it?" Her voice trembled as she subconsciously shrank back. "I’m just a... a monster that brings misfortune."
"You are not a monster, Winnie. You are our indispensable teammate, a companion we trust to watch our backs. Of course you deserve it. In our eyes, no one is more qualified to have all this than you." Raine’s voice was gentle but unquestionable. "We need you. We don’t need a Caster; we need ’Winnie’—our unique and irreplaceable companion."
He extended his hand to her, palm up—an invitation, and also a promise.
The barrier that isolated her from the world shattered in this moment.
Winnie looked at his outstretched hand, then into his determined eyes. Though her pale face still bore the glimmer of tears, it bloomed into a radiant smile he had never seen before.
"I..." She choked up, her voice faint but clear. "I... I need you all too!"
Slowly, she raised her trembling hand and placed it in his palm.
"The battle isn’t over yet." Raine closed his grip, holding her icy hand and bringing her a surge of warm Power. "Let’s continue, side by side."
With a slight pull, he firmly helped her up from the freezing floor. As she rose, all the ice and snow melted away.
The surrounding scenery instantly collapsed. The old oak tree, the crushed daisies, the hustle of the market, the rain pattering on the attic... all the painful memory fragments receded like the tide.
Raine took a sharp, deep breath, already standing back amidst the churning fog.
He tightened his grip on the bow in his hand, a sharp light flashing in his eyes.
Now, it was time to let those damned Black Tide Embers taste some suffering.