Inside the dim agency, the fire in the hearth had died down to a faint, flickering amber. The moment Corvus stepped through the door, the dark-gold prosthetic on his left arm began to violently shudder without warning. Its once-dusk metal surface now pulsed with a scorched, magma-like red light, and the runes emitted a pungent, burning stench, as if something inside the artificial limb was slowly cooking alive.

"Ngh...!"

Muffled groans escaped Corvus's throat as he collapsed painfully to his knees. He clamped his right hand over the joint of his left shoulder, where his flesh was turning into a deathly, ashen black at a visible pace, as if life itself were being drained from his body drop by drop.

This was the price for overusing the Demon-Buster Cannon.

While that cataclysmic blast could vaporize fiends, its devastating magical discharge also generated "Demon-Ashes"—a corruptive residue that ate away at what little flesh he had left. If the erosion reached his heart, he would permanently transform into a mindless monster of iron and sinew.

"I knew it! You stubborn, reckless idiot, you cranked the output to maximum again!"

The wooden basement door was kicked open with a resounding bang, and a girl’s crisp voice, laced with torrential fury, shook the oil lamps hanging on the wall.

Layla marched in, her brown leather apron smudged with engine oil. Her neat blonde hair was cropped short, her goggles pushed up to her forehead, and a few stray strands clung to her sweat-dampened temples. She was the daughter of Raven, and the only prodigy in the world who had inherited his mastercraft of "Mage-Gear Alchemy." She had abandoned a stable life elsewhere, quitting her job to return to this very agency just to help Corvus hunt for her missing father.

Marching over in two long strides, Layla grabbed Corvus by his right arm and hauled him down into the underground alchemy workshop. Her movements were too rough to be mistaken for gentle care; she was dragging him like a piece of broken cargo. Yet, the swelling tide of anxiety deep in her eyes was impossible to hide.

Corvus was slammed down onto the cold, iron operating chair. Layla aggressively unbuckled the leather straps on his left shoulder. But the moment the bare skin was exposed, her hands froze, and a fleeting, almost imperceptible pang of heartache flashed across her eyes.

At the seam where metal was stitched to flesh, gray-black crystalline veins were spiderwebbing toward his collarbone like rotting roots. Each dark line read like a silent countdown.

"Another thirty minutes and your left lung would have turned into scrap metal," Layla hissed through gritted teeth. She turned and wheeled over a sophisticated magic-extraction machine, its metallic casters scraping sharply against the stone floor.

With practiced ease, she grabbed several silver needles etched with binding runes and drove them precisely into the pressure points of Corvus's left shoulder, locking down the spread of the Demon-Ashes. Pulling on thick leather gloves, she gripped an alchemical screwdriver that thrummed with a blue light and began dismantling the outer casing of the dark-gold prosthetic.

"This is going to hurt like hell. Brace yourself."

"Just do it," Corvus muttered. His face was deathly pale and drenched in cold sweat, but his blue crystal eye remained as flat and undisturbed as a mirror, as if the excruciating agony tearing through this flesh belonged to someone else entirely.

As the screws and gears were dislodged, scalding, tainted magical steam erupted from the inner workings of the arm, making Layla gasp and flinch. Using a pair of forceps, she pulled out a completely melted, charred magical core. The moment the link to his nervous system was severed, the raw agony caused Corvus’s muscles to violently convulse. His right hand gripped the back of the chair so hard that the solid iron buckled under his fingers, leaving deep prints behind.

While deftly injecting coolant, Layla scolded him with a furious mutter, though her voice trembled ever so slightly: "The Demon-Buster Cannon is for saving your life, not for clearing out trash mobs! My dad didn't rescue you from the brink of death just to watch you burn yourself to ashes!"

"It was... a Blood-Thirsty Hellhound. If I hadn't ended it quickly, that girl would have died," Corvus explained, his voice hoarse.

"Excuses!" Layla snapped, glaring at him fiercely, yet the movements of her hands instantly softened, turning tender as if she were handling a fragile antique. She slotted in a brand-new, pristine magic crystal, using her own mana to guide the liquid metal and repair his corroded flesh cells.

Once the prosthetic arm was secured, Layla exhaled a long breath, pulled off her goggles, and let the sweat from her brow drip past her chin. She leaned in close to Corvus's face, so close that they could feel each other's breath.

"Open your right eye. Look at me."

Corvus opened his right eye, the crystal eye glowing with an eerie luminescence in the shadows. Layla extended her slender fingers, her fingertips pooling with a gentle, green healing magic. She softly caressed the rim of his eye socket, her touch light as if brushing against thin ice.

"The visual sync with Crow is placing an extreme load on your cranial nerves," Layla murmured, using her magic to smooth out the chaotic neural currents behind his eye. "Have you been seeing things lately?"

"...Occasionally, I see the fire from ten years ago," Corvus replied, hiding nothing.

Layla’s hand trembled slightly. She withdrew her touch, turning around to pack up her tools. Her voice dropped, as if afraid her tone might betray too much emotion: "Before my dad vanished, the phrase he said to me the most was, 'I ruined that boy.' Corvus, these mage-gears were attached by my father, and keeping you alive is my responsibility. So... please, don't die on me so soon."

"Before I find Master Raven and slaughter every last piece of filth, I will not die," Corvus said, flexing his newly restored dark-gold left arm. The metal joints clicked with a crisp, full, and solid alignment, echoing his vow.

Right then, Crow, the magi-raven perched on the rack, let out a loud, piercing caw, as if mirroring its master’s resolve.

Layla turned around and tossed a vial of specialized "Mana-Suppressing Elixir" into his lap.

"That's a newly formulated stabilizer. If you melt your arm again next time, I’m filling the next batch with Chinese goldthread. I'll make it so bitter you'll choke!"

Corvus caught the vial, the corner of his mouth curving upward in a rare, faint smile.

In this world drenched in blood and vengeance, this freezing underground workshop and this sharp-tongued girl were his only remaining sanctuary—the one place where he didn't have to pretend to be strong, and where he never had to hide his wounds.