The sorcerer's cold eyes glinted. The graceful dance of his slender fingers squeezed the fistful of air. The speckles of bloodied dust reflected the fragments of the dim scarlet light; the heady scent permeated. Geto mused lowly, "Non-sorcerers aren't allowed to be here."

The bated breath from the other side made his eyebrows twitch. He sensed the human’s—or were they truly logical enough to be called "human"?—terror in the quivering voice. "I-I'm sorry."

Geto frowned. These deep-rooted doubts he had pleaded with himself to rid his uneasy mind of, yet only in vain; the harder he tried to suppress the clashing swirl against his naïve ideology of youth, the deeper that root sprouted and bloomed into another seed of disdain for the weak. "The blood," the dreaded voice agitated his busy hands. Despite the repetitive tedium of the gruesome exorcisms the sorcerers perform for the non-sorcerers, there was a procedure—an investigation they needed to go through meticulously to ensure the safety of and locate the cause of the curses. The sorcerer rose from his crouched form and stood on his two feet, his large stature looming over the despicable creature. He wondered if he could suppress the urge to shed its blood should it decide to open its filthy mouth again to sputter meaningless words.

Then, he felt the burning touch on his cheek. "Are you hurt?" The same quivering voice. The fear for me, the realisation ignited something in his paralysed mind.

Your self-righteous mindset, as if we were something more than what we truly are, will be your downfall one day, Suguru. We're not saviours, nor are we gods, but men who can do some awesome tricks.

"Satoru," the murmur of his once-closest companion, comrade, and beacon to the right path sounded hollow as it fell from his own quivering lips to the gore-covered ground. Geto brushed the hand away from his cheek rather gently, as though the hatred had been tempered. He let out a weary sigh. "Lead me to the place I'm staying for the night," he requested ruefully.