Rita was a Processor-type Oathbearer whose gift was altering the fundamental nature of Od. Her overall reserve was modest, and her raw attunement lagged behind others, yet no one wielded it with greater finesse.
Feigning surrender, she stepped toward the squad leader as if to formally renounce her oath. The moment she closed the distance, she converted her Od into a volatile explosive charge. A deafening blast shook the campsite, throwing up a towering plume of pitch-black smoke.
Sarah and Gide recoiled at the roar, but their instincts flared instantly. Sarah’s barrier magic shielded Ollie and the younger children, while Gide tore through the haze and swept his blade cleanly across the leader’s throat.
Bedlam erupted. The veteran mercenaries had grown soft from leaving every difficult hunt to the Pascal youths, and their numbers did nothing to save them. More than half were cut down on the spot; the remainder broke and fled into the dark.
When the slaughter subsided, only the bloodstained Pascal children remained, claiming Fair’s camp as their own.
As she knitted Rita’s battered flesh back together, Sarah hissed through her teeth.
“What in the world did you think my nod meant, you lunatic?”
“Didn't it mean you'd watch my back no matter what?”
“Watch your back, yes! Not stand by while you blow yourself into chunks! Has that ‘Maple Candy’ nonsense turned your skull into spun sugar? If your focus had slipped by a hair, your head would’ve splattered across the grass!”
Gide stood pale and hollow-eyed, staring at Rita before finding his voice.
“Rita, you made the right call. You made the opening, and I exploited it. It was cold, sound, and the only play that secured our victory. We came out alive because of you.”
Though he kept his tone deliberately steady, his fingers trembled as he dragged a hand down his face. A shudder broke through his words.
“Just… promise me you’ll never pull a stunt like that again.”
“…All right.”
“I’m serious. Never again, Rita Pascal.”
“…I’m sorry.”
Knowing the weight of his burden, she yielded without hesitation.
“I know I scared you.”
“No. You don't have a clue.”
A bleak, crooked smile touched the corner of his mouth.
Only eight of the ten Pascal orphans originally bound to Fair remained. One had fallen in the clash, and the traitor who betrayed them had vanished into the night. Is Pascal, the eldest, steadiest, and most collected among them, went into the city alone and acquired forged papers on the black market to serve as their legal adult guarantor.
They were sixteen years old.
From the smoking ashes of Fair, they established Beacon and registered with the Final Defense Line HQ as a fully licensed autonomous squad.
After long deliberation, Gide assumed leadership, and Rita took her place as his second. Together they cleared beasts, fortified outposts, and split every scrap of their earnings evenly among themselves.
Naturally, reality proved harsh from the start. The children quickly discovered how much bureaucratic and logistical weight the previous adult command had silently carried.
They had to navigate a disorganized yet tyrannical chain of command, evaluate the true risk of every assigned contract, ensure they were not robbed of their commissions, and scrape for their rightful share of rations—all while manning the barricades and striving not to be discarded as meat shields on suicidal operations.
Even in a world swarming with demonic beasts, fellow humans proved far more treacherous. The children learned this through bitter experience, paying with blood, botched deployments, and the agony of misjudged trust.
Comrades fell holding the line. Others abandoned the ranks, claiming they had reconnected with long-lost kin, only for Rita to watch those supposed relatives use them up and send them off to die.
Yet there were times when the reverse occurred, and new faces joined the fold.
“Gide, something is wrong with that Pascal over in the neighboring squad.”
Rita had spotted him during a muster along the Final Defense Line: a boy with sun-browned hair named Ethan Pascal.
“He has the skill, but he fights with pure suicidal frenzy. It looks like he’s actively begging for a beast to tear him apart. On top of that, he looks like he hasn’t touched food in days.”
“…I see what you mean. Something isn't right.”
“And the rest of his squad barely lifts a finger while he bleeds.”
Interfering in another unit's business was normally taboo, but Gide did not dismiss her suspicion. Maneuvering through HQ, he managed to secure formal inspection credentials. While the two of them entered the camp on an official review, Is sent his summoned beast ahead to reconnoiter the interior.
What the scout discovered chilled them to the bone.
“…Rita, their performance record is so wretched that HQ barely allots them any rations. Yet none of the veterans showed signs of starvation. When I inspected their larder, I found human bones and butcher scraps. Most likely unregistered strays. Street orphans.”
Whispers of cannibalism during famine along the Final Defense Line were not new to Rita, but this was the first time she had stared it in the face, having spent her earlier years far beyond the barricades.
Under normal conditions, HQ maintained at least a trickle of survival rations for those actively defending the front. If supplies ran completely dry, beast meat remained an option. It tasted foul, and for anyone without an oath, it was indigestible and outright poisonous, but it kept bodies moving.
“They butcher human beings? When beast carcasses are rotting right outside their trenches?!”
“It happens more often than people care to admit. Especially among squads stripped of their allowances.”
“Have you witnessed this before, Is?”
“I’ve lived longer and spent plenty of time in the city slums. Down there, it’s an open secret.”
“…”
“If you reduce it to sheer animal efficiency, it makes sense. Hunting a child is far easier than bringing down a demonic beast.”
“…I hear your logic. It might look practical from a savage standpoint, but in the long run, it destroys everything.”
“In the long run?”
“Humankind's strength has always been our bonds and our capacity to protect one another. We withstand the beasts because we build communities and bleed for the person beside us. The moment we abandon that, we lose the war before it's even fought. That's why this can never be natural.”
“…Well said.”
“And these bastards weren’t trapped without a choice like the desperate in the slums. They had options. They knew the atrocity of what they were doing and chose the path of least resistance. We aren't walking away from this. We're putting an end to it.”
“…This is precisely why I follow your lead, Rita.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Is only gave her a quiet smile.
Their plan came together rapidly. Gide would take the commander's head, Is would secure the surviving captives meant for the slaughterhouse, and Rita would slip into the back to extract Ethan Pascal.
She found him heavily shackled to the floor.
“Run? Are you out of your mind? Do you have any idea what kind of oath that monster bound me with?”
Ethan hissed, his words laced with venom.
“‘Hear me, Od. In the name of Ethan Pascal, I swear unconditional obedience to my master's will.’”
“Understand now? There is no escape. And right now, that piece of filth running this unit is my master. Do you have any clue what he's forced me to do? Want me to list every foul thing I had to crawl through just to draw another breath?”
Beside himself with fury, Ethan lunged to tear out her throat. But weeks of starving himself to avoid human flesh, combined with the backlash of resisting his oath's commands, had left him hollow and weak.
Rita pinned him with ease, pressed the cold barrel of her weapon against his forehead, and spoke clearly.
“You lose, Ethan Pascal. A twitch of my trigger finger ends your life. That makes me your conqueror. If you wish to survive, swear fealty to me as your new master this very instant.”
Ethan’s eyes widened, his dilated pupils trembling beneath the steel. The moment his will acknowledged her absolute dominance, the supernatural shackles binding his soul shattered into nothing.
Rita struck off his physical chains and gave him his first order.
“Do whatever you please.”
Ethan spun around and slaughtered his former captor. He then hunted down every squadmate who had tried to feed him human flesh and driven him to the brink of madness.
“That’s how it went down, Gide.”
Gide let out a slow breath after listening to her report, then dragged in a dead beast to disguise the aftermath. HQ barely spared a glance for the wiped-out camp of a bottom-tier squad, writing the whole thing off as a routine hunting accident.
In this manner, Ethan Pascal joined Beacon.
The seasons bled into endless combat. By age seventeen, Rita had cornered and slain the very Mimic that had escaped her three years earlier, supported by her unit. Together, they brought down several other Named demonic beasts.
Beacon's reputation spread throughout the defense lines. Scattered children bearing the Pascal name began trekking across the front to seek refuge with them, and Rita and Gide opened their gates to every single one.
The squad swelled rapidly—so much so that high command grew uneasy watching so many dangerous youths gather under one cohesive banner.
Age nineteen.
HQ deployed Beacon on an offshore subjugation mission against the Kraken, an ocean-dwelling Named demonic beast. The vessel assigned to them was a deliberate deathtrap, and several recruits they had taken in were revealed to be command-plant saboteurs.
The vessel broke apart. Across splintered timbers and freezing spray, Beacon engaged the colossal leviathan that ruled the depths. It was an agonizing, gore-drenched nightmare. Wave after wave swallowed their young fighters whole. When the beast was finally brought down, only six survived.
Rita. Gide. Ollie. Sarah. Is. Ethan.
At fourteen, the death of her first friend had shattered her world. The losses during Beacon's early days had left her sobbing into the dirt. But now, not a single tear fell.
With bloodshot eyes and blistered hands, Rita saw to the burials herself, painstakingly chiseling and raising a stone for every fallen youth who had no family left to weep for them.
Once the last marker was driven into the soil and their injuries had begun to mend, Gide broke the silence.
“We can't expand the squad any further.”
“Because HQ won’t tolerate it?”
“Exactly.”
“…Right.”
She understood all too well. Command had no intention of allowing the Pascals to form a consolidated power base. They wanted them fractured, weakened, and expendable.
Rita clamped her teeth shut against the anger, letting silence speak for her. The hillside stretched out, choked with graves. For most of the fallen, there was no body beneath the dirt—only a shattered blade or a tattered patch of cloth.
Winter settled over the ridge, scattering the first pale flakes across the barren field. Through the sea of weather-beaten stones and drifting snow, Gide turned his solitary remaining eye toward her.
“Rita.”
“…Yeah?”
“What if we tear down their HQ and build our own?”