Kai took a deep breath, trying to steady the pounding of his heart. The lingering exhaustion from the earlier battle still tugged at him, but his focus sharpened in the face of the threat that stood before him.
He didn't know who this woman was, but one thing was certain — she wasn't here to make peace.
There was a dark energy swirling around her, an unmistakable aura of malevolence that made his skin crawl.
It didn't take long for him to recognize the symbol on her forehead — the mark of the Erlan Cult. His stomach tightened.
The Erlan Cult.
A name he'd heard in the later volumes of the novel... Adventurer's Crusade. They were a dangerous, superstitious group of people, worshipers of the Demon Lord, a mythical figure that most dismissed as nothing more than a bedtime story.