Setting aside the question of how she'd gotten here, how she'd slipped into the Sanctuary.
A commotion this loud should have pulled somebody in.
And yet neither Reinhard nor Gojo had shown their face. That was the real problem.
The woman claimed to be a Sin Archbishop of the Witch Cult.
A rare caliber of opponent.
But Roswaal didn't believe for a second that a lone Sin Archbishop could quietly take those two off the board.
Ambush or head-on, either way.
If the woman really had that kind of strength, he might as well skip the fighting and surrender on the spot.
So.
Neither of them showing up, the whole village gone silent. That was suspicious.
His gaze swept the village fast.
He came up empty.
His eyes weren't Reinhard's. They weren't Gojo's.
"Looking for something?"
"Such a shame. I walked in through an empty village. Did they leave you behind?"
Capella beamed at him.
"Empty?"
Roswaal let out a quiet laugh, a thread of disdain running through it.
He'd settled it for himself already. This woman turning up in the Sanctuary had Gojo's fingerprints all over it. Her arrival. The vanished villagers. All of it pointed one way.
"Or is that not the case?"
Capella flashed her teeth.
"Yes and no."
Once he'd placed the blame at Gojo's feet, the woman in front of him stopped mattering much.
A Sin Archbishop was troublesome in some respects.
Only that.
Her appearance wouldn't cause him problems.
If anything, she handed him a perfectly legitimate reason to cut loose.
Mana surged through his body as he spoke.
"If fire doesn't take, how about a blizzard?"
The cool words rode out on a swell of power under the night sky.
As the mana broke free.
The clear sky overhead turned heavy, clouds rolling in. The air dropped in temperature between one breath and the next.
Within moments, snow poured down in sheets, a razor-edged storm driving toward Capella.
"Oho?"
"Are you trying to make this lady laugh? Courting my favor?"
Capella opened her hands and let snowflakes settle on her palms, giggling.
"If you sold it a little harder, put more heart into it, I might even give you the chance to love me~"
"Apologies. Heart and body have belonged to one person for a long time now. Nobody else will ever be worth my affection."
"Wait. Did I just hear something juicy?"
Gojo turned toward Felt and Betty and the rest.
"Yeah, I heard it too."
"Hard to believe a guy like Roswaal is that hung up on someone."
"Betty. Any idea who Roswaal's pining after?"
"Why on earth would I keep track of something that dull?"
Betty rolled her eyes at him and stuck out her lower lip.
"Oho?"
"I see. Let me take a look then. Is this the one you love?"
Capella's body rippled again. Short blonde hair gave way to long white. The girl's frame stretched taller, a black robe draping around her. Hair white as snow. Brows white as snow. Skin the same.
The shift showed on Roswaal's face. A slight contraction of the eyes.
The reaction scattered fast. He clamped down and buried it.
Capella's eyes missed nothing.
"Hmm. Details still off."
She muttered to herself and made small adjustments.
Moments later, an elegant figure with a scholar's composure stood before Roswaal, smiling faintly.
"Mother...?!"
Nobody else reacted much to the new shape.
Betty went still, the word slipping out before she could stop it.
"You're calling her mother now too? Don't tell me you've got ties to this one as well."
Gojo turned, puzzled.
"No."
Betty's eyes stayed locked on the figure below.
"No. The person she's turned into. That's my mother."
"That's the Witch of Greed!"
The clearing went quiet.
Every face turned toward Roswaal's position, expressions shifting into something complicated.
Let me get this straight.
The person Roswaal was in love with was his own ancestor's teacher?
That was something.
Nobody had expected his object of devotion to be someone who'd died centuries ago.
"Guy's really out of line, though. He wanted to be your dad?"
Gojo reached over and patted Betty's head in sympathy.
"Are you an idiot?!"
"That's not what this is at all!"
Whatever stunned hush she'd been sitting in evaporated on the spot.
Betty glared up at him, furious, grabbed his hand, and chomped down hard.
Gojo let her have her revenge. He didn't use Limitless Cursed Technique to stop it. She couldn't actually hurt him either way.
Roswaal's fight was the more interesting thing.
Once Capella had shifted into Echidna, the Witch of Greed, clearly enough for Betty to identify her on sight, something in Roswaal's expression changed up in the air.
"Still not enough for you? Or would you rather see something a bit more fun?"
Capella laughed up at him.
Her hand drifted to the collar of her robe and tugged, exposing pale skin.
Capella could shape her body however she pleased.
Mabeast, human, any form at all.
Across a long existence, she'd honed the knack of watching a target's reactions and pulling the shape of the person they cared about most out of the flinches and the held breaths.
Roswaal could keep his face as neutral as he liked. It wouldn't be enough.
Watching her use Echidna's form for something that obscene.
Roswaal didn't speak. Didn't stop her either.
The spheres of light gathering between his fingers told the story instead.
Three flames bloomed in his grip. Red. Blue. Cyan. Each one moved like something alive as it rose out of his hand.
The three fires split in midair.
The red swallowed the falling snow and reshaped into a pillar of flame.
The blue scattered wide, curling around to encircle Capella.
The cyan twisted into a serpent and lunged.
Three fires. Three forms. Three angles of attack converging at once.
A single breath, and they had her.
"My, what a cold-hearted man. You'll strike down the woman you love without hesitation."
"Which really means you don't love her at all. Or maybe this whole thing is just a one-sided crush?"
Her voice cut through the inferno without losing its edge.
Something freezing flickered in Roswaal's eyes.
Magic circles shaped one after another in the air around him, dense as a swarm, pouring down at Capella. An endless barrage. Meteor-rain relentless.
Gojo watched the performance and recalibrated his read on Roswaal.
"This guy looks pretty strong when he drops the act."
Felt stared up at the sustained assault and whistled under her breath.
"He's the kingdom's top mage for a reason. Show the man a little respect."
"Though this Capella looks like she's getting walked all over. She's taking everything on the chin."
Gojo eyed the spot at the center of all that magic.
"Roar!"
As if in answer to his words, the moment they left his mouth.
A deafening bellow erupted from the heart of the bombardment.
The next second.
Raw wind pressure tore the surrounding flames apart, and an enormous shape reared up into full view.
Massive body. Scales like lacquer. Twisted horns. Talons honed to points. A heavy whip of a tail. Colossal wings.
Under every watching eye, a black dragon unfurled itself over the village.
"A dragon!"
The word jumped out of Subaru before he could catch it.
"Is the Divine Dragon that Lugunica worships this kind of thing?"
Gojo turned to the others.
If this was the best the Divine Dragon offered, it was more than a little underwhelming.
"Idiot. If something like that could be called the Divine Dragon, how on earth could it have joined the Great Sage and the Sword Saint to seal the Witch of Envy back then?"
Betty, well-read, set him straight.
"What she's transformed into doesn't qualify as a real dragon. It's a Pseudo-Dragon. Same bracket as an Earth Dragon or a Wyvern."
"Makes sense. I did think this one looked a little underwhelming."
In the distance.
The black dragon that was Capella roared once and exhaled a jet of pitch-black dragon-breath at Roswaal.
"Dragon-breath on top of it?"
"That transformation of hers really does pay dividends."
Gojo watched the dark fire pour forth, genuinely impressed.
"These Sin Archbishops' Authorities keep crossing the line. Credit where it's due though, Roswaal's holding his own."
"Maybe we should let Regulus out of the bag."
Roswaal didn't counterattack.
A wall of earth shot up from below without warning and caught the breath, swallowing it whole.
A second volley of magic followed, arcing toward the dragon.
Yet.
The dark fire of that breath didn't dissipate when it hit the earth wall.
It stuck. Glued on like tar. Kept burning.
Even when the wall collapsed and buried itself, the flame went on eating through the rubble.
Roswaal clocked it. That attack wasn't something you could block and walk away from.
Touch it and the only treatment would be cutting the affected limb off fast. Miss the window and the black fire would spread. Dead end.
"Not going to talk? Honestly, types like you bore this lady to tears."
"My daughters at least have the decency to scream. To beg..."
The black dragon spoke in human tongue, prattling on without pause.
Roswaal watched her in cold silence. His reply came as another wave of spells.
With the group watching, Roswaal finally showed what earned him the title of the kingdom's foremost mage.
Even in dragon form, Capella couldn't keep up with his endless stream of magic, cast faster than she could respond.
She'd become a target and nothing more.
If not for the regeneration, anyone else would've been reduced to ash several volleys back.
"Barring surprises, this is already a rout."
Gojo studied the two fighters and shook his head.
"Let Regulus out. Otherwise this devolves into a boring war of attrition."
"Satoru."
"Might I ask why you're treating Lord Roswaal this way?"
Reinhard glanced at Elsa within the group, then back, puzzled.
"Ah. That's a long one."
"Enough to know this guy isn't clean."
"And we aren't planning on killing him. We want to use this to figure out what he's actually up to."
Gojo shrugged through the explanation.
There were too many question marks hanging over Roswaal to ignore.
That said.
If Roswaal couldn't take a hint.
Dying wasn't off the table.
They'd already pocketed what they needed money-wise.
Whether the two little maids blamed them afterward wasn't their concern.
A Sin Archbishop had thrown the punches. The body count wasn't on their ledger.
Gojo had no problem wearing the villain's hat here.
"I knew the moment we stuffed this one away, we'd be pulling him out sooner or later."
"Heads up. Use magic and he'll spot us before you finish the first word."
Betty grumbled and raised her hand.
Not far from Roswaal and Capella's battleground, a seam split open in the empty air.
Both combatants turned toward it at the same time.
The rift yawned wider, and a figure crashed out of it onto the dirt in a thoroughly undignified heap.
"You bastards!"
"Teleporting me into some dimensional space without my permission, then throwing me out of it. This is a violation of my rights!"
Regulus scrambled to his feet, still cursing, no idea yet what he'd walked into. The shockwave from Capella and Roswaal's clash caught him before he could finish orienting himself.