Edelgard has moved in a flash, but not to do as this strange woman bids her. Rather, she's lunged to attack, and the two are soon fighting in a flurry of moves that Byleth can hardly keep up with, frozen in place as she watches them, as she watches Hubert move forward, and then she returns to her senses.

Hubert is already at her father's side, and Byleth hurries, kneeling beside him, feeling tears pricking at the corners of her eyes. This is all happening too fast to process, and her father is coughing up blood and bleeding on the floor, and she doesn't know what she is supposed to do.

"How do you know her?" Hubert asks. "How do you know about Edelgard and how do you know that monster?"

"Don't...just take…" Jeralt is struggling to speak, and he looks to Byleth. "Kid...over there, the stake...you need to…" Though he tries to point, his hand is shaking so much that he isn't able to. Still, Byleth knows what he's talking to. The item he pulled out when he lunged at Edelgard, the one she managed to take from him in the struggle, was a wooden stake.

Byleth wastes no time in grabbing it from where it fell, managing to beat Hubert to it and returning to her feet, watching the fight as it continues. Edelgard is not stronger than the vampire, but she is fast and she manages to dodge her attacks, though she isn't able to land any solid hits for herself. If Byleth is going to do something, it needs to be now, while the two of them are distracted, and she knows that she has to do something.

She has no training in this; before she moved here, she never even knew these creatures were real, much less that her father's secretive work involved hunting them, but now, she holds the stake in her hand and tries to figure out the best opening, her best chance to take the monster down. Her father is dying on the floor, and if she doesn't stop her, then she's going to lose everything, if she even makes it out of here alive.

Byleth only has an opening because the vampire doesn't regard her or Hubert as threats. She took down Jeralt first and now focuses solely on Edelgard, because to her, Byleth and Hubert are nothing to worry about, and Edelgard manages to distract her enough with her quick attacks and dodges that she doesn't waste any attention on either of them. That is the only reason that Byleth is able to memorize a pattern in their movements, the only reason that she is able to jump forward at just the right second, jamming the stake into the monster's back.

After that, it's over even more quickly than it began. She lets out a sudden shriek of pain, and Edelgard knocks her to the ground, stepping on her chest so that she falls back onto the stake, pushing it further into her until she falls silent, and then, before Byleth's eyes, begins to disintegrate into nothing but ash.

"Did she…" Byleth trails off, but hears a cough from her father and snaps out of it, returning to his side. She already knows that it's too late for him, even if they tried to get him medical attention; he's lost so much blood already, and he looks like he's barely hanging on.

"Shouldn't have...kept you in the dark about work, I guess…" he mumbles, as she sits at his side, holding the back of his head up. "Y-you shouldn't have gotten mixed up in this...as long as you're with her...they're gonna come after you…and now I can't even protect you, damn it…"

"It's alright," she says, though she isn't quite sure that it is. "It's alright, this isn't your…" She's crying now, she realizes; she can't remember the last time she cried.

"I have people...i-in my phone, you can call them, let them know what happened, they'll take care of you," he says. "You're gonna be just fine, kid, just don't...don't let them find out about your friend, if she's that important to you...be careful at school, your headmistress...just be careful, you need to…"

"I love you," she says, because she knows this is her last chance. She has a million questions for him, about his work, about his "people", and about what he's just said about her school, but he won't have the strength to answer them, so that is all that she says.

"L...love you too, kid...I'm sorry, I…" He trails off, and he says nothing else. Byleth holds him for only a moment longer before standing up and turning to face Hubert and Edelgard. She wipes away her tears, and does not allow herself to cry anymore right now.

"Her name was Kronya," Edelgard says. "She was one of the ones who was there when I woke up like this."
"You two should leave," Byleth says. "If I'm going to have to call his friends, then it will be dangerous for you. I won't tell them anyone else was here. I'll just say that he died protecting me, and that he managed to land the last blow before he collapsed."

"But what about you?" asks Hubert. "Will you be alright by yourself?"

It's odd seeing him look so concerned, and she simply nods. "I don't want either of you brought into this any deeper than you are. A lot of the things he said...I never knew what he did before now, but it seems like he's involved in something really big."

"We'll leave before you call them," says Edelgard, "but let us sit with you for a minute."

Neither of them have much to say, but Byleth doesn't need to talk to them right now either way. The three of them sit in silence, close together as she tries to let everything sink in. For the most part, she simply feels numb, and wonders if she will come back to herself later, or if this is how it's going to be from now on, but as she goes over what she knows in her head over and over again, one feeling begins to return to her.

Determination.

Byleth knows that there are others out there. She knows that the woman who killed her father is one of many, one of a group that may also be responsible for stealing Edelgard's life from her. And now, she knows that her father has possessed the means and tools for killing them, and that she could be capable of doing the same. Whether it will return Edelgard to a full human again or not no longer matters to her.

She simply wants to make sure that anyone responsible is dealt with, so that nobody else has to live like this.