Ishi ni Usubeni, Tetsu ni Hoshi

In a world where the very air can turn lethal and the monstrous denizens of the wild secrete venoms potent enough to drop armies, one name stands above the fray: Gath, the warrior they call “Iron-blood.” His body is a fortress against the arcane poisons that flow through the veins of magical beasts, a rare and fearsome immunity that has carved his legend across the kingdom. No toxin is too virulent, no fang too venomous—his reputation as the nation's indomitable shield is hard-won, forged in countless hunts where lesser fighters would have perished in agonizing silence. During a routine subjugation sortie against a nest of such creatures, Gath’s unyielding path collides with an anomaly: a young Medusa, her serpentine hair writhing with latent power, yet her eyes wide with a childlike curiosity that belies her monstrous lineage. When her innate petrifying gaze washes over him, it finds no purchase—her curse meets his blood and simply shatters, ineffective and null. For the first time in her existence, she has encountered a being who can look upon her without turning to stone, and she clings to that miracle with desperate affection. Against every instinct of a solitary hunter, and in a move so out of character it would shock his peers, Gath makes the inexplicable choice to sheathe his blade and escort the creature back to the capital’s marble halls. But the capital is a nest of politics and prejudice, and bringing a Medusa home is not a rescue—it is a provocation, one that threatens to turn the kingdom’s greatest weapon into its most wanted fugitive.