The Underworld had been restless for a while, like embers breathing under ash. The Church led a crackdown, pruning every faction, scheming their next move. Facing that storm you couldn’t hide on a distant shore; you bowed or you burned. Just as the Church pushed to widen its net, a twist struck like lightning over a dry plain.

Rumor swept the Underworld, like wind through alleys. People ready to punish the Church’s tyranny started clashing with its members in every corner. Fights broke out by the handful, big and small.

No one knew who fired the first shot. But once a precedent bled into the streets, resistance followed like floodwater, and the world churned in chaos.

Yun Shi knew who swung first at the Church. Likely no one but their few.

They shared a goal—hit the Church—but remained enemies under the same moon. If they met, it would be glares and cold air, not harmony. The Magic Institution knew that truth like frost under the skin.

Some from the Clan Head tried to move against the Church, and they “coincidentally” ran into Witches of the Magic Institution. Enemies don’t have to clash at once, but a stance is a mountain; it doesn’t move.

So Yun Shi didn’t want that meeting. Anxiety rolled like low thunder; she wished nothing bad would bloom from it.

“Yun Shi-chan, hey, what’s up? Your thoughts look deep as a well.”

“Nothing. More importantly, we’re here. We’ll head toward the noise next. A fight could break out anytime. You good?”

“Relax~ whoever they are, I’ll beat them all~”

“Is that so? Be careful.”

Moa’s spirits flared like a banner in wind. Yun Shi stayed cool, eyes like still water tracking the incoming crisis. She measured how to win.

The Church had plenty of strong ones inside its walls. If luck soured and a powerhouse appeared, it would be trouble. She prayed for grunts, like straw to cut instead of hardwood, to save time.

Her aim was simple beneath the chaos—find Sham and Mizuki’s location. Asking around like usual in this storm felt like fishing in a whirlpool.

People in the bright world didn’t see it. Their surface looked calm as polished glass, but beneath, it was hell, a sea of blood eddying in the dark.

To those living in light, they’d call this the criminal underworld. But that wasn’t the truth of it.

Mizuki had been training nonstop. For once, she was told to stop. The reason landed like a cold blade.

“Is this real?”

She couldn’t quite believe it. A few days ago everything was steady, and now—

“The world’s unsteady. Don’t wander,” Andrea said, sheathing her sword, face a frost mask. “Even you, an Outer World person.”

“But…”

“I know what you’re thinking. You’re not getting back to Japan now. As soon as you reach the coast, you’ll face checks by the Church and by the Clan Head’s people. London is the most unsettled right now. You can’t train. If anyone sees you, it’s bad.”

“Miss Andrea, I still don’t buy it. Weren’t we saying action against the Church hadn’t started yet?”

“That was before. It’s begun. And ‘action’ isn’t war or negotiation. It’s this—chaos, like a net cast over the city.”

Andrea stared at the distant sun like it was a blade’s edge. A hint of killing intent flickered in her eyes.

A chaotic world is a stage where factions gnash and grind. You don’t need war; you win by outlasting the storm.

The Church is a single body, a fortress. You can’t crush it with regular means. Those declaring themselves its enemies are just powerful individuals making vows. If you can’t start a war, can’t throw bodies into the fire, and your team counts in single digits, you do what works—you weave chaos.

It’s guerrilla, like sparrows pecking a tiger. When the enemy is too massive, and you lack the numbers and gear, attrition is the blade that bites.

Even the toughest boss buckles under round after round of pressure. After a gauntlet of wheels grinding, the side consumed falls first.

This plan, everyone arrived at without speaking.

“Then I should join this action too.”

“Think, Mizuki. You aren’t strong enough yet. This fight is long. It isn’t decided by skill alone; it’s decided by time. If you slip, you lose your life.”

“If that were true, my life would’ve been lost in past wars. I’m alive now. That says something about my strength.”

“Mizuki, what are you doing?”

“I made up my mind. I can’t sit this out. I promised someone I’d join. Not only to help her, but to change myself. I want to test how much I’ve grown, with my own hands.”

Resolve burned in Mizuki’s eyes like a winter star. Andrea didn’t argue. She watched the girl, silent as stone.

“If you have that resolve,” she said, voice cold as iron, “you can come.”

“If you don’t have the resolve to face death, then clinging to life is all you have.”

Andrea had decided. She wanted to see how much change her teaching could carve. Whether Miyuki Kiseki could stir waves, only time would judge.

They left the overpass where they usually stayed. Andrea led Mizuki onto the main street. On the surface, everything looked the same, like a painting kept clean. But Andrea felt eyes in the corners, sharp as thorns, weighing them.

No doubt—they’d been marked.

Walking out and meeting ill intent at the door. Unlucky—though for the other side.

You couldn’t stretch your limbs on an open street. They had to move.

“Mizuki, your first lesson starts here.”

Andrea spoke flatly to the girl at her back.

“Eh…”

Mizuki thought Andrea would take her home, gather allies, then act together.

“Dummy Mizuki,” Elana snorted from the Artifact Spirit, amused and ancient. “She means someone’s on our tail. You handle it.”

“Oh…”

With Elana’s reminder, Mizuki caught Andrea’s intent and matched her pace.

They turned a corner into an empty lot. No bystanders. A perfect field to trade blows.

“Come out.”

Andrea spoke to the shadow behind them, voice even as midnight.

“So you noticed? What a pity~”

A blonde, blue-eyed woman stepped out, gaze curved like a knife over the two.

She wore the Church’s robe, identity clear at a glance. Mizuki and Andrea’s black coats marked them as the Magic Institution. A Church tail wasn’t surprising in this storm.

“Go.”

Andrea kept it simple. She patted Mizuki’s shoulder, sending her forward like an arrow loosed.

She knew the woman had come for blood. In today’s Underworld, Church versus other factions was a daily weather.

“Hey, seriously? A little girl for the vanguard?”

The woman looked down on Mizuki, throwing a contemptuous glance at Andrea. In her eyes, this was madness.

“I trust the student I raised with my own hands.”

Andrea didn’t bother with more words. She urged Mizuki on. Mizuki nodded, drew out her Artifact Spirit, and walked toward the foe.

“Interesting.”

“Form Three Reaper Scythe!”

Boom!

The fight ignited like dry grass.

Mizuki twisted, body like willow in wind. A violet ghostly aura flooded the lot, binding the woman for a breath. The woman cursed under her breath, pulled Mystic Power up from her core, shaped several layers of defense. Mizuki gave no room. She danced the scythe, swung hard. The woman flipped backward, bare feet kissing air, slipping past the blade.

“So tricky…”

Only now did the woman feel the weight of the girl’s strength. A sting of regret pricked her.

No retreat now. Only forward.

She drew two knives. Steel flashed. She slashed at Mizuki, wind like a hawk’s cry.

Mizuki felt the killing intent like cold rain on her neck. She reacted right. She met the knives with her scythe. Steel kissed steel, sparks skipping like fireflies.

Boom!

Mizuki dipped her waist and let the slash pass, dropped her palms to the ground, swept with her legs. The woman blocked with her elbows, absorbing the sweep. Mizuki used the beat, reclaimed her weapon’s grip, retreated a few steps, breath steady.

“Trying to run?”

The woman released energy. It slammed into the ground. Bricks spat up. Smoke rolled, gray waves swallowing sight.

Her Mystic Power control was practiced, like ink flowing from a steady brush. This kind of external blast was common, but never to be taken lightly.

Andrea watched every motion, mind drawing lines and conclusions. She kept an eye on Mizuki, because this was her student in name and in trial.

The woman rushed to strike through the smoke—then sparks flew out like meteors.

Ratatat!

A storm of bullets roared in, scorching the air. Mizuki stepped from the smoke holding a shotgun, and let loose. The barrage drove the woman back, her feet skidding like skates on thin ice.

“When did she have a gun…?”

She didn’t know Mizuki’s Artifact Spirit could transform. That ignorance was a crack.

Mizuki pressed the edge. She flipped the selector, chambered a fresh rhythm, and fired again, savage as hail.

The woman didn’t fall for the same trick twice. She kicked off the floor hard, body springing up. She dodged the pellets in air, and in that same breath, slid to Mizuki’s flank, knives ready to carve.

Mizuki threw up Absolute Defense at the instant the blade fell. The barrier flared, stopping the strike like glass catching lightning.

“What is this…?”

The woman couldn’t believe the girl had so many tricks. In her mind, this one should be a green, naive fledgling. How did she have so many magical tools?

She didn’t dwell. She poured Mystic Power into her knives, then into the barrier’s seam. The Absolute Defense shuddered, corroded by a strange energy, trembling like ice under spring sun.

!

Mizuki froze for a heartbeat. The woman pried a gap open, slipped through like a viper, and knocked Mizuki down. Mizuki hit the ground hard. The blade poised to pierce. Panic surged in her chest like a drum.

“Stand up,” Andrea called, voice colder than steel. “If you can’t, you vanish from this world.”

She didn’t help. She demanded Mizuki stand on her own feet, heart hard as a mountain.

Mizuki clenched her teeth, rolled to the side, and rose. She faced reality again, eyes clear.

“Form Four Demon Eagle!”

“Go, Elana!”

“Oh? Leave it to me!”

Elana became a Demon Eagle, wings booming like thunder. She drove forward, flinging iron wing-shards that whistled like throwing knives.

“What the hell is that!”

The woman couldn’t make sense of it. Using Mystic Power to forge a monster? It felt like some bizarre secret art from the Clan Head.

“Form One Black Iron Wings!”

Mizuki kept pace, wings flaring like a hawk catching sun. In a rocket blur she was there. Under stunned eyes, her heel hammered the woman’s gut like a ram.

She let Elana meet her head‑on, a comet strike, and together they hauled the foe into the sky like stormwind lifting a leaf.

“Fight, Mizuki, for yourself.”

Watching Mizuki and the nameless woman clash, Andrea felt still water settle in her chest; truth be told, she’d never poured much feeling into this to begin with.

“This is your fight. Stand up, Demon Sovereign.”

To answer the wish in your heart, like lighting a lantern in fog.

To turn wish into reality, like ink fixing on silk.

Stand and move, one step, then the next, along a stone road without a visible end.

Even if the horizon never stops retreating, your footprints will become your worth.

No one else can walk it for you; this path is a narrow bridge only your soles can know.

Andrea lowered her lashes, feeling the current inside the moment, like a tide beneath ice. “Yes. This is…”

Midair, Mizuki called her Reaper Scythe into being, moon-cold and grain-sharp in her hands. The woman writhed on Elana, angling for a backstab. Mizuki’s gaze turned to iron.

“This is mine alone. My battle.”

Violet ghost-breath coiled along the plates of the Black Iron Wings, weaving a banner of light across the bright sky.

The woman’s shock, Mizuki’s resolve, Elana’s monster’s visage, and Andrea’s iceberg calm formed a four-part frame, stamping the instant like a seal in clay.

“Aaaah!”

“Splurt!”

After the roar, blood rained to earth, a rose blooming midair, too vivid to ignore.

Life fled, and the body lay quiet, sleeping forever on this clean patch of ground like snow on a shrine step.

In this world, if you don’t cut, death comes to call, as sure as winter finds the fields.

Miyuki Kiseki had long stopped praying to God; when it comes to life and death, she now knew the grain of the wood.

Killing is a process; fear is a word in a past tense.

To reach the road’s end, even if you soak your hands in blood, so be it; a river only learns its sea by flowing red at dusk.

From a mask of no expression to something almost natural—she knew how hard that climb was. The moment she ended the life, her hand stopped shaking. That’s habit, isn’t it?

Habit is terrifying, like roots cracking stone.

And sometimes, it’s a medicine; at least you don’t carry so much guilt on your back.

“Well done, Mizuki. As expected of my master~”

Mizuki gave a wry smile and held her tongue. She looked across at Andrea, and confidence rose in her like flame catching kindling.

Andrea said nothing, but a barely seen curve touched her lip, a crescent hidden in frost.