Adelaide sat quietly by the window, watching dawn’s orange climb the far ridge like slow fire.

It was six a.m.; without the tide of students laughing in packs, she could hear sparrows ringing from the boughs.

On a normal day, she’d be face-down on the basement lab bench catching up on sleep, so this morning felt like a new page washed in light.

She watched the trees outside, counting pale yellow leaves spinning down like slow coins, until hurried footsteps rushed up behind her like a gust.

“L–Lady Adelaide, g-good morning!”

Skela had run all the way here, hand on her chest and eyes bright as star-sparks, her breath a little ragged, her excitement blazing.

“Good morning, Skela.”

Adelaide waved and smiled, the gesture light as a feather; inside, she rubbed her brow and sighed like a stone dropped down a well.

Truth was, seeing Skela gave her a headache, a pressure like a storm front pressing on her temples.

She hadn’t expected to become the reason Skela joined the student council, and even less that Samir—who didn’t know Skela at all—would approve like a judge’s stamp.

When she heard Samir say, “Let her acclimate,” Adelaide barely kept her face still; out of sight, her nails bit into her palm until skin broke like thin ice.

For a heartbeat, it felt like a god chuckled at her ear, a cold wind whispering mischief.

It had been like that at Mira’s birthday, and it was like that now, the same old wheel turning.

At every crucial fork, things rolled toward what she dreaded most, like water seeking the lowest ground, no matter how she dammed it.

The only good news was this: though Skela showed up at the student council room every day, she had no interest in Samir at all, circling only Adelaide like a moth around a lantern.

She meant no harm—Adelaide knew that, a certainty like a warm stone in the palm.

Even so, letting it go on like this was a path leading off a cliff.

“Lady Adelaide, we—”

“Shh…” Adelaide touched a finger to Skela’s lips, her voice soft as falling snow.

“We need to keep quiet. Just follow my lead.”

Skela nodded at once, bright-eyed like a kid on a treasure hunt; seeing that bubbling excitement, Adelaide firmed her face like sealing wax.

“And no matter what you see, stay calm.”

Skela tilted her head, puzzled as a sparrow, but she’d soon understand what Adelaide meant and why calm mattered like a rope over a ravine.

They stopped at the second-year classroom door. Through the glass pane, two girls stood inside like shadows caught in a lantern.

Skela’s pupils tightened like pricked ink; those two stood at her desk.

“Ha, just a commoner with high magic aptitude. She dared talk back? She’s really pushing it.”

A blade scraped wood, carving a bitter sound like teeth on bone.

“Right? She’s not even in the student council but keeps orbiting His Highness Samir. Does she think she’s worthy of climbing up?”

“And that ‘Ha Ten Diocese’ she mentioned last time? Never heard of it. What a joke~”

Another grating scrape. They admired their “work,” smiling the way oil smiles on water.

“Perfect. This desk matches that nobody.”

Even from the door, you could see the crooked cuts: the slur “lowborn” gouged into Skela’s desk like a bruise.

Skela’s shoulders trembled like a leaf in wind. Before she could wrench the door open and clash like flint and steel, Adelaide caught her lifted hand and shook her head, steady as a palm on a skittish horse.

A second later, the lock clicked, a small thunder.

“Who’s there?!”

The girls inside snapped to it like startled cats. Adelaide placed the keyring in Skela’s hand, the metal cool as moonlight.

“Witnesses, evidence, and the time of the act,” she said, unhurried as falling rain. “They’re all in our hands now.”

Adelaide’s biggest problem right now was that Skela almost never triggered the “script’s” flags, those little stakes that should steer fate.

Skipping Samir-route flags was nice, but it wasn’t just Samir—Skela had no spark for any of the three princes, drifting back to Adelaide every day and letting event after event pass like missed trains.

For instance, by the “script,” yesterday she should’ve wandered the academy with the third prince, Rahman, searching until dusk, collapsing on the lawn, and triggering a stargazing scene like two fireflies sharing a night.

Instead, Skela simply brought Rahman to Adelaide for help, and the affection scene fell away like a petal in wind.

Her interference had already bent things away from the “script,” and that was a river Adelaide couldn’t accept.

So today, she’d nudge the current back between the banks.

“Let us out!”

“Do you know who I am? I’m of the Hadaliya family—we’ve served the Crown for generations—”

“If I were you,” Adelaide said, her words a pin slipped into a balloon, “I wouldn’t drag my family’s name through the mud for this. Sahil.”

Her voice hit the bruise. The pounding on the door stopped, and swagger melted into pleading like snow under sun.

Adelaide ignored their offered terms, lifted her chin, and gave Skela a gentle smile, warm as a lamp in fog.

“It’s alright. Once classmates and teachers get here, no one will dare slide a cup of water into your desk again.”

“Lady Adelaide…”

Skela looked torn, her feelings rippling like a pond—just as Adelaide had expected, yet still a touch off.

“If they realize what they did, I don’t mind letting them go…”

There it was—the soft, saintly forgiveness every bright-eyed heroine carried like a ribbon.

Adelaide sighed, then set her tone like a blade in its sheath.

“No. If you do wrong, punishment will come. Open the door now, and their future fall will be even harder.”

Skela glanced at the door, where small sobs leaked like steam, bit her lower lip, and turned away, the struggle shuttered like closing blinds.

“Still can’t bear it?”

“No… I just think you’re so gentle, Lady Adelaide, yet you’ve got a stern side too—like steel under silk.”

“I told you, I’m no angelic big sister,” Adelaide laughed, light flickering through leaves. “When I get mad, I’m scary, you know?”

“Eh?”

While Adelaide teased her, the first student appeared at the far end of the corridor, a ripple before the wave; soon bodies layered outside like rings of a tree.

The two girls were truly cornered now. Only them inside. If it had been dirty water or trash, they might have hidden it, but carved cuts in wood don’t wash away like chalk.

Faced with a fact they couldn’t deny, they could only cry and wilt under disgusted stares, their dawn swagger gone like smoke.

Their last hope arrived late, trailing brightness—Mira.

“Your Highness!”

The two ran to her like castaways to a mast.

Adelaide watched the familiar scene and let a small smile bloom, a flower she’d seen before.

These two were Mira’s tagalongs in the “script,” and just like the “script,” their actions leveled the spear at Mira’s chest.

Next, Skela would clash with Mira, and it would swell into a challenge at the academy’s arena—a keystone event, and Adelaide’s target today.

Sure enough, after that one line, the crowd buzzed like a hive.

—She ordered it?

—Figures. It’s always her…

—Just because Skela’s close with Lady Adelaide, she’d stoop to this?

Mira frowned slightly, a crease like a drawn string.

Her gaze swept the carved desk, then settled on Skela and Adelaide like a hawk’s drop.

After a brief pause, a mocking smile curved her lips, a knife’s reflection.

“How pitiful. Looks like someone needs a new desk.”

“…!”

“No way. Are you saying I ordered them?”

Skela’s face changed color like a struck match; she pointed at the crying tagalongs.

“If they act for you, then own it. Don’t dump it all on them!”

Mira only looked amused, the look of a cat with cream.

“Say it was me. I refuse to admit it. What can you do about it, commoner?”

The air burst into noise like dry twigs catching.

Mira had not only admitted to bullying, she’d done it with the worst kind of baiting—so the crowd heard. Only Adelaide’s brows tightened, a thread pulled taut.

Something was off, a note sour in a familiar song.

In the “script,” Mira hadn’t gone this far.

That old split between memory and reality opened again like a hairline crack, and the situation slid toward a bank she couldn’t see.

“Mira…”

She called her name. Mira looked over and snorted, a candle blown sideways.

“What? Going to play ‘big sister’ and lecture me again, Adelaide?”

She started to turn away.

Smack—!

A heavy palm slammed the desk; Skela glared at Mira’s back, her anger burning up like dry grass. Adelaide had never seen her blaze like this.

“You’ve gone too far, Mira Izabella Belior—you don’t deserve to be Lady Adelaide’s sister!”

Mira paused mid-step, the heel caught on a thread.

“I’ll challenge you in the academy’s upcoming arena event. If you lose, you give Lady Adelaide’s ‘sister’ place to me!”

After a beat, Mira looked back.

“And what does that have to do with me?”

The sneer was gone. Her eyes pinned Skela like needles through silk.

“But if you want a bet, let’s make it worth watching—if I win, you withdraw from school. How about it?”

Hot with anger, Skela nodded without thinking, a spark leaping to tinder.

“And if you don’t win, you withdraw?”

“Don’t get greedy, commoner. You don’t get my terms.”

Mira paused, then drew something from her breast pocket, a secret pulled from the dark.

“But if I don’t win—”

A beige gem sat in her palm. The first sunbeam struck it like a blade, and it flared.

Everyone held their breath—not for the light, but for the flood of mana spilling out like a tide.

It wasn’t a mere gem. It was a magic core, rare as rain in a desert.

Only the strongest monsters birthed such things, and a core of this grade came only when a legend fell like a mountain.

Adelaide stared at it. The aura felt familiar, like a scent remembered in a dream.

“—this Dream Eater Spider’s Magic Core will be yours.”