The king was dead, like a candle snuffed mid-breath.

No spray of blood, no wound, not even the red choke of a heart attack.

He just toppled on stage, a puppet with its strings cut, and never breathed again.

It was too quiet, too uncanny, a death wrapped in velvet silence, so the students balked at the truth.

Adelaide was among them, her mind a still pond struck by a sudden stone.

In the palace hall packed with nobles, the Sarman Empire’s chief minister, Rockridge Harris, stood at a white marble lectern like bleached bone.

His power ranked just below the crown, and his eulogy drifted like incense.

He was a gaunt elder, hair greyed to frost.

In Adelaide’s memory he was tall and straight, his back like a drawn bow that spoke of command.

Now, wrinkles mapped his face like dry riverbeds; his voice trembled like a reed; his bent spine looked decades older.

Like a sorrowing elder robbed of a child, he spoke of watching the king grow, choking more than once as tears pulled tight like strings.

Adelaide’s chest tightened like a fist; she had no room to share a grief that wasn’t hers.

She listened for the last line, the blade hidden in the bloom of praise.

His passing may leave wounds slow to heal, but justice won’t be veiled by fog—we’ve captured the suspect.

Very soon, we’ll judge her publicly before the whole nation, like a verdict hammered on an anvil.

Adelaide’s pupils pinpricked, and displeasure rose like heat under the skin.

She knew the king would die; she hadn’t expected him to fall early, like fruit shaken from the branch.

Worse, he fell right after Skela’s presumptuous line, collapsing at her feet like a guillotine.

They seized her on the spot, hands closing like iron vines.

But how could Skela be in prison, a hawk stuffed into a coop?

She’d laid the road for her, a red thread meant to slip Skela onto Neprah’s route.

Adelaide clung to the Neprah route for reasons rooted like old pines.

Not just to win Samir over, but because it’s the only route where Skela doesn’t obtain the Sacred Heart, the jewel like a heart aflame.

In the script, coveted by Mira and the heroine, the Sacred Heart runs through every route like a vein.

It always becomes the key tool that unties the final knot, a blade for tangled rope.

In the Samir route, the Sacred Heart is a token of troth, given by King Samir to Skela with his own hand like a vow set in gold.

In the Rahman route, Skela shields gentle Rahman, rivals Samir, wins the Sacred Heart, and shelters him in Sarman politics like an umbrella in storm.

It’s so vital that even the TE route won’t spare it, a thread that never breaks.

In that line, Mira steals the Sacred Heart by trickery; when Skela arrives, she finds Mira hasn’t fused with it, a lock resisting its key.

Mira sits beside a coffin like a ruined shrine, and Minister Rockridge lies remade into a horror like twisted metal.

In that moment, Mira wears a gown red as fresh blood, her gaze a blend of frenzy and despair like fire and ash.

“This thing is useless to me now,” she said, her voice brittle as glass.

She tossed the hard-won Sacred Heart before Skela, like a jewel flung from a fevered hand.

“Only the pure can fuse with the Sacred Heart,” she breathed, cold as winter.

“Prove it—Skela Trinity Purdo, is your heart truly as pure as those clear eyes?”

Skela fused with the Sacred Heart, then faced Mira for the first time when Mira fully released the Time Domain, time surging like a storm tide.

What came after, and why Mira gave up the Sacred Heart, Adelaide didn’t know, her knowledge ending like a cliff.

The dream ended as Skela sank a blade into Mira’s fatal weak point, a thorn at the core.

Those pieces were enough for Adelaide to judge her path, a compass set by starlight.

In her plan, seizing the Sacred Heart outranked winning Samir, like crown over court.

The dream never defined ‘pure,’ but as the king’s symbol, even if she couldn’t fuse, she wouldn’t let anyone else claim it, a gate she’d guard with teeth.

Thus the Neprah route looked ideal, clear as a mountain stream.

Only there do Neprah and Samir, after seeing nobles grind the common folk, choose to stand with the people like trees taking root.

After the revolution, the brothers bury the Sacred Heart—the emblem of divine right—in a deserted forest, a grave without a name.

They hope to end the royal remnants’ dreams there, like seeds burned in ash.

They’d never imagine a third person would learn the site through a dream, a lantern in fog.

When it all ended, Adelaide would claim the Sacred Heart for herself, fingers closing like a lock.

That was the plan; yet a mischievous god plucked her fate’s strings again, mocking her effort like a player on a stage.

...

As anger buzzed like hornets in her chest, a chill cut in—the same ice as on the king’s assassination day.

She snapped her head up, but saw no anomaly, only air smooth as still water.

After the speech, the nobles ebbed like a tide; at the far edge of her sight stood the three crown brothers.

Rahman, most cherished and most dependent, took it worst, sobbing to pieces like wet paper.

Samir kept his feelings tight, watching Rahman with eyes like shuttered windows.

Neprah, true to his nature, became the reliable big brother—hand on Rahman’s shoulder, voice a steady rope.

Their reactions were normal; Adelaide’s view held no thorn beneath the silk.

She still felt a grain of wrongness like sand in the shoe, but she set it aside.

More pressing matters waited.

Adelaide drew a slow breath as a faint red glow pulsed under the lap blanket like an ember.

A lizard slid from under the blanket, climbed down the wheelchair frame, and slipped to the floor like a shard of night.

Pick it up, and you’d see strange red markings on its skin, like runes stitched on scales.

No one would snatch a lizard at a king’s funeral, so it crawled unhindered onto Neprah’s chair, bold as ivy.

Then it convulsed, sudden as a thunderclap.

The red markings cinched, then rearranged into complex patterns like braided thorns.

The poor thing turned to ash the next heartbeat, yet its belly dropped a small white pouch and a flimsy note, pale as moth wings.

Seeing that, Adelaide turned her head and left the hall, steps soft as drifting leaves.

Skela knelt on the cell floor, craning toward the small window to watch the moon, a cold coin on black velvet.

Her hands were shackled behind her with sealing cuffs, yet she shaped herself into a prayer, a wilted lily trying to rise.

Raised in a convent, she’d made this a habit, but tonight her focus scattered like leaves in wind.

In truth, she was still lost, thoughts circling like stunned birds.

What had happened, a question flitting like a bat?

Why was she locked up, a chain clinking in her mind?

Why did they call her a murderer, a word like soot on the tongue?

The king dropping before her felt unreal, like a stage curtain falling mid-line; her heart refused the scene like a locked door.

Murder—like ink spilled on faith?

That’s a deepest blasphemy against God’s teaching, a stain like pitch.

If they thought she was a murderer, then what waited for her next, a night without dawn?

Only then did Skela grasp the danger, like a cliff edge under her feet.

Her breath shook; instinct urged her to scream, to throw fear like a stone into the dark.

Yet her mouth wouldn’t open; silence sealed it like wax.

Magic—the word prickled like static.

She knew at once, but her mana was fettered by the cuffs; she could do nothing but tremble like a leaf.

Then a blade cut the air with a whoosh, swift as a swallow.

She squeezed her eyes shut, flinched like a startled fawn, tried to pull back, and toppled sideways.

Was someone here to punish her, to lay steel across her throat like frost?

No—she was innocent; she still had unanswered questions like knots in thread.

At the next swing, pity and fear pooled; she truly expected the dull bite at her neck, a blunt moon on skin.

Instead, relief flooded her, warm as water; her magic came back to her hands like returning birds.

Skela opened her eyes, stunned; the sealing cuffs lay broken in pieces, and the window bars had sifted into iron dust.

She looked around, but no one left even a shadow, only air like empty glass.

If you want the truth, run south; someone will meet you there, a promise like a path.

The raspy stranger’s voice rose at her side, a whisper like gravel.

She startled, then steadied; she understood the voice had come to help, a hand in the dark.

Hesitation rose after clarity, mist after dawn.

She was clean—why should she flee, when God wouldn’t wrong His faithful, a shepherd with steady staff?

She should keep faith, a lantern in the night.

If you can’t prove you’re innocent, the one who recommended you will share your guilt, a stain that spreads.

Skela froze; the Abbess’s look, when she gave her the Holywell Academy badge, bloomed in her mind like lamplight.

After a beat, she bit down and nodded to the empty window, a leaf signaling the wind.

At that, the spell binding her mouth melted like ice.

Who are you, really?

Her voice was thin as thread.

No answer came, only silence pooling like water.

She pulled herself through the window and found no trace, only night inked deep.

She thought a moment, then bowed deeply to the empty sky in thanks, and ran toward the southern woods like a deer.

Soon she met the person meant to receive her—and he was the last she expected, a face like a flare in dark.

Ha, I’m out of my mind, thinking whoever’s named on that scrap would even show, words tossed like pebbles.

Your Highness Neprah...?

In the trees, the two stared wide-eyed, then raised their guard like cats arching backs.

Skela? Aren’t you supposed to be in a cell? And you dragged me out here—what are you playing at?

His tone struck like flint.

That’s my line! Wasn’t it you who let me out of prison?

Huh? What are you talking about, confusion buzzing like bees?

In a distant shadow, a pair of blood-red eyes watched them, silent as coals.

Their voices threaded through the insect song, words carrying like smoke.

The watcher listened, until they aligned on the doubts of the assassination and chose to go where the note pointed, a decision like a compass swing.

Then the hidden one straightened, no longer pressed to leaf and branch, a silhouette uncoiling.

A lithe shape in black robes, face veiled by thin gauze, flashed through the air and vanished beneath the dim moon like a swallow into night.