“I don’t remember.”

Adelaide still remembered the underground cavern, black as ink and pricked with pale-blue luminescence, like a drowned sky threaded with cold stars. She remembered the soft weight of Mira’s coat laid over her, warm as moss on stone. She remembered the fire, its jump and flicker like a feral heartbeat—dangerous, yet steadying.

She remembered Mira’s eyes when Mira pushed her away that day—clear as glass, hard as a blade.

She was no longer that small girl who would stand in place and cry unless Adelaide took her hand—no longer dew on grass, no longer a shadow clinging to a wall.

“I don’t care. Your past doesn’t matter.”

Mira had declared it, as if everything were merely side effects of the Time Domain—as if memory itself had been wiped clean at awakening and turned to dust.

But Adelaide didn’t buy it.

Even if the Time Domain could bruise memory, what about Mira’s hair? That blaze of royal gold, bright as hammered sunlight, couldn’t be a stain left by time.

The royals did something to her.

She would find the truth. She would make them pay—

…

No. She would… find clues to the covert thread, that was all.

Yes. She was here because Mira was an ideal entry point to that hidden line. Nothing else. No other reason.

Adelaide drew one long breath, pressing down the anger in her chest like a lid on boiling water.

Every time she thought of the dissonance between that black-haired girl and the Mira now, a tearing pain clawed at her mind—like paper ripped along the grain. It had to be that sadistic god needling her, trying to make Mira her soft spot.

It was fine. If she got answers tonight, that damned dissonance would stop grinding at her.

She raised her right hand. Blood-red mana flickered at her fingertip, a spark on steel. She cut the most sensitive edge of her nerve, and the sting drowned the turbulence in her head. The blood welling from the cut lifted into the air and hung there, a red drop waiting for its master’s word.

“I hope, once we find Skela, the ever-busy Miss Hazel can spare a precious minute to explain what she just said.”

Hazel didn’t hesitate. Her hand pressed to her chest, steady as an oath-stone.

“In His name, I swear.”

Pushing a frantic rescuer was a bad idea; Adelaide trusted her oldest friend not to break an oath. She gave a small push, and the blood drops flew.

They hit the door without splashing; instead, they sank in like rain into parched earth. In an instant they filled the core array and drew a pattern like veins and arteries across it—a body’s secret map inked in red.

A sickly-sweet scent rose. The array’s lines pulsed, contracting and expanding like a heartbeat, sending red light to every corner of the door.

Boom.

Squelch.

In the sealed space, the two sounds were almost simultaneous. The first was the expected thud of the door unlocking. The second was a sticky, wet sound neither Adelaide nor Hazel had foreseen.

As the door opened, a corpse toppled at their feet. The body was the size of an adult man, but the skin had shriveled like old bark; the muscle looked sucked dry. He wore the institute’s uniform. His face was frozen in terror. His back was hollowed out, broken lungs slopped with white and yellow mucus.

From his posture, he had been plastered to the door, trying to escape from the other side. Before that, something peeled him like a fruit, then drank him like grapes, each piece torn from his core.

Even Adelaide and Hazel, too used to severed limbs and battlefield ruin, frowned at the scene. No human or beast had left these marks.

“…Three-One!”

Hazel seemed to connect the signs and what they meant. She took two strides, leaped the corpse, and sprinted in. Adelaide spared the body a few more heartbeats, then followed.

As they ran, truth made itself known: that man was the luckiest—or the unluckiest—of them. More bodies. More shriveled husks. Victims who didn’t even reach the door before the same force snuffed them out.

Here, living longer only meant more misery.

“Help—help—help aaaaah—”

A shriek ripped up the hall. Hazel and Adelaide traded a glance and kicked their pace into a blade’s edge, bearing down on the sound.

Too late. They arrived just in time to see the last instant of the victim’s life: a blood-red, rotting hand clamped the screaming woman’s head and lifted her like a toy. Her bare skin, peeking from under the research uniform, withered at a speed the eye could track. Then the grip tightened, and she went rigid. Her skull burst like a brittle shell brimming with juice—fragments of bone and yellow tissue sprayed the air and painted the floor.

Behind the corpse stood a “person” in blood-red. It had features—eyes, nose, mouth—but swelling had blurred them into a grotesque mask. The color of life—red—showed here as sickness: naked muscle and ulcerated flesh, bright red stripes binding its body like chains, forcing a dead mass to wear borrowed color.

One glance was enough. Adelaide knew what it was.

A thing forged from a corpse. A Blood Puppet.

Even within Blood Magic—a craft already branded profane—corpse-forging ranked as the most evil. Simple reason: unlike sacrifice, which burns flesh and blood to fuel the caster, corpse-forging builds a self-feeding array and engraves it into meat.

That way, the victim is both offering and vessel. Their soul is caged in a body turned to pure wickedness, forced to serve by devouring their own essence, piece by piece.

Adelaide’s gaze fixed on the half-rotten red figure; a spark of mania tinged her eyes. Before she moved, Hazel was already rushing in.

“Nénar rissë—Water Sever!”

A blade of water flowed like silk and cleaved the puppet’s arm. No blood splashed—not because the puppet lacked fluid, but because Hazel’s second spell had already taken hold.

“sercë tur—Rudder of Blood!”

Hazel’s mana slid through the wound into the puppet’s body. With a hard report, the already swollen Blood Puppet bloated further, then burst, flying apart in chunks.

“Hu—huh—” Hazel panted, wiping gray-black corpse slurry from her face. Her water affinity was high, but keeping that precise grip on magic drained the mind like a millstone.

She lifted her head to Adelaide.

“We need to hurry—”

A rasping cry tore the air. Hazel turned. The voice came from the puppet’s mangled head; what remained of it was calling. A signal. Other roars answered.

She knew trouble had arrived, but it was already late. The room’s exit clogged with bodies. The vent shafts rattled with collisions. In less than half a minute, she saw fresh Blood Puppets folding themselves in ways no living thing could, squeezing from vents like strips of meat extruded from iron.

They were surrounded. Underground, there was nowhere to run.

Hazel clicked her tongue and shut her eyes, regret flashing like a knife’s glint. She stepped in front of Adelaide. Water magic spread from her like a ring, a temporary wall hemming the puppets back.

“Got anything?”

Hazel’s voice edges brushed despair. Adelaide didn’t answer. She kept her head down.

She looked at the woman’s body twitching on the floor—life gone, nerves dancing. Nausea rose, old and sharp, like the day she was thirteen and shed her last soft illusions.

Half-grown, fingers too small to clasp a large teacup, she hid in the backyard shed and decided to try Blood Magic. With no reference, her sacrificial spell was incomplete. The rabbit she offered was only half sacrificed.

In that shed with no candles, no lamp, she watched the half-body rabbit struggle, dragging itself with its forepaws, trying to flee. Her stomach knotted; acid stung her throat—not because the rabbit’s guts sloughed as it crawled, but because of something more primal, tucked away for thirteen years.

Anger.

Such fine material, wasted so pathetically. That instinct was etched into her soul, a chord resonant with her Blood Magic affinity. And now, staring at corpses roughly, stupidly drained—no longer fit as offerings—she felt the same anger twist with the same nausea.

She raised her head. She looked at the drooling, dull-eyed Blood Puppets. Her fingers moved, a pianist’s first note.

Essence drawn by a Blood Puppet, a construct of mana—Adelaide couldn’t even sacrifice them to reclaim the flesh’s power. Whoever made these Blood Puppets didn’t deserve the title Blood Mage.

A small vial flashed from Adelaide’s black robe. The tissue fluid inside winked out in a red flare. Before the glass hit and shattered, a blood-red butterfly lifted from her palm.

It flew with courtly grace, each wingbeat tracing a pale trail of luminous dust through the air. Hazel stared, confused, yet held by its dangerous beauty, like a moth held by a candle. Her barrier relaxed for half a breath—a Blood Puppet slammed into the thinned ring.

Its torso pushed through, then an arm. It was about to breach. The butterfly drifted above it and settled on its swollen, ugly brow.

The Blood Puppet melted in front of Hazel’s eyes.

She blinked, slow as a heartbeat, not grasping the scene. She only understood when she saw the puddle on the floor: the butterfly had done it.

Shock lasted a beat; her mind cut back to the fight.

“There are too many. Single-target won’t do. We need—”

“That was just a guiding butterfly. It marks targets.”

“Huh?”

Wind licked Hazel’s cheek.

But underground, there’s no wind. In the corner of her sight, she caught the cause: a storm of identical butterflies—crimson squall, petal and blade—sweeping past her. Wherever the storm passed, the puppets didn’t even manage a roar. They dissolved into pools of gray-black corpse water.

In seconds, the circle of enemies was gone. If not for the ankle-deep slurry soaking through her shoes, Hazel would’ve thought she’d dreamed it.

She turned, slow and careful, and caught the last blood butterfly perching obediently on Adelaide’s finger.

Beauty paired with a beautiful butterfly. Hazel shivered.

“…You’re… this strong?”

Adelaide breathed out, soft as a sigh. The butterfly on her fingertip fractured and fell into glittering motes of mana.

“Miss Hazel, are you the kind to be scared when your blade’s too sharp? How amusing.”

“No, no. I just figured you did Blood Magic, and wanted you to help open a door…”