Hazel froze, mind iced over like a winter pond, and stared at Adelaide until Adelaide flicked a strand at her temple, shy as a cat, and murmured.

“Please don’t look at me that hot, especially while Her Highness just got snatched. She might… misunderstand later.”

…

She drew a long breath. A spark of snark flared under her tongue, bitter as smoke.

But now wasn’t the time. Like Adelaide said, the urgent thing was to bring Skela back. Whether the woman before her was a world-ending dragon or a silver-tongued devil, if she could help Skela, Hazel wouldn’t refuse.

That thought loosened the shock pressing on her chest, and the old anxiety surged again. She ignored Adelaide’s teasing and ran to the shadowed door where Skela had vanished.

She kicked it open. A wave of disinfectant hit her, sharp as winter mint. A white-tiled corridor stretched ahead; both walls were lined with schematics and anatomical sketches, neat as prayer flags, recording what Blood Magic did to human bodies.

The reports were blasphemy bound in order. Every page was precise as a ruler, and that cool, scientific care against its subject made the air crawl.

Hazel’s hand tightened till her knuckles ached.

It looked exactly like her memory.

After all this time, he was still doing this.

“Toka…!”

She ground the name through clenched teeth and sprinted into the depths, tuning the rhythm of blood in her muscles with Water Magic, pushing her body to its fastest beat.

But minutes later she had to stop.

Another door blocked the way further down. It resembled the first Blood Magic seal, but the array etched across it was far more intricate, a thorn bush of sigils.

Adelaide came up behind, brushed the seal with a fingertip, and blood-red pulsed into the grooves like dye in water. This time, it spread slower, like syrup in cold.

“How long?” Hazel asked, eyes on the throbbing lines, voice edged with haste.

Right now she wanted to drag that bastard to a table, open him with a scalpel, strip skin, fat, muscle layer by layer, leave the organs floating in nutrient broth, let him taste the phantom pain he inflicted day after day.

Adelaide only shook her head; her shoulders lifted beneath her black robe. “Triple-layer authenticated seal. Ten minutes, give or take.”

“Can’t we blast it open? Use that spell from before.”

“Materials are spent. If Miss Hazel doesn’t mind donating half a spine, maybe I could… hey, don’t take that face seriously.”

She waved it off and turned toward a side room.

“Instead of fuming, let’s sweep these rooms. Might be something important.”

Hazel watched Adelaide’s back slip through the door. Her nails bit deep into her palm, then she forced them loose. She bit her lip. Powerlessness welled up like low tide. Reality pressed her neck down.

Yes. All she could do now was wait.

She glanced at the progress on the seal, then looked away. Watching those blood-lines creep would only salt her nerves.

Fine. Do what Adelaide said. Hunt for clues.

She tried to gather herself, to sift the papers for any proof linking Rockridge to this place. But her thoughts wouldn’t settle. Letters broke into skewed strokes, ants crawling across white, right in front of her yet refusing to form meaning.

She pictured Skela, bleeding and stolen by Toka, and her heart went ice-cold. A cramp twisted her belly like a rope.

No. Don’t lose your head.

Smack. Hazel slapped her own cheek. The sting didn’t help much—just shaved a little noise off her mind.

In that thin quiet, she realized she’d wandered into a room.

It was hollow as a shell. Aside from the restraint bed at the center, only a low rack of surgical tools stood beside it. Thick dust covered rack, bed, and floor, a gray snowfall erasing most of what had been.

And yet Hazel knew this room at a glance.

She stepped forward, hand trembling, and reached for the restraint bed. She brushed the dust at the headboard. Numbers rose out like bones from sand.

No. 31.

Memory surged like a tide and drowned her colors. A little girl’s voice rang by her ear.

“Hazel, Hazel—tomorrow’s your birthday, right?”

“You… remembered?”

“Heh-heh~ Of course. I arrived here on your birthday.”

“Thirty-One…”

“Don’t make that face. It’s good news! The doctor said a kid who stays here a full year gets a gift. If I behave tomorrow, they’ll even let me go play. Then I can go to your birthday party!”

Right beside this bed, a girl bound at wrists and ankles by iron rings made a promise in a young voice.

Her smile was bright as a lantern. Her hand in Hazel’s was warm as bread. For one instant, Hazel believed the doctor might be merciful and grant a day of freedom.

So she nodded to the girl and, with hope burning low and steady, said:

“Mm… I’ll be waiting.”

She told the girl that. The thought of meeting on the surface mattered more than the party itself.

On the night of the party, she waited long. She combed the crowd for a streak of silver hair. She never found it. When the bustle thinned and vanished, she sat alone in the hall, turning the little wood carving she’d made for the girl, a gift waiting for fingers that never came.

No matter how long she waited, no matter what secrets she whispered to the carving, the girl never returned to her.

**

“Let me guess… you met Her Highness here?”

Adelaide’s voice cut the memory behind her. The past shattered like a mirror and scattered into air.

Hazel surfaced, but didn’t turn to answer.

Be rational, Hazel Padini.

Her father’s words rang in her chest. She bit down, then drove a fist into the wall, dull as a drum.

Adelaide only strolled up, slow as a cat on a wall, and glanced at the number on the bed.

“So that’s where ‘Thirty-One’ came from. No wonder you never call her Skela.”

“…”

“Well, since we’re idling anyway, let me be your confessional. Empty it all in one shot.” Adelaide leaned against the bed, voice light. “I’ve always been curious—how did you two suddenly become so close?”

Hazel closed her eyes a moment. Then she turned her back.

“Nothing worth saying.”

Even so, she didn’t give Adelaide room to prattle. She went on.

“The royal family used to seize orphans for human experiments. Skela was one of them. The vent we used to sneak down was hooked to this room. That’s when I met her.”

“Oh?”

“Home was suffocating back then, so I came here to talk with her. We were… probably friends.”

Adelaide looked around the bare room, and her tone sharpened like a thin blade. “Then why didn’t the famed Supreme Judge, Padini, give his own daughter a hand and pull her friend out of this hole?”

Silence fell again. Hazel spoke only after a beat.

“Toka… was my mother’s attending physician.”

Her voice was low, the edges trembling like a leaf.

“I promised Thirty-One I’d get her out. But father told me Mom’s illness needed royal resources to maintain. So I thought—let them cure her first. Then I’d expose what they’d done and save Thirty-One.”

“Sounds… reasonable.”

“Reasonable? Sure. Beautiful and neat. And the ending was her heartbeat dying right in front of me. Mom went, too. Both lost. I guarded nothing.”

Adelaide paused, then one brow lifted.

“Her heartbeat died? But she isn’t—”

“Why is she still alive? Don’t ask me. I don’t know. I accepted long ago that my mistake couldn’t be undone. And then—I saw her again.”

Hazel turned to Adelaide with a crooked smile, bitter as iron.

“Funny enough, that was thanks to you.”

“Me?”

“That day I remembered what you said—if I repeated the year, I’d be your junior again. It annoyed me, so I showed up to pad my attendance. At the campus shop, I met her—a silver-haired girl exactly as in my memory, just… stripped of memory, unaligned.”

Adelaide’s face changed. Hazel didn’t notice; Adelaide’s heart churned like storm-water because she realized she was the reason Skela and Neprah never ended up together.

Hazel didn’t know about the ‘script’, so she kept speaking.

“Tell me—doesn’t that feel like the gods giving me a chance to atone?”

“…” Adelaide closed her eyes and sorted her feelings, then answered, steady again. “If so, why keep her in Balad, right under the royals? You know they’ll watch her.”

“They’re already watching. The moment her name hit the enrollment list, the royal house knew she lived. There’s no safe place in the Sarman Empire. In the capital, at least I can shield her as much as I can.”

“Like now?” Adelaide lifted the paper records in her hand. “Find evidence linking Rockridge to all this, and she won’t have to come down herself—that’s your plan?”

Hazel’s silence was a nod. Adelaide sighed, a thin ribbon of sound.

“Without me, did you really think you could get this far?”

“…I’d move quiet. As long as I don’t trigger their alarms—”

“You’d die here, Miss Hazel.”

Adelaide cut her off without mercy, tiredness in her eyes like dusk.

Silence lapped back. Hazel lowered her head. Her torn clothes swam in her gaze like wreckage.

“Last time, I failed her. I promised and delivered nothing.”

When she spoke again, her voice braided resolve with guilt, taut as a bowstring yet frayed at the heart.

When I met her again, she already wore a new name like a fresh crest. A new birthday, like a second spring. New friends, like lanterns around her night. She held everything I had once promised, yet not a single piece came from me.

She lifted her head, and her gaze met Adelaide’s. In her eyes, a resolve flickered like a steady flame.

But at least this time, I’ll guard the happiness she already holds, like standing watch at a garden gate.

...

You’re right. I can’t unleash legion-level magic like you do; my power is a reed in a storm. I can’t even handle a handful of Blood Puppets, much less that mountain of a beast. If, when the moon was only a third full tonight, the Mysterious One hadn’t appeared, I’d likely be a corpse on this floor.

Hazel paused and slid a hand into the pocket over her heart.

And because of that, I have a request, a stone on my chest—

—Stop.

Adelaide threw up a dramatic X with her hands and stepped back, like drawing a bright line in the sand.

If you’re about to say, “If I’m gone, please pass this gift to her on her next birthday,” I’m refusing—flat. Gifts belong in your own hands. Words that outsiders shouldn’t hear belong at her ear, in your own breath. Don’t dump that kind of thing on anyone else.

She rattled it off in one breath, like lines she’d rehearsed under a streetlamp, and Hazel froze, stunned.

Pfft... After a beat, Hazel let out a soft laugh, and the hand in her pocket fell, like a bird folding its wing.

That’s way too sappy. If I actually said something like that, I’d march myself to a therapist to get my head checked.

As she spoke, she turned toward the door and walked out. The anxiety and gravity from moments ago burned off like morning fog.

Adelaide saw it and, without a tell, let out a quiet breath, like easing a knot.

That’s better. That’s the dear friend I know, like a familiar star back in its place.

What are you even saying? Aren’t you the Mysterious One?

...