—Blood.

Hearing him pin that word down, Adelaide’s mask of calm cracked like thin ice; her gaze flashed and froze to winter.

"How do you know?"

"Just deduction from research and experiments," Toka said.

He shrugged, slow as drifting smoke, not rushing to finish the fight, and started chatting about his studies on the Sacrifice Domain.

He spoke like a colleague sharing notes over tea, lamenting how material on the Sacrifice Domain was rare as desert rain.

It last surfaced thirteen hundred years ago; records on it were fewer than those on the Time Domain, thin as worn parchment.

Most were copy‑paste, a chorus repeating: casting sped oddly, offerings amplified a hundredfold, a wind whipping small embers.

While complaining about how repetitive those pages were, his voice held a sighing grit, like sand in a shell.

Then he mentioned an ancient scroll written in Elvish, and his eyes lit like a lantern in dusk.

"You know? When it described people like you, that Elf author didn’t write monster or genius, but 'sírima carnë Tar-culu'."

"Translated into the Salman tongue, it means—"

—flowing red gold.

"What a poetic name, right? It matches Elven style, moonlight over leaves," he said, smiling like a cat with cream.

"But I felt it wasn’t just a flourish. I had a hypothesis, only lacked material to test—until you handed me a chance."

Adelaide’s eyes widened, a storm slamming into still water. "You used me while I was unconscious…!"

"Correct," Toka said, voice smooth as oil. "During your heart surgery, I collected some of your blood."

"I must say, red gold lives up to its name; your blood is a catalyst that turns any mixture into wildfire."

He raised his arm sheathed in purple mucus, rotated it like a jeweler checking a gem, and wore a blissed‑out look.

"These liquid metals are what that blood catalyzed; just a few drops turned mud into mercury, convenient enough to make saints jealous."

"But its strongest use shines when offered as a sacrifice in Blood Magic," he murmured, a priest over a crimson altar.

Adelaide locked onto him, her red eyes flaring like warning beacons, but she couldn’t stop Toka peeling back the truth.

"The blood of a Sacrifice Domain holder is itself among the strongest offerings," he said. "I’m right, Miss Adelaide, aren’t I?"

She didn’t answer, but her clenched jaw clicked like grinding stone, a silent yes carved in granite.

Yes—this was Adelaide’s trump card, a blade wrapped in silk.

She hadn’t learned it from any scroll; she’d stumbled on it in a small accident, a candle falling onto dry straw.

She had tried a spell that required a kitten as the offering, but the little her couldn’t bear to harm it; the kitten clawed her finger.

That was a trifling scratch, a raindrop on a window; yet the spell that day exploded beyond the scroll’s promise.

Its duration multiplied dozens of times, a river running long after the rain.

After repeated tests, she saw the difference wasn’t array, chant, or mana. The kitten’s fur carried a smear of her blood.

That single redness turned iron into steel, straw into flame.

As Toka said, her blood wasn’t just efficient for offerings; it was a potent offering and catalyst on its own, a spark that made spells leap.

A few drops, and effects rose by several folds, a bonfire blown by wind.

Knowing the worth of her blood, Adelaide kept that knowledge as a blade at the bottom of her chest, a hidden ace for dire hours.

Yet the man before her chatted about it like market gossip, tossing secrets like pebbles into a pond.

No—she had to know how far he’d spread this, how many ears had drunk this wine.

To do that, she would have to—

Adelaide glanced at the screen casting the projection nearby, the cloth rippling like a pale lake.

On it, the battle grew more heated, embers fanned to flame; her mood frayed, a drumbeat thudding wild.

Hurry, Hazel…

Break the Life Synchronization Array on her—otherwise, I won’t be able to keep my hands clean.

Hazel’s side was far uglier than Adelaide imagined, a storm beating a lone hut.

It wasn’t just her body: gashes everywhere, ribs and shin splintered like cracked ice.

What trapped her was the situation grinding toward a cliff.

A magic bullet shot at Hazel; she staggered aside, already bracing to be hurled by the explosion like a leaf in gale.

But the bullet didn’t explode; it hit the wall and dissolved into motes of mana, a snow of sparks.

Far away, Skela kept attacking with mechanical repetition, a metronome stuck on one beat.

Compared to minutes ago, her spell strength had dropped visibly, a river thinning to a thread.

Boom!

Another blast rolled, but this time the magic bullet burst mid‑flight, short of Hazel’s face, a popped seed in dry heat.

The shock made Hazel cover her eyes and step back half a pace, sand sliding underfoot.

Skela’s left hand trembled so hard she couldn’t draw arrays with precision; that wasn’t relief, it was knife‑edge anxiety.

It meant her body was being bitten back each time the array went crooked, backlash chewing like wolves.

Hazel looked at Skela’s limp right hand hanging like a broken branch; blood ran down like a small stream.

Skela’s face was drained to paper‑white; cyan blotches bloomed on her limbs from lack of oxygen, storm‑cloud bruises on a corpse‑pale sky.

She looked like a zombie, a puppet of frost.

The only reason she was still alive was Toka’s Life Synchronization Array stitched onto her like a borrowed heartbeat.

Realizing that, Hazel felt a tide of powerlessness and despair crash over her seawall; her own pain shrank to smoke.

Because the only way to stop Skela was to break the array on her.

The instant she did that, Skela would die from internal wounds and blood loss, a candle blown out in a draft.

Facing that cliff, Hazel had to choose between her life and Skela’s, a scale creaking under stones.

It wasn’t a rash thought born of a spike of emotion; she had considered other paths, even a mad idea to overwrite the array’s core.

Maybe she could avoid destroying the array, just replace its core, switch the synchrony target from Toka to herself.

Then, when Skela slipped free, she would still have the array’s support, a rope across a ravine.

But that was impossible; with enough time, Hazel might cast a Life Synchronization Array of her own.

Yet rewriting and casting are not the same craft; the former is carving glaciers, not tracing circles.

Any magic, even the simplest lighting spell with two concentric circles, bears the caster’s imprint while casting, a scent on snow.

That imprint marks the caster’s sovereignty; when Hazel tried healing magic on Skela before, she met resistance, a rejection like oil and water.

To modify an array, the rewriter must understand the field far beyond the caster, a hawk above the clouds.

How could Hazel do that?

Toka’s water mana had higher affinity than hers, a spring deeper and clearer.

He held imperial resources and studied this field for decades, while she worked alone in a small room, a candle against night.

She could not succeed; failure’s price would be losing Skela utterly.

If she slipped even a hair while rewriting, the Life Synchronization Array would go chaotic, then berserk.

It would shred what remained inside Skela like razors in a storm, killing her in blistering agony.

Then nothing could be mended; ashes would be ashes.

She could only watch Skela inch toward death, feel her heartbeat slow, her body turn cold on Hazel’s back—like that night.

Thinking of that possibility made Hazel shake uncontrollably, a leaf in winter wind.

Skela couldn’t read her heart; she kept charging.

Like a machine about to split a seam, Skela couldn’t cast now; she switched to pure mana blades in her hands, blue fire condensed into edges.

She ignored what that did to her body, a moth rushing the flame.

Hazel stared blankly at Skela closing in, reached a hand toward her like pleading with a silent sky.

"Sanyi… don’t…"

Squelch—

No miracle came to wake the sleeping mind; Skela crashed into Hazel’s arms, and the blade punched through Hazel’s belly without mercy.

Hazel toppled; they rolled once across stone, then Skela straddled Hazel, iron weight pinning her like a storm‑lashed beam.

Red spread across Hazel’s abdomen, crimson soaking cloth like ink in water.

A numbing burn fanned from the wound along her spine; she spat blood, liquid choking her lungs, and coughed weakly.

It hurts. It hurts so much.

Pain gnawed her nerves like icy rats; thinking blurred into fog.

Through the haze, she heard her father’s old words, a nail hammered into wood.

—If you want to protect anything, you must keep giving ground.

…

Yes, Toka was a bastard, a demon in a lab coat.

But Hazel knew he wouldn’t lie about this deal; he wouldn’t throw away Skela, his precious subject, a crown jewel under glass.

As for Adelaide… Hazel had thought she was a wheelchaired poser with a flair; in truth, she was a Blood Mage beyond belief.

Someone like that could escape clean, like a fox into reeds.

The only price to pay would be Hazel’s life, a coin tossed into a black well.

If she did what Toka said, Skela would live.

The blade slid out of her belly, slow as a worm from fruit, and drew a lot of blood with it.

Snowy static freckled Hazel’s vision; the silver‑haired girl’s face blurred, a moon behind gauze.

Yes—this was the most rational choice, the only way to ensure Skela’s survival, a bridge across a flood.

She knew it; she knew—

But why?

In what might be the last breath of her life, the images in her mind weren’t her dead mother or that bastard father, not even childhood days with Skela.

In this final moment, she sat again at the Imperial Theater with her parents, before she met Skela, a child woven into velvet seats.

Small Hazel sat with feet not touching the floor, craning her neck to watch the stage, eyes like lake glass.

On stage, a knight with heavy makeup knelt before the princess’s tomb. Behind him rose a ruined city, the kingdom he wished to guard already rubble.

He wept rivers; his sharp nails tore open his tabard, leaving lines of regret on skin, red tracks like vines.

He screamed to the world, voice raw as winter wind, and cried until his throat bled.

—Why, gods? I sacrificed my beloved, sacrificed everything, and still saved nothing. Why did it end like this?

His cry held a weight of despair like a mountain; little Hazel couldn’t bear it and left.

Yet now she sat, unable to tear her eyes away, roots clutching soil.

Why did this scene rise?

Of course—because of anger, and refusal to yield, a fire under ash.

She saw herself in that knight.

For her mother’s health, she gave up the chance to save Skela, letting her suffer longer in chains.

To avoid clashing with the Regent, she chose silence, and that choice birthed Dalahaman’s tragedy, a tower toppled in slow motion.

It’s fine, she told herself; these were prices paid to protect what mattered, the most rational choices in those hours.

Was that true? Could she accept this ending, this closed door?

No. Of course she couldn’t.

She stayed in her small room day and night with rotting corpses, a penance like salt on wounds, because she couldn’t accept it.

She couldn’t accept being the failure who saved neither her mother nor Skela; so she punished herself this way, chained to stink and darkness.

If she had known medicine then, maybe she could have healed her mother.

Maybe she wouldn’t have lost her most important person, a star shown and gone.

That bare refusal and regret drove the daughter of Padini down a path of medicine, a road far from her family’s hall, a stream away from the river.

Now, the gods handed her a chance to atone; the person she thought lost beyond return lay before her.

And she was about to yield again, hand Skela’s fate back to Toka?

No—she wouldn’t step back under the stage lights as a knight, wouldn’t copy his “rational” choice, only to drown and lose both shores.

Fire broke in Hazel’s chest like a brazier in winter, sending up strength she shouldn’t have had, bracing her shattered frame like splints.

She looped her arms behind Skela’s back and hauled her close. The half-drawn blade slid back into Hazel’s belly, deeper, cold as iron in snow.

She didn’t stop. She let steel tunnel through her, until their bodies aligned like joined seals. Pale-blue mana flared where skin met skin, and spun into threads that slid into Skela.

The moment those threads brushed arteries and vital cords, Hazel felt the same rejection. Toka’s water mana bucked like an icy tide, and the backlash punched blood from her mouth.

Pain bloomed from the core, a nest of glass grinding under her ribs. Her molars pressed so hard she thought they’d crack like stones.

Even so, she didn’t call her mana back. She forced more through, a steady flood, until her current drowned Toka’s locally and began to twist and rewrite his Life-Resonance Array.

Any physician would call her mad. The Array was a snowfield of sigils within sigils; she had to remake tens of thousands of strokes, each line straight as a blade of light.

One tremor, one curve gone wrong, and it would fail. Skela’s body would be shredded by rampaging magic, and Hazel would take the same ruin in backlash.

Hazel knew. Failure meant both of them dying the hard way. But her doubt had burned away; she poured mana with a burn-the-ships resolve, carving over Toka’s tracks like a chisel through wet clay.

To anyone else, every heartbeat she stayed alive was a miracle. Hazel held fast, kept rewriting, until her senses touched Skela’s heart—the Array’s ember-bright core.

She felt the complex lattice buried in muscle, a maze under roots. It was the last gate, and the most fatal: Toka’s current fought her, and Skela’s instincts rejected her.

Any flicker, any slip, and the end would be bleak as winter sea. Fear rose, but her breath came first, and then—she smiled.

She tightened her grip along Skela’s back. Bodies overlapped, chest to chest, two pendulums finding the same rhythm, heartbeats knocking like soft drums.

With her mana, she cupped the fine string buried deep in Skela’s heart, a harp hair-thin. She hid her face in silver hair and breathed warm words at her ear.

“It’s okay. I’ll get you out. I swear I will.”

She had told Skela that once, a promise she’d broken. Now the words worked like a spell. Skela’s body stopped fighting and fell into the hug.

The string locked in her heart loosened under tender water mana and slowly dissolved, like frost under dawn, until everything melted into Hazel’s shape.