The moment their life sources touched, Hazel felt a feather-light brush, as if the stone beneath her wasn’t snake-scale cold brick, but clouds soft as cotton candy. She and Skela floated in that cloud, bodies woven close; soul met soul. She tasted Skela’s bare, unguarded trust, and through Skela’s eyes felt her own joy shimmer back. That no-you-no-me sweetness was so pure she almost let herself drown.

Then the spike of pain in her gut ripped her back to the world.

She’d focused too hard on that gambit and had muted her senses. Now the adrenaline bled away, and the Life-Synch Array’s shared damage surged in. The blood loss hit like a wave, and she nearly blacked out.

Her organs shrieked warnings into her skull, a storm of alarms. She felt like a fire dragon had scorched her once, then raked her across stone with clawed fury. Pain licked every inch of her, denying even the mercy of fainting.

Her arm, pinned under Skela, twitched. A hiss slipped through her teeth. Warmth leaked from the puncture in her abdomen. Even so, the first thing she did was fumble across Skela’s body, pouring mana into a quick diagnosis. She didn’t relax until she found Skela’s heartbeat steady, patient, tapping like rain on leaves.

Pain or not, they were alive. Nothing mattered more.

Hazel slowly loosened her hold, letting Skela’s warm weight drift away from her, reluctant as silk slipping from fingers. It wasn’t time to linger. She couldn’t stand, so she grit her teeth and dragged the still-unconscious Skela, inch by inch, until both of them rested against the wall like battered sparrows under an eave.

They’d miraculously survived the last crisis, but the backlash of magic had set both bodies aflame. High fevers simmered. Organ damage and internal bleeding hid in every corner like shadowed knives. Skela’s right shoulder and Hazel’s abdomen were pierced clean through, each wound wide as a bowl.

No exaggeration: they were at the edge. Most doctors would shake their heads and call the family to say their goodbyes.

Luckily, one of the patients was Hazel.

She closed her eyes and pressed her palm over her gut wound. Mana lifted, a soft, ghostly blue glow brightening the underground like dawn in a cave. Elegant Elven syllables drifted with a tender breeze. Pale motes rose and fell like breathing fireflies, calling to mind the Elven Spring from old tales, the fountain that healed every sorrow. For a heartbeat, sanctity bloomed in this den of sin.

High-tier Water Magic: Nocturne Grove.

Hazel didn’t rely on sight or touch; she leaned on hard-won muscle memory and years of practice. The soft blue motes traced lines she painted in her mind, circling them both. They lifted grime and ill luck away, brushed their monstrous wounds like dancers skimming a stage.

Bit by bit, their breathing steadied. Color returned to their faces. Pink new flesh budded at the rim of fatal cuts, and the skin knit closed without a scar, like frost melting under spring light.

Inside, the same dance took place. Mana settled from chaos into rhythm. The fever receded. Their expressions eased, a lull of comfort bringing the edge of sleep, like a breeze through cedar boughs.

That peace wasn’t Nocturne Grove’s nature. As an emergency healing spell, it usually hurt; rapid tissue growth brought a maddening itch, the kind that made people claw themselves and swear. Today’s quiet was a gift.

It was Hazel’s gift. Her water mana threaded through both bodies and delivered just enough numbing, a silver lining that softened the itch when tissues knit. She navigated veins and nerves like river and root, knowing the map by heart.

Few healers on the Sumarte Mainland could manage this finesse. And even without that, the fact she’d just rewritten the Life-Synch Array inside Skela proved Hazel’s medical craft had already surpassed Toka’s.

She never thought of herself that way, but at this age, that kind of work put her right beside prodigies like Skela and Adelaide.

A short while, and they were hauled back from death’s edge to a place without imminent peril. Hazel finally had room to think.

Skela lay across Hazel’s lap, sleeping like a child after rain. Hazel stroked that smooth silver hair. Gentle worry pooled in blue eyes like water under moonlight.

Skela was safe. They also had proof Toka used the war to study Blood Magic. Their goal was met. Now came the hard part: how to wield the sins they’d gathered.

On that front, Hazel had no idea.

There were two ways to stop Rockridge from pushing the war. Convince the council. Or force the Supreme Tribunal to strike down the march order. The council was under the Regent, Rockridge’s firm hand. As for the Tribunal—

She remembered her last conversation with her father. Unease crept in, cold as water down the back.

While she searched for a path to face a Chief Justice who was also her father, her palm felt a motion, like a bird waking.

She looked down and met Skela’s gold eyes, slowly opening like dawn.

In that instant, Hazel was at a loss, awkward as a deer on ice.

She hadn’t had space for this during the fight with the Ghoul Warden Golem. Now she’d already mended Skela’s torn eardrums. Skela could hear again. So… what should she say?

Ask if anything still hurt? Or smile and say, “You’re awake”?

Both sounded wrong in her mouth, like borrowed shoes.

Maybe she should scold Skela for charging the Ghoul Warden Golem alone, headlong as a storm. That fit her better—except the patient had just woken, and scolding would be cruel. And before Skela’s ears were hurt, they’d quarreled about returning to the surface. Hazel didn’t want their first words to spark another fight.

Her thoughts tangled like threads in a loom. Skela’s soft voice cut the knot.

“I had such a long dream, Zer.”

Those gold eyes, under the blue light, rippled like water about to spill. She told Hazel gently:

“I dreamed I was locked on the operating table here, wrists and ankles trapped in cold iron shackles. Every day someone came with needles of different colors. The food was always gruel dusted with bitter powder.”

“…”

“I dreamed of a girl with light brown hair. Her clothes were always exquisite, and her face was so pretty, too perfect for this place. Yet every few days she crawled out from the pipes along the wall, like a little Elf who lived in the vents.”

A fond smile lifted her lips, fragile as spring petals.

“I loved her hands. She loved holding mine, keeping me company. Sometimes she brought tiny pastries. Sometimes she told me stories of the surface. She promised she’d take me back above and give me a wooden sun.”

Skela looked at Hazel, slipped a hand into the pocket at Hazel’s chest, and drew out what she’d felt pressed tight against her earlier.

A small wooden sun. It usually sat on Hazel’s nightstand. Skela studied the cuts in the wood; clumsy grooves spoke of a child who’d poured all she had into it.

She cradled it like a warm stone.

“Zer, that wasn’t a dream, was it?”

Hazel went still. After a long breath, she bit her lip.

“I don’t want you to remember that nightmare…”

She didn’t finish. Warm, damp softness silenced her.

Nocturne Grove’s blue magic flickered around them. The quiet air took a blush. Time paused like a held note.

Hazel froze and forgot to breathe. When they parted, she saw Skela panting softly, a faint red rising across the cheeks so close it felt like firelight. Hazel’s heart finally caught up, stumbling and then racing.

“If a nightmare has you in it, I don’t want to forget it, Zer.”

There might be sweeter words, a better place, a better hour. They didn’t need them.

No more testing. No more fevered tangles. It happened as water finds a slope, easy and sure. Like two girls tired from play, lying on grass without a word, hands finding each other, eyes on the stars above.

Yes. This was always what they were meant to be.

**

For a long stretch, Hazel and Skela didn’t speak. They rested in each other’s arms, sharing quiet warmth, like sunlight on stone. For a while, doing nothing felt perfect.

In the end, Hazel fractured the precious silence.

“Let’s go.”

“…Mm.”

Skela’s voice held a trace of reluctance. As Nocturne Grove faded, the fairy-tale sheen went with it. They were still in a nest of danger, deep in an underground lab. First priority was finding a way out.

Hazel braced a hand on the wall and tried to stand. Her fractured shin throbbed, dull and angry.

Nocturne Grove was high-tier healing, but Hazel’s mana was finite. She’d triaged the worst wounds. Now her mana was ash, and the fracture had worsened during the fight with Skela. She stumbled and almost fell back onto cold stone.

Before she hit, pale arms caught her like wings.

“You okay? I’ll carry you?”

Skela pressed in, flustered and earnest. Compared to the still-weak Hazel, she looked fine—better than fine. Her cheeks were rosier than usual, which probably had more to do with what had just happened than with recovery.

Hazel leaned against her, face burning. Shame pushed her to refuse, but she knew this wasn’t bravado. The Life-Synch Array still hummed between them. She felt their link flip from Hazel dragging Skela back, to Skela supporting Hazel, bright and steady.

Toka might be a devil, but he was right about one thing. Skela’s body was strong enough to put humans to shame.

Hazel felt that surge of life inside Skela, sighed, and gave in. She settled on Skela’s back like drifting reed.

Skela, seeing Hazel accept, hoisted her easily. She wasn’t tall or burly, but her steps were sure, like a sailor’s on deck. She even seemed to enjoy carrying someone, humming as she walked, light as a sparrow-skipping song.

A Ha Ten Parish folk tune rose, bright and quick.

“In winter’s third month, sailors hole up at home. New brides become the house’s pillar.”

Hazel listened to the foreign lilt of Hilgu words and felt a ripple of unreality, like stepping into a dream.

While she’d been hunched over a yew desk, heart buried in research, Skela had truly lived on the Empire’s border for over a decade.

Even now, it barely felt real.

A child thrown into a winter canal with her heart stopped, drifting on ice-cold current for a thousand miles, and surviving—Hazel had never been able to believe it, even with the living proof right here against her.

She buried her face in Skela’s silver hair and breathed deep, as if to anchor Skela’s presence. Dust and sweat chased the night, but under it lay the scent Hazel knew by heart.

Her breath teased Skela’s neck and drew a laugh like silver bells.

“D-don’t— that tickles~” Skela giggled, then turned her head and glanced at her. “What’s wrong, Zer?”

“…Back then—how did you survive that canal, that black vein cutting the city?”

Regret pricked first like a thorn, then the words hung cold like mist. Hazel wished she hadn’t touched that scar.

Skela arched a brow like a drawn bow. After a heartbeat of still water, she shook her head like a leaf.

“I don’t think I drifted long… then someone pulled me out…?”

Someone… pulled her out? The thought bobbed up like driftwood, then sank like a stone.

Maybe someone found her right after she fell, fished her from that iron-cold current. But then why send Skela all the way to the far-flung Ha Ten Parish, a lantern at the edge of night?

Hazel chased possibilities like fireflies, yet each one fizzled with holes. The clues were fog-thin, and the riddle grew knotted like roots—until something else cut in like a bell.

They met Adelaide halfway, a figure rising like a moon from crossroad shadow.

At a fork, Skela stopped short like a hound catching a scent. A shape peeled from the other branch like ink from the dark. They tensed like bows, then eased like slack strings.

“Adelaide…?” “Lady Adelaide!” Their voices rose together like twin echoes in a well.

Confusion followed like a trailing wind. The Adelaide before them looked battered, not broken, but weathered like stone after rain.

Her black robe, untouched even by the prison-wraith golem, was now torn open in clawed gashes. Beneath, a black bodysuit showed, inked with sacrificial arrays like climbing vines. More than the cloth, it was her face that snagged them like a hook.

Her veil was gone like shed skin, and for the first time tonight they saw that always-lovely face, bright as a polished blade.

Familiar as the moon they knew, yet strange as a new season, it was neither the sly demon who traded barbs with Hazel nor the all-embracing archangel in Skela’s heart.

Her expression now was storm-dark and frightening, a thunderhead crouched low on the horizon.

Her lids half-fell like evening blinds; her eyes were dark red like congealed blood. Hatred leaked from them like poison, cursing the world, scalding herself. She looked to Hazel like a wounded lion, ribs hot with a churning tide under thin skin. An aura bristled off her like a wire-tight tripmine—keep out, touch and it explodes.

Hazel had felt shame at being carried on someone’s back, a blush like dawn. Under that killing gaze, the shame burned off like dew.

In her mind, Adelaide always had cards like hidden blades, always had a plan like a compass. Hazel had never imagined this look, sharp as winter.

A shiver ran through her like a cold reed in wind. She tried, testing the ice.

“Are you… alright?”

“Toka’s below us. I’ve stripped him of his ability to resist.”

The answer skated past the question like a skipping stone. It was the intel Hazel wanted, but it dodged the heart of it.

She clearly wasn’t going to explain. Her body said the same, turning cleanly like a blade and moving off like a shadow.

“W-wait, Lady Adelaide!” Skela called, breath catching like a snag. Adelaide’s step paused a beat like a snared drum; she tilted her head, glanced back like a knife-edge.

“Thank you for helping us tonight! Without you, we’d never have made it here…!” Her words spilled like warm tea in cold hands.

Skela drew a beige gem from her pocket, smooth-warm like bone shaped by river. Its glow was soft yet sultry, a desert dancer beckoning in the dark.

It was the Dream Eater Spider’s Magic Core.

“I know no thanks can repay tonight’s grace… so I hope you’ll take this gem I got from Mira!” Her plea trembled like a thin flame.

At the name “Mira,” Hazel caught Adelaide’s shoulder flinch, a bird startled from a branch.

“Why?”

Adelaide turned and pinned Skela’s gaze like a spear to a shield.

“Uh… because I don’t have anything else worth much…” Under those blood-dark eyes, Skela faltered like a step on loose gravel; her voice dropped like dusk.

“And on the day of the arena bout, I had this feeling. Mira gave me this gem… because she meant it to help you.” The memory rose like smoke, then settled like ash.

Silence pooled between them like ink. Adelaide reached out and took the Dream Eater Spider’s Magic Core, hand steady as a blade on a block.

She studied it a long time, her look clouding like a sky before rain. The air held its breath like a lark. She stood so still they almost thought the core’s lingering power had lulled her like a cradle song.

At last, her fingers closed like a trap, smothering its bewitching light like a lid on a lantern.

“I understand.”

She left those words like a pebble in a pond, then turned and slipped into shadow like a fish into black water—gone before Hazel and Skela could move.