"I'm a little tired, and I'm not hungry right now..." Her voice slipped through the wood like a thin thread in the night breeze.

The maid stood outside Adelaide's door with a dinner tray, a still pond under moonlight, and she didn’t leave despite the request drifting out.

"You haven't eaten all day, Lady Adelaide." Her tone held steady like a tray balanced on one palm.

"Uh, then... please leave dinner outside. In a bit... right, Anisa will bring it in." The words stumbled like pebbles on a shallow stream.

"Forgive my impertinence, but your personal maid took leave today." Her reply was crisp as frost on a window.

"No, she... she'll be back soon, don't worry." The voice wavered like a candle in a draft.

It was Adelaide’s voice, yet the stammer snagged like a burr; the maid’s eyes narrowed, a knife edge under a veil.

She set the tray down, then turned the hidden panel in the wall with a careful hand, a secret hatch the Douglas Family had installed before Adelaide returned to the sanatorium.

She pressed her cheek to the slit like a moth to a crack of light, but before her eyes could adapt to the unlit dark, her nose caught a wrong note like smoke in rain.

Adelaide’s room usually carried a lavender-like hush, a breeze the mistress herself wore, but tonight a flamboyant fragrance bloomed like a peacock tree in spring.

She focused and saw a pot of Tamm flowers on the nightstand, the same breed as in the garden beds outside, a purple spill in a simple vase.

In this season Tamm flowers shout their scent like summer thunder, so it was only natural they drowned out Adelaide’s gentle trace.

That neat explanation smoothed her doubt like a hand across rumpled silk, and she looked toward the bed beside the vase.

As if sensing her gaze fall like a net, the hump where a girl’s legs should be twitched under the sheet, a small fish under ice.

Adelaide seemed curled tight beneath the quilt, a snowball in a drift, even her head buried, her breath trembling like a winter reed.

A fragile girl who wanted to seal herself away from the world flickered in the maid’s mind like a lantern behind paper.

Considering the shock of being sent here, a low mood and a wish to see no one felt natural, like rain following thunder.

With that conclusion, pity softened the maid’s face like thawing wax; she closed the peephole without a sound and prepared to report “all normal” to the Douglas Family’s duke as on previous nights.

Under the sheet, the girl listened to the footsteps ebb like a receding tide, and kept herself balled up in the warm dark.

She waited a few minutes, counting heartbeats like beads, and only when the steps vanished did she push her head out of the stifling quilt to gulp fresh air like a diver breaking the surface.

The breath filling the room still sounded exactly like Adelaide’s, a chime struck behind a curtain, but if the maid had kept peeking, she wouldn’t have mistaken the girl on the bed.

Because the girl’s hair wasn’t white; it pooled like dark tea on linen.

The one under the sheet wasn’t Adelaide but her poor little maid, Anisa.

After finally catching her breath, Anisa glanced around in a flutter like a sparrow, then buried her neck back under the blanket to hide the spiderweb of a sound-mimic array etched on top.

She did all this sneaking because of her lady’s “little request,” a secret tucked like a note under a tea cup.

Anisa looked out the window; a three-quarters moon hung like a bitten peach, saying night had only begun, yet time felt like it had stretched a century thin.

Serving and watching a perfect lady at close distance, Anisa often dreamed of being a young mistress herself, a wildflower wishing to be a peony.

But once she became the stand-in when her lady was away, she learned how hard it was to hold that serene mask, as hard as still water in a storm.

The grievance pricked her like sand under the eyelid until she wanted to cry.

She sniffled, tucked her head deeper like a wary turtle, and whispered in a voice only she could hear, a moth’s wing in the dark.

"Please... come back soon, my lady..."

In a room washed by a weak light, a blonde girl lay on her back, hands folded on her chest like a saint in a glass coffin.

Click, click. The sound of the clock landed like pebbles, one by one, in a silent well.

The Magic Crystal Stone lamp drew shadows over her fine features like ink wash, and the pendulum’s swing drowned her breathing like rain on thatch.

It also covered the faint crackle of wood being gnawed and dissolved, a dry branch turning to pulp.

At the farthest window, a crystal-violet mist seeped in through the wood-grain seams like a slow-moving serpent, then thinned on the air into a colorless, tasteless breath.

The girl’s gem-bright blue eyes lay closed beneath their lids, a lake under frost, and her even chest rise said sleep had taken her whole.

The pendulum kept its pace like a metronome lashed to the tide, each second a mirror of the last, until the hands pointed at midnight.

In that moment, the standing clock’s innards reset with a clack, a hinge clicking like a beetle, and the window’s spindle scraped in answer.

Under that cover, the window opened without fuss, like a petal parting, and a figure lifted from the spreading shadow outside.

The intruder wore a dark-gray coat and a hood, with a mask covering the lower face, a night bird cloaked against the moon.

She didn’t want to be known, but her disguise was a thin cloud; with the right angle, the signature white hair gave her away like snow on coal.

It was Adelaide herself, the one who should’ve been sequestered in the sanatorium, a ghost stepping back into a forbidden room.

It didn’t matter; she wouldn’t let anyone see her like this, not even the room’s rightful owner.

She drew a shallow breath, and the gas filter in the mask gave a dull growl like a caged cat.

The crystal-violet gas she’d released here was extract from the Elenoru flower, a sweet-named carnivore of the garden.

Refined, its anesthetic fluid turned volatile, a lullaby in smoke; one breath, and even a werewolf under a full moon would sleep like a baby till dawn.

Which meant, whatever she did now, the room’s owner wouldn’t notice, like a stone tossed into a dream.

Adelaide glanced at the lit Magic Crystal Stone lamp on the desk; pain stabbed her wrist like a thorn, and the room felt both familiar and strange.

Familiar, because in her memory the girl could only sleep with a lamp on, a small sun to ward off shadows.

Strange, because of the room itself—bare walls, blurred-grain wood floor, a desk, a lamp, a hard chair, a standing clock, a bed, a monk’s cell in a palace.

Skela once dragged Adelaide to see her own room, and if that austere, nunlike style should be called “minimal,” this was merely “bare-bones,” a bone picked clean.

These few pieces didn’t meet the simplest personal needs, a desert of comfort in royal ground.

It hadn’t always been this way; back then Adelaide brought gifts now and then, small clouds on a plain sky.

Fluffy carpets, teddy bears and puppies, pink touches everywhere, childlike dreams perched on every surface like doves.

Adelaide went to the bed and pressed a hand to the mattress; her fingertips met iron under cloth.

This wasn’t a bed for a girl in bloom; only bodies hammered by the strictest training needed such hardness to keep a straight spine.

"Mira..." The name slipped out like a prayer, and the pain in her wrist peaked like lightning.

In the sleep-soft face, Adelaide caught a shadow of that black-haired girl of the past, a ghost beneath the gold.

While I wasn’t watching you, you went and... changed this much all on your own... The thought burned like brandy in an empty stomach.

She bit her lip; emotion surged like wildfire, licking her reason to ash, and her hand reached for that cheek without permission, a moth to a flame.

Ding—!

Light flared and cut the room like a flash of summer steel, and sparks leaped where two long swords kissed, white fish scattering in the dark.

Adelaide’s body took the hit and retreated from the bed, a leaf blown back by a sudden gust.

Reflex had raised her guard, but the sight of Mira on her feet still stunned her, a bell rung in a church’s hollow.

She should’ve been unconscious. Why?

Was she faking sleep from the start...?

Either way, the fact stood like a stone in a stream, and Adelaide’s heart went cold as a well.

She couldn’t fight Mira here; win or lose up close didn’t matter, because any royal alarm would end everything like a slammed gate.

What now? Dark-red light flared in her palm like embers; the sacrificial array woke as if tasting blood.

She could unleash Crimson Frenzy now; it would give her one chance to put Mira down, a thunderclap to break a storm.

Crimson Frenzy’s speed-up could cancel the Time Domain for a single instant, a spark against frost.

If Mira sensed that and turtled, the fight would bog down like a cart in mud.

Only now did Adelaide regret not resting this past week; the remorse crawled like ants.

Crimson Frenzy spent her own blood; each release demanded long nursing to return her body to calm water.

She was still under the drag of the two Crimson Frenzies from the underground lab, a weight on her bones like wet wool.

Every extra use would bruise her brittle frame, and she’d rather not, if she could help it, like a swimmer avoiding a riptide.

But Mira gave her no time to weigh the scales; the next strike flashed to Adelaide’s face like a hawk’s dive.

More sparks flew, fireflies scattering, and Adelaide stepped back again without choice, a dancer pressed by drums.

Her back hit the sill; the hanging flower pot outside jolted and dropped, a clay comet falling through dark.

With no options left, she steeled herself and crushed the sacrificial array in her hand, a wineglass shattered in a fist.

But right as she moved to press her palm to her chest, some impulse tipped her chin up like a finger under her jaw.

Blood-bright eyes behind the mask met Mira’s close-blue gaze, lake to flame, at breath’s distance.

"Big sister...?" The word drifted off Mira’s blade like a petal.

The force on the sword softened at once, pressure easing like tide undone by moon, and a daze flickered in Mira’s eyes.

Then a soft light rose there, a dawn glow, something more like joy than disbelief at finding Adelaide here.

Adelaide couldn’t read her thoughts, a book shut by wind, and she almost asked.

Before she could, Mira let go of the sword, then tipped forward and fell into Adelaide’s arms like a fainting lily.

...Eh?

The hand holding the broken array hung midair like a stopped clock, yet warmth pressed into Adelaide’s chest, a bird settling on a branch.

She froze in that pose, letting Mira melt against her like warm wax, until the array’s brief time bled away in her palm.

Only then did she realize Mira had slipped into sleep, a deep lake swallowing a stone.

So... she took a breath of the anesthetic by accident? Was Mira the type to make that mistake mid-fight? The thought was a mix of sour and sweet, a strange tea.

The knot that had choked her a moment ago loosened itself like a string cut, but downstairs a murmur rose, a ripple through quiet.

"(Why did this flower pot fall?)" The royal guards’ voices came muffled, like talking through water.

With the first word, Adelaide snapped her fingers; the Magic Crystal Stone lamp died at once, a star pinched out, so her shadow wouldn’t stain the curtain.

"(Told you, I’ve reported that wall needs fixing a few times, and they say the royals don’t have spare budget. It’s a joke...)"

Adelaide flattened to the wall like ivy, and eased a breath when suspicion didn’t lift like a spear.

It wasn’t great news; they hadn’t left, and the window was no longer a gate to the night, a path blocked by idle soldiers.

Only one safe road remained... She weighed it for a heartbeat like a scale, then lifted the sleeping Mira and slipped from the bare room without a sound, a shadow carrying a warmer shadow.

Adelaide chose a secret passage that linked the underground wine cellar to the outer city, a rabbit run through stone.

It was the exit the heroine found in the “script,” and it should be the safest road now, a path mapped by fate.

She had to cross the sitting room and some open spaces, dry ponds in a winter garden, but no guards patrolled there.

Only high-ranking people came that way, and they would be deep in sleep now, like logs in embers.

By the time anyone sensed something wrong, Prince Samir’s fiancée would be gone like mist at dawn.

Yes, bride-stealing—that was Adelaide’s plan to stop the betrothal, to snatch Mira before the vows and hide her in a hidden cellar near the Empire’s border.

And then...

...In truth, what came after, Adelaide hadn’t figured out yet, a blank page waiting for ink.

This was probably the first time Adelaide moved without a plan, stepping into fog without a lantern, knowing the fog did nothing for her.

She stacked excuses like paper charms in a storm. Anisa would give her an alibi; no one would suspect her; Mira was a wild variable; cutting interference was good.

Taken together, she knew she was tossing sparks into her own powder keg. For the throne, harm outweighed help. In every sense, it was foolish.

Yet even with that chill in her gut, she still came.

All other reasons were ash. She had only one flame.

Mira was hers. Without her say‑so… no one had the right to touch her.

Unaware, her gaze drifted back to the sleeping girl in her arms, like a moth to a small, warm light. She watched those lashes like moth wings and forgot the palace’s stone hush, like a pond gone still.

Until a familiar scent hit, like iron in rain.

A familiar blood‑scent bloomed like rust in rain. Her skin prickled; her instincts drew a bowstring tight and stopped her step mid‑air.

Somehow, she had drifted into the parlor like a sleepwalker. No lamps burned. Moonlight pooled like water, painting fat shadows over luxe furniture.

The massive cage crouched in a corner under a drape like a funeral shroud. The reek of blood leaked from its base like a slow stain.

But rot wasn’t what checked her feet; a sharper edge kissed her path.

Clack.

Her mask slipped, split midair into two petals, and struck the floor with a crisp chime that rang through the hushed room.

A bead of cold sweat clung to her chin like dew on stone. A hair‑thin silver thread lay across the dark like a drawn blade.

One more step, and it would open her cheek the way it had sliced the mask, like paper under a knife.

She was already inside a web of silver, each line a knife, each gleam a moonlit fang.

“What a terrifying instinct. I thought I could at least mark your pretty face, Miss Adelaide.”

Her eyes narrowed. She knew that voice. Scarlet rings of mana flared around her fingers like coals breathing.

“Oh? If I were you, I wouldn’t move. You’re surrounded by silver threa—”

A crimson flash scissored the air. Every silver thread parted, drifting down like snow shaken from eaves.

“Sorry, what was that?” Her words fell light, like frost.

With one hand, she laid Mira down like setting jade on velvet. In the other, the chain‑blade clicked together and became the Bloodsword, its edge drinking moonlight like wine.

She did it slow, like smoothing a sleeve. Then she tilted her head toward the voice, as if she’d swept up dust and set the broom aside.

After a few seconds, the man in the dark began to clap, the sound light and dry as leaves.

“As expected of the figure every Blood Mage of our era admires. It seems I’ve embarrassed myself.”

“In that case, how about this,” Adelaide said, voice like a spring breeze over steel. “Your organization and I don’t interfere. We walk our own roads. Agreed?”

Inside, her calm was paper‑thin, like rice paper over a brazier. She had recognized him by sound alone—the same man in black from her probe into the king’s death, a shadow bleeding through memory.

Why was someone from the Blood Mage organization here? Cards flicked through her mind like knives.

More than any answer, she wanted to avoid a fight, like stepping out of a coming storm. So she wore ease like a mask to weigh on him.

He didn’t buy it. He sighed, the note soft as a regretful string.

“Sorry. That won’t be possible. After all…”

He stepped out of the shadow. Moonlight poured silver over his golden hair like wheat gilded at dawn. No hooded robe tonight; nothing to hide.

“After all, I can’t watch you steal my brother’s bride.”

For a heartbeat, Adelaide couldn’t trust her eyes, like mist parting the wrong way. Even her worst dreams hadn’t dressed a cruel torturer in such a gentle, androgynous face, like a wolf behind satin.

A blade in silk stood before her—the Third Prince Rahman.

“What’s wrong? Surprised it’s me?” His words curled like smoke.

Rahman shrugged, thorns in his smile like briars on a path. Adelaide lost the weight of her pose and pinned him with a stare like driving a spear.

“Impossible. You clearly—” Her voice was a drawn wire.

“—clearly had only a ‘low’ aptitude for water magic.” Rahman’s tone slipped back to the boyish voice she knew, his mockery sharper, like a knife honed on stone.

“Doesn’t that sound familiar?” The words flicked like a whip.

Adelaide’s pupils widened, memory rising like a cold spring. She recalled the strangeness when Skela first brought Rahman to the student council, like grit under silk.

Rahman laughed, playful as a cat with claws hidden.

“Exactly. Just like you told me—I’m your kindred, Miss Adelaide.”