—Jiaqi.

It wasn’t a fluke. Firefly’s “welcome” wasn’t two neat syllables for “Jia” and “Qi,” but the efficient, intricate isolating tongue from her dream-road—Chinese.

Food from that other world had shocked and panicked her. Hearing Firefly speak her name in perfect Chinese scraped her mind blank, leaving a single question.

Why?

Why would anyone else know a name that should exist only inside her own memory?

Adelaide stood numb, a statue in moon-ink. The bracelet that flagged her mood surged at full power, a lighthouse in stormlight, yet she felt nothing.

She didn’t feel the circle behind her back blow out from backlash when her fingers stopped. Needle-prick pain in her nerve-rich fingertips blurred like rain on glass.

Night shadows twisted before her eyes, like ink in water, as if something was eating away at the nailed-down “real” of her world.

Mira’s voice tore through the fog and hauled her back.

—Adelaide!

Adelaide...?

Yes. That’s my name...

That voice hit like a shot of heart-fire, drove off part of the soul-tearing chill, and steadied the unraveling edges of her sight.

A hard impact smashed into her ribs. Her feet left the ground. A falling sensation spun her like a leaf in a gust.

Air punched from her lungs. Warmth clamped her waist and arm. Blood drifted across her vision like ruby petals in night wind.

Midair, Adelaide felt senses flood back, each bright shard forcing her mind to click into place.

She slammed down. Sand screeched. She skidded half a meter, lifting a gray fan of dust.

“Mi...ra?”

Adelaide pushed up, instinct reaching to brace Mira. Pain answered with a ragged gasp, and color burned Mira’s face the crimson of fever.

She bit her lip. Her breath came quick, a bellows in winter. And her right arm—

Adelaide’s hand met sticky warmth on Mira’s forearm. Her eyes widened. Her pupils reflected blood-red, twin moons in a scarlet pool.

Mira’s upper right arm was shredded. Skin and muscle were shaved away in strips. An inches-long gouge exposed bone veined with threads of red.

Only then did Adelaide truly wake, the world snapping into hard focus like frost on glass.

Mira had saved her from Firefly’s sneak strike. And paid in flesh.

No time. Stop the bleeding. And that monster—she’s still here—

Adelaide’s fingers trembled. A dozen urgent tasks jammed her thoughts. Too late. Another orange-red circle hung in the air, its chant already woven.

Losing yourself mid-fight is fatal at this tier. The mistake magnified like thunder in a canyon. Firefly didn’t even give her Crimson Frenzy.

The next beam came like a sunrise turned blade.

Adelaide couldn’t dodge. She refused to. Mira was rooted behind her like a wounded tree. There was no world in which she abandoned her.

She stepped in front of Mira, raised her left arm, a flimsy shield against a tidal wave.

Screams rose on cue, a raw animal note. She didn’t melt. She stood her ground, jaw clenched like a locked gate.

“Wow. You reacted to that, Miss Jiaqi.”

“Shut... up...!” Adelaide forced the words out. Pain rippled her muscles like lightning under skin. She drew breath in ragged gulps.

It wasn’t Firefly’s magic doing that. Every reinforcement circle on her body had collapsed into her arm, lines retreating like birds before a storm.

Too-high mana density necrosed her skin, gray creeping under violet bruises. She overloaded a limb, a burning fuse, to neutralize Firefly’s strike.

She spent the power she’d torn from the caravan’s dead, from her Sacrifice Domain, and paid for it in meat and pain.

Firefly floated and watched, hair wound around idle fingers. Her smile tightened, then widened, a blade glinting brighter.

“I see. I wondered how something so weak could threaten me. As a conduit, your potential beats my first guess.”

“Thanks for the compliment... really...”

“And that pointless stubborn will. Never learned how to quit...” Firefly’s gaze flicked to Adelaide’s hidden hand. She clicked her tongue, a cat annoyed.

Looks like I need to kill you here and now.

“Don’t count on—ugh!”

The second, refocused beam slashed her words in half, shoved her back a step. Mana multiplied, a river turned flood.

Overload bruising spread down her arm like spilled ink. Circles winked out across her body, lights dying in a city at night.

Adelaide lifted her chin, eyes locked on the flesh orb behind Firefly, that meat-balloon beating like a sick heart.

She’d confirmed it. Firefly’s Blood Magic talent matched her own at extremity. But Firefly lacked a Sacrifice Domain. No question.

To cast like this, freehand and ceaseless, and crush her total mana, Firefly had an outside source feeding her.

What was it?

She didn’t know. She knew only that, even in the best possible world, she had one shot left.

Her hidden hand shook. Backlash didn’t matter anymore. She traced Elven glyphs in the air, a lattice of light, complex as frost.

Her chant compressed to a knife-thin whisper. Sparks jumped in the air around her, wild mana spitting like a fire in wind.

Even cutting every safety, she was too slow.

She felt her surface circles shatter, scales popping from a dragon. Firefly’s beam would break through a breath before her spell sealed.

If luck smiled, she’d pay with an arm and shoulder, flesh for spellfire. If luck spat, half her body would char.

All of this on a gamble she could punch through Firefly’s defense.

Even so, it was the only fair trade left. She bit down. She didn’t look back. Burn the boats.

As the last circle on her arm flickered to ash, a sound rolled from far off, a low beast-note that trembled the air.

A lion’s roar bled from the canyon mouth, small against the mana thunder, carried by cliff echoes into the sleeping village.

Neither Adelaide nor Mira heard it first.

Firefly did.

Her pleased face drained like wine spilled on stone. She cut power, snapped back, and pulled a blood curtain with a jerk of will.

This time, she was the one too late.

Pressure lifted off Adelaide like a lid. Wind slapped her cheek, a cold ribbon.

Two golden flashes streaked past, tails burning like comets, arrow-straight toward Firefly.

Her blood screen lasted less than half a second. It tore like paper. Gold punched through, clean and unblinking.

Two dull wet pops thumped the air, meat and metal speaking in one bitter breath.

The first gold drilled through Firefly’s abdomen, carving a cavern on the left of her belly, a red hollow like rot in fruit.

The second hit her head dead on. Her glamorous face blew apart like flowers under fire, hair and skull shattered to glittering dust.

Red near-black matter rained down, a storm of viscera. Mira moved first, eyes hard through pain.

She didn’t know what the gold was. She knew a door had opened. She bared her teeth and used the sword hilt to lever herself up.

Her good left hand gripped the blade. Her right foot kicked the wall, a spring uncoiling, launching her into midair like a hawk.

She cut the empty-looking air between meatball and Firefly’s spine, a stroke at nothing—and something.

A sound like a snapped string twanged the night. An invisible tether broke. The meatball’s skin rippled and began to slough.

Adelaide’s hidden circle finally opened, a red flower bursting. Six blood beams shot out, weaving midair like threads pulled by deft fingers.

They braided into a feathered arrow, sharp as winter, then drove into the meatball’s heart.

Squelch.

Blood bloomed like a red chrysanthemum. The arrow tunneled through, bullet-cavity opening, and burst out the far side.

The blood slurry rippled in great rings. Firefly’s ruined body spasmed, a puppet with cut strings twitching midair.

It all happened too fast. From gold to arrow, it was a handful of seconds, a blink stretched long.

Adelaide’s mind lagged like a lantern in fog. Her body moved first. She lunged, arms opening to catch a falling golden figure.

“Mira!”

She caught her before she kissed dirt. That strike had burned Mira’s last ember clean. Mira sagged pale in Adelaide’s arms, breath a thin thread.

Adelaide’s lips trembled, a winter leaf. Her hands shook as she pressed cloth and pressure, stopping blood in stuttering rhythm.

Across the way, Firefly was worse—a ruin still whispering.

“N-no... I... I can still crush... these two ants...!”

For some reason, Firefly hadn’t died. Words still scraped out of what remained. The blast had torn open her skull above the jaw.

Only tongue and jaw clung to her spine like ragged straps. Her voice wheezed like a ripped bellows, ugly and raw.

Even now, she begged.

“Don’t... don’t take me back... Master!”

Her plea cut short. Space behind her split like silk under a blade, revealing empty void, a cold fjord of nothing.

“I can win... just a little more—”

The rift’s pull howled. Dust and grit rose from the ground, a reverse rain, swirling toward the tear like leaves in a whirlpool.

Adelaide tied the last quick wrap on Mira and turned. Firefly clawed to escape the pull, limbs straining like bent branches.

Hands reached from the void, pale and implacable. They grabbed her intact limbs and hauled with patient cruelty.

A half-headed body writhing in midair strained against sense. Adelaide froze for a heartbeat, mind stalling.

In that beat, Firefly’s ruined “head” snapped toward her, rage a furnace under shredded bone.

“I will never let you near Master—!”

For the first time, Firefly’s voice held no tease, no delight. Thick blood poured from the bowl of her skull like tar.

Her scream knifed along the cliff faces, a hate-note that shook stones, and didn’t stop until the void swallowed her whole.

The seam sealed. Night returned, smooth as lacquer.

Is it over...?

Adelaide stared at the nothing where the crack had been. Tight muscles loosened, a rope easing.

The thought lasted seconds. The flesh orb still hung in the sky, a red moon refusing to set.

No. That last scream wasn’t a vent. It was a call.

Adelaide tried to lift Mira, but the mana ripple riding that scream had already spread, a tide under sand.

The orb burst like a ripe pod, then clenched inward, shaping itself into a blood-red fetal shell that pulsed like a heart.

Inside it, a dark core beat, heavy and slow, a shadow pumping dread through the air.

Far off, soul crystals left by the corpse-giant shattered. A new wail rose, bigger than Firefly, grief a storm rolling downhill.

Countless wronged souls spilled free, crying in a black choir. They clawed at air, hands empty, trying to catch the world.

Ghost arms couldn’t touch anything anymore. They couldn’t stop sliding backward, pulled like weeds in flood.

They poured into the invisible ring of circles at the village edge, fed like grain into a mill.

Then, with a baby’s cry sharp enough to pierce eardrums and hearts alike, a blood-red storm swallowed the village whole.