Deep-violet mana, and planks that snapped at a touch like brittle frost—Adelaide could tell Anta carried a corrosive twist. That wasn’t the point tonight.

What mattered was the way her spell behaved, like a shadow ripple under moonlight.

When the magic missile brushed the plank, her defense array stayed silent as a stone pond. Yet the board behind it broke, as if sulking into splinters by itself.

In other words, Anta’s mana slipped past the array without tripping it, like water through silk, and bit the thing beyond.

As far as Adelaide knew, only one innate domain did that.

The Shadow Plane Domain.

Unlike the Silver‑Mane Great Ape’s trick—smashing through obstacles like thunder through a cliff—it only ignored the physical. That ape’s power couldn’t pierce a barrier woven of mana, while the Shadow Plane was different, honed for mage‑on‑mage war like a knife for night work.

Picture this: both casters fling fireballs at each other. Their magic won’t meet and cancel midair. It drifts past, lanterns passing in fog, as if there were no resistance at all.

As the name says, the caster’s mana lives in a shadowed plane, like a reflection in dark water, never touching the currents of other spells in the waking world.

If you fight that without knowing and raise a shield like in a normal duel, you’re doomed—your ward is a paper lantern in rain.

History agrees. The previous wielder was infamous for assassinations, his blade a whisper from the shade. He felled masters like trees in a storm, the first strike punching through without warning and leaving no fight in them.

Because of that, the domain earned a second name—the Assassin’s Domain.

Of course, Adelaide didn’t pin this purple‑haired child to a blood‑soaked killer. But the girl suddenly gleamed like a gold ingot to her eyes.

Shadow Plane isn’t as rare as Sacrifice or the Time Domain, yet the last record was fifty years back. If she could fold this child into her hand, that would be a fortune well made. With that thought, she brought Anta back to her tent.

“Don’t run off. Wait here for your teacher. I’ll be right back.”

She said it and asked Mira to watch the child for a while, then hurried out toward Varie, chasing materials to test Anta’s attributes and edge in detail.

Our poor, lucky Anta didn’t know that Adelaide had only just, for the first time, truly considered taking her as an apprentice. Mira knew, at least in outline.

She’d seen that bright spark in Adelaide’s eyes she couldn’t smother before leaving. A guess settled in Mira’s chest like a resting bird.

“Congratulations, Anta.”

“Eh? Ah!”

Congratulated, Anta went stiff like a deer under torchlight. Her hands flicked behind her back, then to her sides, fluttering like startled sparrows.

You couldn’t blame her. This was, in truth, her first real talk with Mira.

Last time, Anta had been half‑unconscious. Once the village crisis passed, Mira stayed in the tent to heal, so there’d been no chance to chat.

“Um… Sister Mira, what are you congratulating me for…?”

“You earned the teacher’s approval. That’s worth celebrating.”

She said it with a soft smile, but inside she let out a hidden sigh, like steam off bitter tea.

She’d sent the girl to Adelaide with private hopes. Yet when she felt Adelaide truly meant to keep her, a thin bitterness rose in her throat.

Anta stood beside her and watched Mira’s eyes dip. As if sensing a current under the surface, she hesitated, then spoke.

“Sister Mira, do you like the teacher?”

“...Uh?”

This time Mira went rigid, pulling the blanket into creases like waves on sand.

“Why ask that all of a sudden… D‑did she say something?”

Anta shook her head. “No. But she smiles whenever she mentions you.”

“But… she’s smiling most of the time, isn’t she…”

Mira blushed and tried to steer away, yet Anta cupped her small head, thought like a cat listening at a wall, then shook it.

“It feels… her smile isn’t the same as usual.”

At that, Mira’s eyes widened, a flicker of joy like sunrise on water, and then her fingers tightened again.

“She… is my older sister.”

She said it to Anta, and to herself, like a mantra carved on wood.

Anta was still a child and didn’t catch the undertow. She just smiled with her.

“So, Sister Mira, you do like the teacher?”

Facing those clear, wide eyes, Mira could only sigh again, thin as wind.

“Mm. I’m her sister, after all.”

“I thought so,” Anta said, staring at Mira’s face and gold hair like a curious magpie. “But your hair and eyes aren’t the same colors.”

“That’s a story that won’t finish before your sister gets back,” Mira said, tapping the purple head now peeking at the window like a sprout. “More important—why do you want to be her student?”

Mira asked, but Anta didn’t answer right away.

“Anta?”

Something felt off. The innocence in those violet eyes faded like a lantern going dark. She stared ahead, as if at a thing that wasn’t in the room at all.

In the unfocused pupils, a deep‑violet flame burned, cold as starlight.

“I want to kill the man in red.”

All told, the village’s nightmare was likely led by that “man in red,” and the woman called Firefly was probably his subordinate.

The oil lamp wavered in the night breeze like a ship light. Mira flipped through notes she’d taken from her talk with Anta, syncing what she’d learned with Adelaide across the nightstand.

“Does Anta know where that castle of human flesh sits?”

Mira shook her head. “She went in through a portal. When she got out, the portal was gone.”

“A single‑use teleportation array…”

Adelaide reached the conclusion at once and clicked her tongue, annoyed like a sparrow pecked by rain.

Watching her think, Mira closed the notebook with a soft thud, like a lid on a pot.

“You still think this has nothing to do with General Slandor?”

Adelaide nodded. “They did get word we were leaving, but the timing doesn’t match. And if General Slandor sold us out, Rockridge wouldn’t need to use the man in red to locate us—she knows the convoy’s route like lines in her palm.”

She fell quiet again, eyes closed, thought drifting like smoke.

“Maybe there’s a spell that detects departures. But to do that, the array would have to ring the whole border like a chain of standing stones… Wait. Is that the ‘super‑spell’ the general mentioned?”

But why would Rockridge spend that much effort? Watching two conduits like birds in a cage?

No. Something’s wrong. His aim won’t be that simple…

Mira watched Adelaide rub her brow, tangled like vines. She hesitated for a few heartbeats, then took her hand, warm as a hearth.

“Sister, we have too few clues. Thinking won’t help right now. Besides, we’re about to enter the realm of the Elves. Rockridge, no matter how capable, can’t chase us there.”

Her drifting gaze settled on Adelaide’s face like a leaf on water. She met her eyes and spoke, serious as winter.

“I think we can relax a little. I want to see… my sister smiling.”

“...Eh?”

White and gold—two girls with different hair like moon and wheat—both flushed the same blush.

It was the first time since that day Adelaide had heard something so direct. She couldn’t help a dazed sound, then looked away as if from a bright sun.

Words like that… must be normal between sisters, right?

Her thoughts churned for a heartbeat like rain over tiles, yet she didn’t let go of Mira’s hand. She turned her head and, not meeting her eyes, murmured in a low voice.

“Honestly… after you say that, how am I supposed to smile…”