“So, are you ready?”

Varie sat by the fire, her voice like a blade drawn in moonlight.

“Elves aren’t a bunch of soft-hearted fools. Even if you get in, you’ll end up like this stick.”

She leaned back and flicked the last twig into the flames, sparks leaping like scattered stars into the velvet night.

“They’ll eat you clean, and you’ll have nothing left but ash.”

Adelaide didn’t answer; she lifted her gaze like a lone hawk and stared into the far night.

At the edge of that night, a jade-green dome swelled like the sky itself, a world-covering canopy of runes that made the Elven Realm a sealed island in a sea of men.

By the plan, they would reach the Elven Realm’s border tomorrow, their wheels like beetles crawling toward a forbidden grove.

Since taking Anta as her apprentice, six weeks had passed like water through fingers, and Adelaide had pegged Anta’s mana as corrosive water, acid licking like rain on stone.

She was already tailoring classes, threads of teaching like fine silk drawn through the loom.

With Adelaide’s blood as a dark river of aid, Mira’s wounds had knit shut like ivy reclaiming brick, leaving only paler skin where bandages had shaded the sun.

That was the result Adelaide wanted, a garden trimmed to perfection and shadow.

Yet good news lay on her face like frost, refusing to thaw under the campfire’s glow.

“Finger-twiddler, you really want that Savia Rose so badly?” Varie’s tone was a pebble tossed into a still pond, ripples of doubt chilling the air.

That unease didn’t live only in her chest; it rustled like reeds in all of them.

Adelaide watched the slow-turning auspicious-cloud sigils in the dome’s lines, and anxiety crawled under her skin like ants in summer dust.

She wouldn’t share that with Varie; instead she reached for thorns and threw a barbed line.

“Those ears of yours are a beacon; sure you don’t want me to cut them out like weeds?”

Varie’s round ears twitched like startled rabbits, and her long cat eyes flashed with a knife’s cold light.

“No need! I’ve said it a dozen times—I’m a Hero, slipping in is child’s play.”

“A Hero in name and deed…” Adelaide echoed, the foreign word tasting like spice on her tongue, then rose from the log-stool, brushing sand from her skirt like petals from stone.

“My answer’s the same—I’m Adelaide, and anything I want, I’ll take, like a hawk stooping for prey.”

“That thing isn’t even good for you—I told you already, that damned rose—”

“You don’t need my reasons, same as I don’t care for your tangled feud with the Elf race.” Adelaide paused, her steps a held breath, then glanced back with eyes like winter glass.

“We’re partners for profit, not soulmates for secrets, lioness.”

“Hah??? Wait—”

Varie’s words burned like sparks that never found tinder; Adelaide turned away like a tide pulling out, leaving Varie by the fire with her confusion like smoke.

“What’s with her? We’re close now, and she’s turned into a powder keg.” Varie threw up her hands to the beanpole beside her, her complaint a wind kicking sand.

Lately, because Adelaide’s crew ate and slept on Varie’s dime, and the Nacha Tribe had pampered wounded Mira like a sick bird in warm straw, Adelaide had stayed polite, a heiress mask like lacquer over wood.

Why the sudden temper spike, why the storm after the calm—Varie couldn’t read it, but Adelaide couldn’t fool herself, her heart a drum thudding against a locked chest.

Especially when they reached the Elven border’s mouth, and the gate wore the same style as in the “dream,” a memory like a lantern flaring in fog.

At first, when the Nacha Tribe lead barked for the convoy to halt, they stared at dunes like waves of gold.

He drew a jade token and fed it mana, and the desert twisted like heat-haze, then brick walls rose from nothing like a mirage hardening into stone.

Those timber wedges and brick patterns should’ve been alien to Adelaide, yet they plucked her nerves like a lute string, leaving her staring like a statue in moonlit garden.

She’d already suspected, from the desert village’s familiar dish names and the Elven craftwork on Varie’s trinkets, a thread like incense smoke drifting toward a truth.

Seeing it made her hands and feet go cold, winter water flooding a summer body.

Why was there Chinese-style architecture here, the style that lived only in her “dream,” a paper crane finding its twin in a living forest?

The question curled around her heart like a black serpent, scales whispering against bone.

Maybe it was a coincidence; maybe there was another answer—her wrist stung like a needle, and her mind dodged the final step like a deer skirting a cliff.

Then a voice cut the mist, ending coincidence like a blade through silk.

“Exiles, why have you come?” The crisp, neutral call fell from the high wall like sleet, carrying a bite of hostility like iron in water.

They spoke a tongue Adelaide knew, a bell tolling in a closed temple.

Chinese.

While Adelaide drowned in thought like a swimmer under black water, Varie cupped her hands and shouted back, her words flung like stones toward a gate.

“Relax, we’re not entering the city. We passed Tatapakari Village and found a convoy hit by unknown Blood Mage forces. These humans are the last survivors; they need supplies to turn back.”

“Wait, you’re saying the entire Tatapakari Village… only these are left?” The hostility cracked like ice, shock rushing in like cold wind.

“Yes, and most of them are the Human Empire’s investigation convoy,” Varie said, her voice weary like a traveler drinking from a dry canteen.

Voices rustled on the wall like leaves, then the same voice answered, a thread pulled tight across distance.

“Why not send them straight back to the Empire instead of bringing them here?” The question hung like rain caught on a bare branch.

“Our own supplies won’t reach the Human Empire; it’s this or watch them die,” Varie said with practiced sighs like footprints laid before dawn. “Any problem? You can wipe memories when you send them off. That’s what you’ve been doing, right?”

They’d prepared that story like armor fitted to a body, and the massacre had shaken the other side like thunder, so the questions never cut deep, just brushed dates and details like fingers over a map.

“Don’t tell us how to do our job, Exile.” The voice still snapped like a twig, but heavy crossbows turned like crows banking in wind, and the gate yawned open like a river mouth.

“Exiles, stay put. All humans, dismount. Entering requires inspection!” The command rolled like a drumbeat, and the convoy flowed down like ants from a log.

Adelaide didn’t move; she stood still as frost on stone.

“Sis.” Mira saw the dragon-head carvings on the buildings reflected in Adelaide’s wide eyes, eyes that never blinked like lanterns in a long night.

She touched Adelaide’s hand, a gentle tap like rain on a window, and whispered.

“We’re going in.”

After a few seconds, Adelaide drew her gaze away like a tide retreating, lowering her head as if dodging a sky too heavy to bear.

“…Mm.” The sound fell like a pebble into a deep well.

They followed the others, steps slow as shadows, and watched an Elf in mana-gilded armor stare up at a “human” nearly half-again taller, muscles like ropes under sunburned skin.

“Hey, you…” Suspicion pricked like thorns; even with ears sacrificed to the disguise, the Nacha Tribe’s size stood out like a tree in a field.

Varie’s pupils tightened like knots, alarm flaring like a match.

Move, finger-twiddler, do your part—her gaze cut to Adelaide, who still watched the ground like a crow examining river stones.

The plan said that if someone pushed, Adelaide would smudge minds like ink on wet paper, yet she didn’t move, a statue among reeds.

“Hey—what’s your name? Are you from Tatapakari Village?” The soldier’s bark was a dog at the fence, while the infiltrator, half-deaf without ears, stared back like a cow at thunder.

The soldier’s hand touched his weapon, tension rising like heat off stone—air strung taut as bowline.

“(Yes. They say Tatapakari Village was hit by unknown Blood Mages… Right, they’re all survivors.)” Far off, a high-ranking Elf spoke to someone inside a carriage, his words like folded orders passed hand to hand.

A pale hand lifted the curtain, a glance widened like a lotus opening, then a crisp salute cut the air, and the officer turned to shout like a horn.

“Let this group pass!”

The soldier gaped, confusion fluttering like moths. “But…”

“No buts. It’s a direct order from Lord Silan!”

“Uh… yes, sir!” His answer was awkward as a stone skipped wrong, but he stepped aside, the path clearing like reeds stirred by wind.

Varie finally exhaled, relief pouring out like steam from a kettle, her heartbeat settling like dust after a stampede.

She didn’t know why or how, but passage was passage, a door open in a cliff.

She glanced at Adelaide again, the girl’s soul adrift like a kite with a cut string, and she cursed silently, her thoughts snapping like twigs.

Mira saw it closer, worry rising in her chest like smoke trapped under a roof.

She couldn’t act openly; under eyes everywhere, she merely laced her fingers with Adelaide’s, a secret knot of palms like ivy joining two stones.

Cold pricked her skin from Adelaide’s touch, a winter stream winding through summer grass, and fear surged in her own heart like a startled flock.

After inspection, they were herded into an inn-like hall, doors closing like shutters against wind, and at last the room held only two shadows in lamplight.

“Wait, let me lock the door first…” Mira let go, reaching for the bolt like a hand to a bar, and she began to weave an anti-eavesdropping array, lines like spider silk in the air.

She’d barely pulled away from that icy palm when Adelaide seized her again, fingers clamping like iron on wet rope.

“Uh… sis, people outside can hear—mm!?”

In a blink, Adelaide pushed Mira onto the bed, their bodies sinking into quilts like stones dropped into moss, silk under them softer than imperial velvet, a river of smoothness unnoticed.

Mira felt a pinch at her neck, a sting quick as a thorn nicking skin, a bead of pain blooming like a red petal.

“Wait—ah…” After a month and a half, those little fangs sank in again like crescent moons on pale bark, a pure echo of the bathhouse night.

Only this time, no warmth rose like incense, and no gentleness spread like tea in a cup—just a claim pressed hard as a brand on skin.

The bite left quickly, hardly any blood drawn, a thirst denied like a well capped with stone.

This wasn’t hunger—Mira knew it, the certainty blooming like dawn over rooftops.

If the last times were drinking, this was a beast scratching its mark on a tree, a territory line burned into bark.

But why?

“Don’t… let go.” Adelaide kept her face buried against Mira’s neck, words thin as mist, voice trembling like a leaf in early frost.

In that tremor, Mira heard fear, a chime caught by wind, a heart beating fast beneath armor.

Was she… afraid?