What am I afraid of? The thought churns like storm water in Adelaide’s skull, never settling. The fact she spoke that tongue so fluently turns into a soul-deep shadow. It seeped in even before she answered that Elf woman. It bit like winter ice, yet made everything boil. It tore through everything, even the thing called “Adelaide.”

A wolf-at-the-door kind of crisis bares its teeth, leaving one thought in her heart.

Mira… Mira…

Yes. It’s fine. I still have Mira. If I hold her like before, the wind in me will settle.

Adelaide lifts her face like a flower seeking light and looks to Mira. She wants to move closer, to open her arms and catch warmth.

But she meets a pair of startled eyes.

“You really… know their language…?”

“Really…?” The word drops like a stone into a lake.

Adelaide’s burning thoughts plunge into an ice pit. They freeze.

“‘After all’—so…”

“You knew?”

She locks her gaze to Mira’s pupils. Her voice loses all warmth.

“You’ve always… known?”

“I—”

Mira hesitates, then moves her eyes away like a bird breaking a line of sight.

“You used to mutter it in your sleep…”

Adelaide steps back. A tremor rises from deep in her chest, like a drum under snow.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to overhear—”

The apology never reaches her. Adelaide clamps her head, breath ragged. That tearing makes standing a cliff. She sets her shoulder to the wall like a tired tree leaning.

Mira rushes in to hold her, but Adelaide swats her hand away, a trapped animal under a lantern.

“Go—back.”

“Huh?”

Mira freezes, staring at a sister who seems to have shed her old skin.

“But we haven’t—”

“I said—get back!!!”

She screams it, almost self-destructing, a kettle finally bursting. She doesn’t care if other Elves hear her speaking a foreign tongue. She lets the pressure in her chest erupt like lava.

“Go back. I don’t want to see you right now!”

Mira opens her mouth to speak, then meets those bloodshot, feral eyes. She presses her lips shut, like holding rain behind a dam.

“I’ll… wait in our room.”

As she turns away, Adelaide catches the wounded look, like a stray pup left in the rain.

Wait—

Adelaide lifts a hand toward Mira’s retreating back. The saving words snag like thorns in her throat. She watches Mira vanish into the market’s river of bodies.

A breeze toys with her hood like a cat with string. The night market’s hum keeps scraping the air.

Adelaide holds that pose for a long time, a statue under wind. Then her arm sinks, heavy as wet cloth.

What… did I just do…?

Tear and regret knot and tangle in her head like vines. Her awareness flickers, a lantern guttering, as if the mind hunts for meaning in its own storm. Reflex moves her feet; she walks.

She drifts without destination, a leaf in a current. She slides into the bright street, bumping who knows how many shoulders. Replies come—kind concern, impatient gripes, sly flirtations—but no sound pierces the water over her ears.

Until she climbs a small hill that overlooks the whole night market, a perch above a sea of lanterns.

Whoosh—bang!

A chest-rattling echo tumbles from the sky. Adelaide turns like a flower to thunder.

Her eyes fill with a sky of stars, fireworks stitched into night.

Countless bursts bloom on the black vault. Another booming flower opens. A river of light—like a spilled Milky Way—brightens her unfocused gaze.

Cheers rise from the Elves below, a wave at the mountain’s foot. Adelaide hears nothing. The world goes silent, like snow over a field.

Only the image remains.

An image not of this world, like a forfeited reel spooling into her mind.

Bleached film floods her skull. The scene is so clear, so real, she feels herself thin and vanish, like breath on glass.

In that instant, only one thing exists… Jiaqi.

She stands on a balcony, bare as bone. Rubble from the site presses her soles like gravel teeth, but she doesn’t move.

She just stands, inside a concrete shell that might never be finished, a husk against late wind. Behind her, the last mason packs his tools, metal clinking like wan bells.

“Engineer Jia, not leaving yet?”

Jiaqi remembers the uncle’s surname: He. “Foreman He,” she calls, but her eyes stay on the ground, ten-plus floors down, a dark pool.

“I’m fine. Just want some wind. You go on ahead.”

“Oh, I see.” He wants to say more, then just shakes his head, resignation like dust. “You’ve worked hard. Even with the deadline, Boss Chen shouldn’t curse like that…”

Footsteps fade down the stairwell, a falling wave. A sigh lingers like smoke.

“Anyway, get some sleep. Busy tomorrow.”

Jiaqi doesn’t answer. She watches the distance, a lighthouse without a beam.

There, the city’s New Year fireworks at the civic center have begun, red flowers opening in steel sky.

Past midnight, a soft whoosh. Then a roar that hums the ribcage like a drum.

Cinders of firelight drift, bejeweling a city whose stars were erased by light, sprinkling night with borrowed constellations.

Her phone starts to buzz in her pocket, a trapped bee. Family, probably. She doesn’t want to pick up, doesn’t even want to decline; the screen is a cold moon she won’t touch.

The phone’s hum, dust shaken loose by fireworks, and that familiar latex and formaldehyde tang mix like bitter tea.

Watching the far-off blaze, Jiaqi feels drowsy, like dreaming on a train. Her feet grow light, untethered. High-rise wind brushes her cheek like a cool hand. She imagines the fall, a long, silver ribbon.

Falling wrapped in stars—would the wind then feel just as… easy?

In her hazy gaze, the sky blurs, then overlays the present, until Adelaide’s fireworks fully replace it, a tide washing one shore for another.

A burning acid rises in Adelaide’s throat, like bile and fire. She catches the wall and retches, a dry river.

Only now does she understand the shape of that fear, a beast she can finally name.

She doesn’t want to admit it. She doesn’t want to admit the facts, stones set in a path.

She told the Lioness she always gets what she wants, words like blades. But what leverage does she have left? What coin in this market of thorns?

Family she could lean on, hard-won renown, even bonds rebuilt by shedding her self—all turned to ash the moment Rockridge declared her talent for Blood Magic.

She’s already lost everything, and still wants to be king…?

Dreams became jeering demons, mirrors that laugh. Carefully laid plans became scrap paper, tossed into rain.

Even the one solace left, the one thing truly hers—Mira—becomes the final straw that crushes the camel of her pride.

When her weakness stood bare before her, she shattered with one touch, porcelain under a hammer. Every line broke, a dam in spring.

No logic. Absurd facts glare like noon sun. So Adelaide lost control, a kite cut loose.

Beautiful fireworks bloom before her like lotus in night, and she feels nothing, a field after harvest.

Never has the border of dream and waking felt so thin, a gauze veil in wind.

Never has she felt… so close to that failure, like two faces in one mirror.

The mental tearing reaches its limit. She hasn’t eaten since last night; there’s nothing left to give the ground. Adelaide slides down the wall, a fallen leaf.

Her body’s shield kicks in like a shutter dropping. She closes her eyes, dark water over flame.

I want to run.

I want to drop everything. Leave this country. Leave these sights that hurt and tell you what a failure you are, signboards that won’t stop blinking.

You shouldn’t have come here. You knew that, didn’t you.

Yes. Before anything else happens, turn and run. Go back to the hotel. Pack. Walk away. Pretend nothing happened. Pretend you never coveted that damned rose, thorn and all…

The imagined relief tugs her mouth like a loose thread. She has the strength to mock herself.

And you’ll apologize to Mira later. Yelling at her like that— you’re rotten, Adelaide. A storm without rain.

She didn’t do anything wrong. She was just worried about you, a lamp in your fog…

In the dark behind her lids, Mira’s face appears— that look like a small dog you just left at the gate, eyes wet as rain.

In that moment, her heartbeat feels like a match striking in the dark, a small flame that catches unseen tinder.

The dark voices still whisper at her ear like snakes in grass. Know yourself, they say. Know your ridicule, your fragility, your powerlessness.

But…

Mira… I…

The fire keeps spreading through dry reeds. Her bitter smile fades like smoke. The sting at her wrist ebbs, a tide pulling back.

Another crack of fireworks. She opens her eyes to the river of light. She lifts her hand, as if to take a corner of that galaxy cloth. Slowly, surely, her fingers curl like a sprout.

“After all… I still can’t give up.”