Time rolled back a few hours, like the sun slipping behind a drifting cloud.

“Then, may your wish be granted, Miss Adelaide.” The Queen’s blessing drifted like a warm breeze over still water.

Gratitude swelled in Adelaide, warm as tea in a cold chest. She dipped a small curtsey, then stepped over the royal threshold like crossing a painted line.

By then, noon hung high like a white coin. She finally stood again on the streets of the Elven Realm, like a traveler back from fog. This time, no concealing black robe clung to her like a false shadow. She could stand openly in the sun and let the world see her white hair, a snowfall in a green forest. Before they parted, the Queen gave her boots to replace her broken heels, and etched a bright sigil on her clothes like a scarlet seal.

With that sigil, Adelaide was a guest personally invited by Her Majesty, like a banner carried before her. She no longer feared arrest for being human; doors would open like petals, and even fans of Queen Dreamlan would drift over to chatter.

She watched several hurried Elves swarm in like sparrows. Adelaide wore the poised smile of a well-bred lady, a lily floating on calm water, ready with graceful, measured answers.

“Hi, hi, beautiful human miss, I’m a reporter from Naitie Press. Could you share what you just discussed with Her Majesty? Ah, wait, that pose is great. Please hold it—pusta—freeze!”

She hadn’t even opened her mouth before a barrage of light spells popped in her face like noon fireworks, and her smile hardened like lacquer.

…Fine; maybe they weren’t fans, and respect felt thin as paper, but the special-treatment conclusion still stood like a stone.

Flash the sigil, and most Elves wouldn’t make things hard; paths opened like swept snow, which suited Adelaide just fine.

Only, that privilege had a ceiling, a glass sky you couldn’t push through. Some things were still forbidden like red lines on sand.

A flicker at the edge of her sight flashed like fish scales. Varie and Mira stood on a rooftop, signaling with a mirror like busy birds. She only turned her head and kept handling the circling reporters like a patient rock in a stream.

A guest trusted by the Queen mustn’t meet those “dangerous exiles,” thorns beyond the garden wall.

In an angle neither the reporters nor the girls above could see, Adelaide bit her lip like tasting a thorn.

It had been less than a day since they parted, yet her heart clenched at Mira’s face like a startled bird in a net.

She wanted to run to her like a river breaking a dam. She wanted to hold her, even if that meddling lioness laughed on the side like clattering pebbles. She wanted to speak last night’s apology out loud, warm as rain, and leave no frost’s breadth between them.

But wanting was a tide, and right now duty was the dike; she could only look away like stone under wind.

Inside the manor, Queen Dreamlan had warned her not to meet Varie and the others in public. They were technically still exiled, like names crossed out in red.

Her mind agreed, but her feelings balked like a horse at fire. Months without Mira had been bearable like slow rain, yet now even days sparked in her chest like flying embers, burning reason to ash.

So, with heat in her head like steam, she threw her first barbed question at the Queen.

“Your Majesty is truly contradictory; if you care so much about Miss Varie, why cast her out into the night?”

She knew she was venting before the last syllable fell like a pebble. The Queen took no offense; she refilled Adelaide’s cup like an amber stream and smiled. “It wasn’t me who banished her.”

“Ah, sorry.” Calm slid back over Adelaide like settling snow. She corrected her expression and leaned in, eager to listen like a student. “So it was the Carne Family’s decision?”

The Carne Family, red in Elven, ruled the realm like a deep-rooted cedar. They’d beaten their rival Iluni (Blue) Family for three straight terms like waves toppling the same sandcastle.

They leaned conservative, frost over sprouts, especially on Nacha matters. Twice, they’d led lockdowns and curfews over Nacha settlements, iron rings over camps. By that logic, Varie’s exile should’ve been theirs.

But Queen Dreamlan shook her head, a wind through chimes.

“They’d love to, but sadly, Varie is a remarkably law-abiding citizen, straight as a well-laid path.”

“…Huh?” Adelaide’s mouth opened a touch, a crescent catching dew.

“She likes to talk that way, but her only real record is dislocating a prosecutor’s wrist, a branch snapped with a crack. That happened when he overreached against a Nacha child, shadow crossing the line, and she stepped in to stop it. So even if the Carne Family wanted it, they couldn’t hand her such a heavy sentence, the hammer hanging in midair.”

“If that’s so, then who passed the judgment?” Her question fell like a stone into a well.

“She did.” The word cracked the air like a dry twig.

Adelaide’s brows hooked into a question mark like bent willow. “Uh… why?”

The Queen lifted her tea as if to wet her throat for a long road, and took a small sip like dew. “Humans may not know much, but you’ve heard of the Nacha Tribe’s ‘Title,’ haven’t you?” Her voice moved like a silk ribbon.

Adelaide searched her memory, dust in late light. In imperial tales, every beastkin is born with a birthmark that spells a word—their Title—and it maps their fate like a carved path. Elven lessons had broken her faith in legends like glass, but she still relayed the tale. The Queen blinked, a flick of starlight, surprised.

“I’m surprised the human version is so accurate,” she said, and nodded, a slow leaf-fall. “You’re right, but it’s only part of it. A Nacha Title actually passes down ages like a riverbed. Each Title corresponds to several specific souls. When one bearer dies, a new, best-suited being is reborn with the same Title, like a sprout from old roots.”

“Wait—reborn? You mean the Nacha reincarnate?” Her question rose like pale smoke.

“Smart,” the Queen said, smiling like dawn. “The Nacha soul-count stays nearly fixed, stars that don’t vanish. For example, the Title ‘Hero’ matches over sixty distinct souls. Some fight well; some resolve with diplomacy, two banks of one river. In peacetime, the diplomatic Hero rises; in danger, the warrior does, like a blade drawn from its sheath.”

Adelaide stared, her mind blank as winter fields, then asked, “Do they keep their past memories, if it’s the same soul reborn?”

For once, the Queen didn’t answer at once. Her gaze lowered like a feather falling, to the tiny ripples in her tea. In that sheen, Adelaide saw a flash of loneliness, a cloud crossing the sun.

“No. She… they will be new beings, sharing only temperament and skill.” She raised her head, her face still as a lake restored.

“We’ve wandered off, but here’s what’s important. You know Varie’s Title is Hero. She likely hasn’t told you this: among all Heroes, even the fighters, she’s the strongest in history, a peak above peaks.”

“The strongest?” The word thudded like covered thunder.

“Yes. This is her second rebirth, and her first came during the worst of the Chaos Uprising, a black tide. She led displaced Nacha through every battlefield like a lantern in storm, until the three races sealed the chaos rift shut. You understand what that implies.”

“In other words, her arrival means the Nacha need raw combat power most.” Adelaide propped her chin, gears turning like a waterwheel.

“Right. The Lionheart Hero—born for battle—arrived when Nacha and Elves smelled of powder, storm-scent on dry earth. What else could it mean? To Nacha radicals, it was a war omen; papers splashed her on the front page daily like flags. They claimed her birth proved the moon goddess Isylia had sent a holy-war edict, a silver seal in the sky.”

Adelaide remembered the lioness tossing out “long-eared bitches,” her mouth quirking into a thin hook of sarcasm. “I’d thought she’d love being the radicals’ totem.”

“Don’t let her mouth fool you,” the Queen said, laughing like a wind chime. “In short, she spent a night speaking with the Nacha chief—the old man you met—two fires crackling till dawn. Then she marched to our bureau and, staff in hand like a shepherd’s rod, forced a poor clerk to write her some odd charges. After that, she walked out through the sealing wards, bold as a standard, taking her followers and all the strife coiled around her.”