So, amid their noisy little farce, night finally swallowed the last smear of sunset.

Kabos, Hos, and Tela cracked jokes like sparks. Yet the temperature plunged like a cliff face. Fog thickened like wet wool. The rough camp fell quiet.

Most people huddled mute around the fire, blankets a patchwork of bright colors. Flames licked at skewers like small red tongues. Varie, for once, sat apart, her back squarely to Queen Dreamlan.

The Queen didn’t seem to mind. Her gaze held the skewers stuck near the coals. Her breath turned silver in the cold, kissed the leaping fire, and shattered into glitter.

Time stretched like cooled sap. Kabos finally couldn’t bear the silence. He peeled his hand from under the blanket and shivered the instant night bit his skin.

“So cold, so damn cold... hey, this dumb—uh—gourd should be done. Can we eat it?”

“Not ‘shagua.’ It’s Shala gourd.”

To his surprise, Queen Dreamlan answered herself, voice unhurried and exact. She drew out a skewer and offered it to him. The fabled Elven Queen handed him food.

Kabos almost bowed into the dirt. He nodded thanks over and over. Then he felt a lion’s stare rake his back. Cold prickled down his spine.

Pinned between awe and alarm, he smiled the politest smile he owned. He took a cautious bite of the Shala gourd’s rugged skin.

“Shala gourd was a standard ration during the Chaos Uprising,” the Queen said. “It keeps well, nourishes well, hits hard with energy. Most important, it’s delicious—right?”

Adelaide watched Kabos’s face green in seconds. His mouth twitched like a hooked fish. But the Queen herself took a gentle bite and nodded, pleased.

He remembered the gourd was on Queen Dreamlan’s special list. He swallowed pride and pulp together. His thumb shook up.

“...Sweet!”

Laughter finally bubbled into the night that had driven even insects to hush. Kabos flushed blue and red by turns. He stuffed a skewer into each Nacha Tribe buddy’s hands and killed their smirks stone-dead.

Adelaide’s curiosity rose like a cat. She took a Shala gourd, its surface charred black. She peeled off the inedible shell. A clean, grassy scent lifted, like rain in a meadow.

It dragged up a memory of bitter melon from her “dream” world. She braced, not the sort to flinch like Jiaqi at the word bitter. Then she bit. Pride cracked.

Bitter hit past reason. The pulp wasn’t a redeeming sweetness. It turned sour and hot, like someone baked buns with chili powder instead of flour. Her throat wanted to throw it back.

She wasn’t alone. Most faces mirrored Kabos’s sea-sick green. All except Queen Dreamlan. And, unexpectedly, Varie.

Adelaide had pegged Varie as the first to erupt. Varie only took a bite, frowned lightly, then finished the whole gourd in a few neat mouthfuls. She grabbed another. She chewed and teased her two childhood friends for being pampered.

So the stupid can’t taste bitterness, Adelaide grumbled inside. But reality was a ledger. They needed the calories. Her tongue screamed no. Her body wrote yes.

She sighed and parted her lips, pure reluctance. She raised the gourd—and someone caught her hand.

Startled, Adelaide looked up. Mira had already finished hers. She shook her head, took the skewer from Adelaide, and set it aside.

“Sis...” Mira thought a beat, then asked, “Want to get some air?”

The sudden offer hit like a lit window in a dark street. Adelaide straightened in the blanket and nodded fast.

“I wanted to see the moon here anyway. Let’s go.”

They told Varie and Queen Dreamlan they wouldn’t go far. Then they departed—Mira carrying Adelaide in a princess carry.

She hated needing it. They couldn’t recast physical buffs inside this domain. Soul Devourer Sormaidon’s reach outstripped Varie’s first estimate. Adelaide had to split every second of spell time into thirds.

In that math, Mira carried her unless it was urgent. A blanket wrapped Adelaide warm as a cocoon. A piggyback didn’t work. She had to accept the shame of a princess carry.

It wasn’t the first time. She’d been carried like this in the caves. That didn’t help. Her face burned ripe-tomato red. She scrambled for a topic, any topic, to air out the heat.

Mira’s voice slipped in, soft and odd. “Sis... can you grab something for me?”

“Mmh? Sure. What is it?”

They were far enough now. Even Varie couldn’t hear them. Mira still checked the silence, then said, “Inside my coat. Right pocket. I can’t reach. Please?”

“Don’t ‘please’ me—”

Adelaide froze mid-sass. Mira’s face was as pretty as always, and now softly flushed. The penny dropped.

Wait. My hand... inside Mira’s clothes?

Her tomato red deepened to volcanic. White breath puffed from her hair like steam. Mira hurried to add, flustered too.

“Not like that. The lining. Just the lining...”

“Oh. R-right, of course!”

Adelaide shook the thoughts out like water. She took one deep breath. Then she slid her hand into Mira’s coat. She held her breath and ignored warmth and the soft, inevitable brushes.

Her fingers found small, round things. She blinked and drew them out. Little oval red fruits shone like lacquered beads.

“Hey? Aren’t these...”

Mira nodded. “The lisse berries we brought.”

Lisse, named with the Elven word for sweet. Juice like honey. Not a hint of acid. They had become the crown jewel of the trip. Adelaide’s eyes lit like lanterns unshrouded.

But—

“I thought we ran out. Where’d you get these?”

Before leaving, they’d planned supplies tight. Fruits like this needed a magic ice-box. Bringing extra would’ve been waste. The math was precise. Adelaide herself had “gloriously” finished the last few before entering the domain.

So she’d thought.

Mira shook her head. “I didn’t eat mine. I saved them.”

“Eh?” Adelaide couldn’t believe anyone resisted lisse berries. Her stomach answered with a loud grumble, like a drum in a quiet hall.

“Don’t tell me... these were for me?”

Mira’s silence said yes. Words slipped from Adelaide’s hand. She said nothing. She felt everything.

They came upon a big stone with a flat lip, free of dead branches. Mira bent her legs and sprang up. She cleared a small patch. She set her sister down on the blanket’s soft thickness.

“I’ll go find something for a cushion—”

Mira turned. Adelaide caught her wrist and tugged. Mira tipped and fell with a soft whoomph—onto blanket, not stone. The back of her head met not cloth, but a warmer, smoother softness.

She opened her eyes. Adelaide looked down at her from above. Most of Mira’s view was taken by her sister’s proud chest. The scolding in Adelaide’s red eyes still reached her plain.

“I don’t need—mm!”

Adelaide popped a lisse berry between Mira’s lips. She huffed, half-playful. “If little sis acts this considerate, you make your big sister look bad. Honestly.”

“...”

Mira stopped resisting. She bit the berry, swallowed, and closed her eyes. After a long beat, she opened them again.

“Then... is there a punishment?”

Adelaide tapped Mira’s forehead, feigning severity. “Of course. Your sentence is to stay like this. No moving. Understood?”

A lap pillow as punishment. The words made Adelaide almost laugh. Mira tilted her head a fraction. Her ears blushed a pale pink.

Adelaide didn’t notice what it was for Mira. It was a trial. Look up: her sister’s overwhelming curves. Look left: a soft stomach. Look right: white silk with the faintest pink glow. For Mira, this was waterfall training, not rest.

Adelaide missed all that. She only relished her right to ruffle her sister’s hair. She laughed and twined Mira’s golden locks at her temple, looping them into little butterflies.

The white-haired girl chuckled. The golden-haired girl bit her lip and held still. It lasted until Adelaide tired of the game and tilted her face to the sky.

“Wow... the books didn’t exaggerate. The moon here really is split.”

Wonder softened her voice. Mira followed her gaze. With no dead trees in the way, the far horizon lay bare to them.

At night, that’s a trick. Darkness erases the seam of earth and sky. Unless something tears both.

At the edge of sight, a vast wound split the land and the heavens. It cut their world into halves. The closer you got to the birthplace of the Chaos Uprising, the more it bared itself.

In human and elven lands, the sky’s wholeness was an illusion from the Sealing Array. A kind lie to soothe the masses. A story that things had returned to normal.

A lie is still a lie. Here, no one can cheat their eyes. The Void Rift devours meaning itself. It refuses to be ignored.

The hanging moon was sawn in two by that rift. Green lines from countless Sealing Arrays spanned the gap like suture stitches. This wound won’t heal.

Adelaide stared at the forever-separated halves, the shattered moon that marks the death of Isylia. She didn’t feel war’s ancient ache. She felt a soft warmth instead, a familiarity that eased her breath.

“The setting’s different. No stars then. No moon split in half. But it reminds me of those days we were alone underground.”

She laced her fingers with Mira’s and looked at her, gentle as candlelight.

Back then, Mira lay quiet on my lap like a young fawn; I'd rub your hair and you'd soften, then sleep like dusk settling.

Mm...

It was only a few years ago, sand slipping through the fingers, really.

Yet it feels like a shoreline pulled far away by the tide.

After a breath, Mira answered in a leaf-soft voice.

Maybe because so much has shifted, like seasons turning and old beams warping.

Really? Then let your big sister test it—let me see if the wind still lulls you.

Adelaide hummed the old lullaby, notes warm as milk in the dark.

At once, Mira’s gaze blurred like mist over a pond, just like when she was small.

She quickly shook her head in protest, a sparrow’s flick against the lure of sleep.

Adelaide laughed, let the teasing go, and smoothed her hair like silk.

Back then you even lied, claimed your memories were gone—wicked little thing.

...

But you remember, don’t you—a lantern kept lit inside?

She paused, her gaze drifting toward the camp like a moth to lamplight.

Queen Dreamlan, Varie, Kabos, and the Nacha Tribe were talking in the firelight.

Now and then a grumble popped like a pebble in the coals, and laughter rang like windchimes.

Not only the years after the Douglas Family, pages browned at the edges.

Not only my deeds, footprints in wet clay.

You never forgot what happened to the Nuhaman Tribe either, a thorn sleeping under silk, did you?

Mira sank into silence, snow settling inside her chest.

She and Adelaide watched the little band—spirits not soaring, yet bonded like stew in one pot.

Only after a long breath, like a flute holding its note, did she speak.

They were bystanders, reeds on the bank, really.

The guilty from then have already met the blade.

Now I have no ground for bitterness to sprout, and no stance to hold, so…

But what if some shadows slipped past the knife? What if not all the guilty paid?

At that, a spark pricked; Mira’s eyes opened a shade wider.

If I can prove it, you have every right to raise a storm, every right to let the thunder out.

Adelaide looked at her, red irises holding only Mira’s reflection, a still pond cupping a single moon.

If that day does come, I don’t want my plan to be a net that snags your revenge.

Will you promise me, Mira—tie that knot with me?

That was Adelaide’s last request that day, a lone leaf falling at dusk.

And it was the one time Mira gave no answer, a closed door where words would not fly.