No jade-and-jade tableware. No chef-as-artist plating to mask sins. Menglan eyed the odd fruit skewered on a rough stick; its blistered, charred skin looked like scorched bark, promising a devil’s flavor.

“Sorry, Varie…”

“What are you on about?”

“Back then… I just wanted to tease you. I mean, I was wrong, okay? Let’s not torture ourselves. Let’s not actually eat this…”

The woman beside her rolled her eyes and lifted the stick with a Shala gourd speared on the end.

“What, scared now?” Varie bit the devil’s fruit. Her cheeks twitched like a startled fish, but a heartbeat later she swallowed it down.

“Hmph. You Elves just don’t know how to handle it. Roast it and the bitterness backs off.” She cut Menglan a sidelong look, then added, too earnest to be joking, “Honestly, compared to hard tack, this thing’s pretty good for high-energy rations.”

“Mm? Really?”

“Wouldn’t lie.”

Menglan blinked her golden eyes. The Shala gourd still radiated bad omens to sight and smell, a black comet with a foul tail. But Varie’s face stayed calm. She polished one off in a few bites, then grabbed another and tore in. Curiosity rose like mist and took the high ground in Menglan’s mind.

Maybe Varie had found a trick the Elves missed for tens of thousands of years, a way to tame this devil’s fruit. Thinking so, Menglan cradled a roasted Shala gourd and took a careful bite.

First came a yue—then a burst of laughter.

The instant her teeth cracked that half-burnt skin, she knew she’d been played.

Bitter, hot, astringent juice flooded her mouth like a dark river. It numbed the little tongue pampered by maids and master chefs. She abandoned her Elven Queen’s grace, spat in quick peh peh bursts, yet the devil’s taste clung to her like smoke that wouldn’t disperse.

Seeing Menglan’s perfectly proportioned face twist, tongue out, blowing air like a panting cat, Varie burst into cackles, every inch the plotter whose trap had sprung.

“Y-you wicked thing!”

Menglan, slurred by spice, swung a fist in outrage. Varie pretended the soft, pink little punch knocked her back, then let Menglan press her down.

“Why did you trick me!”

“Two reasons.”

“...?”

“First, I swore the day I got conned that one day I’d make the lofty queen herself take a bite of this fine cuisine.”

“Petty.”

“Petty or not, a vow’s a vow. I follow through.” Varie pinched her cheek, smiling. “Second reason…”

“This gourd really does keep you sharp.”

Her voice dropped, face lifting, breath warm at Menglan’s ear.

“Hard-won half a day off. You don’t want to pass out after we do it, right…?”

“...!?”

Menglan’s face flushed apple-red. The culprit only tilted her neck and brushed a dragonfly kiss across Menglan’s lips, then got pushed away by her embarrassed, angry shove.

“You—! You’ve only lived a few years, and your mind’s filthier than the pistil of an Elinoru blossom!”

“Flattered, flattered. All thanks to the Elven Queen’s hands-on tutoring~”

“Have some decency!!”

Teased to tatters, Menglan’s queenly dignity scattered like petals. Passing soldiers—Elf, Nacha Tribe, and human alike—turned their heads with practiced tact, wearing a kind of watchful, satisfied smile.

Yes. Unlike they feared, making their relationship public didn’t trigger backlash.

In fact, it was the opposite. The news hit like a shot of adrenaline. It spread through the army and the towns like a bright flare in fog.

Later bards praised it. They called their union a lamp named hope, lit in the darkest, bleakest night of the Chaos Uprising. It told warriors near despair that even here love could be born, that what they cherished hadn’t been ground to dust by Chaos.

Yet when the war’s late stage was mentioned—when asked why the Lionheart Hero and Queen Dreamlan seemed to drift apart—bards grew vague. They skipped how the two fell quiet when they met, offered no answer.

You couldn’t blame them. Poems and legends paint “love” with gold leaf. For those living it, love can be carved in iron. Cruel, and final.

“Someone has to stay inside and shut the door.”

“I know.”

“Belior won’t volunteer.”

“I know.”

“...Then what else is there to say, Menglan?”

“...”

Silence. The air between them stalled on Varie’s tired question, a bird caught in a net.

The rumor was true. The closer they came to ending the Chaos Uprising, the less often people saw them alone. When they spoke, the heat of their earliest days cooled, like banked embers.

But it wasn’t drifting apart.

They just didn’t know how to face the truth.

The Chaos Uprising, the greatest threat the Sumerland Continent had faced since gods shaped the world, couldn’t be solved by simple killing.

No matter how many Chaos Spawn Varie and the others tore with their bare hands, as long as the rift yawned open, the living’s banner would be bled dry by the armies pouring from within. To avoid the worst, they had to seal the rift itself.

And unlucky as it was, that meant one of the three strongest living had to remain inside, to finish the seal.

This wasn’t some fresh discovery. They’d known it not long after the uprising began.

Knowing isn’t accepting.

They didn’t know how to face it, so they avoided it. Maybe, they thought, a path would appear at the last moment. A crane soaring through a closing sky.

They ran from it until now—over ninety percent of lost lands reclaimed, the tri-race coalition at peak morale, every warrior ready to die to end the Chaos Uprising.

Yet the leaders who gave them hope, who led them to this point, began to waver.

No miracle, no perfect answer. That was the only truth they found.

Victory meant that future would arrive. No one liked this ending. You couldn’t flee a storm by refusing to name it.

So, the day before the final battle, Varie stepped into Menglan’s tent. As always, she was the one to move first.

“We can only do this.”

She broke the silence with a soft sigh, the kind that carries rain.

“Belior won’t be that person. You’re the Elves’ only queen. I’m just a ‘Hero’... When it’s over, the chieftain knows better than me what comes next.”

“Varie, I’ve decided. You can’t change my mind.”

Her reasons were cut off without hesitation. Varie’s fingers clenched; her tone brightened into heat.

“There’s no other way…! Do we abandon every life on the Sumerland Continent? Even if I drag you to run now, could you watch them die?”

“I can’t.”

“Then we have no choice—”

“But I’ll stay with you. To the very end.”

Varie’s eyes opened wide. She stared as Menglan walked over and sat on her lap, light as a falling leaf.

Like she needed to hear her heart, Menglan pressed her cheek to Varie’s chest.

“Remember the legend you mocked, Varie?”

Nestled in her arms, their hands met for the first time in a while. Fingers interlaced like vines. She spoke of the tale they’d laughed over after their first night, the legend that an Elf loves only one, and when their love dies, their own heart shatters and follows.

“The new generation doesn’t seem bound like that. But for the First Generation… it’s not a lie.”

Menglan’s laugh carried self-mockery, a brittle bell. In her ear, the heartbeat answered, incapable of lies.

“You’re my first, so…”

Silence returned, but this time it was thick with heat and damp confusion, a summer storm coiling.

Menglan lifted her face. Watered eyes found Varie. She slowly unfastened the buttons of her robe.

“At least… let’s put a period on this story together. Please?”

Her hand was caught and held. Varie lowered her head, kissed her cold lips, and pulled her close.

“Mm.”

A single sound. It broke all the unsaid words and muted days between them.

Breaths tangled. Touches rose and fell. It felt like the first night rewound.

Before her mind dissolved in pleasure, Menglan clutched her partner’s back. Skin to skin, she drank in her warmth, unwilling to part even a second.

Mm.

This is good.

She knew it. She knew this changed nothing.

Just as Varie couldn’t change her, she couldn’t sway Varie’s resolve.

So this was good.

Let them sink together into that eternal dream that never wakes…

Don’t be so cruel… Don’t leave her alone in this world…

But Menglan woke again.

She opened her eyes. It wasn’t that fabled bridge of the afterlife she saw, but a familiar figure in heavy armor, a mountain under iron.

The sweet dream ended.

The sealing array hung in the air like a sun of runes. The massive Chaos rift was stitched shut by a thousand threads of mana. Menglan’s face went pale as frost.

Other than herself and the armored figure, no third silhouette stood beside them. No one who had gone in to seal the rift with them.

She knew she’d lost the wager.

In that instant, her god-given perfect face broke. All her feelings and memories rammed into her mind like a stampede. She nearly lost reason.

Heartbreak—worse than death didn’t begin to cover it.

A tidal wave of magic flattened the ground. Flags planted among mountains of corpses and rivers of blood bowed under the shock. Despair-blooming mana condensed in her hand, becoming a blade that drank light.

Then she thrust at the one who had, in theory, saved her life.

If that strike had hit the face dead-on, even a god’s hand would have been too late. Yet the other didn’t budge.

Because, just as they’d predicted, the blade crooked an inch at the last moment. The solid helmet shattered like an egg, but the edge only scored a long cut across the right cheek.

“How unbecoming, Your Highness Menglan.”

The other spoke calmly, touching the narrow wound Menglan had left. The light of the Sacred Heart flashed. The cut closed at once, skin returning to smooth cream.

With the helmet gone, Menglan saw a face she’d never actually seen. It stunned her for a breath.

She didn’t yet know Belior blood bore gold hair, so it wasn’t the white hair under that helm that froze her. It was everything else.

Emperor Belior was a woman, fine-featured.

Unlike the armored giant she projected, the face under the helm was cuter than rumor, even a bit youthful. It clashed hard with the maturity pooled in her scarlet eyes like aged wine, a contrast so strong it made Menglan’s stomach turn.

Belior seemed unbothered by the dissonance. She tied her white hair back, straightened herself, and spoke while tidying the strands.

“She asked me to knock you out and carry you out.”

Menglan heard this, and the wildfire of hate in her eyes broke loose again.

“I told you, crystal clear—no matter what happens, you don’t get to interfere, Human King!”

Her words climbed like a storm. The magic she’d just caged spilled from her skin, a shimmering tremor in the air.

Menglan had expected Varie to beg Emperor Belior to pull her out. She hadn’t expected the latter to actually haul her from the Chaos Rift.

After all, she’d tasted the bitter grain of human nature through their cooperation, mouthful after mouthful.

If Menglan and Varie died together in that rift, the white-haired girl before her would cut down the last equal rival in this world. The Elves’ pressure on humanity would thin like fog at dawn.

For a selfish jerk who’d give nothing even to face the disaster of the Chaos Uprising, it was a perfect bargain—profit without risk. So before she woke, Menglan was almost certain that would be the Human King’s choice.

Yet she was alive. Stuck with this jerk. And the chance to be buried beside Varie had slipped away like a last petal on the wind.

“Why… why did you do what she asked!”

Belior only shook a finger, a chill flick through the air.

“You misunderstand, Your Highness Menglan. To me, her request wasn’t higher priority than yours.” She paused, tidying the edges of her calm like silk. “It’s just that you, alive, mean more to me.”

Meaning… what?

Menglan didn’t understand. Belior didn’t intend to explain. She finished setting herself in order, then spoke, slow as drifting ash.

“As you can see, I’m a woman, and I can’t bear children. For an imperial system, that’s unacceptable.” She glanced at the heavy armor that hid every shape, every line. “I won’t let the nation I unified crack apart over an heir. I need a child. Preferably one with a woman of high rank.”

Menglan felt her blood turn to ice.

“You—”

Belior raised a hand, palm like a closed gate. “Don’t worry. I had plans, yes. But I didn’t expect you and the orcish Hero to go public, burning the bridge behind you. So I’ve abandoned the path of marrying Her Majesty the Elven Queen.”

Even so, you’re still useful to me—her lovely face, her voice colder than iron in deep winter.

“If I’m right, you’ve touched a certain taboo, Your Highness Menglan.”

Menglan’s pupils tightened, a knife’s flicker. Belior walked toward her, step by step, stripping bare the secret not even Varie had known.

“No need to circle each other. You don’t want your lover judged by her own people for having no children. So long ago, you started research into special breeding.” A breath, then the blade’s edge. “Yes. I mean using the World Tree to fuse bloodlines of different races. Letting two women of different races bear a child. A forbidden art.”

“You can’t marry me. But you can help me with an heir.” Belior stopped a single step away. Her hand settled at her waist, where her sword hung like moonlight held in steel.

“Unlike you, who no longer need that art, I need it now.”

…

Yes. She already… had no chance to ever use that art again.

Menglan lifted her face, ruined and radiant, the corner of her mouth pulling into a smile sharp with pain.

“Then why would I hand it to the bastard who blocked my last wish?”

She shut her eyes and turned away. Belior’s voice came just as empty, like winter wind through bare branches. “No. You will hand it over.”

Menglan snorted. She had decided. Even if that sword touched her throat, it wouldn’t matter—no, better that way. It would save her the motion.

She had no wish to live. The vision of the other world, of reunion, filled her mind like a warm night tide. Only that could soothe the heart torn inside her chest.

So she even waited, a small, terrible hope—waited for silver steel to draw across her throat, for blood to flood her windpipe, for her awareness to fall away like dusk.

But no blade sang.

“Because if you don’t hand it over, you’ll never see the last letter she left you.”

Menglan’s eyes flew open. Belior drew a small box from her belt. Light spun around the other gauntlet—a bright sigil, a small searing beam, a light spell not strong enough to kill, but more than enough to burn a single sheet before Menglan could move.

“Choose, Your Highness Menglan.”

Do you want to know her last words?

**

Despicable.

You really… are despicable.

Varie.

Even a hundred years later, when Menglan opened that letter for the umpteenth time, she still couldn’t stop herself from a gentle scold in her heart.

Only this time, her mood was different.

Maybe because this would be the last time she complained like this.

Menglan brushed her fingertips over Varie’s signature at the end. The preservation spell faded from the yellowing paper like mist dissolving at dawn.

Her eyes filled with a soft reluctance as the late-coming years finally pressed into the page, until it turned to ash in her hands and sifted away through her fingers.

“I did my best… Varie.”

She raised her head again and stepped into a sea of roses. A light, graceful, weary song lifted from her lips and drifted with the night wind.

Yes, Menglan had done her best.

Even knowing the letter’s impossible tasks were just a way to buy time, she still burned herself to fulfill them.

Live on. Help the Nacha Tribe rebuild their home. Stitch the moon back together with illusion, make it whole again in the sky.

With a heart split like cracked jade, enduring a loneliness deeper than ten thousand years, she held on, to this very moment, only because at the end of the letter there was Varie’s promise.

Because Varie said she would come back to see her. So Menglan would wait for herself to be seen.

…

Menglan reached the end of the rose sea. A shell-shaped stone carving appeared, large enough for two women to lie side by side.

Her song reached its closing note.

As the last tone fell, a spring welled up from the sculpture’s heart, cold and clear, filling the shell. The overflow ran down as a small stream, wetting her feet like silver threads.

Menglan gazed at it, and spoke like a dreamer.

“A waterbed set in a sea of roses… the last request. I did that, too.”

Weariness crept through her limbs, peeling away the strength she’d propped up like scaffolding in a storm.

Varie…

We promised—when I, like you, learned to bear the bitterness of shala-gua, could swallow a whole one with a straight face, you would come back to see me.

We promised—you’d be different from the other people of the Nacha Tribe, that even after reincarnation you’d remember me, find me first, hold me, kiss me.

“But where… are you now?”

Her voice came thin, as her strength failed. She grasped the shell’s edge, then sank onto it, lying down as the moon bled silver over stone.

She caught the last measure of moonlight in her eyes, and let her lashes fall.

She was so tired. Mind and body both pressed to the limit like a bowstring drawn too long.

She knew that once she slept, she would enter a long dream without a date on its end.

Maybe she’d wake. Maybe she’d sleep until time itself was ash.

But at that moment, Menglan’s heart overflowed with… joy.

Because she knew—if she had any chance to open her eyes again, the first thing she would see would be her beloved face.

That was the condition she set for her own awakening.