“Report, ma’am. Same as last time—no survivors, like a field gone white with frost.”

An Elf in uniform, a clivia badge bright as a leaf after rain, snapped to attention and saluted, reporting to the officer crouched by the dead leader. The officer stared at the lake of blood and the bodies strewn like broken branches, then let out a breath like steam in winter.

“Same as before…?” Her fingers brushed the sword-cut at the leader’s throat, as light as a moth’s wing on bark, her face pensive. “But this one died to a clean blade in one strike. Did we find a matching weapon?”

“No,” the subordinate said, her voice rippling like a disturbed pond. “Ma’am, you mean there was someone else this time?”

“It’s not impossible the Hell Python Hounds melted the weapon mid-fight, like salt in rain.” Her tone sank like a stone in deep water. “But something feels off this time.”

She narrowed her eyes and swept the walls spattered like red ivy and the straw piles matted like dead grass, doubt glinting like frost. The shadows around them looked stitched together like a net.

Her gaze was about to skim the rafters like a hawk’s wing when another Elf’s report cut across the room like a thrown pebble.

“Ma’am, the analysis is back—it’s that substance!”

The speaker looked young, her eyes bright as dew, a test tube lifted like a firefly jar. Inside was every drop of pale gray liquid they could collect. That was the one thing the officer cared about most, a beacon like a lighthouse in fog, and she turned at once—missing the wrongness her peripheral vision had brushed at the last moment like a cat’s whisker.

It proved her sixth sense was sharp as a blade, but it also proved an old line true as a weathered road—most gamblers fold the hand right before the win, like dropping the fish as the net tightens.

Half a heartbeat more and she might have noticed the very quarry she hunted, a gecko-thin presence on the beam. But all her attention slid to the gray liquid like iron to a magnet, and she started asking for the diagnostic numbers her subordinate had pulled from the bones of the scene.

“Report. This incident matches the last two, like three beads on one string. Likely cause is overdose on that substance leading to psychosis, mania, and shared hallucinations, then self-harm and attacks.”

“So it is,” she said, a dry laugh like a snapped twig. The officer rubbed her brow and sighed, a long wind through a hollow reed, missing the tiny glow that winked from a Magic Crystal Stone tucked along the beam like a firefly.

“So… ma’am, how do we handle this one?”

“How?” She sighed again, the sound falling like ash. “How else? Bag the bottles and all evidence, take the bodies with the highest concentration, then torch the warehouse. These folks kept Hell Python Hounds, so we’ll dress it as the beasts going out of control and causing an accidental fire—oh, and burn it hot, like a kiln. Make sure the Nacha Tribe can’t pull anything from the ashes in autopsy.”

She finished, but the young subordinate still stood, rooted like a sapling in wind, as if wrestling with thorns.

“What is it? Why are you standing there like a stump?”

“Uh… ma’am, forgive me for overstepping, but this is the third similar accident this month, like drumbeats in a row. Shouldn’t we… warn the public?”

The Elf officer’s mouth tugged up, amused, like a cat spotting a clumsy bird, her look pure “first day, huh?” But the rookie glanced at the carnage, faces like torn paper, and gathered her courage like kindling, pressing on.

“Even if Lady Silan ordered secrecy… this drug vanished for so long, then suddenly flooded back like a hidden spring. The fallout’s worse than last time; the death toll’s pushing three digits like a sick tally. And we’re just… I don’t understand what we’re doing!”

“What, for a handful of Nacha Tribe folk, you’re questioning Lady Silan’s orders?” The officer’s voice pressed down like a stormfront, heavy and electric. But the rookie held her ground, heat in her eyes like banked coals, and others glanced over too—silent as snow, yet sharing the same doubt.

Seeing herself become the lone reed in the current, the officer relented, stepping close and patting the rookie’s shoulder like tapping a drum.

“Lady Silan has her reasons. We’re at a critical bend in the Flower Dancer election, and there’s that troublemaking white-haired human stirring the pot like a stick in mud. If word gets out that our controlled districts are seeing this thing again, what does that do to the Carne Family’s name?”

“Even so, we can’t just watch them—”

“I get it,” the officer cut in, her tone soft as felt. “But this isn’t just for the Carne Family. Even the whisper of a message like this breeds chaos like mold, and chaos gives thieves cover like tall grass. It hurts the case.”

It’s a longer road for a farther aim, like swallowing bitterness for spring harvest. You don’t want the crooks dancing under our eyelids in the clamor and turning this into a lose-lose, right? Her words fell like steady rain, meant for the rookie and for every ear in the room that trembled like leaves.

The explanation won most heads like a tide wearing down stone, and they bent to their work again, quiet as ants.

They collected what samples the autopsy team would need, then several Elves with fire affinity cast hellfire kin to the Hell Python Hounds, orange-red fireballs dropping onto the straw like ripe persimmons. The scene bloomed into a fake disaster, and they sealed the doors and left like shadows fading at dusk.

Not long after they’d gone, a sound like tearing sheet metal screamed from within, a hawk-cry out of steel. They all turned, startled as deer, but the officer only waved a hand like brushing off dust.

“Probably something in there popped in the heat, like resin in a kiln. Leave it. Getting out matters more.”

She spoke, then wrapped the squad in a wind-acceleration spell, the air thick with wind element like a river current. Their steps went light as feathers, and a veil of draft blurred their sight like gauze.

And so they missed their last chance to notice that figure, a lizard of shadow clinging to the beam.

—

“You’re finally back! We were worried sick, like ants on a hot wok!”

The hooded blonde rounded the corner across from the orphanage gate, and voices burst from inside like sparrows. Pengpeng hurried to open the gate, the door barely cracked when the little ones swarmed like chicks from a coop, closing around her in a chirping ring.

“Teacher! They said you blasted a whole crowd away in one go! Is it true, is it true?”

“Master! Teach me how to throw lightning! I wanna zap my hair into curls!”

They chattered like a flock until Pengpeng yanked each by the collar like scruffing kittens and tossed them aside, tapping their foreheads in warning. One more peep and no dinner, and the wave scattered like seeds on wind.

“These little punks don’t know the weight of rain from dew,” Pengpeng exhaled, walking up to Mira like approaching a tired stag. “You okay—whoa, you smell like smoke, like a blown-out lamp! What happened?”

“…”

Mira’s face hid in the hood’s shade like a moon behind cloud, unreadable and mute, and Pengpeng’s heart, just set down like a basket, flew up again like a startled bird.

“Um… anything I can help with? Say the word, and I’m there like a spare hand.”

“…Yeah.” Mira finally lifted her face, pale as paper. “Has Sanda had a lot of… ‘accidents’ lately?”

“Eh?” Pengpeng tilted her head, puzzled like a dog, then nodded. “It’s been calmer on the Elves’ side, but there’ve been several fires in a row, like torches in a lane. A lot of poor folks got burned.”

“…Got it.”

Got it? Got what? The question bloomed on Pengpeng’s face like a question mark vine, but she had no time to ask. Mira walked past her like wind, slipped into the orphanage, and reached her own door in a few steps like falling water.

Then—click—the gate shut, neat as a blade, leaving Pengpeng frozen and the kids peeking from grass and the swing’s shadow like rabbits.

The scene was a mirror of the day Mira first came, like spring echoing spring, or maybe worse, like a storm darker than before.

Mira went in and locked the door, the bolt sliding like a line of ink. She drew the curtains like pulling nightfall, traced a soundproof spell circle that gleamed like a ring of frost, and sent a small magic detection sweep that skimmed the room like a bat. No surveillance artifacts stirred like sleeping mice.

Only after the whole ritual, neat as folding paper, did she stop. She didn’t remove the hood. She sat by the window desk like a stone at a riverbank and lit the kerosene lamp, a single flame like a star.

But as the bright glow poured out like milk, she snuffed it by reflex, quick as pinching a wick.

Only when darkness wrapped her again like a cloak did she… feel the faintest peace, like cool water on a burn.

Yes. Peace.

One… two…

If she couldn’t see, then no one could see her either—Mira breathed deep, waves in and out like tides. She told herself this in the hollow of her chest, trying to press down the prickling on her skin like fur standing to a chill, trying to haul back her reason like a kite in wind.

After a few minutes, her breaths steadied like a drum. She opened her eyes, dark in dark, and drew something from the inner pocket of her clothes, quiet as dusk.

In the black, its shape was ink on ink. She fed it a wisp of mana; it flashed once like a fish belly in a stream, then trembled in her palm like a trapped cicada.

—So… ma’am, how do we handle this one?

—How? How else? Bag the bottles and evidence, take the bodies with the highest dose, then burn the warehouse—

The slightly distorted voices played in her hand, hot as a coal. One night with this could set both Elf and Nacha Tribe aflame with gossip, and shave three points off Lady Silan’s lead like a whetstone on a blade.

A treasure like this, perfect to help her sister, should have been her dream gift, a lantern in a tunnel.

Yet her face in the hood’s shadow held no joy, no spark—only fear and unease, frost over a pond.

Not because Lady Silan’s order was too cold, like iron. Mira’s fear rose because she’d grasped one hard truth, sharp as glass.

Inside this recording Magic Crystal Stone, before she started it, there had been nothing—empty as a new jar.

She realized it the instant she powered it, a flash like lightning. She had been crouched on the rafters, eavesdropping on the Elves. The talk mattered too much, so she’d activated the stone without thinking, a strike like a thrown knife. That was dangerous, because a Magic Crystal Stone only records the first time. After that, every injection of mana only plays back that original recording, like a loop.

In other words, if it had already held something, her rafter perch would’ve been exposed like a bird on a bare branch.

So, lucky it was new, and lucky she had it right when she needed a recorder—she’d felt that luck for a breath, a spark in ash. Then, the next moment, the feeling curdled like milk.

Was it really luck?

She’d pulled this Magic Crystal Stone from the Nacha leader’s bag like a pearl from a net. Who carries an empty recording stone for no reason, like a drum with no skin? Shouldn’t it hold something vital to him, like a keepsake? And why was the stone tied to the neck of that vial? What was the point of lashing the two together like twins?

You could explain all that with “coincidence,” if you wanted, like blaming wind for a toppled lantern.

But Mira had met too many “coincidences” today, a string of beads too neat, and another possibility crept in like fog…

She tugged the Magic Crystal Stone, and the vial it was tied to slid from her pocket like a fish on a line.

As proof of Lady Silan’s cover-up, this vial could cut in the Trial of Truth as sharply as the recording, twin blades.

The more useful it seemed, the more bricks it laid on the uneasy structure in her mind, a tower leaning like a shadow at dusk.

Mira looked down at it. In the lightless room, glass merged with night like water to a well, its shape barely traced. But she remembered the label clearly, a word branded in her memory like a burn.

—Gift.

The first time she’d seen it, she thought it was a little freebie from the Medicine Peddler, a trinket tossed like candy. But now she no longer believed that, because there was a cleaner line that fit, straight as a spear.

The vial, the Magic Crystal Stone tied to it, and that chatter about Lady Silan’s order—all of it was…

A gift. A gift sent to Mira, tied with a ribbon of shadow.