Yes, this was a “gift” prepared just for Mira.

Trace the day like footprints in wet snow, and the pattern glares back. First, Anta and Copato were attacked by oddballs from nowhere, like stones thrown from fog. That “just happened” to give her a chance to find that potion, a glint in the reeds. Then, once those weirdos had leaked enough, they turned on each other like starving wolves and “just happened” to erase every witness and trace, a tide washing the beach clean.

Right then, she “just happened” to run into an Elf from the Carne Family sent to mop up, a moonlit shadow crossing her path. The Elf never sensed her. She used the “just happened” Magic Crystal Stone to record something vital about the Trial of “Truth,” like bottling thunder in glass.

So many “coincidences,” laid like stepping stones on a stream, they sounded exactly like what the leader had said…

—Everything written in the “script”

—will come to pass.

Yes. Everything today moved like a play someone staged in advance, lanterns already hung. That’s why those freaks knew the nickname “Iceberg Witch.” If this was all prearranged, that detail stops being strange and becomes a cue line.

She was an actress who didn’t know she was on stage, a moth circling footlights. She almost missed the question that chills the marrow.

Who is the one who wrote it all, the audience member lounging in a goose‑down cushion seat, staring up at her from the dark?

Mira thought that and couldn’t help it—she looked back, like a deer testing the wind. She swept the room, confirmed she was alone, then bit her lip and breathed in on a one‑two count, like steadying a boat on black water.

The dark was ink‑thick, the kind that swallows fingertips, yet she felt eyes on her back like frost. No—like a gaze from above, amused, looking down.

Mocking—she could taste the word like iron on her tongue. She felt the intent to toy with her, to twirl her like a puppet. Even if that presence had “helped” her get what she wanted most, she couldn’t paint a friendly face on it, not even in moonlight.

If her reasoning held, then that someone didn’t just make a living tribe of Nacha turn on each other like trapped scorpions. They also knew her habits and trails as if they were etched on bamboo, a map pinned under a lamp.

All her hiding to this day was a joke in that presence’s eyes, a paper screen against a storm.

She might as well be naked under noon sun; every secret lay bare before them. At the same time, she couldn’t even be sure they truly existed. She was passive as driftwood in a current, with no paddle, no way to push back.

The feeling of being gripped made her shiver, a wind through wet clothes. No—this can’t go on. She had to tell her sister everything she’d found. She had to warn her of this possible danger, a fire bell in the night.

Mira drew a sheet of letter paper from the dark like plucking a leaf at dusk. She bit her lower lip, mustered courage, and with a trembling hand lit the kerosene lamp again. In its dim amber pool, she lifted her pen and set the nib on the page, a spear poised before the charge.

The impulse carried her only this far, then died like a wave against rock.

Ink pooled on the paper into a black circle, a spreading stain like twilight. Mira stared at it, dazed, watching it bloom and ripple.

She had fought to claw free of the dark, yet her hands froze again, frost creeping up her fingers.

The reason was simple as a bell. She’d realized one more thing.

Doesn’t my sister already know?

In that moment, the missing piece of logic dropped into place like a key in a lock.

She remembered the fear in Adelaide’s eyes after they destroyed the Soul Devourer Sormaidon, a winter gust caught in her gaze. She remembered the “coincidence” at the Carne Family’s celebration that exposed Mira, a domino tipped by a fingertip. She remembered Adelaide’s look, as if she were challenging something unseen, a blade testing a veil. The once‑scattered doubts threaded together like beads on a string.

Of course her sister knew—she’d known from the very start, like a scout who reads sign before the rain.

If something was watching Mira, the same something could watch Adelaide, a hawk shadowing both sparrows.

And if the slower sister could figure that out under clouded moon, then the sharper one couldn’t have missed it at high noon.

In truth, the fact she realized so late meant the main target of that gaze and those meddling hands had almost certainly been Adelaide all along, not her. She was a side mirror catching stray light.

This “gift” was in fact meant for her sister, a tool to enter the Trial of “Truth,” like a key left under a stone. That only confirmed it further.

This had to be the root of Adelaide’s recent oddness, the grit under her collar. And Mira only now caught up, breathless on the trail.

—Clack.

Mira’s pen dropped onto the table, rolled like a loose bead, then tumbled off the edge.

She only watched it happen, blank as winter fields. Her hand hung limp, a branch after frost.

For months, her sister had borne an invisible stare, a silent sun on her skin. She’d struggled, thought, and challenged under the unseen hand called “script,” like a swimmer fighting a river.

Just imagining it saps strength, like heat on a long road. Her sister had carried it all alone, a solitary lamp in wind.

And Mira—who should’ve been her strength—what had she been doing all this time? She asked herself, a whisper to an empty room.

“Good morning! You look great today—eh?!”

At dawn the next day, when Pengpeng saw Mira come through the orphanage gates, her greeting tripped and fell like a child on ice. It had been ages since anything startled her this much. The sight crashed into her because the woman in front of her was the opposite of that cheery line—she’d never seen Mira this worn down, not even once.

Back when Mira first came to the orphanage, those first days, the blonde beauty had been cold as frost, but spotless. Her clothes were tidy. Her pretty face wore the lightest makeup, but still held Elf‑level standards, a flower cut in ice.

Today she looked like someone else’s reflection in broken water. The once‑sleek golden hair was dry, split, and snared into knots like brambles. Her bare face was overcast like a stormed‑over lake. The fatigue showed in bruised crescents under her eyes, shadowed moons. She still wore last night’s hooded outfit. Smoke clung to it like a stubborn ghost; Pengpeng could smell it in the doorway.

Honestly, with someone as naturally stunning as Mira, making herself look this… rough took effort, like smudging sunlight.

That hair? It screamed of careless mana‑dye, colors burned by sparks. Her face? Worse. She looked like someone chewed by magical backlash, a boat slammed by waves. And that coat—like she’d just fled a fire, ash on the hem. Mira was neat to a fault; she almost never wore one set two days running, like never using the same cup twice.

“Pengpeng.”

Pengpeng was still trying to piece together what disaster had rolled over Mira when the other woman spoke. The sudden voice made her jump like a cat at a dropped pan. She nodded fast to show she was listening, asked if she could help. But Mira didn’t seem to hear. She kept speaking with a rasp, a reed in cold wind.

“Tell the kids… the physical training classes… are canceled for now.”

“Huh?”

Pengpeng’s eyes went wide as lanterns, but Mira didn’t explain. She walked straight back to her room and shut the door with a sharp snap, like a gust closing a shutter.

Pengpeng’s guess was right. Mira had hit her lowest valley in months, a riverbed after drought.

She’d wrestled all night with what to do, and in the end she gave up on writing the letter. The pen lay like a fallen branch.

By now she was almost certain. While she was tangled in small things like weeds, unable to govern her own moods, even turning into a burden, her sister had already known all of this, a hawk long aloft.

From the start, Adelaide didn’t need Mira to “warn” her. That bell had rung long ago.

At this stage, if she still dumped these so‑called “new findings” onto paper, reciting what her sister clearly already knew, then tacked on the line she’d always wanted to say—“I want to return to your side. I want to be your strength”—that wouldn’t be mere ignorance. It would be sand in the wound.

She would only be…

Like a child, shamelessly pouring her fear into her sister’s lap, tears on a sleeve.

Mira knew the only real help now was to hand over the potion and the recording Magic Crystal Stone, like passing a torch before the wind.

But these mattered too much. She couldn’t trust a letter to carry them to Adelaide, not through hands she didn’t control. So she’d rushed overnight to Varie’s place, hoping to ask her to carry the evidence to the Elven capital. On the way she didn’t care what her hair looked like—who cared about dye when the sky was falling. She pushed herself with spells and, distracted, suffered magical backlash twice, like horses stumbling in the dark. Her eyes were dry as sand. Her guts felt knotted, twisted rope under the ribs. A dull pounding pain throbbed inside, hammer on shield.

Even so, when she reached Varie’s place, she learned Varie had left two days prior. She’d gone with the few people Mira still trusted to recover ancient Nacha technology from Lama City again, a caravan already over the hills.

So, what now?

She didn’t know. Her thoughts were like her hair, tangled into a briar, snagging on every twig. She couldn’t think. Chaos ran wild in her skull like a brushfire.

Maybe she could carry both pieces of evidence back herself—

—No. No way.

The thought had barely formed when every other thought rose up to block it like a wall of shields.

She saw again the moment Adelaide sent her away from the Elven capital, that decisive look like a drawn bow. Her hands clenched, knuckles white as stones.

There had to be another way. The Carne Family was still searching for her. Going back now was too risky, like walking into a net. She told herself that in her heart, trying to cut the thread of that temptation.

And so the river bent back to the first question.

What should she do? She didn’t know. Truly didn’t. The horizon was fog, no sun.

If all this still wasn’t bad enough, a worse wave broke while she floundered, footing gone.

“Teacher, Teacher! Open up!”

From beyond the gate came Copato’s urgent knocking, a drumbeat on wood. Mira sat against the wall, eyes empty as winter ponds. She didn’t lift her head or answer, content to let him stand like a caller lost in snow.

Until, between the bouts of ear‑ringing from the rush in her skull, she heard his next shout slice through.

“The paper says Adelaide—she’s a Blood Mage!”