—Blood Mage.

A word carved into Mira’s skull, a shadow that snaps her awake like cold water in fog.

The day she first learned the truth felt like breaking through ice.

She had to swallow a bitter fact like ash on the tongue.

She had already sinned against the one who mattered most, an irreparable wound like a cracked bell.

Even if she spent her whole life on penance, she could never return the warmth she stole from her sister, like trying to glue a shattered moon.

But the curse tangled in that word had only just begun, like roots creeping under a door.

When that old fox read “Blood Mage” to the guests at the financial summit, it hit her again like winter wind.

She had been betrayed, years of work swept away like sand in a tide.

Even the tiny compensation she had tried to offer turned hollow, crushed by the same word like a stone falling in a well.

Looking back, it always felt the same, like a storm that returns by season.

Every time the word had to appear—whether from someone else’s mouth, or in the red flash of an enemy, or when Adelaide had to show it to the world—something would slip from them like leaves in late autumn.

So when Mira heard it again, even with backlash still chewing her nerves, even with her mind a nest of tangled reeds, she stood on instinct.

She shoved open the door like breaking a stuck latch and saw Copato at the threshold, brandishing a newspaper like a victory banner.

“It says Anta’s teacher is super strong, like she can beat a ton of long-ears alone. Is that true? Can I learn—”

“Give me.”

“Whoa!” Copato’s paper was snatched clean, a flutter like startled sparrows.

With the shield gone, she finally saw Mira’s disheveled face, a mess like rain-beaten straw, and she jumped.

“Mira, what happened? Is this bad news?”

Her small finger tapped her chin, thinking hard with a little engine hum, muttering, “It’s just people knowing you can use Blood Magic, right? What’s the big deal?”

It was honest confusion, like clear water.

Meanwhile, Mira skimmed the headline like wind over grass.

Her arm sank, and panic drained into a fog of bewilderment.

Yes, every time the word came, something cracked.

But this time, by the feel of the air, the storm wasn’t sharp.

Lady Silan points out hidden Blood Magic aptitude among Dark-Horse humans. Why did Miss Adelaide conceal her true strength?!

That was the headline in Mira’s hand, a mirror to Rockridge’s reveal of Adelaide’s Blood Magic.

Yet the time and place had shifted, like a river changing course, and that made all the difference.

As Copato muttered with easy certainty, this wasn’t the Sarman Empire.

Here among Elves—where magic ran like sap through old trees—Blood Magic wasn’t demonized into a monster.

Prejudice lingered like a cold draft, but not to the empire’s point of slapping a prefrontal lobotomy the moment it was found.

In truth, since Blood Mages are keen to flesh and material like hawks to motion, many hold key posts in research, much like Ayu, whom Lady Silan invited to verify Mira’s identity back then.

Because of that, the report didn’t fixate on “Adelaide can use Blood Magic.”

It focused on two points instead: the “extreme” aptitude and the Sacrifice Domain, and why hide them like a covered lantern.

Such stellar talent, pretending to be ordinary.

Downplaying her decisive role in battle, while pushing the Nacha Tribe’s tech—Forging Hammer—to the front in ending Soul Devourer Sormaidon.

Was this an attempt to boost the Nacha Tribe, to inflate ancient Nacha tech, to drum up Nacha nationalism?

That was the Carne Family’s line of attack, the blade-edge of their “Trial of Truth.”

No doubt, a clumsy reply would gouge Adelaide’s popularity like hail on crops.

But compared to what once stripped them of everything and drove them from the empire, this reveal… actually let Mira breathe like lifting a weight off the chest.

The breath was only a brief spring.

It held until she flipped to the second page and saw thunder split the sky.

Shocking! The Dark-Horse humans’ counterstrike is—overturning the verdict on the Nuhaman Massacre!

Undercurrents surge!

The most talked-about Flower Dancer election in a millennium—how will it end?

Mira locked up again, heat flushing her skull like boiling water.

Her ears rang like bees, and the latter half of the headline doubled in her eyes.

Only one word stood sharp, the one she dreaded like a thorn.

—Nuhaman Massacre.

“Miss Mira, in this matter… I fear I don’t know much more than you.”

That was what the elder said when Mira reached the Nacha Tribe’s council hall and asked what was happening.

“Moreover, I think the friendly folk of the Fana Family may not offer much either,” the elder’s voice rasped like old bark.

“From what I know, this was not their agreed strategy. To publicly announce on the central square that they will seek to overturn the Nuhaman Massacre… was Miss Adelaide’s sole decision.”

Mira stared, disbelief flaring like sparks.

“But why…?”

“That is exactly what we wish to know.”

“Yet to this moment, she has not told us the reason.”

He lifted his gaze through drooping lashes like tired leaves and met Mira’s eyes.

He spoke with the weight of stones.

“Forgive me, Miss Mira, but your sister’s decisive, solitary approach leaves our Nacha side hard to mesh with her.

And the topic she chose itself… carries heavy controversy like storm-clouds.”

“Con…troversy?”

“Yes. Controversy.”

“Not only among Elves. Her decision has stirred a gale inside our tribe as well.

Many voices say she may have played a wrong move.”

Mira shook her head on reflex, a stubborn flame.

“No. If she did this, there must be a reason…!”

“A reason…”

The elder lowered his eyes again, slow as dusk.

“I do not doubt Miss Adelaide’s mind or her restraint.

We will never forget what she has done for the Nacha Tribe.

But…”

Though those who slaughtered the Nuhaman were not the orthodox Nacha trapped inside the Sealing Array, the pack that did it were blood-drunk beasts without honor.

And they wore beast ears that no one could deny, like marks carved by frost.

His voice grew heavy, and as elder, he fell silent for a heartbeat, like a wind break in winter woods.

After a pause, he lifted a card-like sheet, a picture like a window.

He handed it to Mira, whose pupils shrank at the gallows.

“These… were them?”

The last words were ground between her teeth like grit.

She had seen a face she could never forget in any lifetime.

Deep yellow beast eyes.

Gray ears stained with blood.

A scar that ran from the mouth to the ear like a crooked river.

In a heartbeat, she knew what this photo held.

“How… did he die?”

She set the image down after a long beat.

The elder felt the hate burning in her gaze like coals.

He closed his eyes and spoke, slow as falling snow.

“He died in pain.

The drop from the gallows didn’t break his neck.

He hung there halfway, kicking and clawing like a trapped wolf.

I watched him struggle for over ten minutes before he stilled.”

He waited, granting Mira time to let the storm thin.

When her fist loosened like thawing ice, he continued.

“It was not only their punishment.

The Carne Family chose Sanda’s open square to execute them, like beating a drum in daylight.

It was a warning to our people in essence.

That even if those brutes were never shaped by our rites and our teaching, they still remained a shame to the Nacha.”

At last, he said the worry that weighed him down like wet cloth.

“This topic, with only a small twist, can easily stir fear toward our tribe within the Elves again.

And if the investigation finds any ambiguous ‘evidence,’ it will almost surely become the Carne Family’s reason to tighten lockdown and curfews, like pulling iron bars closer.”

“Such worries are common among my people.

The young radicals exploit the wind and start pressing me again…”

“For now, I can still hold the reins, but as you see, I am old and spent.

If the tide keeps rising—”

He didn’t finish.

He only looked at Mira, meaning clear as moonlight.

Your kin, your closest one.

Go to her for us.

Mira didn’t answer there.

She drifted back to the orphanage like a leaf in the dark and locked herself in a black room.

She lacked even the strength to reach the table.

She slid down the wall and shut her eyes, like folding a wing.

One…

Two… one…

Two… … … one… two—no, wrong, the rhythm slipped like sand.

Damn it… why can’t I find the beat…?

Unlike before, counting couldn’t calm her sea.

Even keeping the intervals even—such a simple task—felt hard as pushing a boulder uphill, lost in the churn.

Too much… had happened, like a storm piling waves.

From the attack on Anta and Copato, only two days had passed.

She hadn’t closed her eyes once.

Every event had left her stranded like a boat on rocks.

How to safely get the evidence to her sister.

The Carne Family’s “Trial of Truth.”

That thing that watches and toys with their fate from the shadows.

And the Nuhaman Massacre…

The elder didn’t know, but Mira believed she did.

She knew why her sister acted alone, like a blade leaving the scabbard.

It must be for her.

She remembered the first night in Lama City.

She lay on her sister’s lap like a cat in winter sun.

Her sister asked: if you had a chance to take revenge, what would you choose?

Mira couldn’t decide.

She offered a foggy answer.

Her sister must have been disappointed by that soft indecision.

So she acted for Mira, like stepping onto thin ice alone.

Mira’s heartbeat staggered again, a drum going wild.

Pain jabbed her chest, guilt turning corporeal like thorns.

She bit her lip until it bled, fingertips sinking into her palm like hooks.

When she was near losing control, a familiar girl’s voice came from the door like a lantern.

“Mira, Sister. Bong-Bong made a special nutritious dinner for you. I’m bringing it in.”

Mira opened her eyes.

She heard the words, but her gaze stayed fogged, a lake under mist.

Anta got no answer, yet she wouldn’t give up.

She ran to the window, stretched on tiptoe like a sapling, and tried to pass the tray through.

She was too short, and that tray was wider than her whole torso, like a shield.

She almost spilled the soup with a wobble like a loose boat.

Thankfully, someone on the other side steadied it, a hand like a brace.

“Mm… my center of gravity still isn’t steady,” Anta said, seeing Mira’s off-balance face at the window, unflustered like a calm stream.

“I guess in the next fitness class, I should do the same sets as the big lug and Copato…”

“I’m not hungry.”

“Nope. Even for Mira, going this long without food is bad, like leaving a lamp without oil.”

Even if she could only show a purple little crown of hair above the sill, she kept pushing the tray inward like edging a boat to shore.

Mira took it and set it on the table, speaking as evenly as she could, like smoothing ripples.

“I get it.”

Anta’s task should have ended there like a door closing.

But she didn’t leave the way Mira hoped.

She didn’t let her sink alone into old waters.

She hopped up and perched on the windowsill with a soft eek, and fixed her gaze on the moon hanging high, a round coin over night’s river.

“…?”

Mira froze.

Anta was a well-behaved, high-EQ child in her mind, like a sparrow that knows when to quiet.

She should have read the air for solitude.

Yet no matter how thick the silence grew between them, Anta wouldn’t shift her little seat, stubborn as a pebble.

“…Fine. I’ll eat. You don’t need to sit here and watch me.”

"Ah, no," Anta turned back in mild surprise, her eyes flickering like a startled firefly.

She looked at Mira and asked, "Mira, don’t you want someone with you right now, under this moon?"

Asked so, Mira’s lips parted, like a petal caught by a small wind, and for a beat she had no words.

Anta kept speaking, her voice soft as moss. "When I wasn’t happy, Grandpa and Grandma would watch the moon with me, and my mood would lift like a tide."

"But if you don’t like that, I’ll go first," she added, her cute face dimming like a lantern in fog.

She was about to hop down from the window ledge, that little perch like a swallow’s eave, when Mira’s voice came.

"It’s fine." The word fell quiet as dew.

Anta looked back and saw Mira sit too, her gaze on her like a lake just clearing after rain, doubt rippling where distance had been.

It was almost like a silent plea, a paper lantern adrift on dark water.

"You said that would make the heart lighter," Mira murmured, her voice thinning like mist, "but if the thing making everyone sad keeps getting worse..."

"Then you should stay by the ones who matter," Anta said, firm as a small stone in the palm. "If everything is awful, and your important person isn’t there, how pitiful that person is, standing alone in cold wind."

Mira froze, silence settling like first snow.

Pitiful…? The word pressed in her chest like a bright thorn under silk.

Would Sister feel that too? The thought fluttered like a moth toward a lamp.

After a while, she lifted her face, and together they looked at the moon, a silver disc spilling light like fine water.

"Thank you, Anta." The thanks moved like a warm current under ice.

"Eh?" A gentle stroke fell on Anta’s head, like a feather from night’s wing, and she yelped, almost sliding from the sill like a startled fish.

At the same time, Mira’s weary face curved into a light smile, a crescent lifting from cloud.

It wasn’t mean laughter at Anta’s stumble; the smile held a tucked-away resolve, like steel wrapped in silk.

Yes. No matter what, she would go back and see Adelaide once, and find the answer with her own hands, like drawing a blade from its sheath.