A strange voice, a strange face, strange clothes and frame. But Mira would never forget that affected drawl, or that weapon that kissed her blade: a snake‑coiled spine spike.

It was Firefly—the ambusher from the desert village, a shadow like heat on sand. Mira knew it the instant steel met steel, a truth sharp as frost on glass.

The woman didn’t hide. She drifted down like a crimson petal in a windless night, then landed before Mira with a dancer’s stillness.

“We meet again, Princess Belior~” Firefly purred, honey laced with thorns curling in her tone.

Mira raised her sword across her chest, a silver gate shut against storm. She stood between Firefly and the heart where Varie now lay, a sentinel carved from stone.

“Hey! What’s happening on your side?! Is there an… enemy…?” Varie’s voice boomed from the heart, then thinned like dawn fog, then broke to threads like torn silk.

Mira’s face darkened, a cloud swallowed by thunder, while Firefly wagged a finger, a smile blooming like a poisonous flower.

“Don’t worry,” she sang, soft as silk over steel. “Yours truly only strengthened the soundproofing. She’s fine—for now. She is the Lionheart Hero. Yours truly knows her place.”

“Even boxed in, I’d need everything to scratch her~” Her eyes glittered like knife‑tips in candlelight.

“I won’t let you,” Mira said, a voice heavy as rain.

“No need to fret,” Firefly laughed, a crescent of fingers half‑hiding her lips. “If someone pokes in, yours truly can’t focus on that troublesome one.”

“Last time, I split attention because of you, and she stole a shot—no fun,” she chimed, laughter like bells dipped in blood.

“So relax. I’ll remove the nuisance first, then devote myself to the dignified Lionheart Hero~” Her words glided like swans on black water.

In other words, you won’t see her corpse, because you’ll die first. She grinned like a cat tasting cream, fingers twining her fire‑burned curls.

“But first, applause for your little cleverness,” she said, voice light as drifting ash. “We meant to lure you to strike the spire.”

“It’d waste some stock, and jump our script,” she mused, eyes gleaming like wet obsidian. “But the factory’s reserves can bathe every Nacha Tribe remnant in our master’s grace…”

“Pity we didn’t play to you and your master’s tune,” Mira answered, cold as moonlight on water.

Firefly shrugged, brow dipping like a wing at rest. “Yes, a pity,” she hummed, smile blooming again like morning glories.

“This works too,” she said, cheer bright as lanterns. “After I finish you here, the factory brews more draughts.”

“The destined revel arrives on the dot, a festival like wildfire,” she sang. “Two birds, one stone—yours truly thanks you for choosing a frontal fight!”

She lifted her short skirt and bowed theatrically, a stage gesture bright as lacquer. Mira didn’t bite; she gripped her sword, rooted like a pine in snow.

“Everything you said happens only if I fall first,” she said, a line inked clean.

Firefly covered her mouth, feigned surprise like a sparrow’s flutter. “Ah! True—if yours truly loses, the pot spills.”

“But alas, impossible!” Her laugh rang like iron on iron. “Remember our last bout?”

“No Lionheart Hero or your dear elder sister will deus ex machina you now,” she trilled, mirth mad as crows. “They can barely save themselves. Hahaha!”

Her manic laugh cut the air like broken glass. The same weapon chorus answered, bone and blade shrieking.

Scarlet flooded her eyes like sunset over a river. Blood spilled from every feature like storm from split clouds.

Any normal creature would faint in seconds at that rate. She only laughed, a nightjar calling over carrion.

Blood hit the floor and melted in like rain into thirsty soil. Meat walls and floor ballooned, grotesque as boils, writhing like maggots through flesh.

That wasn’t the worst. Compared to their true shape, fat fly larvae looked cute as pearls. These were the spine‑bone spikes Mira first crossed.

They had twisted further since the desert village, hard as diamond, studded with tumor hammers and sawteeth, every inch bred for slaughter.

A few spikes had “hatched” early, sly as snakes in grass during chatter. One lifted from Mira’s blind spot, then lunged at her seemingly open back.

Clang!

The sneak failed. Mira tapped a toe and sprang, light as a dragonfly leaving water, a splashless rise.

Her sword swept a half‑moon, a crescent cut made of lightning, and met the spike as it speared through her last footprint.

Steel kissed bone and screamed, a chalk‑burn shriek. The new spikes were tougher, hard as winter roots.

Even so, Mira’s blade only paused, purple‑blue arcs dancing like foxfire, then split the spike clean in two.

Her swordlight didn’t drag. In one jump she bent paths again and again, a comet changing lines.

The next spikes met the same fate, severed like reeds. Blood‑rich spinal pulp fountained with each crack, gouging huge wounds in the meat floor.

Firefly watched, and her laugh died, a candle snuffed by wind. Surprise lifted her brows like frost.

“You… got stronger,” she said, head tilted like a curious bird. “So the curse weakened?”

Mira closed her eyes and said nothing, then landed steady, a stance etched like a seal on clay. When she opened them, blue‑violet light flickered at the corners, crackling like dry twigs.

It was the hue of peak voltage, lightning beyond “High”—the mark of “Extreme,” a crown of storm. She hadn’t touched that in the desert.

Firefly pinched her nose, face crinkling like a child sniffing garlic. “Ugh, what a stink~ Yours truly liked the old you.”

“That one was fragrant,” she teased, voice sweet as syrup. “This one keeps electrolyzing ozone.”

Electrolyze? Ozone? The words pricked like unfamiliar thorns. Mira frowned, a shadow rippling water.

Firefly reclined, boneless as silk in a breeze. The meat wall bulged like a living tide and rose into a sofa to catch her.

She yawned, blood spilling like wine from a cracked jug. “Enough. Yours truly won’t let our master’s factory smell like ten thousand rotting fish.”

“Let’s make this quick,” she snapped, tone sharp as a thrown knife. No tricks now, only storm.

Every bulging sac around her burst at once, a field of ruptured moons. Dozens—no, hundreds—of spine spikes erupted, blackening the ceiling like locusts.

They wove above Mira into a killing net, a heaven‑snare meant to grind life to dust, closing from all angles like tide on rock.

“At this level… it’s nothing.” Mira faced a sealed horizon, no path but forward, calm as a lake before thunder.

She shut her eyes again, then swallowed once, a bell struck in her throat, a small ritual.

A blaze a hundredfold brighter flashed through the gaps, a sun through lattice. The charged field whipped air into a cyclone, razor gusts like air‑blades.

They shattered the net, tore bone from joint, then sliced every piece to chaff before gravity could claim it, a harvest like scythes in wheat.

In a breath, Firefly’s horrors rose and vanished, leaving a deluge—blood in sheets and marrow like cream.

The copper stink smothered the factory’s native rot, iron rain drowning sour steam. Through that bloodstorm, the golden figure broke forward, lightning a halo in her hair.

“It won’t work!” Mira shouted, arcs dancing on her blade like river fish. Blood veined her eyes like red threads.

Tessmi’s Lament still gnawed, a winter pressing sap, a collar of ice. But the curse had loosened, bonds slack as old rope.

It could no longer force her lightning down a tier, no longer dim storm to candle. The shackles rattled, not held.

Without freely used Time Domain, she still stood near her old peak, near the Empire’s strongest—thunder for a crown, steel for a scepter.

If she’d had this in the desert village, that fight wouldn’t have turned ragged as torn cloth. She could have saved the vanguard, Kabos included, a flock gathered before dusk.

Maybe, if faster, Anta’s grandparents too—stop the tragedy before that child’s eyes went dark, lamps blown out by wind.

Her heart thumped, a war drum in her ribs. Her slender blade drew a second surge, stormbank loaded, and slashed for Firefly—still lounging on that meat‑sofa.

Still lounging? The calm set ice on Mira’s spine, a chill like winter river. The cut was past return, a falcon already stooping.

She kept the swing, carving the fleshy sofa like wet clay, then sinking into Firefly’s delicate skin, a petal scorched by lightning.

Contact brought expected burn. High voltage charred her into black crust, smoke curling like singed paper.

For a breath, everything looked right, a plan laid like chess. Mira thought she’d worried too much.

Then she saw it. Inside the cut, Firefly’s body didn’t show normal flesh, only a tender candy‑pink meat, wrong as dawn at midnight.

The hilt went light in Mira’s grip, wind taking a banner. She snapped her hand back, but Firefly had already sprung.

A shriek like a needle through silk tore the air. One long leg scythed from an angle no natural body could reach, a crescent kick.

Too sudden. Mira couldn’t dodge. The strike hammered her waist like a whip thick as an elephant’s trunk, and she flew like a leaf on gale.

She coughed blood, red as plum blossoms on snow, then skidded back, steps scattering like beads. She stabbed down to brace, but the blade met nothing.

Shock flashed through her like lightning on sand. She looked at her right hand and saw her Nacha Tribe rapier from Lama City had lost its tip.

Only a short stub clung to the hilt, a broken fang. The missing length…

“Ah, Princess Belior, so sorry,” Firefly sang, sweet as syrup over poison. “You wouldn’t be looking for… this piece, would you?”

Mira lifted her gaze and froze, a deer in frost. The upper half of the blade was inside Firefly’s body, a silver swallowed.

Not lodged. Not snapped by overload. It was melted from the middle, eaten clean like sugar in tea.

Yes—the Nacha‑forged weapon, a blade meant for no equal, was being swallowed by that candy‑pink flesh, consumed in heartbeats.

“Hee‑hee. What a pity, Princess,” Firefly said, delight bright as lanterns. “Surely you didn’t think yours truly came with only the weakest ‘embryo’ this time?”