—You…

—Truth is, you already… killed your sister with your own hands.

Inside the dim, meat-choked factory, Firefly planted a heel on Mira’s chest and laughed, arms flung wide like a stage jester who’d seen through the script. Her voice danced bright, but the words were so absurd Mira’s mind stalled like a bird hitting glass.

"What… are you saying?"

She asked on reflex. Firefly tilted her head, tsk-tsk, eyes glittering like oil on dark water.

"Don’t get it yet? Honestly. Making me explain the riddle ruins the fun."

She sighed, then smiled, mercy sweet as poisoned honey.

"But it won’t matter soon anyway. For a heartbroken companion’s sake, this lady will be generous—"

She bent close, lips at Mira’s ear, whispering like a secret traded in a shadowed shrine.

"Do you remember the name ‘Jiaqi’—"

The question cut off clean. Firefly hopped back two steps, her chest scorched in a jagged bloom of black. Mira was no longer pinned. She was up again, blade braced, blood at her mouth, eyes blazing like a stormlit sea.

Firefly only purred, a mock-sulky sound, face painted with helplessness.

"Really now. I only said a name, and you flare like tinder. Don’t tell me…"

She casually tore open the charred skin at her chest, peeling it off and flicking it away. Underneath lay a gleam of pink, raw flesh like wet petals. Her smile returned, sly and bright.

"Don’t tell me you already know what that name means?"

Her words fell, and the spot where she stood was swallowed by lightning bright as noon. Crescent arcs of high-voltage carved down in waves. Crack-crack, the air shattered, but even that storm couldn’t drown Mira’s roar.

"I don’t care! I don’t care why she suddenly craved spice, or why she spoke the Elf tongue—I don’t care, you hear me!"

Against her fury, Firefly’s reply came unhurried, her voice drifting through the crackle like a silk fan in summer heat.

"Ho-ho. Really? Feels to me… you care like your life’s on the line. And honestly… there’s a bit of relief in there too."

"—!"

Mira’s strike halted. Her fingers almost slipped from the hilt.

Because Firefly wasn’t wrong at all.

She hadn’t only hit how much Mira cared about that name. She’d speared the secret emotion hiding deepest in her chest.

On the night of her fourteenth birthday, Mira had understood it—Adelaide had always hated her. How could she not? Put anyone in Adelaide’s place, and they would nurse the same bitter root for a sister like Mira.

So, in those days by Adelaide’s bedside, she never dreamed of forgiveness.

All she could do was throw her own faults into stark contrast, to gild Adelaide’s goodness, to return whatever she’d stolen, grain by grain. Beyond that, any wish was a fantasy.

But later, what happened didn’t match that humble hope packed down like dust.

"Come on, tell this lady—down in that cavern, when that woman smoothed the hair at your ear and sang the lullaby from your childhood, how did that feel? Unreal, right? No one else was there—just like the disaster of your birthday feast’s second half. She had no reason to keep playing the sister game."

The lightning paused, a breath sucked back by the storm. Firefly strolled out of the burnt stink, words soft and sharp.

"And yet she still wore ‘elder sister’ like a cloak. Almost as if she truly believed it—believed she was ‘the good sister who shelters her little sister.’ From your view, it’s a miracle with sugar on top. But didn’t you ever find it strange? Why would the person who snapped your shin without blinking change so subtly, so suddenly, after a few years asleep—like something else slipped into that skull…"

"Shut up!"

Mira’s sword-hand trembled, nerves singing thin as wire. Just hearing it spiked her heartbeat into a drum.

"I said it! I don’t care! Even if she suddenly… learned something other, she’s still my sister!"

Yes—if Adelaide remained her sister, that was enough. Mira told herself that again and again, smothering the unease Firefly dragged up like weeds.

Firefly watched her bite her own lip, carving faith through pain. Her smile bloomed brighter, an orchid in poison rain.

"‘Learned something other’? Ah, you still didn’t catch it." She wagged a finger, playful as a cat with a moth. "You think she’s ‘Adelaide, plus someone else’s memories.’ Truth is, it’s reversed."

Reversed?

Mira’s eyes flew wide. Her mind balked like a horse at fire. Firefly gave her no gap to dodge.

"Tell me—after Adelaide ripped the mask off and snapped your leg, what did you do?"

The night slammed back into Mira. Her thoughts hiccuped, and the answer fell out.

"I… pushed her…"

"Right. You shoved her belly hard. And that giddy idiot, sure she’d already won, held no guard at all. A little girl’s force toppled her. She fell backward, and then…"

Firefly leaned back herself, bumped her head on a spine-spike, tilted her neck, rolled her eyes, tongue out like a dead fish.

"Thud. The back of her head cracked against the cabinet. She went limp on the spot, didn’t she?"

"So… what?"

"So… what?" Firefly arched, rose in a twisted coil, then covered her mouth, feigning shock like a street actress. "Wow. How cold-blooded. Because—that was the moment you killed your favorite sister with your own hands."

Mira’s blade froze. Firefly’s words, the flood of memory, every named and nameless feeling tangled into knots. Only one part still moved—raw refusal.

"What are you saying… she’s in the Elven capital right now."

Firefly nodded, easy as rain. "Sure. Her flesh still lives. But sadly, the one inside isn’t the sister you loved."

"Utter nonsense!"

"My my, stubborn as a stone." Firefly’s sigh came with a smile. "I get it. For you humans, this is hard to swallow… Fine, let’s start at the roots."

Pink buds pushed up from the scorched meat-floor, growing fast into pale bone plates. Beneath them, maggot-like knots swelled and sank. The ripples gathered into a single word—Chaos.

"So, Your Highness, do you know Chaos at its core?" She tapped the bone-board with a spine segment, teacher’s rod made of marrow.

Mira ignored the mock classroom. Firefly tapped again, muttering, "Such a bad student," and kept going.

"Chaos lies beyond the Sarman Empire, beyond the Elven Realm, beyond even the Sumerland Continent. Think of it as disorder and nothingness from outside the world—or call it pure malice."

"What… are you even saying?"

"Don’t rush. Listen. You’ll see."

She swept an arm, and above Mira, the meat ceiling tore with a syrupy rip. Tumorous muscle split down the seam under brute force. Rank blood fell in red waterfalls, splashing blossoms on the floor.

Through that ragged mouth, silver spilled in—moonlight like a quiet river.

Firefly lifted her face to the breach. The moon shone, pale and tender.

"Isylia… goddess of night and beauty. Even now, when the divine can only mimic her old form with illusion, her pity still takes the breath."

She praised that gentle glow, a sweetness laced with decline, then went on.

"You know the Moon Goddess’s fall during the Chaos Uprising. That proved Chaos stands higher than this plane—even gods can be unmade by that pure negation. By nature, with no outside hand, Chaos should have devoured our world. Not instantly—but grain by grain, every thing in this closed system would be made into the same nothing."

She glanced at her near-bare body, tugged at the last scraps of skin as if to confirm she still existed, then raised her head again.

"And yet here we stand—right? You want to ask why. Because our clever ‘god’ found a way. If a closed system can’t resist a higher plane, then import a variable from the same level as Chaos. Let them cancel."

"You… make it sound easy."

"Heh. Since your life’s sand is almost out, this lady will skip the ‘technical details.’" Her smile cut bright. "But you’re right about one thing—it’s nowhere near easy. How do you locate a higher-plane variable from below? Even trying to grasp the steps to bring it in would burn the brightest human minds to ash. An almost impossible project. But our ‘god’ did it. The variable rewrote Chaos’s assured victory. And it birthed a chain of side effects—the tragedies you recite like prayers…"

Kaman City Massacre. First Sarman Civil War. Second Sarman Civil War. Fire Moon Festival Famine. She ticked them off like a market list. With each name, Mira’s pupils tightened, not only at familiarity—but at the shared root.

"All of those happened in the early Sarman Empire…"

"Right. As expected of the Empire’s princess." Firefly’s voice lilted. "So you’ve guessed it. The variable wasn’t a weapon, nor a concept, nor a language. It was the one who dragged those tragedies in—the legendary human sovereign, Emperor Belior."

She pressed her palms together, savoring Mira’s shock, then continued.

"Her soul wasn’t of our world. It was a copy of a higher-plane existence. Our ‘god’ planted her in a newborn’s body and gave her his heart, making her the strongest human in history. Then came the alliance of the three races, the counterattack, the victory, the imperial civil wars, bodies by the thousands, yadda yadda… The rest won’t be printed for commoners, but I’m sure the Douglas Family and your royal tutors told you the real version."

Mira’s gaze flickered like a candle in wind. She didn’t confirm. She only asked, flat and sharp:

"How does that history matter here?"

"It matters, dear princess." Firefly chuckled, a blade hidden in lace. "You heard it from that dumb dragon too—after millennia of silence, Chaos will return. What do you think that means?"

"…"

"You still don’t see? This time our ‘god’ has no choice either."

“If it wants to change a world fated to be swallowed by chaos, it has to bring back that higher‑plane variable again—the same soul, a clean copy.” Firefly’s voice dripped like pitch in moonlight, a smile curling as if a blade under silk.

“We all remember what happened,” she went on, delight rising like a red dawn. “That soul from above wasn’t some selfless Hero, but a hopeless petty creature—selfish, sanctimonious, a tyrant who fed the Human race to wars and graves just to cement her power. Under her reign, out of ten human infants, only one lived to five—what a cemetery of childhood.”

Mira’s unease swelled like a storm-tide; the feeling came first, then her breath, then the clamp of her throat. She opened her mouth to stop Firefly, but the latter rode her momentum like a hawk on a thermal and didn’t slow.

“That cruelty had roots,” Firefly purred, eyes crescenting like cold moons. “Her higher‑plane life broke her spine of fate; sudden power rotted her further; you know the old line—the dragonslayer turns dragon. In the end, our savior became a beast with no reins for desire. Classic, right? Tragic, right? And watching that play didn’t cost just a few Heka silver pieces. So our god, tender as a spring rain, doesn’t want a repeat.”

“Enough! Shut that mouth of lies and tricks!” Mira’s shout cracked like thunder across a cliff face. “How could you possibly know what a god knows!”

“Mm? My brilliant Master, generous as a river in flood, shared these truths with yours truly,” Firefly sang, smug as a cat before a milk bowl. “You won’t believe it, sure. No big deal. You’re not as bright as Master, but you’re no fool. With two small facts, you’ll see what I mean.”

She lifted one finger, slow as a knife rising from a scabbard. “One—one body can house only one soul. If you swap, the original owner vanishes. Only the memories get kept, drifting like leaves in a jar.”

“I said stop!”

Her cry tore raw like a scraped nerve. Lightning leapt, a mad river, for Firefly—but that wicked smile only rose like a sickle moon. She didn’t budge; she raised a second finger, unhurried as falling ash.

“Two—the variable’s true name, on the higher plane, is…”

Electric mana slammed into the blood‑net blooming before Firefly with a deafening crash, iron taste and ozone mixing like storm and rust. But it was late by a heartbeat; before the impact, Mira had heard the last two syllables.

“Jiaqi.”

Charge jittered in the air, then thinned like frost under sun. After that first collision, no follow‑up came—only Firefly’s peal of laughter, light as bells, sharp as glass.

“Hee‑hee‑hee! Now you see. God’s biggest mistake last time was choosing an infant as the vessel. Poor little thing—no self yet, wiped clean as a blank page. The variable, Jiaqi, got planted whole, tragic memories and mean nature intact, and up sprouted a tyrant like a black tree. So this time, It changed the script. It picked a vessel with a full, grown persona, then used the poor sap’s memories to remake—no, to deceive. It fooled that higher‑plane soul, weakened her grip on herself, made her think she was native to this world.”

“Shut… up…”

Mira’s voice lost its steel; even forming words felt like lifting stone in water.

But what shattered her faith was Firefly’s next whisper, soft as silk, poisonous as fog.

“Of course, that move is risky,” she crooned. “No one welcomes a stranger who barges into their home. Even if you can’t win, you drag them into ruin with you, yes? That’s the crux of soul grafting: an infant with no memory is easy, but a vessel who’s lived fine years, with a soul grown tall, is hard. So to keep the original owner from fighting back, our god chose her softest hour for that delicate surgery. Yes, don’t doubt yourself—you’ve guessed it. It was when she dropped every guard, showed herself without fear, then fell into sudden coma—on your fourteenth birthday night.”

Fourteenth… the night of my birthday?

Mira’s sword slipped with a clack onto the fleshy floor, like a stone falling into a shallow pool, and she stood frozen, a statue washed in pale fire.

Firefly walked toward her one small step at a time, each tap like a drip in a cavern, and Mira’s gaze stuck at a single angle, fixed like a sparrow pinned on a page. Firefly’s mouth kept moving, sweet as venom.

“Thanks to your little shove, her pre‑op was perfect,” she hummed. “Mind and body bare as winter branches. Our god swapped beams under the roof; when she woke again, she was brand new. Now do you get it? You had it backward. The one arguing with the Elves isn’t ‘Adelaide who received another’s memories.’ She’s ‘Jiaqi who stole Adelaide’s memories.’”

Silence answered Firefly’s cheerful verdict, vast as snow on a plain.

Mira lost her voice entirely. A serpent of vertebrae burst from the meat‑floor at her feet, slithered up her thigh like cold ivy, and coiled her tight. She didn’t move. Something in her heart cracked like thin ice, and her spirit couldn’t lift her body anymore.

Seeing Mira’s body freeze like winter bark, Firefly’s smile blossomed like a crimson peony.

She had spoken so much for exactly this sight—a broken idol, a toppled pillar.

Humans were trifles, dust on a road, and yet Mira and the one calling herself Adelaide had made her taste defeat more than once. Master didn’t scold her, but hatred and envy had piled up in her like silt in a riverbed.

Now, watching one of them collapse, her curve wasn’t a fake mask—it was a joy rising from a hollow chest. Heartless, she still hopped, barefoot in a red slick, each step a deep scarlet splash. She came up to Mira, hooked a finger under Mira’s chin like lifting a fragile cup.

“Oh, poor little thing,” she cooed. “You can’t accept it at all, can you? I get it. Adelaide was your only hope of redemption, a lamp in fog. Knowing you killed her with your own hands, knowing you’ve lost forgiveness at the root—who could stay cold and pretend nothing happened?”

As she spoke, the bone serpent slid past Mira’s chest and began to coil her long neck, tightening like a noose made of winter. Even there, Mira didn’t react; the light left her eyes, and only hollowness remained, like an empty well.

Firefly clicked her tongue, feigning pity, and patted Mira’s shoulder like a mother bird. She leaned to her ear, breath soft as smoke.

“But as a fellow loser in love, kind little me will share one more happy note,” she crooned. “You must hate that nest‑stealing impostor who knocked off your sister, right?”

“…”

“Wow, give me something,” Firefly tsked twice, then giggled like wind chimes. “No matter. This will perk you up. That impostor is about to taste what your sister felt.”

“Back… then…?”

A faint ripple returned to Mira’s dull gaze, like wind across still water, and the words came broken, like reeds in frost. Firefly lit up, patted her shoulder twice, pleased as a vendor ringing coins, and went on.

“You heard me. Her soul will be driven from the body soon, same as she did to your sister. Our Master will run the same steps on her. How’s that? Knowing the impostor will finally get what she deserves—doesn’t that make your chest loosen, hee‑hee?”

“Don’t thank yours truly,” she sang, turning her back without a guard, strolling toward the giant heart that held Varie, each stride a brushstroke across blood.

Meanwhile, the bone serpent only rested against Mira’s carotid like a cold blade; it could cut her air any moment, but Firefly didn’t tighten it. Simple reason.

She wasn’t done playing.

She wanted to keep torturing Mira, to watch pain bloom in layers, until the toy broke under her fingers. Then her losses at the hands of those two Humans would balance like a ledger in flame.

First things first: deal with the bigger problem, the Nacha Tribe Hero. Kill her, then savor Mira slowly—Firefly hummed a tune, counting mind‑scars and flesh‑torments. She even felt a speck of regret, guessing Mira would die before she finished the whole entertainment menu. Still, before she returned to Master, she would have her fun.

A white flash cracked her pretty dream in two, bright as a knife through silk.

“Mm…?”

Firefly glanced back. Every bone serpent she’d summoned had shattered, dusting like brittle glass, and the golden‑haired Human girl who’d been drifting like a lost cloud had picked up her fallen blade. Shake in her eyes, tremor in her hands, but the tip pointed straight at Firefly like a winter star.

“Hu,” Firefly huffed, annoyed as a cat flicked by rain. “I said so much. What are you still clinging to? Don’t tell me—you still want to protect that impostor?”

“I… won’t let you…”

Firefly squinted, a flicker of confusion like mist over a rock. Why could Mira still say that line?

After a beat of silence, she snorted and covered her face, laughter lurching wild like a broken cart down a hill.

“Ha—ha‑ha‑ha! I should’ve known. In the desert, I should’ve known. Besides Master, Humans are all single‑track fools. Even when the truth is a blade, you lie to yourself until it feels like silk. Hopelessly dumb!”

She finished laughing, her sneer a brand on her face.

“Fine. Call it mercy for your dumb loyalty. I’ll give you one shot.” She opened her arms, chest bare like a target board. “I’ll stand right here. Use whatever trick you want. But don’t blame me for the warning—after this, I won’t hold back. You’ll die ugly—”

Before the last word fell, Mira vanished; the air buckled like heat over sand, and light warped as if caught in a whirlpool.

She had used the Time Domain.

Firefly knew it, but she didn’t raise a shield; she stood with scorn like armor, sure as stone in a river.

She was one hundred percent certain. Even with the Time Domain, a mere high‑aptitude Human under a curse’s chains couldn’t break the “Embryo” Master had given her.

That was a true piece of Master’s body, iron in bone; no way a shackled Human could crack it.

With that absolute faith, the clash finished in a blink, quick as a falcon’s strike.

No thunderstorm this time, no seas of blood, no thickets of bone thorns.

The lack of noise didn’t mean Mira couldn’t call down enough lightning; it meant the storm had turned inward, a blade under a cloak.

By the time Firefly realized that truth, the outcome was already carved in stone.