Only when Adelaide spoke her name did Silan finally claw her mind back from the shock that slammed like a storm against her eyes.

The next heartbeat, a corona of fire rushed in and ringed Adelaide’s group; Silan’s voice seeped through the blazing curtain like winter wind.

“You... dare barge in like this?! Hah? Think my Elf kin stands empty? Then try me—see if that sky-high hiding trick can stomach your brazen taunt!”

Kabos stared at the onrushing wall of fire and yowled, nerves snapping like lute strings. Barni hunched, fur bristling like grass in a gale; she tucked her singed tail under her belly, guarding her glossy coat with wounded pride. Adelaide saw and stroked her head, a calm touch like cool rain.

“It’s fine. When this ends, I’ll take you to Her Highness Menglan. She’ll fix you up, pretty as ever. Don’t worry.”

“Like hell I’m calm!”

“That’s not the point!” Kabos blurted, panic fluttering like trapped sparrows. “What do we do, big sis—!”

“Easy. I’ve got a trick.”

“A trick? Great, stop hiding it—huh? What are you doing?”

Kabos’s brief relief lasted less than half a breath. Adelaide smiled, crescent-soft, and reached out with those slender hands like an angel offering a path through fire.

Then—snap.

Magic cuffs clicked around his wrists like frost biting iron.

“Mrrrow?!”

Kabos went blank, and Barni did too, because in the same instant blood threads lashed out like spider silk and trussed her up, a big yellow rice dumpling. The threads didn’t cinch to harm; they just pinned her, helpless as a moth caught mid-flight.

“What is this supposed to mean, big sis?!”

Adelaide only shrugged, a leaf-light lift of shoulders. “You did break in. We still have to follow basic arrest procedures. Bear with it for now.”

“...?”

At those words, not only the cat and the lion went dumbfounded; even the hurtling wall of fire halted like a wave frozen at the shore.

“Now you offer submission?” The voice from beyond the flames was cold with heat, like ice cracking under lava. “Don’t you think it’s too late?”

Adelaide scratched Barni’s chin, soothing her like you would a wary beast, and said, “You did say this debate is essentially meaningless now. Even so, barging into the holy trial ground of ‘Truth’ is wildly improper. Out of respect for the Elf tribe, I’ll proceed by your rules. Is that so wrong?”

“Honeyed words,” Silan snapped, anger coiling like a viper. “You think we—we—will trust an alien charlatan who mocks law and speaks in lies?”

“That’s hard to say. If you can’t answer my next questions, the liar headed for prison... might not be me.”

Provoked, the fire around Adelaide flared high in a sudden surge, like a dragon rearing. Adelaide only tilted her head and asked, light as a feather, “Oh? Feeling guilty—planning to erase the evidence right here?”

She didn’t dodge. The fire stopped inches from her nose like a stallion hauled short at the reins, then thinned and fell away. It revealed a room in ruin, ash and debris strewn like a battlefield, and in that wreckage stood Silan, her casting fan already folded and tucked away.

“Ridiculous,” Silan scoffed, words hard as stones. “You’ve talked and talked and brought no proof. Puff and bluster—why would I be nervous?”

“Heh. Don’t rush.” Adelaide’s voice was a smile. “I said the proof is right here.”

A hook of blood thread lifted a black bag from the floor like a fish caught on a line. The drool crusted on it had been baked dry by Silan’s flames; on the taut, parched surface a faint human outline showed through like a shadow under parchment. Silan’s pupils tightened like pinholes.

A red glint cut through the room. The bag split down the middle. Its contents lost support and began to drop, but blood threads netted them in midair, presenting them bare to every eye, including the broadcast array’s unblinking lenses.

A corpse—more precisely, a corpse of the Nacha Tribe.

Silan’s mouth parted; not even her breath escaped. She stared at that ugliness past ugliness, a face like a scar carved by fate. At length, she murmured, hollow as wind in an empty hall.

“No, this... this is impossible...”

“Yes.” Adelaide stepped into the hush and carried the thought onward. “Impossible. How could this Nacha man appear here?”

She turned to the array streaming to the whole nation and drew out the execution sketch, laying it beside the Nacha man’s face like two moons mirrored. “Look. He’s almost identical to the principal culprit of the Nuhaman massacre shown in the sketch. Is that a coincidence? I don’t think so. Ms. Silan, how do you read it?”

“...No, no—that’s wrong...!”

Even if she didn’t want to understand, Silan had to grasp what Adelaide meant—another step and she’d fall into a pit with no way back. She snapped to, shouting like a drum in a storm.

“The criminals in the Nuhaman massacre were executed long ago. He—he’s fake! You used a Nacha corpse to forge him!”

She jabbed at the hole in the corpse’s chest, clutching at a reed in flood. “Right! It’s just a corpse. You Blood Mages can remodel him at will, disguise him to look like the culprit! You—”

Silan choked on her own thought, eyes widening as if a dark door creaked open. Adelaide spread her hands, smile thin as a blade.

“Ah, so you do see it now.”

“You—!”

“Then let me answer your first question—why I hid my Blood Magic aptitude.”

Adelaide walked up to the corpse and touched the ugly scar at the corner of his mouth, a finger like a brush on dried clay. “First, you’re right. He’s just a corpse now, stripped of the Nacha Tribe’s rapid healing. In that state, even without Blood Magic, mortuary craft alone can remake his face to match the sketch. Appearance alone can’t prove he was the culprit.”

Pale pink welled on her nails. Blood-red magic formed a film, a thin membrane sliding over her hand like a surgeon’s glove.

“But, like how ‘God’ leaves a single thread so deep sin won’t wash away with time—this culprit wasn’t an ordinary Nacha tribesman. He bears a unique mark this world can’t duplicate, a trait that reveals itself only by a special method.” She glanced at Silan, meaning heavy as dusk. “And that is exactly why I never trumpeted my Blood Magic.”

Her fingers closed. She made a blade of her hand and slid it in with a wet squelch, burying her arm in the corpse’s belly like a spear into mud.

“I worried that if you knew my magic, you’d imagine this possibility and prepare ahead. But it seems I fretted too much. You have bigger fears gnawing you, so much that you forgot what we Blood Mages... do best—the dirty work.”

Her hand moved slow within, stirring. Even a Nacha corpse spoils after half a month on the road; the organs had turned, and the movement drew out a sick gurgle like swamp bubbles.

Silan’s face went iron-blue, not with nausea, but with the dread of a truth rising like a tide.

Now was far too late to react. Under the weight of all eyes, she had no move left to play.

Blood sigils crept along Adelaide’s forearm like vines and tunneled deeper. Within seconds, she withdrew her hand from the foul cavity, and the sigils came out with it—no longer smooth as silk, but spread wide like a snapping trap plant.

The moment they entered, they branched and wound through the organs, snaring countless tiny elements invisible to mortal sight. Each tendril, once it reached its limit, folded back into the main pattern, and once free of the body, all threads began to gather toward Adelaide’s palm like streams to a lake.

“We Blood Mages, who deal with the dead night and day, may never earn your respect for such ‘diligent study,’ but we have become the best of forensic mages. Any evidence inside a corpse—even elements thinned to the edge by time and metabolism—we can condense and refine again. For instance... these two.”

Her words landed as two liquid spheres coalesced, one dull gray, the other amber like honeyed resin.

Adelaide lifted a finger, and the gray sphere rose like mist. “Ms. Silan, you know what this is.”

“...It’s Nacha contraband...!”

“Correct. This is the very reason you forced passage through Sanda’s curfew. It’s a drug that strips reason and drives people into beastlike frenzy—commonly called the ‘Stimulant Elixir.’ As far as I know, it vanished from the market some time ago.”

She turned, gaze cutting to the man still cuffed, poor thing blinking like an owl. “Kabos, would you mind explaining the link between this man and the Stimulant Elixir?”

“Uh? Me?” Kabos pointed at himself, then paused, confusion fluttering. “Wait, Adelaide, how do you know—”

“That can wait. Just answer.”

“Oh—okay...”

Still baffled, Kabos swallowed his questions and spoke. He told how this Nacha tribesman’s codename was “Medicine Peddler,” how he supplied the Stimulant Elixir, and how they finally caught him, thread by thread of the tale like a net woven tight.

As he spoke, Silan’s hands clenched harder, her face darkening like thunder. At last she cut him off with a shout.

“Stop spouting nonsense! If he’d been roaming the streets as you say, how could we not have caught him?”

Adelaide tilted her head, a sparrow’s mild curiosity. “But I did extract these elements from his body. How do we explain that?”

“You could’ve injected them into him yourself. He’s a corpse you can toy with, isn’t he? Another lie! Why don’t you explain where you got that Elixir? I say you’re the ‘Medicine Peddler’!”

“Wow, you—how dare you smear us like that!”

Kabos bristled, but Adelaide lifted a hand and stilled him like a hush over water.

“You’re right; this isn’t iron proof. As for what you want, I’ll present it soon. But before that...” She flicked her fingers and the amber sphere floated up, casting warm light like a lamp at dusk. “Please answer me this: can you smell this fragrance?”

“I don’t know what you think that proves. What kind of evidence is this?”

“Of course you wouldn’t know. But I believe you can smell camellia on it.”

Adelaide breathed in with closed eyes, then opened them. The red in her pupils deepened like wine, a predator’s focus locking on prey. She turned to the broadcast array, voice light, hunger coiled like a spring.

“To everyone watching—sadly, your slates lack arrays that sync scent, but this aroma is a delight. In fact, if you’re a Blood Mage, especially one with high aptitude, you’ll feel what I feel now—your canine teeth itch, and you crave a bite of something...” She sighed, a note like wind through bamboo. “A pity. If the scholar Ayu were here, she’d understand me perfectly.”

Silan spoke, alert cutting sharp as glass. “Ayu...?”

“Why bring her up all of a sudden, like tossing a stone into a still pond?”

“Because I’m grateful to her; that meeting handed me a silver thread, a lead about the Nuhaman Tribe, and I followed it like tracking dew at dawn. Back home, I combed through records, and found a marvel—Nuhaman silk was famed like moonlight on water. Their weaving was advanced, yes, but that wasn’t the only edge; the true advantage was a secret step, handed down like a hidden knot, a craft no thief could steal.”

She added, with a sigh like a breeze over a dry riverbed, “Of course, that silk is extinct now,” then carried on.

“Every batch of Nuhaman silk, once woven, had to soak in a special dye, like cloth bathed in twilight. The recipe isn’t too complex to copy, save one thing: it must include three drops of Nacha fingertips’ blood, three rain pearls no other region can supply. Because Nuhaman blood contains a rare aromatic substance, a fragrance faint as mist over reeds. Unless you’re a Blood Mage hypersensitive to bodily fluids, you barely notice it. Yet that perfume both soothes the mind and pricks the nerves, a twin-edged breeze and spark; a trace clears the head like cool rain. Usually, three drops suffice. You may not sense it by smell, but wear it, and joy hums on the skin like sunlight. That is the true spell behind Nuhaman silk.”

As Adelaide spoke, her fingertip flicked; the amber sphere bobbed up and down like a sun-seed in a tide. Her gaze rested on its flawless curve, a lake-smooth surface catching light.

“And this miraculous essence, thought extinct like starlight lost to dawn… is right before your eyes.”

She lifted her gaze; the calm left like fog burning off, and sharp lines gathered at her eyes like drawn blades. She looked straight at Silan across from her, a hawk fixing on prey.

“Ms. Silan, this is my hard proof—if the Nuhaman Tribe has vanished from the Sumart mainland, then where did their blood-essence come from, like spring water appearing in desert sand?”

Silan’s mouth worked open and closed like a fish in troubled water. At last she bit down, anger flashing like flint. “You liar—there’s a living Nuhaman under your command, we all saw her last time! You—”

“—Invalid rebuttal,” Adelaide cut in, the words clean as a blade through silk, stopping a confession like a bird’s flutter. “Suppose there truly is one Nuhaman, unlucky or lucky, the sole survivor. Even then, you couldn’t draw this much essence from her, not by the sun nor by the storm.”

She raised the amber sphere to the lens again, a small sun against a dark sky. “Each Nuhaman holds only a trace, a dusting so slight it’s nearly invisible even when condensed. Yet now, even you, without Blood Magic, can smell this breeze of perfume. To gather this volume, you’d need at least ten Nuhaman drained dry, a scale like a river turned to wine. If I could forge the Stimulant Elixir, then, Ms. Silan, tell me—under what moon and what law could such a flood of essence pool in a Nacha corpse?”

Ms. Silan’s complexion plummeted like a sky under storm. She still wanted to speak, but Adelaide slid in the answer like a knife finding its sheath.

“Only one path. On the night of the Nuhaman massacre, he slit enough Nuhaman arteries, drinking their sweet, tempting blood like red wine under a blood moon. He ripped open pregnant bellies, chewing embryos and placentas like a jackal at the carcass. Only thus could he harvest a hoard like this—the man in the picture, the one who should have hung, is him. It’s the only reasonable explanation, isn’t it?”

Her iron conclusion struck like a gong. Silan opened her mouth, but no words came, silence pooling like tar.

Adelaide had crushed her momentum like a wave flattening sand, yet she didn’t stop. A flick of the wrist, and two small objects traced arcs in the air like falling stars, landing on the chessboard with soft thuds.

Before the shaken Silan could see them clearly, a slightly warped voice rose like static from a storm.

“So… Commander, how do we handle it this time?”

The explosive exchange blazed like wildfire; each word leeched the color from Silan’s face, paler by the heartbeat. Beside them, the bottled Stimulant Elixir gleamed like a steel nail, pinning shut the wooden coffin Adelaide had designed, making any doubt about the recording laughable, like wind arguing with stone.

“Ms. Silan, you claimed I staged this,” Adelaide said, her tone a cool blade with a barbed smile. She stepped forward, circling half around Silan like a predator tracing an orbit, and began to sum up, steady as drumbeats.

“Frankly, once I learned this, I got nervous, a chill like frost under skin. I didn’t know if an authority with this much dirt, once she guessed I might hold her buried secrets, would flip the table like a storm, halt the Flower Dancer election, and send armies marching to wage war on the Nacha Tribe, to drown public attention in iron and dust. So I had ancient Nacha tech moved to the Elf border, like shields planted along a ridge. At least they wouldn’t be crushed by your troops without a fight.”

She finished and dipped her head, a ripple of courtesy on a steel lake. “For that, I owe you an apology. As I said, perhaps I worried too much. You aren’t the cold, cruel tyrant I imagined—at least you let me speak before the nation’s eyes like a lantern in night. Out of respect for that ‘generosity,’ I’ll lay out my reasoning as-is.”

“…”

“First, the convict who should have died, lived on like a shadow that dodged the noose. As the Carne Family head who handled the Nuhaman massacre, though I resisted this thought, you’re the only one who could fake his death. The body after hanging was reclaimed by the Carne Family like goods after a tally; whatever meddling happened needed your consent.”

“…”

“That points to the next question: why keep him alive? My teammate already gave the answer like a finger to the compass. Before he was caught, he spread the Stimulant Elixir across Sanda like seeds in wind. I still hate to believe it, but with this recording, and your order to hide the elixir’s existence, I must conclude you kept him alive to work as a Medicine Peddler within Sanda, a snake in tall grass.”

“…”

“And everything points toward a chilling ridge, ice crawling up glass. That dangerous elixir became your reason to impose a second curfew and lockdown on Sanda; yet its spread loops back to you like a trail in snow. Doesn’t that suggest this is your play, scripted end to end? If so, the mastermind and the profit lines of the Nuhaman massacre become clear as water—You hired the Medicine Peddler and other wandering Nacha Tribe members, guided them to commit that sky-darkening crime. You branded the Nacha as dangerous and uncontrollable, forged a threat that wasn’t there, then used it to drive and crush them like cattle under whip.”

“No…”

“And a decade later, when relations healed like grass after rain—thanks to the Nacha chief and civic forces like the Fana Family—you repeated the trick. In a desert village near the Sealing Array, you carried out another slaughter, a blade in sand. You meant to break both peoples’ hard-won trust again. A small accident followed: an outsider caravan, not meant for the dunes, saw everything like owls in darkness. You rushed them into the Sealing Array—not from kindness, but to wash their memories fast, like tide scrubbing footprints, so nothing harmful to you drifted back home.”

“No… not…”

“Meanwhile, that wasn’t your only insurance. You developed this dangerous Stimulant Elixir, sold it quietly in Sanda like poison in sweet tea, then used its risk to lock the city down again. You didn’t want to dirty your hands, so you sent the Nacha scapegoat beside us—the butcher of the Nuhaman—to execute the order. Even if things went wrong, absent a Blood Mage who just happened to appear and care like a hound on a scent, no one could prove a thing—”

“—No! It’s not like that! Really, I didn’t do it for that—!”

Her fan dropped with a sharp snap, a wing breaking against stone. Pierced by so many points at once, her defenses shattered like a dam under flood, and under the invisible gaze of a nation she screamed, cracking like ice.

With that cry, the debate ended like a curtain falling.

As a First Generation who’d lived ten thousand years like a pine enduring snow, she knew her mistake before the words were done, but it was too late. Adelaide already stood before her, smiling like a red flower after rain, crimson pupils reflecting a prey that had walked into its own snare.

“Then what did you do it for, Ms. Silan?”