Adelaide pushes the door open. Light rushes her like a warm tide, and she squints, lashes catching gold.

What a fine day.

The sun stings, a prickle like hot sand on skin. She doesn’t mind the burn; the heat feels earned.

Ordinary scenes like this may vanish soon, like sparrows fleeing a storm no one can see yet.

She looks to the emerald giant at the end of the road—the World Tree. She breathes deep, closes her eyes, then slips a hand to the pocket over her heart. When she opens them, a crimson rose petal rests in her palm like a drop of frozen blood.

It fell from the envelope that held the “script” the night Mira left her room.

She’s held it a long time, maybe too long. Yet every careful look still widens her eyes; the petal’s plain face hides something that hums.

A normal petal would’ve shriveled dry by now, even if rot spared it.

This one ignores time. Its color stays blood-bright, as if fed from an unseen vein.

She studies the dark veins threading it, capillary-sharp. Her fingertips feel a faint pulse through it, a heartbeat trapped in wax.

This petal is alive.

A tasteful cruelty, tied in a bow.

What did he use to make it? His own skin, or some other, uglier piece of himself?

In the end, the stuff hardly matters; its meaning does.

It’s an unforgeable seal and a pure jeer from that man—mocking the powerlessness before fate, mocking the puppet who fights and still can’t cut her strings.

Funny. Compared to his twisted taste, that damned “god” feels less hateful today.

She lifts the petal into the sun. The glare hits it like light against a black hole; the opaque veins swallow it whole. A shadow pools across her cheek like ink.

At least the petal matches her deep red dance dress today, red meeting red like wine meeting fire.

She lets a small smile touch her lips and tucks the petal back into the hidden pocket by her heart.

Everything is ready.

“It’s time to meet your fate… Adelaide.”

She breathes her name, drawing strength from the syllables like a draught of tea, then sets off toward the World Tree.

The instant she leaves the dressing room, dozens of arrays floating in the air pivot. Their cores lock onto Adelaide. Complex filming sigils spin and drift, catching every angle of her movement and face, then pipe the scene through independent mana circuits to the entire nation.

The Illuin Family’s engineers deserve laurels. They finished the design in a blink, then tuned the flow so even viewers at the kingdom’s edge see with under sixty seconds of delay.

Even with Queen Dreamlan’s generous aid, it’s high magic engineering. Thanks to them, not just Elves, but Nacha folk too witness a holy place outsiders never glimpse.

God’s most generous gift to the Elves—the World Tree, wrapped in the Savia Rose sea.

From afar, it’s a plain tree, roots ringed with pink dots. Compared to wonders the Elves discovered or built, it looks almost humble, like a jewel set in clay.

That’s just the mask. The truth shows only up close.

From Adelaide’s eyes, the road ahead is a few hundred meters. The World Tree seems a step away. Yet every step she takes makes the small tree drift farther, like walking a river that flows backward.

The tree moves. A trunk barely ten meters stretches skyward, lengthening with each of Adelaide’s steps. Branches unfurl like fans. Leaves catch emerald and climb upward, turning rough wood into peridot-bright crystal.

The world beside her shifts as well. Empty ground births pink roses—one, two, three. More bloom at the edge of sight. They take every bit of space. Soon the road is gone under a tide of blossoms, a sea the color of dawn.

Adelaide wades in. Her cuffs brush the open roses; petals whisper, hush-hush, and the bloom-sea ripples like waves in a spring breeze.

In that ocean, her scarlet dress is a lone skiff. Fragile yet vivid, heartbreak-beautiful yet so lonely it aches.

At the end of this drift, her goal glows in the same deep red as her dress.

A gem-shaped rosebud—the true Savia Rose. Its thorned vine coils up the World Tree’s trunk. Against the tree now marrying the sky, the bud is small, a candle against a star.

But that tiny red calls stronger than the great trunk.

Because it breathes. Each inhale-exhale sends tides of resonance through the branches. Magic on a scale no single soul can touch swirls around it as a core. It crashes through the crystal lattice of the World Tree, sings, and folds back into the bud.

This is how the World Tree gathers power to repair the Sealing Array. A century has passed since the last repair; today it’s brim-full, a cup trembling before the pour. The moment Adelaide steps in, every branch linked to the Array quivers, rejoicing, waiting for this Flower Dancer to set it free.

Bearing all those expectations, the Flower Dancer walks without hurry through the bloom-sea. After long minutes, she arrives at the World Tree, slow as a petal falling, sure as a tide.

Before the jewel bud stands another golden-haired figure.

“You… came after all.”

Kneeling at the World Tree in prayer, Queen Dreamlan opens her eyes. She looks at Adelaide and notes the flush on her cheeks, like wine under porcelain.

“You look well.”

Adelaide lifts a shoulder, a smile like a blade’s glint. “Of course. I’ve been resting for nearly a month. I’ve never felt this ready.”

“And you too,” she adds, sly light in her eyes, glancing at the dark-green array mark peeking from Dreamlan’s cuffs.

The queen laughs softly. “It has been ten thousand years since I presided over a Flower Dancer’s rite. First time after waking, more preparation is only proper.”

“Reassuring, as expected of Your Majesty.”

“To be honest, I’m still a little rusty,” she says, a feather of nerves in her voice. “If I slip somewhere… please forgive me, Miss Adelaide.”

Adelaide shakes her head and flicks a glance at the arrays broadcasting nationwide. She offers the queen a knowing smile. Enough words. She steps forward onto her stage.

When her toe taps the stone before the Savia Rose, threads of emerald mana rise from the earth. Dreamlan flicks her fingers. The threads take flight, lay themselves over the World Tree’s roots, and weave a barrier that seals all else away.

Then the queen’s ruby lips part. Notes pour out, shapely as silk and clear as spring, shaping a hymn holy and stately. The song slips into the bud and coaxes its gemlike petals open.

Now comes the time of Beauty alone.

This stage belongs to one who passed the trials of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty.

Upon it, the fairest—as all Elves agree—dances the steps of the Flower Rite, a pattern carried by ten thousand years. Her grace is an offering to God. And when the last note rings and the bud shines brightest, she plucks that holy heirloom from the World Tree and completes the repair and charge of the Sealing Array.

And unlike any past rite, this festival is a first on every front.

First chosen outsider. First live broadcast across the realm.

In past centuries, no Flower Dancer rite stood so silent within a thousand meters—only the chosen, the presiding queen, and a dozen esteemed First Generation keeping the Array steady.

Yet never has any rite gathered every gaze in the country, rank forgotten, walls erased.

The blood-red man is among those eyes, fixed on white hair and crimson silk.

He watches Adelaide spin on the screen, her dress blooming like wildfire. He loses himself for a breath and murmurs, “Too beautiful… too beautiful. Truly… my bride.”

He rises from his seat. Both hands cradle the scrying crystal like a lover’s face. As if she dances for him alone, possessive fever colors his eyes. His fingers tighten. Cracks crawl across the crystal like frost.

Before he lets the blaze in his chest break free, a sound unfit for beauty splits the air.

“Mas… ter…!!”

A ragged scream scrapes beside him. Space tears open. A body rotted beyond form claws through, then splats down like spoiled meat, staining the flesh-built castle with brown decay.

“Ma—master! That Nuhaman… woman… she’s a monster! She… she’s dangerous!”

Even this ruined, Firefly doesn’t spare herself a stitch of healing.

Since fleeing the Factory, she’s burned her remaining life without care, rushing here to warn him of the threat.

He meets her fierce loyalty with a quiet shush.

“Firefly, today is my day of great joy…”

He shakes his head, crouches, and cups her jaw, pus slick as wet clay.

“And on a day of joy, don’t say unlucky things, alright?”

He smiles, pleasure unfurling like a red ribbon. His right hand sketches an array in the air. Red light flares, painting his profile with mercurial strangeness.

When the glow thins, a massive heart hovers there.

If Silan saw it, she’d clench her fists and shout. It’s why she doubted Adelaide, a danger like a nuclear bomb in this world.

Floating in the air is the Dragon Heart of Soul Devourer Sormaidon.

Chaos has tainted it, burning away living crimson until only ash-gray remains. Yet the curse breaks sense—it’s still alive. It still beats. And… it still thinks.

“Thou… thou…!”

It trembles, booming like an ancient bell, roaring rage.

“Thou vile swindler! Jester! Thou promised not this! Our pact was to bring Him back—to bring back the master of all! To taste true Evermore under His grace!”

The blood-red man tilts his head, a smile twitching at the corner. “Such a temper, honored Sormaidon. We only just get to talk, and you skip the greetings for business?”

The Dragon Heart shakes, voice bright with panic, a storm trapped in a box. “No, no-no…! Thou canst not—!”

With another casual flick of his wrist, the heart cinched tight, as if invisible chains in the air had cinched it to the bone, and its voice cut off mid‑throb.

—Hey now, don’t be hasty. Relax. Isn’t your wish about to come true?

As he spoke, veins crawled over the dragon heart like knotted roots under bark, trying to speak again. He flicked his hand. Its massive bulk shrank a size, like a bellows squeezed flat.

To keep a mind after losing the body—this nightmare vitality born of kneeling to Chaos, a thing that defies the sky and spits on law—meant nothing before the blood‑red man, the Follower of Pleasure. One idle gesture, and the heart could no longer tremble a word.

Firefly watched, stunned for a heartbeat, then found her voice.

“It’s… already that day… Master?”

The Follower of Pleasure turned and nodded.

“Yeah. It’s here.”

Something wet dripped to the stone. Not tears. Blood—tide‑red and warm—surged in her last unrotted sockets. It traced her cheeks like rain on a dying leaf.

“Firefly…”

He fell quiet for a breath, because he saw sadness in her eyes.

Not a clumsy act aping humans. Not a beast’s hunger or fear. But a true feeling, born of a soul.

Loss. And sorrow.

In that moment, she ceased to be a blood‑plasma slime that mimicked joy to harvest his rapture. She became something akin to him, in the only way that mattered.

He wavered. He drew her filthy body close, held her like a lamp cupped against the wind, and met her gaze.

“Oh, my dear Firefly, don’t wear that sad face… because I love you. Deeply.” He brushed away her blood‑tears with tender fingers. “Just like I promised, today we’ll truly become one…”

He bowed his head and kissed her, lips to her brown, rotting mouth.

Her eyes flew wide. Her half‑body jerked like a cut wire.

Not from bliss. Her monster’s instinct lunged to resist.

She felt it then: an irresistible gravity seized her core, ripped it from her spine like a root torn from earth, drew it down his throat, and ground it to meat, to warmth, to him.

Death stood at her shoulder. Only then did true happiness break the surface, like dawn on black water. That warmth quieted the last spasm. The soul that had just awakened chose to yield.

She let herself flow into him.

A heartbeat later, her rotting body lost all scaffolding and turned to blood in his arms, a crimson mud that slipped between his fingers. He tightened his hold in grief, trying to embrace the last trace before it, too, could fade—

Squelch.

The mournful tableau snapped. A thick black thorn punched through his chest and jutted out like a spear of night.

Its source lay behind him—the dragon heart that was all that remained of Soul Devourer Sormaidon. In the moment of the kiss, it had gathered its last strength and fired a magic spike, desperate to kill.

It failed.

The man tilted his head and studied the spike blooming from his chest. He stood, turned toward the dragon heart, and yanked the thorn free. He didn’t bother with care. He tore it out wide, ripping a hole larger than the spike itself, a gash like a red door.

Beside it, on his left, where a heart should beat, yawned a hollow black void. His chest lay open, a house with the wall torn off.

He didn’t care. He had no need to.

In the next instant, a film of bloodred substance slid over the wound like frost forming on glass. No process, no struggle. It simply knit shut under Sormaidon’s gaze.

Such healing stood shoulder‑to‑shoulder with the regeneration Chaos had granted Sormaidon. In this world, only one kind of creature could do that.

A blood‑plasma slime.

“You… absorbed her…!” Sormaidon rasped, voice like gravel dragged over iron.

“More or less.”

He shrugged, all airy indifference, and walked toward the dragon heart. It shivered like a hunted animal. He chuckled, a low, amused sound.

“Old friend, why so serious? I’m not going to eat you. Easy, easy.”

He turned his head toward the crystal orb lying on the floor, and his smile deepened.

“If you ask me, you should be happy. Because…”

Inside the orb, Adelaide’s dance crested like a wave under moonlight. She gripped the hilt. The Ceremonial Sword slid free, silver edge rising, ready to reap the Savia Rose.

He let himself drink in one last look at his “bride,” eyes fever‑bright. Then he reached for the dragon heart. A sacrificial array flared in his palm, a blinding red sigil like a sun of blood.

“Because offering your most precious heart to the Master, as the sacrifice to reopen the Void Rift… isn’t that the blessing you’ve dreamed of?”

“Make way, make way, make way!”

The crisp shout rang down the streets of Sanda like a pebble skittering across a still pond, slicing through Nacha folk glued to the Flower Dancer ritual stream.

They looked up to curse the rudeness. The next heartbeat, two lightning‑quick figures skimmed past their noses. They fell on their butts, and only then did the warning make sense—take a hit like that, and you might catch a sparrow in mid‑flight.

Warning or not, it didn’t make those two any more civilized. It just meant they had no choice.

Varie and Mira had no time to stop and trade pleasantries with every warm‑hearted Nacha on the curb, or accept yet another overfilled basket of fruit.

Truth was, they hadn’t rested in half a month. Since the factory, they’d sprinted without pause, eating miles like fire eats dry grass. If they’d taken a carriage, a string of courier teams would’ve dropped dead from exhaustion.

Worse, the factory sat in the corner farthest from Sanda and the Elf Kingdom. Even at their limit, they had only just reached the border.

“Seriously, you sure you’re okay, Gloomy? Let me carry you—”

“I can keep up. Don’t worry about me.”

Varie glanced back. Mira ran at her flank, face ash‑white, like a candle about to gutter out.

She looked better than when they fled the factory, almost like a return from the grave. But she was still running on fumes. Varie couldn’t stop her. By Mira’s word, Adelaide was in mortal danger. Warnings meant nothing. They had to reach her and stay at her side.

Even so, Varie’s gut said no one outruns a collapse. No crisis should hinge on a single hour, right? She swept the street with her eyes, hunting for an excuse to make Mira stop.

She found one without even trying.

“Huh? Why are you guys here?”

Varie braked hard. Her soles smoked against stone. She slapped a tabletop, and everyone sitting there jolted like fish on a line. They looked up, equally stunned.

“Varie? You’re back?”

Hos shouted first. Two groups stared each other down, wide‑eyed. Before anyone could make sense of it, Mira stepped in, grabbed the still‑dazed Kabos, and hauled him close.

“Weren’t you supposed to help Adelaide? Why are you here? Where is she? Where!”

“Whoa, whoa, easy, Big Sis Mira!”

Varie pulled Mira back and, in quick strokes, told the split‑off team what had happened at the factory. They went pale at the brush with disaster, then let out a long breath.

“Compared to you, our side went so smooth it’s unreal.”

“Smooth?” Mira frowned.

“Yeah,” Kabos said with a sharp nod. “Everything’s steady. Big Sis Adelaide already won the Flower Dancer slot. The ceremony’s live across the realm. It’s a whole production… Right, here—see for yourselves.”

He lifted the viewing slate. Before the image could settle, the sky went dark, like a curtain dropped. Screams broke across the street. He flinched. The slate slipped from his hands and clacked on stone.

“What the—what is that!”

In the sudden chaos, Varie steadied first. “Quiet!” Her shout rang like a bell and flattened the panic. She explained: this was normal. Once the Savia Rose was picked, the World Tree’s century of mana overloaded the Sealing Array. Its false sky failed. The whole array would sit in darkness for two days.

The Inventor, Tela, nodded, convinced. Excitement flushed her cheeks the way new blueprints do.

“No wonder. So Adelaide really planned ahead. She set up a broadcast line independent of the Sealing Array—”

Her words froze. A chill like winter water climbed her spine.

What happened? She scanned their faces. The same primal dread stared back from every eye, a storm on the horizon of instinct.

The answer came fast.

“Hey—hey! Look! Over there!”

Kabos gaped and pointed toward the Elf Kingdom. A colossal Void Rift tore open from nothing, ripping up from the horizon to a split overhead, like a black seam unpicked by a giant’s hand. It looked exactly like what they’d seen in Lama City.

“N‑no way. I must… be seeing things.”

They had stood before those ancient scars. Each of them thought the same name, yet none dared speak it. That thing should have been beaten, erased to dust.

Of all the statues in the street, Mira moved first.

She snatched up the fallen slate. The stream still ran. The white‑haired figure she ached for still stood there, Ceremonial Sword in hand. Its edge had just severed the root that bound the Savia Rose to the World Tree.

Relief lifted her, light as breath. Then the clock in her gut went wrong.

The instant Adelaide plucked the Savia Rose, the colors on screen dimmed. The sky lost its hue. That matched what had happened one minute ago.

The stream had a sixty‑second delay.

Which meant what Mira saw was already history.

Her heart skipped and sank. The stream’s background fractured like glass. Behind the World Tree yawned endless void, the same as the rift above them.

Even without looking up, even through the slate’s cold glass, she felt it—the Chaos that negates all things, a force that erases the very idea of being.

In the next heartbeat, a swarm of fangs bloomed inside that smear of void—like a chimera forged from every predator and venomous insect's mandibles. The teeth flared wide, and then—

—it gulped down Queen Dreamlan standing by the World Tree in a single bite.

Adelaide at her side, though spared that instant bite, was still swallowed by the chaotic rift that surged after, widening fast.

Mira's eyes flew wide; panic jammed her voice silent. All she saw was Adelaide, in the last sliver before she vanished, bite down on the freshly picked Savia Rose in her hand.

And then the livestream went dark, like a curtain of ink dropping.