Adelaide flipped her wrist like a breeze bending a reed, tipping Mira’s sword aside without feeling a hint of resistance.

“That’s more like it, my lovely little sister.”

She leaned to Mira’s ear, voice sweet as syrup. “You can execute them yourself, sure—but only after big sister’s done playing, okay?”

Her resolve softened like thawing frost; Mira’s sword-hand loosened and dropped to her side.

She closed her eyes for a breath, then stepped back like a tide receding, putting space between herself and the sister cooing sugar.

“Sis, at least… give them a quick end.”

Adelaide arched a brow, a faint sour cloud drifting through her gaze.

“Why?”

She tilted her head, fingers twitching like a puppeteer’s. The blood-threads around her parents tightened and loosened in rhythm, grinding their screams into broken notes, a blasphemous backbeat.

Riding that desecrated beat, Adelaide smiled, palm opening like a crimson flower.

“Why should I give them a quick end, Mira? When they found I had talent for Blood Magic, did they think to give me one? The answer’s no. To keep their secret, they killed my tutor, shut me indoors like a caged songbird, yet never once dropped their fever dream of clawing up to the royal family. They never thought to let their daughter step away from the risk, live a life that might be plain but safer, happier.”

Her voice trembled; crimson eyes churned like storm seas.

“No, they didn’t let go, Mira. For a commoner, Blood Magic is already a heavy crime. Still, they projected their hunger to make me a royal consort, forcing me into that court full of knives—where a single slip could send me plummeting. Before you came, their favorite line was that if I couldn’t be a consort, I was worthless. A burden on the house. Just like—”

She glanced aside at Emily, still lost in frenzy. “Just like my aunt… ha, hahaha… Can you imagine? Parents love comparing their kids, but mine didn’t pick some bright peer. They picked her. An idiot. A disabled woman who can’t even care for herself. Even after they erased every other path my life could take, I still bled myself dry to meet their expectations—walking a cliff edge where one wrong step shatters you to dust. I kept pushing, kept grinding, until you—”

—until you crashed into my world, replaced me, and stole the last scrap of worth I held.

Adelaide swallowed back the boiling rise, choking off that second, sharper blade of a sentence. Too late; Mira’s head dipped, her teeth pressed to her lip like a petal pinned by frost.

Seeing guilt and hurt ripple like rain on a pond, Adelaide’s heart twinged. She cupped Mira’s cheek and folded her into her arms.

“It’s okay. None of that was your fault. I’ve thought it through—you’re a victim too.”

She whispered soft, holding Mira with indulgent warmth, feeling the tremor that shivered up from deep in her body. “It was all their fault. They betrayed me, and they betrayed you, didn’t they?”

“Sis…”

“Think about it. If they hadn’t sold us out—if they hadn’t arranged for us to fall into Rockridge’s trap—we wouldn’t have had all those misunderstandings. We wouldn’t have wasted so many crooked roads. We’d have been together like this much sooner.”

It’s all on them. So why is Mira stopping me from giving them a little lesson? Adelaide tightened her embrace, voice drifting like low fog.

But an unexpected reply rose warm against her chest.

“But… if not for them, I would never have met you.”

Adelaide’s eyes narrowed; a ripple of displeasure clouded her face.

“What’s wrong, Mira? Do you think… I’m an ungrateful villain?”

Mira shook her head at once.

“No.”

Her voice stayed small but steady, like a lantern in wind. “I’ve never thought you were cruel. That’s why you shouldn’t do this.”

“Oh? Tell me why I shouldn’t pay them back in kind.”

“Because you’re not like them.”

“...Hm?”

Sourness deepened in Adelaide’s tone like rain pressing the air down. Since the night they confirmed each other, she’d never shown Mira displeasure. Now, the room’s pressure dropped.

“Mira, don’t talk back.”

Stop defending those two pieces of filth. I don’t like you like this. Her stare cooled, the dark sediment at the bottom of her heart stirring like silt in a river. Mira didn’t retreat under the weight; she looked ready to argue on.

Then a glassy crack rang from outside, shattering the moment like ice on a pond. It cut them both off.

Adelaide felt the ripple first. She paused for half a beat, then lifted a brow.

“Ah, really—troublesome guests, and so fast.”

She flicked her hand. The ducal couple, torn almost past the shape of people, knitted back together like dolls on crimson strings. She clenched, and the same blood-threads that had sliced them neatly stitched the gashes closed.

They screamed again, a sound like steel scraping bone, yet the truth was kinder than the sight. Adelaide’s blood pulsed through the threads into their muscles and veins. Pink, grub-like buds crawled out, tangled, fused, and bridged their flesh back together.

The result wasn’t as awful as the process. In the end they were human-shaped again, staring at their intact hands with disbelief like owls dazzled by day.

They had no time to celebrate a life snatched back. Adelaide clicked her tongue, flicked her hand, and blood-silk snared their ankles. Before a cry could form, they were yanked into a dark door and gone like rags whisked under a cabinet.

The source of the noise stepped into the dining hall doorway and caught that last, neat moment of cleanup.

“Adelaide, what the hell are you doing, why’d you come here—wah! What is all this nightmare junk!”

One glance at Adelaide and Mira standing among walls lacquered in blood and organ grit, with a white-haired woman writhing like she’d danced herself mad, and Duke Douglas and his wife dragged away like damp rags—Neprah snapped sober in a heartbeat. His blustering demand flipped to shock; he near jumped out of his skin.

“What is even happening here???”

“Just tending to some family business. No need to mind it, Leader of the Red Orchid Society.” Adelaide brushed her palms together, face blank as porcelain.

“No need—are you kidding me? Bloody hell, look at this—did you slaughter ten cartloads of pigs in here—”

“Pat. Enough.”

Another figure filled the doorway—Neprah’s elder brother, the king in name for now: Samir.

He frowned at the wreckage like a winter line crossed his brow, yet stayed far calmer than his brother. He clamped a hand on Neprah’s shoulder, stopping the spiral.

Adelaide shrugged, light as a cat flicking its tail.

“My, my. I didn’t expect old friends to gather this fast. If I’d known, I’d have tidied up. After years apart, this look is… inelegant.”

“Adelaide, we came unannounced. Don’t mind it.”

Samir adjusted his glasses with two fingers, then cut straight in. “But I have to ask. Why didn’t you follow the plan—take the Sacred Heart and meet us at Red Orchid headquarters? Did something happen in the Sanctum?”

“An accident?” Adelaide tilted her head, eyes lifting as if to think, then smiled and spread her hands. “Oh, nothing special. I just ran into your dear little brother.”

“...You mean Rahman?”

Unless Richard VI had more bastard sons than you three, who else would it be? Adelaide shrugged, all easy indifference. Neprah, by contrast, lit up like dry leaves catching fire.

“You met Rahman? Where is he now?”

“Uh… how to put it… oh, right. He’s gone to be with God—assuming that god isn’t a petty creep, and really is as the Church says, big-hearted enough to forgive any sin.”

Neprah stalled, lips parted, words broken like birds dropping out of the sky. He couldn’t seem to parse the meaning.

Samir wasn’t much better. His fingertips started to tremble like reeds in wind, but as the oldest and steadiest of three, he clenched the quake and asked softly, “He… is gone?”

“Ah, probably. Hm? Why the faces? What else could I do? Your brother didn’t leave me a choice. If I hadn’t hit back, the one standing here would be him, not me.”

“You—you killed him? You—how could—”

Neprah had braced for disappointment when Rahman chose Rockridge’s side. But hearing that his blood brother was dead, his temper snapped. Azure wind magic bled out of him like a storm, gouging little pits into the marble walls.

“Enough, Pat!”

“But Rahman—”

“Right now there’s a greater fire to put out. Have you forgotten?”

Samir’s voice cut sharp and clean. He turned to Adelaide and drove straight at the plan’s heart. “The Sacred Heart, Adelaide. Where is it?”

He stripped away every personal string, his face set like iron. “Where is it now?”

Adelaide met that iron with a fingertip tapping her temple and a playful eh-heh.

“Eh—things got tight. I had no choice. I… fused with it.”

“...What?”

Samir’s disbelief had weight. Even Neprah, still half-explosive, stalled into a blank “Huh?”

Adelaide’s expression was pure helpless shrug.

“Was that hard to understand? I fused with it.” She touched her chest with two fingers. “The Sacred Heart is right here.”

“Adelaide! What the hell are you doing?”

Neprah had lost count of how many times he’d blown up today. He wasn’t the brash boy from Holywell Academy anymore; since he’d taken up the standard against Rockridge, he hadn’t cracked like this. But the Sacred Heart isn’t a joke. It’s every life in the Sarman Empire.

Even Samir couldn’t stay calm. His brow locked like antlers. “Adelaide, I don’t know what happened in the Sanctum. But Rockridge is burrowed in the array’s core right now. Before we strike him, we must remove the Sacred Heart’s threat and deny him the chance to complete the medium. You need to hand it over—fast.”

“Why should I?”

Adelaide cut across his solid logic, a blade of sarcasm flashing.

Seeing her face, Samir realized something and his look grew grave. Neprah still thought his ears were wrong. “Hey, come on! We explained when we made the plan. That thing isn’t good. It’s too dangerous in any single hand. You have to give it to us—”

“Why should I?”

Again, that cool dismissal. This time Neprah heard it, and shock carved lines across his face. He tried to pull her back.

“Adelaide, you don’t know. You never read the broken chronicles of Emperor Belior’s reign. You don’t know what that heart did to the Empire—”

“No. I know all of it.”

“...What?”

Seeing Neprah struck dumb again, Adelaide covered her mouth and laughed, a small ripple that swelled like storm tide breaking over stone.

It slipped its leash fast; her hand couldn’t dam it. She hugged her belly and cackled, laughter spilling like pearls from a torn string.

Hah—hahaha! Of course I know. No one on earth knows that moment better than me, as clear as moonlight on ice.

“Disaster, you say? This heart is flawless. How would it birth calamity? The true disaster’s always been those witless peasants.”

“I—Emperor Belior—had set everything. A road paved for brighter days and fairer shares, like sunrise washing the valley.”

“But peasants are peasants. They only see their tiny gains, like ants guarding crumbs. They don’t grasp the need for an era’s birth pangs.”

“If they’d obeyed from the start, that so-called ‘disaster’ would never have bloomed.”

“Birth pangs of the era?” Samir stared, disbelief cold as sleet. “You mean the millions who starved under the Emperor?”

“Heh. So what? For a better future, any cost is worth it, like timber burned to fire a kiln.”

“For one person’s ‘better future,’ you think that justifies butchering lives?” His voice cut like winter wind across bare fields.

“Lives? What lives?” Adelaide’s smile was a blade. “Without the Emperor, those peasants were meat for the Void Rifts in the Chaos Uprising.”

“Their lives were granted by the Emperor, like torches lit in night. If he later reclaimed them, what’s the problem?”

Reclaimed. The word hit Samir like a step into empty air. He fell back, face blanched like paper.

“Adelaide… do you hear yourself?” His voice carried dread first, his hand half-raised and shaking like a leaf in a gale.

She didn’t answer. She wasn’t even looking at him. Her world sealed shut like iron. In her scarlet eyes, violence boiled like molten glass.

“Yes. The Emperor saved them. Those peasants repaid grace with bile. They dared deny the Emperor… deny my decision.”

Her voice grew husky, a bell cracked under frost. She covered her face, but her silver-chime throat couldn’t hide the blaze.

“Stupid. Vile. They wouldn’t even face me. They stole my power with petty poison, drop by drop. Unforgivable.”

“Every one of them… all damned traitors.”

Yes. Everyone in that era was a traitor, a field of thorns.

They killed Emperor Belior, not on a grand field bathed in honor, but with patience and poison, like rust eating steel.

Menglan had said it: with the Sacred Heart, the Emperor shouldn’t age or die. Killing her was harder than felling the Lionheart Hero.

No one in the human Empire could do it, not by steel or spell.

But the Sacred Heart that fed her wasn’t flawless marble. It had a single vein of weakness.

Beyond death, there was one other blade that stripped it from its host.

When the host’s right to be King was denied by every soul under heaven.

That was Emperor Belior’s true end. From babbling infants to elders failing at dawn.

From widows who lost husband and child, to loyal knights whose blades cut the innocent. Not in a heartbeat, but day by day.

Under disasters and pain, like winter grinding the year, a distant moment arrived.

Everyone in the Sarman Empire reached the same cold agreement. They denied her right to be King.

And that was Beniola’s last breath.

The instant her fusion with the Sacred Heart broke, years flooded back like a bursting dam. Age crawled her skin like creeping ivy.

The body beneath her armor withered. Petals fell from a long-sheltered bloom.

Her perfect face, her hair pale as first snow—both shattered in seconds, like sandstone weathered to dust.

Only empty armor remained, and a white heart still beating like a lone drum in fog.

Thus ended Emperor Belior’s era.

Her deeds were sealed as taboo, her histories burned like autumn fields. Her true name vanished like smoke.

All that remained was a royal-crafted idol, a mask no longer hers.

Yet not everything scattered on the wind.

The unwillingness at Beniola’s last instant, that bitter fire, now hammered Adelaide’s chest like thunder.

Louder than ten thousand years, louder than the anger she felt at the Douglas couple, roaring like surf in a cave.

She’d climbed the peak of power, sat a throne none could threaten, a mountain unshakable.

And for such a stupid reason, everything was taken, like a crown knocked into mud.

A joke. She wasn’t felled by Varie or Menglan, not by a blade from above, but by peasants she had saved from the Chaos Uprising.

They schemed, and she died—just like that, absurd as a fallen star in daylight. Hah—hahahahahaha!

Her laugh bled near madness behind her hands, like strings snapping one by one. It jolted everyone in the room like thunder.

Then it cut off, sharp as a guillotine.

Her hands fell. That same gentle, poised face returned, a warm lantern glow. She smiled at Samir and Neprah.

“I—dammit—what the hell?”

Seeing that flawless smile, Neprah felt true dread, a chill slithering like a snake up his spine.

He hadn’t been close to Adelaide at Holywell Academy, not like his brother. Yet even he sensed the wrongness now.

His hands moved on instinct. Mana gauntlets bloomed, wind-aspected power wrapping them like blue silk strands.

He took a guarded stance and shouted to his brother. “Alexander, she’s gone mad! That Sacred Heart’s cursed. We need to rip it out—ugh!”

“Pat!” Neprah’s voice died, cut clean. Samir’s pupils shrank like pinpricks. His hand lifted, then froze, held by fear like ice.

A blood-red longsword pressed at Neprah’s throat, a line of winter along skin.

“How nostalgic, isn’t it?” Adelaide breathed, soft as an old song. Her hand eased forward; the tip nicked flesh.

Dark red blood slipped down the blade like wine over silver.

Neither brother saw her move, same as the talent trials. No one had seen when Mira drew her sword that day.

“Let me think. When Mira did this to you, she said something cool.” Adelaide tilted her head, a child seeking a tune.

“Ah—got it.” She raised a finger. “Duels are for those who have the strength to earn them.”

“You’re the noble second prince. Don’t be a stupid peasant who treats his life like trash.”

She smirked, a razor’s curl. She watched Neprah redden and choke on words, and her mind started to plan how she’d toy with him.

“Stop.” Samir’s voice carried fear first, urgency beating like wings. “Can’t you see the Sacred Heart’s steering you, Adelaide?”

She clicked her tongue and glanced his way. A mocking smile bloomed like a thorned rose. “Oh? Your Majesty knows it’s the Heart’s sway?”

“Not my lifelong truth? I’m moved. The King knows me better than I do.”

“I…” Sweat fogged Samir’s glasses like breath on glass. He gritted his teeth and dropped his voice to a plea edged like steel.

“Keep this up, and someone will stop you.”

“Stop me?” Adelaide gasped theatrically, eyes wide as stage masks. “Heavens! A righteous champion will smite the evil Blood Mage.”

“But who will this mystery champion be?” She spread her hands like a magician. “You, Your Majesty? Or the brother gagged on my blade?”

“Sorry to be blunt. Neither of you looks up to the task.”

She tapped her chin, playful as a cat. “Then who? My cute junior, Skela? My dear friend Hazel, who lives in a house of corpses?”

“Grand Justice Padini, iron-faced and sour? Puh—hahaha. Not one of them even qualifies as a medium.”

“Oh—unless you want the ‘respected’ imperial elder—Rockridge—to take me on?”

No way. That would be hilarious. Adelaide’s laughter shook like reeds in wind. Her sword hand trembled, and the blade bit deeper.

Cold sweat ran down both brothers like rain, while Adelaide admired their ruin with bright satisfaction, like a painter loving her colors.

She turned, chin lifted, toward Mira, who’d been silent since the start, a stone under moonlight.

“Don’t be silly. Even if you convince that old dog Rockridge, it’s useless. I don’t need to lift a finger.”

“Mira alone could carve him up like meat. Right, Mira?”

Her last note carried doubt, a thin crack. Mira didn’t answer as she’d imagined. She only stared, eyes cloudy as deep water.

Not the obedience Adelaide wanted. Not the bowed head.

“Mira? Why aren’t you speaking…?”

“I told you. Someone will stop you.” It wasn’t Mira’s voice. It was Samir’s, steady as a warning drum.

“Months ago, we received a letter from a so-called prophet. It said you’d lose control after returning to the Empire.”

He paused, jaw tight as a locked hinge. “We thought it was Rockridge sowing discord.”

“But now it’s clear. The prophecy wasn’t wrong. You’ve become a dangerous factor.”

Adelaide ignored him. Her gaze clung to Mira like a moth to flame. “Hey, Mira…? Why won’t you answer me?”

“Stop fantasizing, Adelaide.” Samir’s voice cut clean. “The letter said Mira is the one who’ll stop you.”

“Shut up!” Adelaide’s snarl cracked like thunder. The sword writhed into chains of blood, and in a blink they bound Samir.

They tore his formalwear like paper. They bit skin, drawing red lines that ran like rivers.

“This can’t be… Mira would never…” Her voice shook. The earlier fury vanished like smoke. Only doubt and fear remained, cold as ash.

“Mira… you won’t do that, right? Answer me…” She reached out, fingers trembling like a trapped bird’s wings.

Her feet wouldn’t move. Fear held her in place like roots sinking deep.

Mira stood there, silent as snow. Her sword shone with silver light, a winter moon in hand.

“Mira… don’t be like this… answer your sister, please…”

“She won’t stand with you!” Samir’s shout hit like a thrown stone.

“I told you to shut up!” Adelaide’s eyes flashed scarlet, boiling like a pot. The bloodblade chain tightened with a hiss.

In that heartbeat, she almost killed the annoying King, a swipe away from silence.

Then a thought knifed through her mind. It froze her for a few seconds, ice on a river.

She whirled and grabbed Samir’s ruined collar. Dozens of butterfly-shaped blood blades formed, petals of steel inches from his face.

“When did you receive that letter?”

It felt off-topic enough to stun him. He blinked like an owl, then answered.

“About eleven months ago. Why ask—”

He tried to resume his righteous plea, voice lifting like a banner. Adelaide didn’t hear a word. She went still, hand locked in cloth.

It wasn’t his justice that calmed her. It was the worst guess solidifying like frost.

She pulled time backward, counting like beads. Subtract the mad road home, a few months spent in drifting dust.

Subtract two weeks after they offered hearts and bodies, that little honeyed season, warm as spring.

Subtract what came before, six months apart like two stars across the night.

All those days stack to exactly eleven months. The numbers settled like stones.

That was when they got the “prophet’s” letter.

It was also when the Follower of Pleasure burned the last thread of her life, sending unknown knowledge into Mira’s hands, like a moth’s final spark.