With a Blood Magic prodigy bearing the Sacred Heart, plus a Time Domain holder who can run down a Chaos Beast, it’s no wonder Adelaide joked her way in, unfazed by “how to handle Rockridge.”
She didn’t care if she could beat him; she cared if Mira would obey. With that settled, her white silk-gloved hand flicked like a swan’s wing, and blood power burst into butterflies.
One sweep, and those crimson wings scattered the imperial elites from the doorway like leaves in a storm.
Her finger tapped. The blood butterflies folded into a flower; roots kissed stone, then raced outward. Blood-threads braided into vines, thickening like coiling pythons, reaching for the hidden gate’s sides.
Then, like ripping rice paper, the vines tore through a door reinforced by layered earth-and-metal magic in half a heartbeat.
It was all so effortless, like water finding its path. Adelaide’s mood floated light; she clasped Mira’s hand and stepped through the jagged gap, ignoring Skela’s slow-motion warning.
Yet even she, who couldn’t imagine anything here threatening her, felt her pupils tighten the instant they entered the cavernous chamber.
Not from an oppressive field pressing down. From what she saw: more than Rockridge.
In the vault waited a shadow, vast and patient, grafted to the old man’s spine like a black river. It unfolded, scale by scale.
She needed no words. Purple-veined dragon scales flashed, and she knew the shape that blotted the lamps.
Her pure-white heart missed a beat. Crimson Frenzy winked out like a candle pinched between fingers.
“Oh… you’ve come, eldest daughter of the Douglas Family.”
His eyes stayed shut. His face was so wrinkled it lost expression, a drowned mask. No one could read Rockridge’s thoughts; only his rasp carried a hint of… relief.
“This is… an unseemly sight for ladies. Even so, permit me, as master of this place, to welcome you both.”
“Master of this place?” Adelaide laughed through anger, a blade’s edge in the sound. “No. You are not master of the palace—neither these halls nor that body belong to you.”
“You sound furious, eldest daughter of the Douglas Family. Or should I call you… Beniola?”
“Oh? You seem to know too much. Let me guess—some mysterious man mailed you a letter, told you what you had no right to know?”
Rockridge’s lips moved. The corner of his mouth tried a smile like cracked clay.
“You’re exactly right. And more—the Seer told me why you burn now.”
The long neck rose, serpent-slow. Wet, grating crunches came from the imperfect join where the severed dragon’s spine met Rockridge’s back, hoisting him aloft like a puppet.
He looked down from that height at Adelaide and Mira, two bright points in his dark domain.
“I know you rage because I touched the time dragon. It was an unhappy mistake. The dragon’s soul left a thousand years ago; I merely use the husk it left behind—”
“Shut up, you despicable thief.”
Adelaide cut him off, a cold wave snapping shut.
She knew Little Blue was gone.
Back when they first met, Little Blue had told Beniola he was dying.
In that warm little cave, the dragon explained his kind’s life cycle, how he would depart like snow melting. Back then, Beniola barely cared. To a girl who still measured time by human years, “only a thousand years left” sounded pretentious, and almost eternal.
Time proved everything.
A thousand years, in the clock’s relentless poem, is a blink.
She once thought Little Blue would always wait at their secret base. But…
When the Sacred Heart’s sleep-born memories woke, another memory answered. A laughing boy stood before her, light from a sacrificial circle washed the palace hall, and at the center lay a lifeless dragon head.
Each scale matched her memory; yet the great eyes held none of Little Blue’s color.
Nothing taught her more sharply that Beniola’s era had passed.
And still…
Even knowing Little Blue was gone—long gone, even before his body was killed—seeing Rockridge squatting in that remnant shell made her ears roar. Bloodlust gnawed at reason, and she almost drew the blade to take his head herself.
She remembered why she left home.
“Mira… the next part’s yours, okay?”
Her hand settled on the Ceremonial Sword’s hilt. She turned, mouth tipped in a small smile at Mira like moonlight on water.
“I trust you. So don’t give him a quick end.”
As her last syllable faded, all five fingers closed on the hilt. Ink-crimson blood flowed from her grip, seeped along the lines, and sank into the sword’s heartstone.
The core flared. Pink-white light surged like waves, layer by layer, blooming like roses in slow fire.
That same pink-white dye touched Adelaide’s and Rockridge’s eyes.
Then both froze.
The chamber clock kept its normal tick, because Adelaide hadn’t used the Time Domain or Crimson Frenzy. She used a blunter blade—pure hypnosis.
She had higher-grade control spells now, perfect for combat, but she chose not to. She wanted the basic method, a hammer over a scalpel, to crush him with raw power against his field that could cow dragons, so he’d taste despair at the gap between them before he died.
Whatever schemes you treasure, under the Sacred Heart’s absolute might, they’re jokes.
She struck with that creed, and the mind’s wall tore like damp cloth. But once it opened easily, an odd emptiness drifted in.
She wasn’t satisfied. This old dog had pried at her hidden past through Matice, while she knew nothing of his.
How could that stand? Letting him die clean—too cheap.
Annoyance flickered. The torn gap in Rockridge’s spirit loomed right there…
Adelaide thought a beat, then let her awareness float toward the rift, slipping into the mind she had already bound with sleep.
She had meant only to hold him so Mira could cut. But she’d be keeping him under until his head rolled. Waiting was still waiting. Better to find a little fun—see how twisted his desires ran, how he’d risk disgrace, defy the crowd to become Regent, even plan a sacrifice of the entire empire.
That thought stirred a curious spark. Like choosing to watch a bad movie for the kick, she sank into his inner world.
She didn’t have the patience to peep at everything. Reality would give them only seconds, even if time ran slow inside. She wouldn’t sift frame by frame from his birth.
She stood before his memories, shelved like books in a dim library. She skimmed their weight, then chose the darkest, thickest volume. She drew it free, opened it, and let a blood-red thread of her soul slip into its murky scenes.
Hmm…?
To her surprise, the vision in her mind was a wrinkled hand’s back, a forearm spotted with age, and blurred sight—signs no young man carries.
A voice came, old and rough, like bark under frost.
“In that rain-soaked night, I saw the most beautiful woman in this world.”
One short line, and Adelaide paused.
She had believed, as her childhood shaped her, that a life’s pivot must arrive in youth. For Rockridge, this old dog, the decisive memory came this late?
And it was about a woman?
Heh… hehehe~
Rockridge, I didn’t expect you to be this kind of old dog.
Don’t tell me all this was for a woman… hah!
Her mockery slipped out, sharp and amused. Yet the fact hooked her interest tight.
She let go of the last bit of restraint and melted fully into Rockridge’s gaze, to see, with his eyes, the woman standing in the rain.
