A flood of information slammed into Adelaide’s mind at once.

Her heart thudded like a war drum as she tore free of Rockridge’s mindscape, though this wasn’t her first such blow.

She blinked back into reality, and the scene was the one she’d hoped for, sharp as a blade in dawn light.

The dragon lay toppled, its serpent neck slack against stone, like a banner fallen.

The Rockridge it was paired to was under Mira’s boot, her cold-bright blade poised over his chest.

The execution hung a breath away, Mira ready to keep her promise and cut Adelaide’s “hope” with her own hand.

Joy didn’t rise; dread did, cold as night rain, shivering through her chest.

This was wrong, like a compass spinning. This couldn’t happen, like a bridge cracking. He couldn’t just die, like a candle snuffed. Stop...

“Stop!”

Panic sparked like flint; Adelaide shouted to Mira.

Not mercy, not moved by stolen memories, but truth: she’d seen the real goal, bare as bone.

Rockridge never sought a crown; the thorn was deeper.

He himself was the third medium, a hidden wick in the lamp.

Realization struck like lightning; Adelaide reached out, palm like a warning flag, bidding her stop.

One burned in Crimson Frenzy; the other had opened the Time Domain, both like fires caged in glass.

Both moved in skewed speed, like streams in different winds.

Adelaide couldn’t reach her in a blink, like a runner mired in clay.

But it wasn’t irreparable; Mira could still hear her voice, thin as a bell in fog.

“Stop! Don’t—”

Shlick.

With her plea, blood bloomed slow as a dahlia, a red flower opening in air.

The blade had pierced Rockridge’s chest, clean as ice through water.

Mira ignored Adelaide’s command and drove the sword into his heart, like a nail into winter wood.

In counterpoint, the aged Rockridge wore a satisfied smile, calm as a sunset after storm.

On this old hound’s face she’d seen slyness, long-laid schemes, and a ruthless kind of rot.

Never had she seen such genuine joy, bright as first snow—like a man who finished his great work and slipped free.

Worst of all, she knew why that smile bloomed, bitter as wormwood.

And she had already missed the last moment to cut the rope.

The next beat, a power vast as a tidal plain smashed her mind, a pressure to rival Chaos.

So loud—like stone avalanching.

A chorus of screams crowded her skull, like a hundred ghosts on parade.

Even with the Sacred Heart, she felt trapped in a mudslide, her self slipping like gravel.

Helplessness seeped to the marrow, like every time a god lifted her soul and jammed it into a new shell.

It stretched like millennia of torment, yet snapped like a blink, a paradox that froze response.

But this time, before countless white arms wrapped her and dragged her into the abyss, she caught a trace of camellia scent, soft as spring rain.

She poured all she had, reaching for that strand of color in the white, and gathered a spark like firefly light to pull free.

She opened her eyes slowly, waking again, like dawn lifting mist.

Her senses returned in layers, and she was still standing, like a tree after wind.

More: the world seemed unchanged, copied like a print from a print.

Her outstretched hand hung midair, a bird caught between beats.

Rockridge still wore that satisfied smile; his pupils had dilated, life drifting away like smoke.

Mira still stood on his chest, sword lodged in his heart, head bowed, face buried in shadow like a veil.

Everything was the same as before the surge, like a pond unruffled…?

No, something had shifted, subtle as a fault in glass.

Here had gone quiet, a hush like snowfall.

Even underground, Adelaide had heard other noises before, like echoes along stone.

Voices, insect chitter, a nightingale’s song, thin as silver.

Her hearing, amplified by the Sacred Heart, caught surface whispers, fine as dust.

Now, none of that reached her, like a pond stilled under ice.

Only dead silence filled her ears; if not for her and Mira’s breath and heartbeats, she’d think hearing had died like a candle.

Thunk. Thunk.

Two dull sounds knelled behind her; Adelaide turned and found the source, like following a ripple.

It was Skela, who had slipped in after Adelaide tore the hidden door, likely to lend aid, a shadow following flame.

In theory, she had only taken the same stairs, a path without peril, like retracing footprints in sand.

Yet now she hung wrong-side up on the steps, slack in a grotesque pose, like a cut marionette.

Her head drooped and thumped the stair, the sounds we’d heard, dull as wet wood.

Adelaide saw her unfocused eyes and felt blame flood in, heavy as stormclouds.

Damn it, damn it, damn—

She should’ve guessed long ago, like seeing tracks in fresh snow.

The clues sat in her palms from the start—inked in the final scene of the Script.

In that world, Mira held every edge. Why did she let Skela kill her at the end?

Because the third medium’s life was the final offering to fire the array beneath them, like oil to a pyre.

Yes—the supermassive array underfoot, spread across the Empire like a net of veins.

—the Greatest Sacrifice.

The living faction’s last-resort craft, an extermination weapon even Emperor Belior, in his maddest days, dared not turn on his own, a storm kept leashed.

Extract every soul within range, pack them into one body, and forcibly forge a power to rival gods—like forging lightning in a jar.

So Menglan described it; the Sacred Heart’s memories matched, clear as mirror-water.

If the array just fired, where did that godlike power go, like a river seeking the sea?

The answer was plain, like ink bleeding on paper.

Across the Empire, only two still stood, like lone pines on a blasted ridge.

Adelaide looked to Mira, gaze steady as a held breath.

Mira lifted her face, and their gazes met, like blades crossing.

“Hello, my most cherished elder sister…”

That familiar voice spread a chill through Adelaide, like frost threading a window.

As Menglan said, a sudden need for another medium meant someone had altered the Greatest Sacrifice.

They had added a new effect to that Empire-wide array, like stitching a secret into brocade.

Adelaide hadn’t known what they changed—until now, when the curtain lifted like wind on bamboo.

She shivered, seeing “Mira’s” muddy brown eyes, like river water after rain.

“You… you people… what did you do!!!”

“Mira” curled a lip. “Oh, clever girl, you’ve guessed it by now, haven’t you?”

Adelaide clenched her jaw and drew her blade, teeth like grit. “Get out of her body. Now!”

Yes, she understood it all, clear as noon light.

More, she had the answer to the riddle that gnawed her: what did the Script’s Mira truly want?

The answer stood before her, simple as a single bloom.

No matter the worldline, Mira’s final aim was the same, steady as a compass.

The array was altered, not for power amplification, but for… the return of the dead, like spring forcing shoots through frost.

No—more precise: when the Greatest Sacrifice fires, its god-tier might awakens one dead soul.

It pours all power into it, then transfers it into a medium’s body, like wine into a new jar.

In other words, in the Script, Mira handed the Sacred Heart to Skela.

She had the newly risen medium kill her, only to use the array to resurrect her sister, like planting a seed with blood.

So whichever Mira, her core was the same, constant as the North Star.

At any other time, Adelaide would have been wrecked by that cross-world loyalty, rushing to embrace her, tears like rain.

But now was no time for that, the air taut as bowstring.

Even if she tried, that hug was a shattered dream, ash on the tongue.

Why, like a thorn stuck in her throat?

How had she forgotten something this crucial, a stone in the path?

She knew it; experience had proved it, carved like rings in wood.

Her presence warped the Script, but the key events still arrived, only the cast shifting like masks.

And as the climax of Holywell Academy, this battle was fated, a thunderhead that must break.

This time the roles changed again, like dancers switching lanterns.

The one willing to die to resurrect another wasn’t Mira, but Rockridge, a lantern reversed.

And before her stood the young Cabot from Rockridge’s memories, a ghost stepping out of amber.

Or rather, the Empire’s former king, assassinated years ago—Richard VI, returned like thunder after long silence.