Calm—she had to be calm. Even with a storm roaring in her skull, Adelaide forced a deep breath, pressing boiling waves of feeling back under ice.

She teetered on the edge of rage, a blade trembling over sanity, because he dared touch the one she treasured most.

No matter how she longed to drag him out and flay him like a misused hide, now wasn’t the time.

He still nested inside Mira’s body; right now, impulse was a spark near dry tinder she couldn’t afford.

Calm… she had to read his intent, sift it like sand, and find the single flaw to kill him in one stroke.

“What do you want, Richard VI!”

Adelaide locked onto “Mira” with a hunter’s glare and lashed out. He let out a soft chuckle, scratching his nape, like her words were fog he didn’t see.

“What I want… asking a man just woken up a deep, philosophical thing? That’s a mountain to climb. How should I answer—”

“—You did all this to avenge Queen Camila!”

Adelaide cut him off, hurling the name like a stone at the still water of his heart.

At his mother’s name, Richard VI stilled, his hand sinking to his side like a curtain falling.

“Revenge… ah, right, I forgot you just peered through Rockridge’s memories.”

He spoke with a drifting sigh, his wandering gaze settling on Adelaide like ash on snow.

“Since you know, I won’t dance around it. I admit I hate those ungrateful commoners.” He paused, a beat hanging like a pendulum. “At first I couldn’t get it. They aren’t headless, yet their memory evaporates like dew. Five years pass, and they forget everything my mother did. They branded her a breaker of ‘bad rules,’ and didn’t even come to her funeral.”

“How ironic. Without her health guild, many of those swine wouldn’t have lived to the day she died.” He spread his hands with a long sigh, then shook his head like leaves shedding rain.

“But later, I did make peace with it, like a knot loosening.”

“…What?” Adelaide’s doubt trembled like a taut string.

“I mean, once I stepped into the real world, I saw it. Their memory isn’t broken; memory just doesn’t matter. Someone was kind five years ago—so what? Survival is a thorny road, and gratitude doesn’t fill a bowl.”

“It’s like a fruit tree. As a child, you love its red apples. Grown, when it bears no more, you fell it for firewood. Both serve your ends. My mother owed them kindness, but once scandal stripped her power, she couldn’t help them. So they used what was useful. A public woman like her, butchered, becomes a warning flame for their unruly women at home, don’t you think?” he asked, voice smooth as oil over coals.

He wore Mira’s voice and face while speaking words Mira could never shape. Adelaide’s mind stalled like a choked engine. Her grip bit her palm till blood welled, her canines aching against flesh.

“You son of a—”

Even with drawing out his goal set as top priority, her anger rose like floodwater she barely dammed.

Richard VI didn’t care about her killing glare. He rolled his eyes and handed her the answer like tossing a coin.

“You ask what I want. Straight, then—punishing those swine is a side quest. My real aim is to teach that lofty figure in the sky a lesson.”

“…?”

“What, why the thunderstruck face?”

Richard VI lifted his head. A ceiling pressed above them, yet his gaze pierced obstacles like an arrow, toward a height beyond the sky.

“More than the swine, I loathe the god who toys with fate.”

“A… god?”

“Yeah. A god.” His eyes closed like shutters. “Think. My mother, Grandfather Rockridge, Matisse, your poor sister… all our suffering, all our torn goodbyes—wasn’t it His loom that cut those threads?”

The question struck Adelaide still, like frost on a blade.

“Yes, He always has ironclad reasons—save the world, guard the living—so right it suffocates argument. But He forgets, when He arranges silk threads of fate, every cut strand was a living soul.”

A boy not yet ten, heart bright with kindness and simple dreams—grow fast, become a great painter—already had his path inked by God. He would watch his mother betrayed and killed by those she saved, and one day be stabbed from shadows himself, torn from his dream, handed a bad death like a broken toy.

Plain kindness, bright justice, grand hopes to reshape the world—everything else in that boy was declared excess. He wasn’t the butterfly stirring a storm; he was only one strand of wind dragged along.

Not because he chose to be a storm, but because the storm needed him broken. So he had to swallow pain and live a hollow life.

Richard VI finished and let out a breath, like embers fading.

After a beat, his mouth curved. He reopened his eyes on Adelaide with brown irises full of thorns and mockery.

“Answer me, eldest of the Douglas Family. At that birthday feast, when you realized your whole purpose was to be the villain’s white moonlight—the sacred ideal that drives your sister to obey the ‘script’—while you pay with your life…”

—didn’t you want to spit a curse at that god?

Adelaide’s mouth opened, but sound died like a candle pinched.

Her answer was her face twisting like storm-clouds, and the faint tremor running down her sword.

“See? You and I are the same!” Richard VI’s voice rose like drums. “You get it, right? When I received the letter scripting my fate, my world shattered like glass. But that was a gift. It nailed my resolve. No matter what, I’ll teach the god who toys with us a lesson. I’ll make Him learn that even gods pay for their deeds. Heh, ha-ha-ha!”

By the end he wasn’t speaking to her at all; his voice flew like bats from a cave. He threw his head back, covered his face, and howled at the ceiling like a sky. “You can’t control me now with this power!” “Stop hiding, come down and fight me!”

Under him, Mira’s lithe limbs jerked and swung, stiff and grotesque, like a puppet with cut strings.

After several heartbeats of frenzy, he fell quiet. Arms dropped to their place. Madness slipped from his eyes, zeal cooling into regret.

“Honestly, I’ve always thought you and I were kind. Early on I even considered, once the array triggered, choosing your body as my vessel. Two victims together, slapping Him across the face…”

“But your adopted sister’s body was reshaped by Tessmi’s Lament. Her blood runs like mine. Our souls match without a seam. So, sorry—I chose the safer path,” Richard VI said, then added fast, words glinting like knives.

“Even without your body, I still like you, like a collector admiring a blade. I planned to spare you, keep you around to talk and break the silence. It’s just…”

He sighed large, a bellows of regret, his tone cresting like a wave.

“Really, such a pity… We should’ve been allies. Why did you set so many needless safeguards on your adopted sister, turning yourself into a threat, forcing me to… kill you?”

“…What are you saying?”

She snapped back to herself and asked despite herself. Richard VI snorted, told her not to play dumb, and tapped the chest of the body he wore.

Under Mira’s clothes, something was spilling a soft glow, like a lantern under silk.

“Savia Rose—heh, worthy of an Elf holy relic. Even now, its essence resists me, a man bearing ten million souls.”

He lowered his head to Mira’s side flank. A pale violet mark there pulsed with a different, dusky light.

“And that—your Claim Mark. Gods, you were generous. You branded your own sister with a sigil shameful even for slaves. Eh, fine, this uncle won’t judge your little tastes. But playing like this adds extra weaknesses to a perfect body, doesn’t it?”

Adelaide jolted, then the truth snapped into focus like lightning.

This bastard’s fusion with Mira wasn’t complete. The Savia Rose’s essence inside her fought tooth and nail, blunting Richard VI’s foul soul.

More crucial, the Claim Mark she left on Mira was a door left ajar, a defenseless gap laid bare.

Realizing this, she threw her voice like a spear. “Since you know that, get out of her!”

He only wagged a finger and wore Mira’s handsome face like a mask of indifference, shrugging off her thunder.

“You might be the only one besides God who can hurt me. Don’t get starry-eyed, though. First, I’m certain you won’t mar your precious sister’s flesh. Second—”

—even if you try, you need the strength to even touch this body!

Richard VI laughed wild, arms opening like embracing air, like loosing a flock of crows.

Then the underground space changed, like a painting flipped to its negative.

The time-dragon’s massive carcass vanished from Adelaide’s sight. Pierced Rockridge and fallen Skela on the steps were gone. In truth, everything was gone, replaced by chaotic greys and black-and-white.

A violent energy rippled outward from Richard VI as a center, swallowing her before she could blink, like surf closing over a swimmer.

Everything inverted; symbols that knitted reality began to fray and fly like torn banners.

Seeing the desaturated field around her, the white-haired girl’s eyes widened like moons.

“The Greatest Sacrifice” was a last-resort’s last resort, the Living faction’s final card after total defeat.

Could this array really birth someone near a god, a match for the Void Rift? No one had mood to test it. If it ever triggered, it meant the Living had already lost everything.

Its price was so horrific and profane that everyone would die. And on that day, defeating the Void Rift would taste like ash.

So they treated the array like a burn-the-boats mantra, not a plan. No one cared what it would truly do. Even its makers weren’t sure what monster it would birth.

Yet a question that shouldn’t find daylight just received its answer.

In this endless elsewhere, Adelaide stared at “Mira” hovering in the void and felt pressure like Matisse with Chaos in his veins. She understood.

When Richard VI said he’d school that damned god, it wasn’t empty pride.

Right now, he wielded power close enough to divinity to chill the sun.