The muffled bell rang again. The dented bell swayed. Dark liquid dripped from its mouth like night rain.

Bitter ink fell into the lake, like a tree growing upside down. It spread and reached, branching with blood and remorse.

Curved, coiling, fine twigs merged with the lake, as if water and ink were born as one.

In a way, they truly were one.

Mira’s breath slipped into Adelaide’s memories. It turned history over and showed its hidden face, filling the missing angle.

She saw it: when she fell into the minister’s trap, years of work shattered, her heart nearly gone silent—Mira stood beside her, despairing too.

She saw it: when they walked the yellow sands, unsure how to mend with a sister from yesterday—Mira matched her, roiling with the same regret and confusion.

She saw it: when she crushed her feelings and sent Mira away—Mira burned the same, teeth clenched through a thousand sleepless nights.

She had once thought herself alone. She had been wrong beyond wrong.

Soul Devourer Sormaidon. Firefly. Followers of Pleasure.

Looking back, every crisis that bent Adelaide to today, that carved her character, held her sister’s shadow behind it.

On this knife-edge road, a thread called fate bound them. Soul to body, body to soul, tangled until no border remained.

When she laughed, Mira’s heart leapt. When she sank, Mira’s heart slid into the mud.

Feelings or goals, their steps never split. They moved toward the same horizon.

It was true before. It’s true now.

In this mindscape where self and other melt, Adelaide finally understood.

The bell went still. Its echo hung over the yellow-paper courtyard, thinning into the faint floating light of the backdrop.

This was the end of memory, and the end of all things.

Mira, dressed in red, sat on a swing at sunset. Bare feet. A wooden seat swaying like a hush.

No panic touched her face, no hurry. She watched the lake’s endless ripples, waiting for Adelaide to arrive.

And what should she do now?

Open her arms and fold Mira close, paying back her loyalty and restraint, one breath at a time?

Or play the hero from a popcorn flick, use this ending glow to preach a grand truth, spark a love-shaped cosmos to fight evil?

Adelaide didn’t know. She had all the answers she had chased, yet felt more lost than ever.

In the end, no high truth came. No cure for the crisis. Only one question.

“You… knew that early?”

“Mm.”

A voice like velvet, gentle enough to intoxicate, gave the answer she least wanted.

She shut her eyes. She didn’t dare look up.

“Then why… would you still…”

Be with me?

Even here, where nothing could hide, Adelaide couldn’t finish the line.

She couldn’t ask, because she knew how shameless it was for a thief to ask that.

Yet the need for an answer rose like thirst in her bones.

She had thought Mira learned the truth only after she entered the sanctum.

Rockridge must have filled her ears while Adelaide was away, speaking a prophet’s poison. It explained Mira’s oddness after they met again, why she opposed her. Hatred born of truth.

Until now, Adelaide had believed that without doubt, never thinking of other ways the thread could weave.

If Mira had known earlier, how could she explain nights braided together? Bodies spent, eyes meeting, soft love glowing in Mira’s gaze—was it all theater?

From any angle, Adelaide couldn’t imagine kindness for a thief wearing a sister’s borrowed skin. Shouldn’t Mira have gagged the first time she bared herself?

So the only “reasonable” tale had been that Mira knew nothing, and so accepted her confession.

Now, that tale shattered.

Mira had known long ago.

Not from Firefly, even. Earlier than that. Sitting by her bed, listening to Adelaide mutter fever-dream syllables, whispering “Jiaqi” again and again. She had already doubted, already asked if something fundamental had changed in her sister.

In a way, Matis and Firefly only confirmed her guess.

So why?

Why did she accept Adelaide after knowing all this?

“Sis, don’t make that face.”

Her voice cut through Adelaide’s tangle. Adelaide opened her eyes. No disgust waited.

Mira smiled, soft and slight. She shook her head.

“When I heard it from Firefly, I did waver. I asked who my sister really was…”

…Huh?

“Yes. You saw it, didn’t you? On the road from Sanda to the Elf capital with Varie, I was torn up. I didn’t know how to face you.”

Her smile thinned and turned to a sigh. “Now I think of it, back then…”

“Mi—Mira—”

“I was selfish and shameless beyond cure, wasn’t I?”

Adelaide froze mid-explanation. Mira kept speaking, like it was the most natural thing, and pulled her close to the other swing. Their seats creaked in gentle rhythm. Mira faced the lake, toes skimming air, voice unwinding old days.

Bells, a teddy bear, bedtime tales. Hide-and-seek in the back garden. Laxatives for the nasty nobles who sneered at her.

A lullaby hummed in a cave below. That reckless “stolen wedding” that made her laugh herself dizzy. Sand-surfing through a mad desert night. Sweet little Lise berries under the shattered sky of the Sealing Array.

The swings whispered and rocked. She counted every kindness Adelaide had shown her, from childhood to Holywell Academy, even after “Adelaide” no longer strictly meant Adelaide.

Time walked forward in her telling. It reached the knot no one could skip.

“Hey, Sis. When you chose to fight Matis, did you think… you might die?”

Before Adelaide could answer, Mira answered for her.

“I saw your memory just now. I know. You didn’t hesitate, not for a heartbeat… unlike me, full of selfish sums.”

“Sum… sums?”

“Yes. While you laid down everything for me, staking life and soul to dance with that vile man, I—who benefited—curled up as a poor helpless thing. I clutched a selfish, ugly fantasy.”

A fantasy that I could redeem my sins, and then stand with you as an equal.

Her voice dipped, but the words landed clear as cold water in Adelaide’s soul.

“Mira… no…”

Adelaide tried to deny it. The word wouldn’t come. She listened to Mira’s low confession.

“What redemption? What atonement? It was always my one-sided wish.”

“In the face of an impossible goal, ethics are a joke we tell ourselves.”

“Because no matter what… as you said, the debt I owe can’t be paid.”

“So-called atonement was a flimsy excuse that never held.”

“The best penance was to leave your world early, stop being your burden. I didn’t do it. I made a plan that wasn’t needed, likely to go wrong.”

“Heh… stripped bare, it was my crooked pass to keep brazenly staying by your side.”

“And with goals that impure, and me living on your grace, I’m the last person on earth fit to judge who you are.”

The swing-voices faded. Only one long sigh hung in the air.

Mira turned and looked at Adelaide. A gentle, helpless smile touched her face.

“So I figured it out, Sis.”

“Too late, maybe. But when we fell together through the air, when I kissed you for the first time, I understood.”

“You are my sister. Even if I’m unworthy of being your sister, if you choose it, that bond is yours forever.”

“I only need to know that. As for who you truly are…”

“I, the sinner, have no right to judge. The world that looks coldly has no right to judge. Even that god with vicious humor has no right to judge you.”

“Only you can decide who you are.”

“Adelaide, Jiaqi, Beniola, Belior…”

“Whoever you choose to be should be your freedom.”

“And what I, the sinner, can do…”

Is hand that freedom back to you, Sis.

Like sparks falling onto a letter, the yellow-paper world smoldered at her words. Lake, house, everything went mute red, then gray with ash. The countdown of hypnosis began.

Adelaide had no time for any of it. Her heart hammered. Fear surged up and split the silence that had stolen her voice.

“Mira, what are you doing…!”

She reached for her, but couldn’t touch her. Mira blurred, near yet far, like a drop of red ink soaking into yellow paper.

Across the gap she could not cross, Mira still smiled. Her blue eyes brimmed with tears.

She shook her head at Adelaide.

“I’m sorry, Sis.”

Sorry?

Why… why apologize now?

“Because I still broke my vow, and I lied to you.”

Her answer stopped Adelaide’s breath.

A lie?

Adelaide had just watched Mira’s memories. She hadn’t seen a lie anywhere—

No.

There was one place.

One memory left unseen. Matis’s whisper before he died.

While Adelaide had read her, that moment stayed blurred, like someone had veiled it by hand.

Now the veil lifted.

Yes. Mira had lied to her there.

But the lie wasn’t that she hid Rockridge’s plan to restore Adelaide’s soul.

The truth was the opposite. That story was the lie itself.

Matis never told her Rockridge had a way to mend a soul. She said it to goad Adelaide into jealous fury, so she could kill Rockridge and, on his death, spark “the greatest sacrifice.”

But—

“Why would you do that…?”

“Because you’re too gentle, Sis.”

Mira lowered her gaze. Her voice carried a sigh, heavy as dusk.

“You always run yourself down, like throwing mud at your own reflection. You call yourself slick, ruthless, even a whore—but you’re not that person.”

“You say you use people, but most of the time you never need to do that much for strangers, like carrying water for a village that isn’t yours.”

“You didn’t need to go that far for the Magic Society, didn’t need to be that kind to Anta, and you didn’t need to be so gentle to me, who took everything from you, like laying out a feast for someone who starved you.”

“You’re always like this—there’s a simpler path that suits you, yet you walk the long road in the rain for those you claim to ‘use.’”

“I think this: if I hadn’t come to the Douglas Family like a storm and cornered you into defending yourself, you wouldn’t keep rationalizing your softness by tearing yourself down, like building a shelter out of your own bones.”

Adelaide clenched her fists, knuckles whitening like frost. “No! Mira, you’re seeing me too kindly… I’m not that person. I don’t deserve what you say…”

“Then tell me: if you’d known my goal from the start, wouldn’t you have fought tooth and nail to stop me, like a lone wolf against fire?”

“Mira! None of that matters. Don’t do something foolish—” Her voice frayed like a snapped string.

“—See? Just like this, like a door closing.”

Mira cut her off, helpless as a leaf in wind, and Adelaide’s next words jammed in her throat like a stone.

Yes—her words landed like clear rain. Mira wasn’t wrong at all.

If she knew Mira’s true aim, Adelaide would pay any price to stop it, like stepping into fire to smother it.

At the root, she had never planned to let Mira take the shot, like keeping a blade sheathed.

To avoid complications and to keep Mira safe, she meant to handle Rockridge alone, never letting Mira near that risky array, like fencing off a cliff with her own body.

Yet one line from Mira pierced her sore spot like a needle to a bruise. She dropped every guard and followed, knowing it would add one more conduit to Rockridge’s array. She had to watch Mira kill him herself to feel at ease.

Why? Why be this foolish, like stepping into a pit you dug? With a breath of thought, she wouldn’t have made such a stupid mistake.

“No, it isn’t your fault, sister,” came a voice like warm tea in winter.

A wind scented with camellias brushed Adelaide’s face; its mild touch lifted her tears of regret like petals on a stream.

“I know you can’t decide, sister… so let me help you choose, like setting a lamp in your hands.”

Her voice faded like dusk draining color. The hypnosis could no longer hold this space, a paper lantern collapsing in rain.

Adelaide bit her lower lip. Even in the mindscape, the pain was airless, like drowning.

Words failed her. She tried to lift a hand, to touch, to stop, but couldn’t move. She could only watch Mira’s scarlet shadow thin away like smoke.

By now, the ten thousand paths had flowed, as fate arranged, into a single river of possibility.

Everything was set, like a seal pressed into wax.

At the very end, she heard only Mira’s voice, a bell in fog.

—Sister… take the last step, like crossing a frost line.

—Claim the power in me, like drawing a blade from a sheath.

—After that, no one will deny you… even that god will bow before you, like mountains bending to the sea.

—And then, sister, you will…

—be whoever you want to be, like a thousand masks in one mirror.

As the last syllable faded, the yellow-talisman space finally shattered like old charms tearing.

In its place came the muffled clanging of bells, rain on bronze.

But Mira did not vanish; she stood clearer than ever before Adelaide, a figure cut from light.

They returned to reality, like surfacing from deep water.

Mira stood a few steps away. Her sword fell and shattered into silver-white phantom light, like ice breaking.

She clutched her head, breath leaking in pain. She staggered back, and her bell hairpin shivered into chimes.

At the center of her chest, a gentle glow flickered like a candle behind glass.

It was the light of the Savia Rose. Now it blazed like noon, overwhelming the deep brown of Richard VI in Mira’s pupils and restoring a hint of clear blue.

Only, her hair was turning gold in a rush, showing the Elf relic was being burned away like dry straw.

No doubt, when it’s spent, Mira will lose her body again and be wholly usurped by Richard VI, like a flame smothered.

All her struggle now was to win her sister this brief window, like holding a door against a storm.

Of course, this single moment was enough for her plan, a spark to dry tinder.

On her lower abdomen, there remained a patch not covered by corrupted defensive scales, a slip of sky between dark branches.

It had been her birthmark. Now that purple trace bore Adelaide’s butterfly sigil, marking the one weak point on her body—a gap utterly unguarded against Adelaide, like a gate drawn in ink.

Mira was right: with a basic sacrificial array, Adelaide could take everything Mira held, like lifting water from a well.

Her proud magic talent, the myriad souls gathered inside her, would become Adelaide’s, like stars pulled into one orbit.

No one could deny her again, no one betray her, no one threaten her, like wolves tamed by a single gaze.

With the Sacred Heart joined to this power, she could become an everlasting sovereign, iron crowned by thunder.

It was just as Matis had prophesied in his final breath, a candle guttering out:

The price to grant Adelaide’s wish was only this—Mira’s life, offered like a flower on the altar.