Yekase hit the stone like a dropped sack, pain blooming in her tailbone like a struck gong.

“Ow!”

She yelped, voice cracking like a snapped string.

“Even my mom never spanked me!” Yekase barked, anger flaring like a match. “Why tie me up and drag me here?”

Wind knifed across the rooftop fortress like winter through broken shutters; the space was bare yet deliberate, clean as a blade. A ring of a dozen smallish dragons sat around like hulking statues.

At the top of a steel staircase they all avoided sat a great dragon like a cliff of ice.

He—no, she. Yekase hadn’t studied Western dracology, but instinct rang like a tuning fork: this was a she-dragon. Her half‑transparent scales carried an icy crystal sheen like frozen glass; her body was balanced and powerful like a coiled spring; her neck showed hexagonal plates like snowflakes; inside her, warm orange life‑light pulsed like a breathing lamp.

Her gaze dropped like falling frost toward the commotion below.

“You went out making trouble again, Katyusha?”

Katyusha…

Yekase looked up at the red dragon who had snatched her, the color hot as a coal.

That name… yeah, pretty red.

“Boss! This damned human turned a dragon into a machine and chased me all the way to the Sidonia Hills!” the red dragon rattled on like firecrackers. “Oh, the poor little white dragon… she was right behind me, probably here any second. Let’s hear her testimony!”

“?????”

Turned a dragon into a machine? Chased to the hills? A little white dragon?

Yekase scratched her head, thoughts scattering like sparrows.

Every word out of the dragon’s mouth was Chinese—why Chinese?! Dragons living in Russian lands speaking Chinese felt like snow falling upward.

She choked on a dozen jokes at once, relief breaking like sunlight when Ling Yi finally arrived. Air and Flash Energy slammed down with a thunderclap, and she landed between Yekase and Katyusha like a drawn sword.

Around them, dragons murmured like a restless tide.

“Whoa, look at her…” “Did someone rip off her wings?” “Poor thing…”

“Which clan claims you, young and unfamiliar white dragon?” asked the frost dragon on the high seat, her voice steady and clear as a winter bell.

Yekase suddenly snorted, laughter bubbling up like a spring.

Ling Yi glanced left and right, eyes sweeping like searchlights.

Where was the white dragon?

“Don’t be afraid. Speak slowly,” Katyusha said, her firecracker tone softening like embers under ash.

Uh?

Uh…?

“Seems your shapeshifting could put the West to shame,” Yekase wheezed, hand on her stomach like a stitch. “You even pulled that off…”

Ling Yi half opened her mouth and pointed to herself like a hesitant child. “Me? You mean me?”

“What did this human do to you? We’ll make her pay like a storm pays back the shore…”

“I’m human!”

“…”

“…”

Before all the dragons, Ling Yi turned back into a person in a shimmer like melting frost and dismissed her Blade Armor like a ripple fading.

“…”

Even the frost dragon fell silent for a few beats, the hush deep as a snowfield.

Then, as if nothing had cracked, she spoke smoothly, words falling like neat stones. “Good. A new traveler on the Ancient Dragon Path, then. Katyusha, you’ll host these two guests.”

“Why me—”

Katyusha started to protest, then froze under the frost dragon’s golden stare, a sun behind ice. Head down, she muttered like a grumbling stove: “…Fine.”

Yekase climbed up, patting herself down like checking pockets in a storm. Nothing missing; her Gunblade still rode her back like a faithful hound. She cradled the Polaris Staff and tossed a theatrical bow toward the throne like a tossed petal.

“I’m Yekase, this is Ling Yi. Esteemed Lady Dragon, we don’t yet know your name.”

The dragon on the seat narrowed her eyes, nodding the faintest nod like a glacier shifting—if that mountain‑small motion counted as faint.

“Aflessagosa. You may also call me the Queen of the Northern Icefields.”

…

…

They were led into the steel guts of the fortress, corridors wide as riverbeds.

Everything was built to dragon scale, claw-marks and scuffs heavy as rain, yet nothing broken through; ten‑odd years of use, by the look of it, like rings in a tree. Likely they moved in when the Great Evacuation left Siberia a blank map; whether they caused that winter or seized the snow‑cleared chance, no one said.

On the third floor down from the roof, a row of human‑sized doors finally appeared like mouse holes in a barn.

“Those are the guest rooms,” Katyusha huffed, her breath a little plume. “No dragon ever cleans them. If you plan to stay, you sweep your own hearth.”

“We never planned to stay. We’re passing through like wind,” Yekase shot back, tone bright as a copper coin. “And it was your invitation, wasn’t it?”

“Invitation, hmph, invitation,” Katyusha repeated, the word like a pebble she hated to swallow.

Unable to counter, she bared her teeth like a cat pretending to be a tiger. “Tiny human, aren’t you afraid I’ll eat you right here like a snack?”

“Oh, I’m terrified, my legs are trembling like reeds. Please spare me, noble Red Dragon,” Yekase deadpanned, voice flat as glass.

They stared at each other, two flints refusing to give a spark.

Ling Yi tried to ease them apart, her smile stiff as a drying leaf. “Hey, the misunderstanding’s cleared, right? Don’t keep butting heads. By the way, Miss Katyusha, how old are you?”

Katyusha stayed friendly to Ling Yi, her voice warm as a hearth. “Eight.”

Eight… that’s eight?

Both humans glanced up at wings big enough to wrap ten of them like blankets and shared the same thought like twin ripples.

Ling Yi asked, gentle as rain, “Is this castle your home?”

“Yes. Boss saved us from human dragon‑hunts like a ship from a whirlpool. We live in this dragon‑fort she built with her own claws.”

“With her own claws…”

It was hard to picture a dragon troweling mortar like a mason bird. The fortress skin was steel as a ship’s hull, but inside, soil, stone, and brick showed like bones.

“Your Boss is amazing,” Ling Yi said, eyes bright as stars. “And beautiful.”

Katyusha’s tail wagged like a happy dog, nearly smacking Yekase like a swinging boom. “Boss is the strongest! There used to be a human dynasty on this land. Boss breathed once, and the whole imperial palace froze into shattered ice sculptures! No dynasty after that.”

“…Was that palace called the Winter Palace?” Yekase asked, her voice cool as sleet.

“So you know something! Not totally hopeless.” Katyusha puffed up like a proud rooster. “Humans gave Boss’s breath a name too: the Opening Salvo.”

…Yeah. It was her.

Yekase had suspected from Aflessagosa’s look like a snow‑crowned mountain, five parts sure when she heard the name, and now the last piece clicked like a lock.

She headed for the guest room like a fish for shade. “We’ll rest here a bit. Do you do lunch?”

“You can pick some meat and grill it yourself,” Katyusha said, casual as wind.

“Uh…”

Made sense; dragons probably ate it raw like wolves.

Yekase pushed the guest room door. Inside sat one bed, one table, one stool, sparse as a monk’s cell. A thick layer of dust lay on the table like old snow.

Katyusha sprawled on the floor, peering in like a child at a dollhouse. “A dragon will bring you luncheon meat,” she said, voice trailing like smoke.

“Not you? Didn’t your Boss ask you to host us?” Yekase poked the coals again, lips tilted like a blade.

“Delivering you here counts as hosting!”

She took off in the corridor like a launched arrow.

Yekase leaned into the hall and saw a larger blue dragon blast her from the air with a water cannon like a breaking wave.

“No flying in the corridor!” the blue dragon boomed, then nodded to Yekase like a polite doorman and led Katyusha away.

Ling Yi sat on the bed like a folded crane; Yekase took the stool like a roost.

“Doctor, why stay?” Ling Yi asked, worry clouding like mist. “What about Cloudlong City…”

“Sharpening the blade won’t delay chopping wood,” Yekase said, voice calm as a pond.

“What do you mean?” Ling Yi lifted the sheet like lifting fog. The inside was relatively clean, so she kicked off her shoes and sat cross‑legged like a little monk.

“This is called socializing,” Yekase said, tone light as a breeze. “Leaving now would be rude—rude to dragons. They did worry about you when they thought you were a little white dragon.”

“I’m grateful, but that’s a different lane,” Ling Yi said, eyebrows knit like threads. “You expect these dragons to help us catch the culprit?”

“No,” Yekase said, eyes half‑smiling like crescent moons. “But their leader seems to want a word. We’ll know soon. And if not, we can still mooch a meal and make Cloudlong by dusk.”

She pulled out her phone like drawing a talisman and started a game to kill time like sand through fingers.

Mooch a meal? Eat raw meat? Despair rolled through Ling Yi like a gray wave. She flopped back, and dust burst up like dandelion fluff.

“Cough—cough!”

How did it end up like this?

First successful transformation into a mechanical dragon, a dream gilded like sunrise.

Then a real dragon flock, legends breathing like thunderstorms.

It should’ve been a fairytale hour, bright as lanterns.

Why were they in a dusty room, waiting to chew raw meat like wolves?

“…Hey.”

A hand ruffled her hair, Yekase’s touch gentle as a breeze.

“This one’s hard to explain,” Yekase said, voice low as velvet. “You don’t know that person, and I’ve only met her once, like ships in fog.”

“That person? Another human here?” Ling Yi lifted her head like a lily, and Yekase absentmindedly scratched her chin like petting a cat.

“That frost dragon Aflessagosa likely has another name,” Yekase said, words falling like snow. “Aurora.”

“Aur…ora…? I’ve heard that name somewhere,” Ling Yi murmured, memory flickering like moth wings.

“Failed modern history, did you? The one who fired on the Winter Palace,” Yekase said, grin sharp as ice.

“It’s her?!”

Ling Yi bounced on the bed like a startled bird, raising another puff of dust like smoke.

“Cough—cough—cough! Doctor, you’ve even brushed shoulders with someone like that? What kind of network do you have?” Her awe shone like a lantern.

“Connections spread from friend to friend, exponential as spring shoots,” Yekase said, tone half teacher, half trickster. “They say you’re at most six handshakes from anyone. It’s called the small‑world theory.”

“Oh… I see,” Ling Yi said, half understanding, admiration glowing like banked coals.

With that anchor set like a mooring, her impatience ebbed like tide. She sat quietly and felt Mind Energy stream through her like a mountain brook, a tiny echo of Luzhixing’s breathing practice.

Another half hour drifted by like falling snow.

Knock, knock, knock.

“They’re here,” Yekase said, rising like a shadow.

She opened the door. Katyusha sat outside like a red boulder. The knocks had been her nail—about the size of Yekase—tapping like a drumstick.

“Boss invites you to the reception hall for dinner,” Katyusha said, reluctant as a cat in rain.

“Follow me.”