Was I lost on the road toward the trial, or was this coiling staircase itself the trial, a serpent of stone winding into the cold?

Ling Yi looked back. The path behind was veiled in curling smoke, a misted river with no banks. The way ahead stretched like a gray horizon, no end in sight.

By the Emerald Pool, the deeper you went, the hotter it got—like earth’s breath warming a cavern. Yet this shaft held a steady, pricking chill, a thin frost against the skin. It had to be Aurora’s—

No. Maybe this was the Ice Barrier, a winter realm sealed in glass.

Her reflection in the crystal wall skidded on the icy steps and fell. Ling Yi flinched, pressed her palm to the cold surface, fingers stiff as icicles.

…Wait.

The reflection climbed up, turned its head, and met her gaze.

It smiled. A blade-thin smile, all malice and teeth, a predator under still water.

—Flashblade Red, do you think “heroes” are real?

A name woven from lies. A role sanctioned by the organization. A goal propped up by wishful dreams.

A hero is counterfeit from head to toe. Tell me—what’s real in all that silk and smoke?

The Sinister Organization makes people afraid. To disperse fear, those with power put on the hero’s mask and fight. Doesn’t that strike you as strange?

If you truly desire “heroes,” then do it like Shadow Curtain International did at its founding—call every hero to a national alliance, overthrow the greatest evil together.

And then in a few decades, that alliance becomes the next Shadow Curtain International. Would that surprise you?

You’ve sensed it, haven’t you? Heroes and evil organizations share the same bones. Lean on their power too long, and the people sink, like stone dragged into a marsh.

Even knowing the truth, why do foolish crowds still rely on these middle-tier elites? Why does a shrewd operator like Yekase still play along?

It’s simple. The heroes, the strong, the geniuses you raise up slide, silent as dusk, to the other side the moment they taste profit and power.

…

The reflection declared, voice exact as hers, yet cold as iron in snow, a barrage like sleet hammering tin roofs.

Ling Yi had braced herself. No matter what it said, she wouldn’t bite. Then a question hooked her mid-breath.

“Wha—”

Forget why the image could talk. She swallowed, then pushed back, words like sparks in dry grass.

Heroes fight to protect people. I do, and every hero I know does. We stand up on our own will, risking criminal records, injury, even death. If someone wanted power and profit, joining the organization would be easier. No hero is “raised” like a statue on a stage.

Yeah! Don’t listen to that idiot. Our cause is just! another reflection snapped from the wall opposite, voices crossing like arrows.

Even if you start with justice, you rot in the end.

Then everyone should be equally strong and equally smart. We’d watch each other by turns, like seasons circling the fields!

Ha. Saying that proves you aren’t smart enough.

They ignored Ling Yi herself. Across the stairwell, her faces argued, voices clashing like cymbals in a temple hall.

Ling Yi covered her ears. She ran down, feet drumming the stone, breath a small storm.

“Don’t run!” they shouted in unison, a chorus flattening the air like thunder.

I won’t listen to your verdict! she yelled back, a spark against their iron echo.

You’ll end up here regardless! the one above called, voice dripping like wax.

Then what do you think justice is, and what is right— asked the one to her left, words like pins pricking paper.

Needing to ask what’s right and just means you’ve already lost your heart! snapped the one below, sharp as a winter wind.

It felt like a whole classroom of herself bickering at her ears, voices stringing line to line, each barb a thorn. Her head throbbed, near bursting. Their words weren’t hers, and yet every question, light or heavy, pierced her like nails. She feared every answer would open a new hole, driving her step by step toward a cliff with no foothold.

What is justice? What is a hero?

She had hoped Yekase would hand her those answers. After fights not long or short, she held a thin dawn of her own.

Were these—worthy of being called questions at all?

…Right.

Ling Yi slowed. She stopped, breath settling like dust after rain.

Countless reflections circled. They fell silent, faces half-smile, half-mask, like moonlight on a blade.

My answer is—I don’t know.

I don’t know what justice is.

I don’t know what a hero is.

But I do know it’s wrong to hurt others. That’s a line, like a riverbank.

I do know we should treat each other like friends, warm as fire in winter.

I do know—

She turned. Every image gathered before her, expressions tilted, a grin that could be kindness or cruelty. She recalled a line from a language textbook, old ink fading like autumn leaves. She opened her mouth, and the sound flowed like water.

“When sages keep walking, great thieves keep living.”

…Though I don’t remember who said it.

The spiral staircase became a bright whirlpool, a sunlit vortex. It rose round her, wrapped the world in white spray.

The faces in the crystal screamed, twisted, and stretched as strands into the whirl. They blurred like fish in foam and vanished.

Only one sigh lingered on the wind, thin as smoke:

“You won’t be a sage, but someone will be a great thief.”

Ling Yi sat with a soft thud at the vortex’s heart, as if dropped into a calm pond.

…I know.

The whirlpool folded, and it swallowed her whole like a closing flower.

…

…

She blinked. The world had been swapped out like scenery, now a blood-red wasteland, a cracked plain under a rust sky. Everywhere she looked, humans and dragons clashed like storms.

They were fighting. Fully armored humans, and dragons of every hue roaring like avalanches.

She realized the soil wasn’t red. It was mud painted by blood, a river that never dried.

This is— where? A battle from history? Was she still inside the Ice Barrier’s mirage?

At the center of that field stood a frost dragon. Her crystal body was smeared near-black with blood, yet she fought like a winter gale. Each time she breathed upward, a ribbon of ice-blue swept skyward. Everything in its path froze solid, like lake water seized mid-wave.

The Opening Salvo.

Once a roar to declare an age ended and another begun. Now turned inward, used to carve comrades apart.

“Dear holy dragon—”

Aurora’s voice rose from somewhere like sunlight through cloud, both tender and terrifying.

“We’ll truly merge here. With our love, we’ll erase the enemy.”

A pillar of light speared the clouds. It carved a clean circle in the chaos like daylight on a temple floor.

Dragonbreath and mech cannons crossed over Ling Yi’s head, streaks like comets in a winter sky. She ducked, seeking cover like a rabbit chasing shadow, and then noticed she wore the Blade Armor. Her body had become a mechanical dragon, steel scaled and flame-veined.

I’m… a dragon?

Humans walk the human road. Dragons walk the dragon road.

The staircase had tested her will as a human. This battlefield—

She’d never believed a mimic shape made her truly dragon. Even when Aurora proposed a test, she’d accepted only to keep flying in this form, wind in metal wings.

But faced with this savage field, something deep inside—

A foreign fire ignited at her core, a kiln warming clay.

It began as a slow beat from the earth’s depths, steady as a mountain’s heart. Then storm and rain joined, a thousand beasts growled and howled within, a chorus stitched from wild throats. The earth birthed life, the storm carried it, the rain fed it, and life walked every corner of this planet like green waves climbing stone.

Dragons were the rulers before humans. The prior sky.

They had only magic—Eastern dragons had Soul Power, and with their extinction, no one would study that river again. Against the flourishing Infinite Power civilization, they lost ground step by step, retreating to Siberia, the Antarctic, and unpeopled wilds, like rivers forced into narrow channels.

But their thread to nature never snapped. It held like vine on rock.

Now Ling Yi felt that thread. Warm. Free. Vast as a plain in spring.

“ROAR—!”

…Huh?

Was that me? Her thoughts went wool-soft, like cotton soaked in rain. Before she understood, her metal body leaped forward. She plunged into the fight, a hawk stooping into a flock.

The mechanical dragon bared serrated steel teeth. She bit the nearest human soldier, tore his head free like biting a gourd, then spat it away, red spray like petals from a cut flower.

Seconds later, both corpse and blood vanished, unreal as mist in sun. They’d never been “real.” This was someone’s hell, memory made into mirage.

Red light thickened in her eyes, heavy enough to leave tails. Two crimson bolts trailed her movements like lightning that refused to fade. Brush them, and you’d burn.

“ROAR—!”

Another roar. The sound hurled itself like a wave against stone.

Too loud, she thought, a whisper among guns.

She felt like she was floating in a nutrient tank, weightless as a leaf in warm water. Safe. Comfort wrapped her like a quilt. She almost drifted off.

No. Don’t sleep—

Why not?

Why—

The mechanical dragon halted mid-field, frozen like a statue under frost.

I’m… human.

—

Like waking from a dream.

Ling Yi shook her dragon head, metal creaking like branches in ice. She didn’t know what that warm tide had been—a lure, a cradle—but her gut said it wasn’t hers to accept.

Because she is human.

Some might abandon everything to become a dragon, drunk on that near-essence, forgetting the human name like a shed skin. Ling Yi would not.

She scanned the field. She saw only countless selfless phantoms, loops of slaughter repeating like broken reels.

Not here.

She spread iron wings. Six red flame-tails burned from her thrusters and pushed her up, up into the clouds, a comet climbing to the blue.

A breathtaking frost dragon hovered there, wings beating slow, quiet as a snow owl. Her scales were clean as crystal, refracting a cold light under false sun.

—So. Your answer? she asked, voice high and clear, a bell in winter air.

I won’t become a dragon. I still have many things a human must do, Ling Yi said, steady as a flag planted in rock.

Ah. It won’t work anyway, right?

Even if I’m banned from transforming, it is what it is. Flying’s joy is sweet, but I’ve got heavier weights to carry.

You’ve passed.

The voice rang bright and proud, like glass singing.

Huh?

For one who has stepped onto the Ancient Dragon Path, the witnessing dragon becomes her elder by rite, her patron in principle, and grants her a dragon name. Then your name shall be—

She spoke a word that bent like smoke, hard to catch, old as thunder.

Dragon tongue? Ling Yi had never even heard of it. Yet the meaning landed in her like rain on open soil. She understood.

Balafaruth.

…Huh???

The mirage thinned like fog. It blew away. Ling Yi and Aurora stood again in the vast hall of the Sidonia Dragon Fortress, marble echoing like a cool lake.

Yekase and Katyusha sat nearby. Yekase held a phone, showing Katyusha something close. At the sound, he looked up, and saw Ling Yi touch down, steel claws clinking like chimes.

Afulesgosa’s voice rolled through the hall: The human road and the dragon road test only will, in the end.

Uh…

I don’t understand at all!

It means this, Yekase said, voice dry as paper. In your case, if you got drunk on dragon power and chose to become one of the flock, she would’ve stripped your right to transform.

Oh… as long as the result’s good? Then good.

Yekase came over and patted her foreclaw, a small, human warmth against metal. I know a second ID makes you happy, but I’ll remind you—don’t fight in this form.

Got it…

If you’ve got it, we go back. Back to the battlefield meant for us humans.

Mm!