By day seven, the Tunguska survey felt like the seventh notch on a wanderer’s staff.

Inside the Cosmic Bubble, compasses spun like leaves in eddies. So the crews used the T-shaped path from day one as their axis, with Aurora’s line as north.

Aurora had turned dragon and flown north. On day two she glided back from the south, frost on her wings, and then everyone saw the truth underfoot.

We stood on a complete asteroid. It had steady gravity like a held breath, clean air that didn’t bite, and wide ribbons of liquid water.

Life bloomed in full tiers. Animals, plants, and microbes wove a whole ecology, like moss climbing stone.

There was no sun or moon overhead. Yet day and night took turns like tides.

Where did any of this come from?

What even is a Cosmic Bubble?

No one could say, not even the summit of minds. Every theory felt like mist that fingers can’t catch.

Then ask the natives, right?

We had one chance, once. Spain kicked it into the mud for spices and gold, and that door slammed with a clang.

Three hundred years passed like snowmelt. No civilized Cosmic Bubble turned up again.

That morning, Yekase slept in, curled in a VIP single tent like a cat in sunlight. Near noon, she grabbed a tea mug and a toothbrush and walked to the stream.

She wore only a slip and loose slippers, like a lazy summer cloud.

She’d been rotating spare clothes from the teleport box. Wash in the stream, dry in camp. A hermit’s rhythm, quiet as pine shade.

She scrubbed her teeth and stared at the clear, rippling water. Her thoughts drifted like minnows.

Bedhead gone wild. That splash of red fringe arched up like a stubborn flame, and the rest of her black hair—evolved to stay clean even unwashed—stuck out like reeds after wind, now grown past shoulders, grazing the waist.

Her clothes and hair were nothing like before. Maybe her body’s evolutionary force worked faithfully in strange corners. Even with a blank face, her aura had shifted just enough to slip past old eyes. Only the face was a problem.

Rice Rice crawled up her spine like a warm stripe.

“Hey, Rice Rice. If you can shapeshift, can you cover my face and mimic someone else?”

Grruu.

Perched on her shoulder, it nosed her cheek and purred like a tiny engine. After a moment, it melted into slick gel and wrapped her face.

At first it was like breathing through wet silk. Her eyes wouldn’t open. Then the pressure eased. She looked into the water and saw—

Liu RuoYuan looking back.

“Disguising as my little sister, huh? Trying to get the whole family wanted?”

Rice Rice saw Liu RuoYuan the most. Hard to blame it. Yekase thought a beat, then used both hands to knead the thin slime mask.

She pressed and smoothed, like tweaking sliders in a character creator. Adjust, check, adjust again. Done.

Steal Ivaris’s face.

She probably wouldn’t get mad. Right?

The most dazzling woman on the team had joined the Magical Girl development plan simply for the love of magic. So Yekase in full mage garb could help her dream breathe.

Wearing that borrowed face, she walked back into camp.

Aurora was running the daily ops briefing in the command tent. Yekase leaned by the window, a shadow among shadows, and listened. A few people glanced over, then looked away; this site was theirs now, and trespass meant intruding on a hive.

“Yesterday afternoon, Team E found a large man-made structure to the east,” Aurora said.

A rough map chalked the board. A huge inverted T marked the middle. A red circle hugged the right.

At the words man-made structure, the squad leaders rustled like a flock. Whispers sparked.

“Natives?” “What kind of structure?” “I’m E team, I can—”

“Silence.”

Aurora spoke it flat as ice. The room cut out like someone pulled the plug.

That’s leadership, that frost-bright gravity. Yekase nodded inwardly. The Mistress of Dragon Keep. The Queen of the Northern Icefields.

“This Cosmic Bubble is much larger than we thought. Our schedule is tight. The survey plan stands. Push your daily pace if possible—count it as overtime.”

“As for the large structure, danger unknown. I’ll investigate with our three special guests.”

After dismissal, Aurora gathered the three in the largest tent and kept the fire going.

“From the outside,” she said, “it’s a fortress.”

“A military fortress? Which era?”

“Looks like the interstellar colonization era. No signs of Sorcery. Pure tech.”

“Interstellar…” Yekase repeated, barely breathing.

Their main world had stalled in the lunar neighborhood for decades. And this Bubble had interstellar colonists? It felt like stumbling on fusion in a thatched village.

“We move this afternoon,” Aurora said, closing the lid with a click.

“Pure tech’s kind of boring,” Sandryon muttered, a lace fan hiding a yawn.

“Mm.” Xiaoyuan never cared which way the wind blew.

“Can I head out now?” Yekase asked, spark first, plan second.

“…And you are?”

Someone had ushered in the girl in a witch hat by accident. Up close, the face didn’t ring any bells.

“I’m Yekase.”

She grabbed the mask off her face. The green gel snapped back into Rice Rice, its hind legs pedaling air.

“Is that… an alchemical construct?”

“An alien cat.”

…Alien cat?

All three decided, in sync, not to pull that thread.

Aurora kept her expression smooth as glass. “If you want to lead, go. We’ll follow at the right moment. If your master didn’t exaggerate—your talent to change the world even without power—I’d like to see it.”

Change the world without power?

Yekase looked at Sandryon. Her eyes were a rain of questions.

Sandryon coughed lightly. “I’d say nothing can stop you from finding a way to gain power, no matter how many restarts. It feels like fate. It’s beyond systems. It’s you.”

“Master…”

For someone so thorny day to day, those words were warm as coals. Yekase felt it land deep.

She bowed out and slipped from the big tent.

First stop, her own tent. Time to pack for the crawl and the storm.

At the base, missing gear was a quick hop to the main world. At the fortress, the teleport box would be a locked door. Prep had to be full.

Bless the mountain of “chicken-rib” gadgets she’d invented. Useless in a city with outlets like stars, but here, driven by Infinite Power, they shone. Like the Southern Sky Cross, they built a tough, self-contained little ecology, sealed from outside weather.

If there’s time, she thought, team up with Aurora. Sell Cosmic Bubble survey tools. A tidy sideline under strange skies.

Also packed: the space compression tech she co-developed with Jiang Bailu. Using that experimental work, she’d built an offline version of the teleport box—the storage gear beloved by every fantasy shelf: N-691 [Subspace Nexus]. Codename, the Space Button.

Good thing she hadn’t replaced the teleport box with it back then. Otherwise, no flying-box letters this time. Gains and losses, like yin and yang.

The Space Button was still in beta. Stable enough, but the inside had quirks. It turned Infinite Power inert, a pond gone still. Yekase stuffed in the hypnosis MP3, the phase transporter, the Nayuta unit, and most survey gear, keeping only a few safety tethers wrapped to her.

But the two staves with precious circuits, plus a Gunblade—too risky to stash. She borrowed a long canvas bag from a teammate, slung it over her back. It looked cheap and innocuous. She suspected it once held a fishing rod.

Alright. Ready.

She cast flight, like wind gathered under skin, and rose eastward.

She wanted point position because curiosity burned like tea left on the fire. She wanted to see a planetary fortress untouched by boot or pry bar. In this Sorcery-thin Bubble, a pure tech civilization unstained by Infinite Power—she wanted a shard of that fossil light.

Aurora likely agreed. Of the four, Yekase was the most “tech.” Best fit for first peek. She wouldn’t waste that trust.

Slowly, the fortress roof lifted into view, like a cold island surfacing.

A metal-built mass, size of a sports field. The rooftop radar swayed in the wind, a dead flower. Below, a half-open hatch with a gun barrel jammed in it, warped and rust-bitten.

Round holes dotted the outer wall like blind eyes. Inside was well-dark. She’d have to get close to see.

Utterly abandoned. A carcass of steel on a stone plain.

She landed near the wall. From the fishing-rod bag, she drew the Polaris Staff. The Southern Sky Cross had a great coding environment, sure—but right now she needed the Polaris Staff’s built-in, level-one Passion Chant.

She floated forward with toes just off the ground, quiet as a moth. She circled the fortress once, measuring the skin.

She found what passed for a main gate. Rockfall and metal had sealed it into a scar.

Yekase had a way around scars.

Inside, darkness pooled like old oil. Metal floors and walls had rusted through. Moss crawled them in green script. A few thin beams lanced through cracks—sunless light, pale as milk.

In that breathless hush, a girl in a mage’s outfit popped into being, her staff slung on one shoulder like a walking stick.

“Alright,” she murmured. “Infiltration successful.”