Back at the Dragon Keep, Yekase shivered; summer slipped off her skin, and winter bit like a bright blade.

That jolt from warm to cold—she’d felt it before… oh right, the Twin Spires always switch seasons like a guillotine. Never mind.

Two stories with too much weight had crashed over her today. Her mind felt sapped, but sleep refused to land; better to wander, like a leaf on a slow stream.

She hugged Southern Sky Cross and Polaris Staff to her chest. Her steps were small in dragon-sized halls, thoughts chewing slowly like cattle in snow.

Through the corridor windows: the same dark spruces, the same patient snow. A painting that never dries.

Almost March, maybe. Spring is prying at the ice—but some people won’t be coming home with the thaw.

A few dragons called out to her, voices fresh as unlit candles. Wyrmlings, mostly—too weak, and Aurora wouldn’t let them into the Cosmic Bubble. They found her novel the way kids eye a traveling puppet show; they clustered and whispered, yet held back like fish in a shadow.

She didn’t wave them over. They shadowed her at twenty meters, thinking the fog made them invisible.

One human and several dragons strung out like a comet tail through the Keep. When Yekase finally got bored and drifted back to the guest wing, the tail unhooked and scattered.

She pushed a door and paused—wrong side of the corridor. She’d miscounted. This was Sandryon’s room.

…Why not look?

The door was already open, and Master was in the Cosmic Bubble. No way she’d pop out like a thunderclap and catch her.

Savoring the little sin like a secret plum, Yekase tiptoed inside.

Master traveled light. Most of it lived in pocket dimensions. The room was spotless, a lake with no ripples… except for one thing.

Under a half-turned quilt, a shape made a shy hill.

It looked… like a stick.

Yekase edged closer and pinched the quilt up. The thing showed its face.

…

“Tsk.”

Just a brown wooden staff.

How boring—she started to drop the sheet back, retreat, shut the door.

Then a prickling hunch tugged her wrist. Yekase reached in and took the staff out.

Two fingers thick, a rounded tip, maybe thirty centimeters long. Smooth and oiled like river-worn wood, tended with fussy care.

Uh… wait.

This felt familiar…

Yekase tried feeding Sorcery into the staff.

Bzzzzzzzzzz…

It started to vibrate.

A high-frequency staff!

“I get it. It’s for stirring alchemical solvents! Of course Master keeps experimenting, even on the road!”

She almost flung it, then clamped off the Sorcery and gripped it tight.

That squeeze must have tripped a rune. The rounded tip warmed at once, gentle as a hand-warmer, dangerously comfortable to the touch.

“Multifunctional, huh…”

Muttering, Yekase laid it back precisely where it had lain. She pulled the quilt smooth and backed out of the room like a guilty cat.

She decided to talk to dragons instead.

She turned and called, “Hey. Quit tailing me. If you’ve got something to say, say it.”

A red and a blue dragon slunk out from a corner, heads drooping like wilted flags.

“You two can’t do human form?”

“Nope,” said the red one, sheepish as a coal.

“Haven’t learned yet,” said the blue one, voice like a creek.

Fine. Yekase was used to craning her neck to talk.

“I’m Yekase. You two?”

“Ivan.” “I’m Nina.”

Names chosen like the first candy in a jar.

She thought of Katyusha and let it go.

“All right. You’ve been tailing me, right? What did you want to ask?”

“I—I don’t need to tail anyone!” Ivan blurted, scales flashing like blush.

“I heard you’re friends with the world’s first mechanical dragon. She’s amazing, right? Then you must be amazing too?” Nina’s eyes glittered like frost in sunlight.

Even without dragon studies, their genders were obvious as sunrise.

Nina went on, “Hey hey, they say there’s a legend about you in Europe.”

“In Europe? …Huh?!”

Don’t tell me the Sovil incident—the Church knights—had already gone round Europe like wildfire?!

“No, no, they’re still guessing who did it. Just that it was a girl.”

Then how—oh. Aurora must’ve told them.

But why brag about that at home? Was the great dragon lord secretly chatty? She looked so proper.

“We pestered the grown-ups,” Ivan said, tail making contrite circles. “They told us not to spread it. Telling you yourself doesn’t count as ‘spreading,’ right?”

“Oh… scared me.”

Good. Not a gossiping lord—just a soft touch with kids.

“Big sis, you’re half a legend now. Europe’s buzzing. A mysterious girl who doesn’t put the Church in her eyes, who got bored and wiped a whole squad of knights! The Church is fuming, police everywhere.”

“It was not because I got bored!”

Maybe Labyrinth City got canceled because of me… She decided not to pull on that thread.

“Some say you’re a new vampire progenitor for reviving monsters. Some say a crazed heretic. Some say Satan’s messenger, some say Satan’s avatar!”

“Heh…”

Ivan grew animated, sparks in his voice. “All those news outfits that care only about clicks keep minting nicknames. ‘Crimson Queen.’ ‘Deep-Crimson Devil.’ ‘Red Demon King.’ ‘Scarlet Saint.’ ‘Crimson Magus’… mix and match, all red, all wicked. So cool.”

?????

“Th-that ‘Crimson Magus’ doesn’t sound bad…”

Yekase felt her composure fray.

If it were just edgy teens, she’d laugh it off. But Europe had swung back to old bones; religion’s shadow stuck like fog. ‘Demon King’ and ‘Devil’ could call real trouble; ‘Saint’ was the opposite sin—an atheist wearing a halo, a slap across the Church’s face.

Only ‘Crimson Queen’ and ‘Crimson Magus’ felt mildly safe… No, why did it sound like she was accepting any of them?

Shorter tags do feel softer than that six-syllable monstrosity, though. Length changes the whole taste.

Yekase waved goodbye to the two dragons and went to bed.

…

…

She slept until morning.

Unhurried, she pulled a big enamel mug, a toothbrush, and toothpaste from her space buckle. She squatted on the outer railing of the Keep’s corridor, thirty meters of air under her feet, and rinsed. The water dropped clean as glass, then froze mid-fall and burst on permafrost like powdered stars.

Then she slipped back into the Cosmic Bubble, hands clasped behind her like an old cadre, and inspected the survey crews as they buzzed about camp.

On top of Aurora’s grand pavilion she spotted Xiaoyuan, stretched out sunbathing—though no sun lived here.

“Rare. Not gaming today?” Yekase hopped onto the pavilion and sat beside her.

Xiaoyuan squinted, one leg crossed, the picture of an afternoon uncle.

“Finished my first run. Savoring the ending.”

“Oh…”

“People love to tack imaginary curses onto immortality, as if only brief lives can shine. But early deaths are everywhere. Beside them, isn’t a hundred years already long life? Why don’t they point at centenarians and say, ‘You must be miserable’? Makes no sense.”

Xiaoyuan rarely spoke so long. Yekase listened, then lay back too, adrift on light.

“You have to soothe yourself somehow. Teach yourself that death is the finish line. Otherwise you’ll crave longevity at the end and choke on it. Speaking of—Xiaoyuan, I’ve got a question.”

“Mm?”

“Your family and friends when you were young… what did you feel, sending them off?”

“They all died in service. I bowed my head, then kept working. The job wasn’t done; no time to drown in grief. After founding the state, I visited them on schedule. But Huaxia turned into what it is now—wage servitude, bonded ‘companions,’ and the old opium-and-salt rot all crawled back. Lately I don’t have the face to visit much.”

“I thought you’d refuse ‘attachments’ like Master said.”

Xiaoyuan shook her head. “Hear only half of Sandryon’s words; she herself believes only half. Strip out zeal and ties, call yourself inhuman—what’s left but rock and grass.”

…

“So you really aren’t lying about being seventy-seven?” Yekase asked, dubious as a cat at a mirror.

“I lied,” Xiaoyuan said crisply. “I’m still in the phase where being called ‘auntie’ annoys me.”

No way. She was decades past that.

Yekase blinked, then asked, “Why seventy-seven then? To honor Victory Day?”

“A week has 7 days. A rainbow, 7 colors. At room temp, pH 7 is neutral. Humans boast 7 virtues and 7 sins. Most important, I like dice, and opposite faces always add to 7. If they don’t buy seventy-seven, I say forty-two—the sum of six sevens in front.”

“If they don’t buy seventy-seven, they won’t buy forty-two.”

“Then twenty-seven.”

“Then we’re the same age.”

“See? Another coincidence of seven.”

Yekase couldn’t help laughing.

Xiaoyuan didn’t move, eyes on a sky bright without a source, as if the sun hadn’t vanished but swelled so wide it wrapped the whole ring-horizon.

Yekase watched her profile and felt again a warmth she never found in Sandryon or Aurora. Maybe their ages weren’t galaxies apart; maybe their tempers shared a few threads—both grew chatty once you were in.

“My hometown’s Nanchang,” Xiaoyuan said. “A few heroes there rallied people recently.”

“Mm. My sister sent clippings. Jiangxi’s got old backbone; blood still runs hot. The Sinister Organization never grew well there.”

“Doesn’t Twin Spires have a cell too?”

“My hometown’s not in Twin Spires. It’s a hundred klicks out, countryside circling the city.”

“Strategy must fit the ground and the times. No ‘always do X.’ It’s the 21st century. The countryside lags the city by too much; gear’s weak and sieges won’t hold. Hit the industrial zones first. Once Shadow Curtain International catches its breath, the cities won’t hold. Then carry the captured gear down into the towns and villages.”

Yekase nodded, the plan slotting in like a bolt.

“And this time we’ve got Heroes—rare elites. Suits guerrilla work even better… but,”

“Mm?”

“Will the harvest get reaped by someone else again?”

Xiaoyuan just smiled it off. “History climbs in a spiral. Time stands with us.”

Time stands with us… does it?

“Master said that,” Yekase murmured.

“She did. First time I met her, she dropped that line like a secret charm.”

“And after that?”

“I ignored her and enlisted.”

“And then?”

“Then I learned a bullet wouldn’t kill me. Ha!”