Jiang Bailu took Dorothy out for ages, city lights flowing past like a river of coins, and even detoured into a pizzeria for a grease-shiny midnight feast.

Dorothy polished off a whole seven-inch seafood-and-pineapple pie, like a small sun swallowed by a bottomless well.

Jiang Bailu stared, stunned, like a cat seeing its first thunderbolt.

“Espers tend to have bigger appetites.”

Dorothy said it lightly, like steam drifting off hot dough.

Quit fooling me, I’m an esper too… The laugh rose first, like bubbles in soda, but Jiang Bailu swallowed it. The girl was Yekase’s best student and the Second Imperial Princess of France, so fine, let it slide like rain off an umbrella.

Ling Yi had spotted someone suspicious and went to report to Yekase, promising to call after confirming.

Silence spread instead, like frost on glass—no word if it was a false alarm or a fight already burning.

“Dorothy, your ghosts can share senses, right? What does that feel like?”

The worry pressed on her chest like wet wool, so she grabbed another thread of talk to keep from sinking.

“It’s like… walking while looking at your phone,” Dorothy said, like she was tracing fog on a window. “You can see both, but you can only focus on one. The other blurs, like rain on a windshield.”

So that really was something Coffee Moon couldn’t do.

Others could walk and text, fretting over split attention; she didn’t even have a phone, like the difference between running slow and having no legs at all.

Even among ghosts, power isn’t equal; the distance yawns like a canyon.

At least Dorothy’s blank-slate ghosts can’t outmatch Coffee Moon on raw bite; that soothed her a little, like tea warming cold fingers.

Not that comparing notes with an ally would help the storm at their backs.

Jiang Bailu looked out the pizzeria window.

It was late-late, the sky black as ink, yet the street still swelled like a tide of lanterns; no one looked ready to go home.

Damn it, do none of these people have jet lag?

The 23-year-old research assistant yawned, a slow wave rolling off a sleepy shore.

She hadn’t pulled an all-nighter in a while; her night stamina had fallen like leaves after frost.

Old warhorse still got it? More like her guts staged three mutinies in a minute.

How’s Lu Yao doing?

The unease crawled like ants under skin—was it just her crowd-shy nerves tuning high?

……

The bar ran hot tonight, like a stove with the door open.

Shen Shanshan mixed drinks while fishing for tales of Yekase in Europe, sipping each story like honeyed tea.

Her hands never slipped; milk-tea liquor streamed from the shaker like satin.

“Your Alexandra,” she slid the glass across, the ice chiming like tiny bells. “So what happened to that train?”

“Haha, it sank,” came the reply, light as a tossed pebble.

“It sank?!” Shen Shanshan nearly dropped the glass, like a juggler snagging the last ball.

“Kidding. The Brits impounded it for inspection. Mysidia’s been protesting like storm drums. Give it ten more days, they’ll probably declare war.”

You people declare war like popping corks.

No wonder Europe’s mercenary trade blooms like weeds; they’re fighting every other sunrise.

A stir rose at the door, like wind in tall grass.

Yin slammed a drunk to the floor, stepped over him, and strode to the bar to whistles and cheers that cracked like firecrackers.

“Where did they go?” Her voice was hoarse, like gravel in water, as if she’d cried.

Shen Shanshan looked the once-familiar stranger up and down. “They didn’t say. But they held a tiny war council here before leaving… really tiny, like two stones on a Go board.”

“What did they talk about?”

“Someone scrawled ‘God is dead’ on an alley wall.”

“In Chinese?”

“German. Oh, the ‘Death’ was capitalized, and then she looked like the light snapped on.”

—German. Capital Death.

TOT.

“…Got it. Thanks.”

Yin tossed that over her shoulder and headed for the door, stride quick as a blade through silk.

So you do say thank you, huh. Thanks indeed… Shen Shanshan called to her back, voice like a bell in mist. “You’re not running anymore?”

Yin looked back, and a shy, green smile pulled at her lips like dawn prying open the night.

“I just… took a break, is all.”

……

Because the hero wouldn’t come, she became one herself, like a lantern someone lights in their own hands.

All these years, she’d never asked why.

Charity for the world like rain for parched fields? Sister’s shadow like a tree over a road?

…No. Not really.

With a new face, she could face herself, like a mirror wiped clean.

Her reason never changed—neither lofty nor selfish, just simple as bread: she couldn’t stand seeing a child cry for help and get only echoes.

As for the rift with her sister—if a sibling spat could derail what truly mattered, PeaceWarrior wouldn’t need any gadget from Yekase to switch her mask.

PeaceWarrior would vanish on her own, like a footprint under a wave.

“Yin”—a strange belt shimmered at Lu Yao’s waist, like moonlight hammered into metal.

N-701 “Witch Gear.”

It was meant to recreate the power of a Magical Girl, but Yekase, on a bar-stool whim, rewired a loop and lent out the transformation, at the cost of nullifying Lu Yao’s own power for a while.

Witchy tech, uncanny as a cat in a church—yet she didn’t need it anymore.

A streak of silver cut the air, like a knife through silk.

The sailor-suited girl vanished; Lu Yao stood in her place, spine straight as a spear.

“—Part3!”

She sprang onto her wing, then hauled up hundreds of meters, slicing the night like a gull.

She meant to scan for Yekase from above; if Yekase was fighting, she might not win fast, but her special effects would bloom like festivals.

From the height over Soville City, the streets braided like glowing snakes, and Lu Yao spotted what ground eyes had missed.

The little movie plaza they’d passed—round as a coin.

Seen by the line of streetlamps like beads on string, the terrain snapped into shape.

Two T-junctions boxed the circle, and the parallel roads on each side ran into a cross-street that chopped them off.

“T, O, T…”

Could the target be that small plaza?

It wasn’t big and it sat a bit aside, but shops clustered there like barnacles, and the tourists below pressed dense as a dark hive.

If someone hit that spot…

Lu Yao pulled an SSG08 from the armory, cold metal like a winter rail in her hands.

She braced on the wing and swept the plaza through the scope, faces blooming like paper lanterns—no flicker out of place.

Don’t tell me… we’re already late?!

As if to echo the dread like thunder answering lightning, the projector glitched.

The film cut off, the screen went black as a shuttered eye.

From that black, a masked face floated up, pale as a ghostfish.

Plastic, printed with a knockoff Ultraman, the kind you buy for five bucks at a street stall—and yet, under that funereal light, it crawled cold as a centipede.

He spoke before anyone could gasp, his voice booming wide as the square.

“Hello, everyone, we’re Shadow Realm War.”

The plaza lurched into chaos, like a kicked anthill.

Tourists spooked by the jump-scare, locals who knew the name bolting like deer, staff flailing like wet flags—everything unraveled at once.

“Easy, easy. We’re not devils,” the mask droned, smooth as oil. “You’re having so much fun, we just came to celebrate.”

“For example, how about we blow the cathedral’s dome—”

…

…Hm?

Every eye locked to the cathedral, like iron to a magnet.

Nothing happened.

“…”

—Boom, boom! Thump!

Explosions finally cracked from the dome, late as a train in rain.

Sparks and flashes spat like angry stars—

“Heh, feast your eyes on this soul-shaking—”

With those sparks and flashes, two spiraling blue fireballs climbed and burst, painting “Mi Fa Zhou” in midair like brushwork.

Then they pinched into a wobbly soybean emoji, and finally spilled into gradient fireworks, a rainbow waterfall hissing down the night.

“…this soul-shaking fireworks show!”

The masked man’s voice wobbled, like a plate on a stick, and he muscled it back on track.

But he froze on the spot, tongue tied like a bad knot.

Why hadn’t the dome blown? Why were the bombs now fireworks?

Who did it, and when? Who dared thumb the nose at Shadow Realm War?

And how did he miss it, a blind fish in a clear pond?

His carefully staged strike curdled into slapstick, like a tiger slipping on soap.

Shadow Realm War’s Number Two, callsign Giantkiller, throbbed veins under that Ultraman mask.

He cut the hack in rage, a cord snapped like dry twine.

The screen flipped back to the half-finished movie.

A princess twirled in a castle, skirts flaring like peonies, music fizzing like soda.

Joy seeped back into the square like sunlight after squall.

Lu Yao hung in the air, baffled as a rook on the wrong board, but she at least pegged the masked man as bad news.

He hadn’t planned a light show.

Was that Yekase’s hand? She would’ve just defused and been done, not swap in fireworks like a prankster.

Which meant, besides them and Shadow Realm War, a third party was moving in Soville City—

And this third party had the guts of a cliff diver, mocking a chaotic-evil crew that’d run free for fifty years.

A local hero, maybe, cloaked like fog?

She tapped the pedal and slid the wing toward the cathedral, the air cold as river steel.

The garden below bore the scars of battle—shrubs and lawn sliced and scorched, leaves strewn like torn green paper.

A gouge clawed across the grounds like a lightning scar.

A bronze statue of the Fae teetered, shadow long as a spear.

No figures showed, just the quiet after thunder.

Suddenly, a carved window blew outward from inside, glass spraying like ice.

…Inside the cathedral.

Lu Yao hated tight, indoor fights; walls closed like jaws.

She shifted angle, propped the rifle, and watched from afar through the broken pane, sight steady as a held breath.

A figure in a voluminous red robe stood within, both hands casting different spells—one a fireball, bright as a furnace coal, the other something invisible that bent air like heat haze.

Her opponent wore half-green, half-black armor, a glowing one-handed blade burning in his grip like a comet tail.

The design rang a bell—wasn’t that Blade Armor?

They traded blows like hammers on anvil, sparks in every breath.

Lu Yao arrowed toward the dome where the fireworks had bloomed, wings humming like a taut string.