This is the world of dreams, a lake of quiet moonlight.

Yekase sat again on that familiar cushion, in the study she’d entered once before, under rafters that smelled of old pine.

Across from her sat the Scribe in ink-blue robes, still as a brush resting by a porcelain well.

“Actually, everyone who meets me gets a gift,” he said, voice like paper turning. “You may ask me one question.”

“What about mine?” Yekase asked, the words sliding like pebbles across still water.

His mild smile faltered, a candle wobbling in a breeze. “Ah, even sages stumble. I’m here to make it up to you.”

So that’s your excuse for tapping my rare, deep sleep, she thought, the thought drifting like fog through lantern light.

She knew it was a dream, yet memory of waking life stayed veiled, a shoreline lost behind mist.

She wanted to ask about a thorn in her Infinite Power research, but the words scattered like leaves on a stream.

A big social question? That felt hollow too, the Hundred Schools bright as spring blossoms yet bound by their season.

Forget it, she thought, letting the idea sink like a stone into deep water.

A single question spanning two millennia shouldn’t be spent on a door I must kick open myself.

It would be like asking, “Is the road we walk right?”—a windless banner, limp and uninteresting.

Besides, she probably wouldn’t want a carefully engineered question; the mood pulsed like a sparrow’s wing.

Dream-Yekase stared at the Scribe’s face, as steady as a mountain under winter light.

Black hair and black eyes, a jade-fine nose, an unpainted mouth, simple as a clean spring.

Pretty? Pretty—like a small flower by a roadside, worth a second glance, forgotten by nightfall.

Beauty like that slides into the subconscious, a brushstroke added to the canvas where we define “beautiful.”

She brushed past two thousand years the way travelers brush sleeves at a ferry, then vanish into rain.

Past countless people, a river of faces parting around a rock, and flowing on.

Now she was a history teacher from some mountain hollow, a reed whose roots no one traced.

Her students wouldn’t know their teacher was a pebble in the mosaic of history, cool underfoot.

Yekase watched her, and some answer settled, a delicate feather coming to rest.

Never a blaze, never ash; more like the ever-burning lamp hanging from the study roof.

“I remembered a novel I read years ago,” she said, voice soft as dust on a book spine.

“Back then my body hadn’t ascended, and Reverse Meme had rewritten my mind like frost on glass.”

“Day by day I drifted in a Sinister Organization’s current, a fish caught by the tide and turned cruel.”

“After one long overtime, I found that book—cliché at the start, hurried at the end, yet it had one line.”

“One question stayed—like a seed carried in a coat pocket—and now I’ll ask you with that same seed.”

Yekase straightened, a bow drawn taut, breath a thin thread in cold air.

To anchor the memory past waking, she pressed her nails into her palms, pain like thorns under skin.

Then she met the Scribe’s eyes and asked, each word a bead on a string: “Mr. Ji, after hundreds and thousands of years, what do you become?”

Ji Xia tilted his head, a small bird listening on a branch in spring rain.

“‘Mr.,’ no one’s called me that in a long time—these days it’s ‘teacher,’ a different bell tone.”

“…”

“Since your line came from a novel, I’ll answer with one from a manga—paper is paper, ink is ink.”

Yekase had set out feelings for him—lonely or detached, a wind on an empty ridge.

But he felt like a young teacher at sunrise, warm and green, a first term rolling in.

He was like the first time she saw Liu RuoYuan on the podium, a storm quieted into resolve.

Their eyes faced the future, twin comets, glints on the same wavelength of light.

“My story,” he said, words falling like rain, “neither ends nor gets a sequel. That’s all.”

…

…

The next day, Yekase packed, zippers whispering like reeds in a sharp Siberian wind.

She contacted Aurora, whose voice carried cold stars; the far north is harsh and tangled weather.

Even she wouldn’t go deep alone; bring someone, she advised, like a rope across ice.

Yekase asked Jiang Bailu and Ling Yi, but one was buried in dev work and one in studies.

It made her look like a tourist, wandering with a camera, while others hammered steel in a forge.

She asked Lu Yao without much hope, tossing the line into gray water.

“Okay,” Lu Yao said, her agreement clean as a bell across empty snow.

“Then we’re—wait,” Yekase turned ninety degrees and froze, like a compass finding north. “You’re okay?”

“‘Suspicious human activity inside the Arctic Circle,’” Lu Yao said, words like pins on a map. “One clue, two keywords—what’s the chance it’s Shadow Realm War?”

“Over eighty percent,” Yekase said, the number a red mark on frost.

Lu Yao shrugged, a pine shedding snow, and began packing the few things she needed.

She was like Ling Yi, a banner planted on the cliff—old-school hero and stubborn red flame.

Even when the big-sister switch clicks and she goes a little intense, justice stays the highest star.

Shadow Realm War is a textbook Sinister Organization; she’ll strike, blade clean in winter sun.

Yekase had assumed refusal, and stumbled; the thought wilted like a leaf in early frost.

“If you think my human body will slow you down out there, don’t ask me at all,” Lu Yao said, a flake sharp on the tongue.

“No, no, of course not,” Yekase waved quickly, hands like birds, and offered a space clasp.

“Use this,” she said. “It holds a lot,” a small moon slipped into a pocket.

“Mm,” Lu Yao answered, the syllable a pebble tapping glass.

How was it so harmonious, Yekase wondered, a sheet of ice without cracks.

Lu Yao was oddly easy today, even accepting the gift—was she Rice Rice in disguise, a fox wearing snow?

Yekase reached out and pinched Lu Yao’s cheek, mischief like a cat pawing silk.

“Got a problem?” Lu Yao asked, eyes cool as a lake at dusk.

“Seems you’re the real thing,” Yekase said, the verdict a stamp in wax.

“Seems you’re really sick,” Lu Yao replied, a dry twig snapping.

Eh—

“You seem more cheerful,” Yekase said, a breeze teasing a banner. “You even push back.”

“At this rate you’ll graduate from tragic and pivot to comedian—stardom’s just a sun away,” she grinned, a crescent blade of light.

She leaned in to see Lu Yao’s face, and Lu Yao drew a breath, brim full as a tide.

“Do you need me to explain?” she said. “You read rooms like wind reads grass.”

“Oh, I get it,” Yekase said, a spark leaping. “Like when a guy asks a girl if he can finish inside.”

“Even if she agrees, she won’t say it out loud—eyes speak better than tongues,” she added, a blush implied like cherry petals.

“…”

Yekase didn’t know why a model citizen turned raunchy around Lu Yao—maybe a wolf finally found sheep.

But bullying needs sustainability; if the prey runs, the field goes barren under winter sun.

She stopped, and from the transit crate took out the Magical Girl Device, a ring of metal like a frost halo.

“I don’t need it,” Lu Yao said, her refusal neat as a folded note.

“Tourist mode still gives Magical Girl stats,” Yekase said. “Better cold resistance, just in case,” a scarf around a throat.

Lu Yao took the belt without a word and tucked it into the space clasp, a coin slipping into night.

“When we reach Siberia, Aurora’s dragonflight will meet us,” Yekase said, silhouettes like mountains in motion.

“They live in extreme weather; I’ll try to mooch a few pieces of gear,” she added, a grin bright as ice.

“If not for possible enemy eyes in the Arctic Circle, I’d hire a dragon as guide,” she said, dream like a comet.

“Riding a giant dragon over the ice at supersonic speed—just imagine that wind,” she laughed, a hawk scream in the sky.

“Mm,” Lu Yao answered, a heartbeat under fur.

“Bailu used her powers to save cities twice, and now the Church calls her ‘Apocalypse Witch,’” Yekase said, a title hammered in iron.

“Way cooler than my pile of dumb nicknames,” she added, a pile of fallen leaves by a gate.

“I don’t know why ‘devil’ aesthetics keep misfiring for me—maybe I should go official with ‘Crimson Witch.’”

“Then Ling Yi can be ‘Ironfire Witch,’ and we’ll be the flying Little Witches trio,” she smiled, three sparks on black velvet.

“Yekase,” Lu Yao said, the name a bell that cut the breeze.

Yekase fell silent, voice folding like paper, and met her gaze, a blade held flat.

“So many versions of you—which one’s the real you?” Lu Yao asked, a mirror under winter sun.

“All of them,” Yekase said, the answer a ring tossed into water.

“Draw the line at your return after the One-Year War,” Lu Yao said, a boundary carved in frost.

“Before and after, you act too differently—how much did that war, and those Magical Girls, change you?”

It had to be asked; the question paced like a wolf at the fence.

Yekase had her answer ready, a lantern kept full for a long road.

“They pointed me to a path,” she said, voice steady as snowfall. “Since then, every word I speak overlaps with their voices.”

“And every step I take falls into their footprints,” she finished, a tide pulling toward the moon.

…

When they were about to leave, Dorothy clung to her, a bright ribbon on a darker coat.

Yekase didn’t want a student risking frost and steel, but Dorothy could fight, a young spear with a steady shaft.

And she was bound to the future fight for the Golden Apple, a fruit hung high in mythic branches.

Better to temper her now, Yekase thought, hammer ringing in a morning forge.

She looked to Lu Yao, who tossed back, “Don’t interrogate me,” a stone skimming off water.

Then she looked down at Dorothy, hugging her waist, eyes wet and clear, spring wells under ice.

Those eyes were like Ling Yi’s, cut from the same dawn, and the resemblance struck like light.

Yekase thought, then rose, a sleeve whipping the table like a gust.

“Damn it—if I can’t even protect a student, what kind of hero am I?” she said, the oath a flag snapping.

“If you want to come, then come—just remember to request leave,” she added, a stamp and a seal.

“Yay!” Dorothy cried, gold hair like a banner, and leaped to high-five, palms cracking like firecrackers.

Lu Yao watched, puzzled, as the little sun sprinted off to the office, feet drumming like rain.

“Really bringing her?” she asked, the question a thin, straight blade.

“Yeah,” Yekase said. “She’s tied to France’s future; as her teacher, I have to ready her.”

“France is an old revolutionary heartland,” she added, a map smoldering at the edges.

A pity the royalists were too strong back then—if the wind had shifted, who knows what shape the river would take.

Yekase watched Dorothy dash across the open-air walkway, a swallow streaking over tiles.

“We’ll split the Philosopher’s Stone and drain the power of the World Tree that shelters them,” she said, a hammer poised on a keystone.

“France will take its first step,” she finished, the words marching like boots on frost.

Lu Yao had grown used to Yekase’s grand talk, wind in big, red sails.

This line still warmed for a heartbeat, a coal under ash; Dorothy would make it a slogan by sunrise.

“Let’s go straight to the helipad and prep for takeoff,” Yekase said, silhouettes gathering like migrating geese.

“In the spare time, I’ll frost-proof Peace Walker’s circuits,” she added, a craftsman’s touch in winter light.