Selene led Artemis into the bedchamber, her cleansing spell washing over her like moonlight rinsing dew. She opened a wardrobe like a gilded cliff and drew out a dark‑gold, rune‑woven bliaut, dusk stitched with constellations. Her hands, soft as swan wings, dressed Artemis with patient care.

It was a skirt, yet it hung loose like a robe, sleeves pouring down like rivers; it felt almost like a mage’s mantle. Relief drifted in like a quiet breeze—then Selene tugged the waist cincher tight, a bowstring drawn across Artemis’s spine.

“—Mm?!” The knot bit like iron, and her spine felt ready to snap, a sapling bent under a storm.

“Hold it, dear. Court girls all pass through this fire,” Selene said, her voice a warm brazier in winter.

Is… is that true? Artemis glanced at Selene’s waist, slim as a willow’s shadow, yet no cincher coiled there. You liar. Her glare sparked like flint, but the mature, beautiful queen only smiled and tied the knot, firm as a sailor’s hitch.

“Come. A guest waits in the garden,” she said, her tone a bell across calm water.

“Huh? Do I… have to go?”

“You’re coming,” Selene replied, the command a silk ribbon that still held like iron.

Artemis followed, half pushed, half drifting, like a leaf tugged by a current. Midway, the taste of the words struck her—what guest? In this season, visitors to Mysidia would rustle the city like wind through reeds. How had someone slipped past the city lord’s net, like a shadow crossing a wall, to see a queen buried in cold halls?

This was rebellion, bright as a torch in midnight.

Shock and anger thudded like drums in her chest. She wasn’t one of those sung‑for millennia, but she’d raised the Trinity Ring Grand Barrier to shelter every citizen, never raised armies or bled the people—at least a worthy steward, a lantern keeper. Yes, she drowned in Sorcery research like a scholar lost in snow, but this was the Mage City. What sin stained her robe?

A thin sorrow threaded her gaze toward Selene, like smoke wandering through rafters. Is it because… I gave you too little time?

Before marrying into Mysidia, Selene had been the daughter of an old Alchemy clan, praised like spring rain for sight and skill. Back then Endymion had just climbed the Magus King’s throne, a young hawk rash in bright wind; he married her to steady that house’s roots. Afterward they were strangers, two mages with no common tongue—no, there could have been one; Artemis had simply done a cruel thing, a frost laid without consent.

“Why’d your hand tense? Nervous?” Selene asked, a quirk like a crescent moon.

“N‑no…”

“Nervous,” she decided, calm as a lake. “Don’t worry. It’s just my friend.”

Friend? More like a counselor with knives hidden in sleeves, Artemis thought, hope guttering like ash. She let Selene pull her into the garden.

She looked up. Behind a white‑jade table sat a small figure, delicate as a sparrow on snow. Artemis had seen that girl—once, a fleeting silhouette under lantern light.

“Sorry to keep you waiting,” Selene said, her tone a warm hearth.

“It’s fine. The scenery here is good,” said the Second Princess of France, seated straight in a carved chair, a teacup blooming red as sunset in her hands. “Lymriel, come to me.”

That name pricked like a thorn. Wait—could it be—

“—Yes, my lady.” Lymriel answered and walked past Artemis’s stunned face, standing behind Dorothy like a shadow settling at the root of a tree.

Huh?! That was her maid automaton. Why was it in Arcadia, why alongside that rogue Yekase—

Selene set Artemis on a small chair prepared in advance, a perch light as a spar. She herself sat opposite Dorothy, their gazes crossing like two blades over silk.

Dorothy said, “Much work lately. I’ve neglected greetings.”

“No matter. A stolen moment is a candle in wind,” Selene replied, gentle as rain on tiles.

Just talk? Artemis had braced for questions, words sharpened in the corridor like hidden daggers. None were needed.

Dorothy sighed, her voice curling like mist over battlements. “France has closed itself for four hundred years. Hearts unravel, soldiers lack fight, generals wear rust. Inner ministers grow pale, outer bandits grow bold. Storms gather on the horizon; fields wither behind us. Wretches steer the court; bandits watch like wolves. Advance, we cannot seize the Philosopher’s Stone; retreat, we cannot raise the World Tree. I fear this Golden Apple won’t test the world, only test our necks.”

No—how did this turn to statecraft, and why the theater‑stage cadence?

“The battlefield will surely fall within France,” Selene said, worry rippling like a pond. Mysidia, bound by a contract, couldn’t pluck the Golden Apple; it sat safest, a neutral island. France had no such shield.

“We must shrink the fight’s compass,” Dorothy answered, voice a ring drawn in sand. “Best limit it to the palace, near the new branch.”

“We can lend our grand barrier,” Selene offered, her words a dome of glass. “We’ll cap the core field so no matter how fierce the clash, the outside won’t burn.”

“Then I must beg that favor—ah, let’s leave this for now,” Dorothy said, setting down her cup, the porcelain a soft click like hail on stone.

The topic pivoted like a kite caught by a sudden gust. Artemis was still silently complaining when both sets of eyes turned toward her, twin lanterns focusing in a dark hall.

“Magus King, does the new body fit?” Dorothy asked, gentle and sharp, a needle wrapped in silk.

…Huh?

In that instant, threads she had ignored braided together, a tapestry snapping into view. She asked though she already knew, disbelief flickering like lightning behind clouds. “You… conspired?”

Conspired—to make her a smaller Selene, a mirror shrunk to fit a doll. Why? What did this buy you? Was that academy partnership worth a human price?

“France needs change. Mysidia does too—and you as well,” Selene said, her gaze steady as a lighthouse.

“I… Your change means turning me into this?” Artemis burst, anger flaring like dry grass catching flame. “What are you after?!”

The Magus King, lord of Mysidia and head of the great academy, flipped like a chess piece by three women; stripped to a little girl with no Sorcery; forced into a skirt, cinched at the waist like a captive kite. She’d given Sorcery her whole sky, and they had slipped through a blind spot like thieves.

Regret came too late, a tide against stone. Knowledge caged, hands useless—humiliation bit like frost inside bone.

Dorothy on her right said, “We aim to make you see with new eyes, like turning a lantern toward corners long ignored.”

Selene on her left said, “This small body with no current of Sorcery is to simulate those born Sorcery‑poor, cast aside by our Mage City and Magic Kingdom—roots cut by the gardener.”

Yekase in the middle said, “When we cross graves to the horizon of causality, you and the ‘fools’ you scorn are the same dust under sun. We can make machines for everyone, so even old farmers who’ve never touched an appliance can wield Infinite Power. But no matter how high the craft, it can’t heal arrogance.”

…Yekase in the middle?

“Where did you pop up from?! Intruder! Assassin in the palace!” Artemis cried, her voice a startled bird breaking from brush.

Yekase slid the maid shell back over herself, gears whispering like reeds, and Lymriel stood there again, quiet as dusk.

“Ah—ah—ah?!” Artemis stammered, panic scattering like leaves.

“No shouting,” Selene said, and tapped Artemis’s head, a knuckle like a pebble on a drum. Even a touch felt like fire; her eyes stung, vision blurred like rain over glass.

“M‑m…” The day’s storm broke at once; she wept, unguarded, a river rushing down a cliff.

“Waaah—!!”

Selene drew Artemis in, her embrace a quilt in winter, pressing Artemis’s face to her breast, her hand soothing rhythm on her back like a mother patting a cradle. “Hush, hush. It’s all right.”

Dorothy and Lymriel watched, a chill passing like a shadow of wings. The plan to reform the Magus King’s spirit had been Yekase’s spark; when Dorothy heard it meant kidnapping Mysidia’s lord, her interest lit like festival lanterns. She used court ties to reach Queen Selene, famed for bold reforms; the guards were peeled away like bark; the women worked inside and outside, the door opened from both sides.

Yekase admitted she’d been a touch radical, a knife drawn too early; but the truly dangerous one was this queen who sold her husband without a flinch, ice under silk.

After Artemis’s mind cracked and cried itself dry, her shoulders dipped slower, like waves easing after storm. Selene blinked, and the two unrelated guests read the signal, leaving by the side door like owls at dawn.

They followed the queen’s handmaids up to the top room of the mage tower, steps spiraling like a shell. The chamber had been reserved only for the city lord and the queen, a vault at the tower’s throat, but Selene had told her attendants to let them through. Yekase pushed a wooden door carved with sealing arrays, lines like vines—unpowered, a dead orchard—and stepped into the royal loft at the needle of the spire.

In the center stood a celestial instrument, an armillary heart hung in air. It matched the old museum spheres in size, a moon balanced on antlers; its stand was cast from bone‑like matter, and the globe was ink‑dark crystal, glassy and deep, star points flickering within like fireflies under black water.

“What is this?” Artemis asked, wonder lifting like a skylark.

“That’s Mysidia’s city treasure, the Celestial Vein Instrument. It computes the heavens and checks if Earth’s Sorcery field lines flow true,” said the queen’s handmaid from the door, her voice a reed flute.

Yekase knew its uses, yet its core astonished her, a black pearl with a familiar pulse. The crystal matched the relic of the Cosmic Bubble given by Sidonia Dragon Fortress—one material, one silence. This Celestial Vein was a dead universe, an ocean set in stone.

Two people, arms spread, could barely encircle it; so vast and perfect a relic well deserved the city’s crown. And still… it felt smaller than Arcadia, a garden beside a continent.

“The Vein shows Earth’s Sorcery field lines have fallen far below normal,” Dorothy said, her palm resting on the globe like moonlight on water. “Perhaps the lowest in four hundred years.”

“Where did the lines go?” Selene asked, brows like wings drawn in.

“A sliver became waste Sorcery,” Dorothy answered, tone a shrug to small rain. “That impact’s like rural smoke on climate change. Most of the rest likely gathers into the World Tree’s branches, waiting on an outcome near at hand.”

Europe is a mosaic of states, more shards than Huaxia’s leagues of factions; when war breaks, it will grind like ice against rock. Yekase wanted to raise the Cloudcrown Isles’ research ecology during this brief calm, the hush before thunder. She wasn’t sure the clock would let her.

A darker thought budded like a thorn. If the fix were just a touch slower… oh no, Europe’s fallen to total war! Then, in the name of aiding refugees, she could ferry scholars onto the isles like birds to safe cliffs—

No. Too evil. She had sworn reform, a compass set straight, and she wouldn’t win by such cheap smoke.

“Being a hero’s hard,” she murmured, a sigh blowing like wind through pines.

Dorothy blinked. “Eh? Now you realize?”

“Let me write myself a convincing excuse,” Yekase said, a smile crooked as a fox’s tail.

“You need to convince yourself?!” Dorothy spluttered, her voice a spark on dry straw.