The autumn of 2022 was destined to score a glowing line across the ledger of history.

Dewa Tech Group announced progress on Spiral Force. Some said this power, deadlier than other branches of Infinite Power, would doom humanity. Others said only weapons that could mutually erase us might, in turn, force peace—like thunder holding back rain.

Then, almost without fanfare, conversion routes for the three “super-series” Infinite Powers drifted into academia’s field of view like quiet comets.

The Infinite Power model built atop an alchemical array looked clean as ordered snow and elegant as calligraphy strokes, hinting at a vast new plain beyond the horizon. New technique meant new profit; in a gust, the Sinister Organization, universities, and citizen labs all flocked like starlings. On street corners and in tea shops, people chattered about the news like wind in bamboo.

Turf disputes didn’t shrink, but they didn’t swell either. The water rippled; it didn’t boil.

Infinite Power scholars shared a whispering certainty. This year’s Sovell Conference would be heavy with gold. It might match—or even outshine—the Flash Energy rollout from last year.

And under the soft-focus promos, intentional or not, from Dewa and the City of Ivalice, everyone’s gaze tilted toward Arcadia—the fledgling academy still laying its first stones.

Led by Baroque Studio, the young talents who moved in pulled runes and “keys” into the language of Infinite Power, then turned around and tested those old empirical tricks with steel‑rule science. A dozen or so founded a research circle called the Lingua‑Sigil School.

A month later, the Lingua‑Sigil School co‑authored their first paper: “A Classified Analysis of the Multiple Roles Played by Rune‑Link Keys in Infinite Power Coupling.”

...

...

In this golden October that mattered to every researcher, on a clear, high morning up in the stratosphere, what was Yekase doing?

She was clinging to the kitchen trash can, retching up half her breakfast in watery threads.

“Ugh… pff, pff—this bacon is way too salty…”

Liu RuoYuan and Lu Yao sat at the table. Their brows knit, then matched. They both lifted their own bacon and took a bite.

Not salty. If anything, a little bland, like a pond at dusk.

Ivalis, who was on breakfast duty, felt her cooking get slapped in the face. Sure, Brits serving dog food is the stereotype—like the French “love surrender.” But honestly, the French only lost face in one World War, and the Brits—

Oh. The Brits really have eaten like cavemen since forever.

“Did you overdo the salt on yours?”

Ivalis tasted the bacon from Yekase’s plate. Not salty. A calm sea.

“Urrgh…” Yekase gasped against the trash can, shoulders heaving like a bellows.

The four of them looked at each other. No one had a map.

Their mom, up the earliest, had just finished watering her precious Little Chili and came back in, Rice Rice perched on her shoulder like a tame sparrow. She asked, “What’s wrong? Low blood sugar?”

“No way. In this body, low blood sugar…?”

Mom cupped Yekase’s face. She felt the pulse at the side of her neck like checking a river current, then leaned her forehead close. Suddenly, shock lit her features like lightning across a dark field.

“W-what is it?” Seeing disbelief break across her mother’s face, Yekase’s own nerves trembled first, then her body followed.

The shock settled into gravity.

“Girl, you’re… expecting?”

...

“...Huh?”

“...Huh?”

Liu RuoYuan and Lu Yao shot looks at Ivaris, who still held a spatula like a short sword.

Ivalis whistled and studied the window, as if clouds could offer counsel.

It had been mutual, known on both sides. A month had passed; the timing lined up like stars. They’d meant to find a moment to say it. Yet what rose in Yekase now wasn’t flustered shame at a kink exposed.

It was a sudden swell of tears for no clear reason, like mist over a lake at dawn.

“Uh? I…”

“Nope. I’m not hearing this.” Lu Yao made a face, shoveled down her bacon, and slipped back to her room like a shadow at noon.

“...Expecting?” Liu RuoYuan echoed, dazed. “I’m going to be an aunt? Huh?!”

She’d long known her sister turned into a people‑pleaser around family and friends, never saying no even to over-the-line asks. I’m guessing Ivalis just tossed off a line about kids, and Sis took it as a vow. As for how two Flash Energy Ascenders pulled it off—what can’t they do?

...Yekase never had a shred of “masculine aura,” but seeing her flip to “little girl” mode still shocked me. Blink once, and she’s about to be a mom?!

Twenty‑eight… yeah, the age checks out.

Still, picturing her forever‑youthful, schoolgirl face bobbing around the house over a round belly nearly broke my composure. Pregnant. Then birth, then raising a child… A good-wife Yekase, gentle as spring water, one headlight popped out, nursing the baby…

Liu RuoYuan stayed stunned until Mom, arms steady as a shepherd’s crook, helped Yekase back to her room to rest. Then she dragged Ivaris to the table, planted her in a chair, and began performing her duty as the bride’s family.

“...When did it happen?”

“Last month. After we got back from Japan.”

“Have you met your family on that side?”

“I don’t have a family.” Ivalis said it like calm rain.

Liu RuoYuan blinked, then moved on. “Ah… then the wedding? Even a small one at home. If you wrong my sister, I’ll never hand her over to you, even if it kills me.”

“She said it’s fine to wait until after this year’s Sovell Conference. In Ivalice, or in Arcadia…”

Smack.

Liu RuoYuan slammed the table and shot to her feet like a firecracker. “She’s already pregnant and you’re still going to the conference?! In two months the outline’s visible, right?!”

Ivalis spread her hands, palms up like empty skies. “I told her to stay home and rest. But this is the highest summit of Infinite Power, once a year. You think I can talk her down?”

“...”

“We’ll go by portal. No fatigue.”

“It better be like you say…”

Liu RuoYuan’s head felt like a tangled fishing net, a thousand threads knotting at once. A massive change was walking into this house like a warm wind. Ivalis had once defended humanity; her character wasn’t the worry. So why this restless thrum under my ribs?

“I know to you all, I look like a gatecrasher who popped out of nowhere, in a rush to stake a claim… But for her and me, we’ve waited ten years. I don’t want to run a second ten.”

“Earth’s got plenty of Longlifers, yet they don’t rule humans. They turn, without noticing, into ash without flame, and can’t kindle a spark again. Before we become that, we want to leave proof… and we want it now.”

...Ten years.

Half of Liu RuoYuan’s life, and all her youth. It was hard to grasp what that span meant to them, like measuring the sea with a teacup.

True.

When she first came to Twin Towers, Yekase tried to act sunny so I wouldn’t worry, but gloom pooled in the corners. Impatience and desolation clung like damp. On that Lantern Festival that stormed like a drum, it all detonated… Deep in her nature, there was a tilt toward self‑destruction, a moth’s heart beating toward flame.

The One‑Year War etched scars too deep.

She always had the impulse: if burning herself out could change the world, she’d do it without blinking.

But the world doesn’t turn that easily. It won’t bend for one person. That’s a moth against a furnace.

Then, after one incident, she ran into Ivaris. She came home happy and stayed several days, then began planning her borderless Infinite Power research city…

The gloom thinned. The impatience ebbed. The desolation lifted like fog.

Sorry to Ling Yi and Jiang Bailu, but this was something they couldn’t give Yekase.

Even if they walked this far with her, they were still her “successors.” They could soothe her. They couldn’t stand on equal ground and pull her back from the brink… In that, even as a sister, I was the same.

Does a near‑omnipotent genius need saving? She does.

...

To her surprise, Liu RuoYuan found herself crying, tears running like clear threads.

She wasn’t some anime “sis‑con,” not by a mile.

Ivalis thought she was hurt and rushed to apologize. “I’m sorry. We should’ve told you a month ago. But it felt like bragging if I said it, and she—she’s careless about this stuff…”

“I’m not blaming you.”

Liu RuoYuan wiped her cheeks and smiled, warm as a small lamp.

“You don’t need to feel guilty. Be proud, actually. Only you Magical Girls can heal what’s lodged in her heart… The rest of us are outsiders.”

“...I’ll treat her well.”

“Do you need to say it?”

“Oh—uh. Mm.”

Then Liu RuoYuan pivoted on a heel and fired like a bead string. “Do you have a job right now? We don’t feed freeloaders. Ling Yi’s in college. Jiang Bailu runs a class. Lu Yao collects intel every day. Tell me what you bring to this household.”

“Uh?”

“A job. Work. Don’t think you can fool a teacher’s eyes. In bed you’re clearly the 1 and she’s the 0. I know some couples split roles—top and bottom. If you’re the one doing the, uh, input, you’ve got responsibilities, right?”

The hazing began?!

Ivalis ran away at seventeen to join the East Asia front, fought a year, then got flung by a self‑destructing Patrol Destroyer into another dimension and spent ten years in a cold box. The word “job” wasn’t even on the map in her head.

“Eh? I’ve never worked…”

“What’s your education?”

“H‑high school dropout…”

“A factory girl!”

!!!!!

A factory girl!

A girl!

Ah!

Ivalis reeled. Those three words bounced around her skull like an old screensaver logo.

“I’m… a factory girl?”

Think hard. Aside from fighting—really fighting—what else can she do? Singing? Dancing? Zither, chess, calligraphy, painting? Science and craft? Nothing! As a child in the palace she learned plenty, but who remembers now?

If she lost her Flash Energy, what path would she walk, besides a factory line? None!

Picture it: Magical Girl outfit, cleanroom cap, mask, standing by the conveyor handling parts like a wind‑up doll…

“This is fake. You’re lying to me…”

Ivalis slid off the chair and dropped to her knees in a full prostration.

“No way, that can’t be true—!!”