When Ling Yi and Jiang Bailu heard the news, the place burst like a coop at daybreak.

Ling Yi seized the pretext to move out and camped on the Ambition Divine Ship.

Though Liu RuoYuan, weighing calm like a scale, doubted what a nineteen-year-old mechatronics freshman could do.

But more voices meant warmer lights, and bustle chases off cold like steam off a rice pot.

Jiang Bailu tugged a smile like a cracked mask, said congrats, and went back to balance the lab’s books like abacus beads in rain.

Liu RuoYuan watched her lonely back fade like dusk, even her daily lab coat dulled to ash, cuffs and elbows bruised with colored stains.

Ten years on, maybe Ling Yi could walk out of puppy-love like fog thinning, and find someone kinder to her.

But Jiang Bailu... maybe, across endless years after turning vampire, could only watch Yekase stand with someone else.

She would stand nearby like a shadow at the door, yet never be the reflection in the Doctor’s eyes.

Maybe the ending was sealed the moment she called the defected Yekase "Doctor," like nailing a charm to fate’s gate.

Yekase walked out of a dusk-dark past like leaving a cave, yet Jiang Bailu stayed there at the border.

She watched heroes stream by beyond the line like lanterns on a river, knowing she could never truly march beside them.

Ling Yi fought for fairness and justice, like balancing a blade on a scale.

Lu Yao fought for a child’s future, like planting a tree against winter.

Yekase fought to witness possibility, like lighting a spark in vacuum.

—And her?

She only wanted to stay by the Doctor’s side, like a kettle keeping to its hearth.

She couldn’t drag the Doctor back, so she followed forward herself, simple as a single step on frost.

...

Liu RuoYuan found no comfort to offer, and forcing her to the sky-island would cut deeper, like salt in a wound.

Maybe long from now, Jiang Bailu could stop counting love, kinship, and friendship apart, and simply sit with everyone like stones around a fire.

Then, when she finally lifted her head again, there was no one left there, like wind crossing an empty porch.

On December 17, 2022, the Sovell Conference opened on schedule, like a gavel striking; it affirmed Spiral Force.

Several Infinite Powers could interconvert under certain conditions, a seed that took root; old invisible walls began to crack.

On January 22, 2023, Lunar New Year, Yekase’s belly had budded like a crescent.

She wanted to stretch, yet blushed at prying eyes, so she did laps on the Ambition Divine Ship’s lawn like a slow comet.

She ate the liveliest New Year’s Eve dinner in a decade with Mom, her sister, Ivaris, Ling Yi, and Lu Yao, smoke curling like dragons.

Then she lay back down, cradled by quilts like clouds.

She asked after Jiang Bailu, but Liu RuoYuan relayed that Arcadia was swamped, no time to come up and play.

In February 2023, their cardboard-box spacecraft shipped to dozens of countries, and protests against the space embargo grew like brushfire.

Shadow Curtain International’s headquarters stayed silent, a stone in a well.

That same February, the United States announced a stable stargate, while Huaxia tested a propellantless magnetic engine that pushed a few newtons, like an ant.

Time flew, and March 2023 arrived like a page turning.

Today, Yekase tinkered out an anti-gravity carrier board, a handcart for the swelling moon of her lower belly.

Every morning, the unknown life inside kicked her awake like a drum.

Two battle-hardened Flash Energy Ascender moms-to-be had no answers, and let the little tyrant be, fearing some foolish accident.

Their bodies were forged like steel, but the child’s wasn’t, and that truth hung like frost.

At least, with the board built, she no longer had to buff her waist and legs every morning like a ritual.

Yekase named the plain, felted metal slab N-708: Never Using This Twice, the only spite-name in her decade of inventions.

Liu RuoYuan and Ling Yi headed back to their schools, while Lu Yao came out for air more often, shy as a fawn.

XiaoLei took over all meals, three a day in steady balance, like seasons.

Yekase thought she needed no special tonics; apart from early nausea, nothing went wrong, and she almost got her ear twisted off.

The two walked into the courtyard, sat on the Victory Goddess’s plinth, and stared at the sky projected on the dome like silk.

The stratosphere’s sky is always empty and hushed, a place to rinse the mind clean, and today was the same.

No birds, no clouds, no thunder or snow—

—but there was a shooting star, a spark across a black bowl.

A shooting star?

"Is that thing getting bigger?" Ivaris asked, wary as a cat.

"Seems like it..." Yekase echoed, doubt pooling like ink.

Alright then. Suppose a massive meteor slipped past Jupiter and the Moon, and plunged toward Earth.

From deep space to the stratosphere, not quite enough to burn it clean—what happens next?

"Get Mom to the hangar, open the shield!" Yekase reacted fast, drew Dawn of Eden, but Ivaris pressed her hand down.

"You guard Mom inside. I’ll handle it."

"...Mm."

Yekase hurried into the house.

Minutes later, the hemispherical shield rumbled apart like parting seas, revealing the true sky—

—and the true meteor, no different at all.

Ivaris drew Polaris Staff and planted her feet like a batter, legs set, shoulders loose.

The meteor neared, its outline sharpening like a coin.

It was a spherical machine.

It looked like a landing capsule, or something close, but human spaceflight traffic was still a trickle.

Aliens? Or...

If it was a visiting alien, would one swing cause a diplomatic crater? Ivaris hesitated, breath held like glass.

But she couldn’t let it smash down either; what if it meant an impact winter?

At that knife-edge, the capsule broadcast a girl’s bright shout: "Hey, you there! Is this the Ambition Divine Ship?"

The Ambition Divine Ship!

She knew this secret sky-island existed.

"Who are you?"

"I was about to ask you!"

During those two lines, the capsule visibly slowed, puffing two jets downward, and landed cartoon-clean on the lawn opposite the little nursery.

Contact of the third kind? Were they really doing this?

Because of the foreign origin in her body, Ivaris distrusted aliens, and crept closer, gripping Polaris Staff like a spear.

"Hmm—so the sky-island is still this tiny at this time."

Pssht—

The hatch irised back into a ring, and a petite figure poked her head out like a curious sparrow.

Hair braided into twin spiral tails of red and blue, and metallic red pupils that glinted.

A ring of machinery hugged her neck, an oversized lab coat draped her frame, and work gloves swallowed her hands.

Her face was finely cut like jade, yet wrapped in factory steel, and nothing jarred.

"Huh..."

At those eyes, Ivaris knew she was close to Yekase, because an Infinite Power’s color is almost impossible to fake.

Yet the twin spiral red-blue hair traced Ling Yi’s silhouette, while the coat and gloves belonged to a long-absent someone.

Yekase breaks safety rules by habit; she’d never wear gloves this thick.

But, but!

The only thing missing on this mysterious girl was any hint of Ivaris, and that lit Ivaris’s temper like dry grass.

"Who are you? Why are you such a mash-up?"

"Who are you? Why are you on this island?"

Tension snapped tight between them like a bowstring.

A cobalt dagger blinked into the girl’s hand, and when she fed it Flash Energy, red bled through, spraying particle effects.

The teleport shimmer and that dagger were Yekase’s work, no question.

"My name’s Luoje! I jumped from a far future to save Mom from a doomed fate!"

"???"

A doomed fate? A far future?

What even was that stew of words?

"You mean you came from the future—time-traveled, right? How?"

"Use Infinite Power to punch a hole in the events light cone, then walk a straight line back on the timeline!"

"????"

She sounded dead serious, like a bell.

After settling Mom, Yekase went upstairs to check, and met Luoje’s gaze through the window like two stars aligning.

The girl lit up, then vanished on the spot.

"—Mom, I missed you so much!"

The voice burst at Yekase’s right ear, point-blank, and even she jumped, heart knocking like a sparrow.

She wrapped Yekase’s shoulders in a soft hug and whispered, "It’s okay... I’m here to save you. This time, you’ll be okay."

What... even is this?

Yekase shot Ivaris a help-me look, but Ivaris snorted and turned away, which only deepened the fog.

With no choice, Yekase questioned Luoje’s claim.

"If you’re my daughter, why don’t you know Ivaris?"

"Who?"

"The one at the door!"

"No idea..." Luoje looked up with big innocent eyes.

"In my timeline, there’s no such person at home."

"Then you’re a fake daughter! I don’t have a daughter like you!" Ivaris stormed in, grabbed Luoje’s collar, and tried to pry them apart.

Luoje clung to Yekase like sticky plaster.

"Bleh." Luoje stuck out her tongue at her.

Ivaris laughed from fury.

"Fine, you messed around behind my back with Ling Yi and Jiang Bailu? I’m telling Mom!"

Thump-thump-thump, she ran downstairs.

Only Yekase remained, full of question marks like falling leaves, while Luoje hung on her and chuckled in bliss.