After the public security promo wrapped, the sculptor was escorted to Arcadia. That night, Yekase used her own clay to fix the woman in the fountain’s heart on the academy square, a new statue standing where she herself had stood guard.

“Weren’t you going to reduce my sentence for service?”

“It is reduced.” Yekase smoothed clay over her, voice like cool water on stone. “You love living statues, right? Don’t be all talk. Feel it yourself. You’ll understand more.”

“Then… can I bring toys? Otherwise it’s too boring.”

“Sure.”

Merciful and generous now that it was done, Yekase reached into a transport crate and pulled out a nuclear reactor control rod that had wandered through several caves. She spread lubricant like moon-gloss on metal, then installed it with careful hands.

“Mm…”

“This clay of yours holds an interesting array,” the sculptor murmured, eyeing the patterns like constellations set in mud. “Life-support, right? As long as the shell doesn’t shatter, the filling won’t eat or drink, yet it’ll be forced to hang at the brink. Feed Sorcery from outside on schedule, and it keeps going. Might be useful in medicine.”

“Exactly. My greatest masterpiece!” The sculptor preened, pride shining like lacquer.

“Any last words?” Yekase lifted a lump of clay to her mouth, a soft gag shaped like a peach of mercy.

“I won’t make that tacky screech! …Also, how long do I stand here?”

The clay pressed over lips like winter sealant.

It dried fast, stiffening into armor, melding with the surrounding shell like bark to trunk.

Yekase finally spoke, not answering, her tone light as a knife. “Ever heard of a ‘living stake’?”

“Mmph?”

“The four girls we rescued all have multiple organ failure. Sorcery can’t fully heal them. They have months left. So… live for them. Here, in the Arcadia Engineering Academy, as the fountain statue. You’ll become this evergreen academy’s emblem. Generations of students will pass by your feet and admire the Wisdom Goddess’s face.”

“Mmph, mmph—mmph?!” The only exposed eyes brimmed with terror. Tears spilled and slid over the shell like rain on bronze.

“Now you know how to cry?” Yekase’s voice was snow-clear. “By the way, I’m an Infinite Power Ascender. I can charge you for ten years at once. Don’t fantasize the caretakers will forget the array and let your soul slip free.”

Yekase smiled, bright as a blade.

Under moonlight, that smile was pure ice.

“This is your last look at the world. From now on, listen to laughter from boys and girls the age of your victims. Count your sins, one by one.”

The final lump of clay went on like a lid on a jar.

Yekase closed the Wisdom Goddess’s heavy metal shell. She stepped back two paces, admiring her work, eyes a calm lake.

“…”

The square at night held only silence, pooling like ink.

…

…

A few days later, a message from Sandryon found Yekase. There was a meeting she needed to attend.

The Magic Association’s “Grand Magus” banquets, held irregularly, only invited those acknowledged as Grand Magi under heaven. Their presence outshone the Alchemy Association like a tower over a shed.

Last year saw heavy turnover. Now that things had settled, the dinner that let Grand Magi keep their ties naturally returned to the calendar.

This year’s list dropped the departed “Crescent Puppeteer.” The remaining four stayed: the “Iceblood Spear Princess,” the “Star-of-Dusk Machina,” the “Softlight King-Embracer,” and the “Crystalline Witch.” One new name closed the ring—

“Sword Destroying Mechanic.”

And since Luzhixing never comes anyway, the “Ironfire Swordmaster” wasn’t even written down.

The next day, the Association’s envoy brought an invitation.

Gold-edged, sealed in red wax, the envelope looked solemn and old-world. The prose inside felt alien-stuffy, but Yekase cracked it open anyway, like peeling a crimson apple.

It was indeed about the dinner.

The southern Nande situation was chaos; the King-Embracer, Natasha, probably wouldn’t attend. Without that punch-sister she neither knew nor wanted to, the rest would be old friends around the table.

The schedule was short. Meet in the afternoon, chat, then eat. The venue was the palace garden on Mysidia’s canopy—the Magic Association’s backer is the Magus City of Mysidia, and this is the only entry for outsiders besides a royal invite.

Compared to joining the six-under-heaven Grand Magi, a royal summons almost felt easy.

Yekase set the letter down. Her gaze drifted to the clear far sky like a kite let loose. She curled on the lounge chair and let idleness tide in. The stratosphere stayed calm year after year, yet a south wind carried the first March warmth like milk in tea.

Sleep tugged her eyelids.

How was Endymion… no, Artemis doing? Life turned anew under her hands, the first successful gender conversion. If outcomes held, maybe it could become a long-term public good. Narrow use, sure. But need finds its door.

“…Kase? Darling?”

…

A palm smacked Yekase’s shoulder. She jolted like a cat.

“Ah? What?”

She snapped back and saw Ivaris.

“I just talked. You didn’t hear a single word?”

“Uh, no… What’d you say?”

Yekase asked, sheepish. Ivaris snorted, a little bull’s huff, and stomped back inside.

What’s that about? It’s not feeding time yet.

Yekase scratched her head. She rose and followed. “What is it? I was thinking about the alchemy dinner!”

“…The wedding,” Ivaris muttered, voice small as a pebble.

Her usual voice could drown most men. Now it was a whisper, like someone swapped pills. Yekase leaned in, ear grazing her breath.

“I said, our wedding!!”

“Gods, my ear!”

Yekase crumpled, rolled half a turn on the rug, and froze. “Wedding?”

“Yeah. We were too busy before. Now we should do it. Lijie will be calling me mom soon. Without a wedding, how do I marry you fair and square?”

Ivaris tried to haul her up. Yekase heard those last two words and glued herself to the floor like a stubborn carp, protesting, “No. The last shred of my male awareness says I’m the one who marries you!”

“We already had a child. That shred still exists? Where?” Ivaris pried her legs apart with a naughty surgeon’s grin. “Is it here? I’ll dig it out!”

“Dig your own!”

Yekase rabbit-kicked. Ivaris went airborne in a neat arc and landed on the plush fabric sofa, sinking like a pebble in moss.

“Domestic violence—this is domestic violence—” Ivaris yelled twice, voice ringing like a brass bowl.

No one answered.

The few with chores were out. Lu Yao had gone to the City of Ivalice for mech maintenance. Mom left with her, likely still strolling under trees.

Lijie was sleeping in her room, breath soft as a kitten’s. Could this be… an opportunity?

Ivaris, sly as a fox, poured Infinite Power into her limbs and scooped Yekase up like warm bread.

“?”

“I’ve held back five months without touching you. Shouldn’t you… show me something?”

Yekase understood. She rolled her eyes, shifted in her arms to a more comfortable perch, like a swallow adjusting on a wire.

She tapped Ivaris’s nose, lazy as summer. “Make it quick. And stop acting so ‘masculine.’ The predatory edge is too much. I don’t like it.”

“Okay—changing now.”

Ivaris had thought that as Yekase’s soul fit a girl’s body more and more, she’d prefer strong, proactive partners. Her taste for force seemed proof enough, right?

She’d misread. Matter shapes mind, yes. But people also bend matter, steering flesh with iron will.

Yekase became Yekase. She didn’t toss twenty-seven years spent walking as a man. A man’s hardness and softness, a woman’s softness and hardness—she’d seen them, lived them, played them. All folded into her.

She laughs for victories. She cries for rebirth. She finds the gap between souls isn’t that wide.

“Alright. New game today.”

Ivaris carried her to the sky-island’s edge. She set Yekase against the rail, legs splayed outward like twin gates opening to clouds.

“For Lijie’s future potty training, I’ll practice on you first.”

“This is your ‘I’ll change’?!” Yekase’s voice was half scold, half trembling harp.

Her skirt and underwear slid astray like silk caught by wind. The clean, smooth wormhole entrance faced the vast sky, quivering and opening with nerves like a shy flower.

Ivaris leaned to her ear, breath warm as spring rain. “Day by day, I’ll change. But for this? This is how it should be, right? Or I worry you won’t get off… Aren’t I right, Miss Hopeless M?”

“Mm…” The girl in her arms stopped struggling. She let the tide carry her.

Ivaris locked Yekase’s legs from behind. They pressed to her chest and lifted high, like drawn bows molten with heat. Her forearms braced under the knees. Her hands roamed north and south—one checking headlight brightness, one testing wormhole depth like a diver tapping the reef.

A milky stream slipped through her fingers, ran along Yekase’s belly, and met the translucent broth blooming there. It mixed into a strange, fragrant dish like nectar over rice.

Ivaris spread it along every contour, paying special care to space-folds around the singularity, a cartographer of flesh and warp. Yekase called out again and again. Ivaris tilted the headlight up to plug her mouth, letting this new mother taste Lijie’s feeding style in earnest.

“A bit fishy…”

“Right? You hit me when I said it wasn’t tasty.”

“Looks like you—ngh—want to try my games, hmm?”

“I refuse. I hate being unable to move.”

“Then… what do you like…?”

“Say ‘Ivaris sis’ once?”

“I—eeeee?!” Yekase started to say it. Her voice shot up and turned to a shriek. She covered her face—

Lorameia’s silhouette appeared on the sky’s far rim, flying straight toward them like a speartip of dusk.

…

Ivaris closed the two legs in her hands.

Lorameia fell.