The clash with Crimson Paradise lay half a day behind us, like blood-mist thinning in a cold dawn.

Two days had passed since we left the Elven Forest, and the Skyship crawled along a twisting woodland road, wolf howls drifting past the windows like ragged banners in the wind.

A round moon rode above black clouds, and the air hung thick as ink, steeped in a chill that smelled of iron; this was the chaotic border, where bandits prowled like thorns and trouble bloomed like nightshade.

“Xiaoyan, check the damaged sections,” I said, voice low as a knife over ice. “Don’t let anyone slip past the alarms.”

“I got it.”

Xiang Xiaoyan narrowed her eyes, the purple-haired girl wearing a wolf’s wild gaze, as if her nerves were pricked ears listening to every leaf-breath.

Sikong Qinhui and Xia Jiajun lay on neighboring beds, and Ailuna and Zero Wei changed their sheets and quilts, crisp and clean as new snow.

Both were still unconscious, their breaths thin as candle-flames; Sikong Qinhui’s body was a map of scars, her once-pale skin a storm of cuts, like petals slashed by hail.

Crimson Paradise had treated her, yet the sight still stabbed like sleet; her back held almost no unbroken skin, as if fire had licked it down to raw earth.

As for Xia Jiajun… that part was a thorn in the tongue; the boy who once wore a suit now had a girl’s body, a chrysalis forced open by a surgeon’s blade.

The genes hadn’t changed, but face and frame had shifted like a riverbed crossed by a new current; what looked back was unmistakably a girl.

“What a terrifyingly skillful operation… Is she really the former royal guard, Xia Jiajun?”

Maria’s brows softened with rainlike sorrow as she studied Xia Jiajun; the hand that cut her had been precise as frost, yet the result felt like thunder under the ribs.

“Mm… It seems Crimson Paradise did it. If I’d known, maybe… I shouldn’t have let her walk so easily.”

Dixue sighed, a white breath in a cold room; trouble rose like mist, and masks she wore before enemies felt thin as paper now.

Only those on the Skyship and the elves Tisinate, Qiu Ruyi, and Xiao Bai knew Yue Liuyi was the World Tree Maiden; if Sikong Qinhui woke and learned it, she might rage like a storm and strike at Little Moon.

Yue Liuyi read the hesitation in Dixue’s brows like wind reading the grass.

“LittleSnow, don’t worry! I won’t get jealous,” she said, voice warm as lantern light. “If we talk right, we don’t have to be enemies.”

“Mm… Thanks, Little Moon. It’s just Qinhui…”

“Wait, the heart trace just jumped… Butterfly Snow President! Xia Jiajun’s waking!”

“Huh?”

“Th-this is…”

The black-haired girl on the bed opened her eyes, slow as a night flower.

The body had once been a boy’s, and it showed in the line of her brows, sharp as drawn blades, and in the steady light of her gaze; for a heartbeat, she looked even more valiant than Xiang Xiaoyan, like a young hawk catching sun.

The moment snapped; tension pooled in her eyes like stormwater, and she pushed up on shaky arms, urgency beating like wings.

“You’re… from the Rangers Lodge? Where’s Her Highness, the Princess?”

“Right beside you,” I said, voice like a blanket over a flame. “She’s only unconscious. No danger to her life.”

“Your Highness!! Th-thank goodness… You’re safe!”

Hearing Sikong Qinhui’s calm breathing, the black-haired girl exhaled like a string cut, strength leaving her as she sank back into the mattress.

“Um… may I call you… Miss Xia?”

Yue stepped closer, moonlight in her eyes; their situations mirrored across water, though Yue’s change was life-force given, and Xia’s was cold surgery.

“Miss Yue, right? I’m sorry about before… Call me whatever,” the girl murmured, her face pale as paper and her pupils hollow as winter sky, a brittle smile cracking her lips.

For a boy, this would be a nightmare with iron teeth; to wake and find yourself a girl—no storybook charm, only reality’s hard frost.

“Guard Xia, if you can, tell me this,” Dixue said, letting the emotion settle first like dust, then moving her tongue like a quiet blade. “After you left the Lost City, what happened to you and the Third Princess?”

“Butterfly Snow President… you saved us, didn’t you?”

“Mm. Crimson Paradise is long gone.”

“Thank you… It’s ridiculous, really… At this point, only you dare save us,” she said, voice like a laugh over ashes.

“Huh? What about your royal backing? Weren’t there still nobles supporting you?”

“There’s no backing left. Maybe the Rangers Lodge hasn’t heard… Her Highness the Princess has been struck from the royal rolls.”

“What!?”

Yue Liuyi blurted the cry like a bird startled from a branch; even she knew a royal erasure was a punishment colder than stone, one that barred your bones from the family tomb.

Unless it was treason, even murder rarely dragged that kind of night down.

“But erasure would be public, wouldn’t it? My feeds never carried news like that,” Maria said, shaking her head, a professional’s certainty bright as steel.

“Because… it’s the most shameful thing inside the royals,” Xia said, voice like a door closed softly. “For face, they’ll never speak it.”

“Shameful…?”

“Lord Qinhui… is the Phoenix King’s child by adultery. She shares no direct blood with the current sovereign.”

“What!?”

Yue and Maria sprang up as if a spark had bitten their heels.

“I only… learned it later,” the girl said, words falling like slow rain.

Silver-haired Dixue stood silent like a heron in shallow water, thought rippling under a still surface.

“No wonder…”

Yue’s mind flashed back to the half-dragon girl in the Lost City, those scales patterned more like western dragons than the eastern rain-serpents; the word mongrel had cut like a thorn.

She drew a sharp breath, cold running down her spine; if it was true, the knives turned against Sikong Qinhui made brutal sense.

Not just a pawn in royal strife, but a hated splinter under certain imperial nails.

“Butterfly Snow President… During my training at the retainer academy, it happened… I failed to stop Her Highness from killing your ally…”

“You don’t owe me an apology,” Dixue said, shaking her head, offering a thin smile like a crease in ice. “If anything, you owe it to Xinrui.”

“LittleSnow…”

Yue slipped her fingers around Dixue’s hand, warmth like spring water against a palm gone cool.

“I’m fine. Thank you, Little Moon,” Dixue said, squeezing back; in times like this, a lover’s touch was a sheltering roof in rain.

“I don’t want to whitewash Her Highness,” Xia said, voice unsteady as a lantern in wind. “She must bear what she did. I only hope you’ll understand why, then…”

“It was the purge of the rebels, wasn’t it?”

Dixue’s gaze dimmed like a star behind cloud, and sweat beaded in her grip with Yue, small as dew.

“You… already knew, Butterfly Snow President?”

“Mm. I dug a lot after we left the Lost City.”

“Rebels?” Yue asked, memory unfurling like an old scroll. “The feat that made the Burn-Song Princess famous—the one where the Third Princess alone crushed a rebelling state.”

Back then, the tale said, one girl went to a distant planet and snuffed out a small country’s rebellion, one spark starving a whole fire.

“Yes, Miss Yue. But that country…”

The black-haired girl hesitated, gathered courage like kindling, and spoke:

“That country… was Her Highness Qinhui’s father’s realm.”

“What!?”

Yue stared, unbelief a glare of ice, at the red-haired girl sleeping like an ember under ash.

Cold sweat crawled down Yue’s back; if this was true, the weight behind it was a mountain.

Why did that realm rebel?

Why did Sikong Qinhui gain the name Burn-Song Princess?

Why did she seek the Murder Fiend?

Why…

“Her Highness Qinhui cut down her own father,” Xia said, voice like a blade drawn in the dark, “and only then gained the title she holds.”

Silence froze the room like hoarfrost.

The night wind whooshed past the window like a river, and the sleeping girl’s breathing seemed loud as a tide in every ear.

At last, Dixue shook her head gently, walked to the bedside, and let her voice fall soft as snow. “And then? You fled to the New Land. How did the royals still find you?”

“That was… Guslei, that bastard!”

The black-haired girl flared, fists tightening like knots. “He was Her Highness Qinhui’s own guard! He betrayed her in the end! He colluded with the Fourth Princess and poisoned our food!”

“Poison…?”

“Mm! Otherwise, how could a Princess that fierce lose… and our brothers wouldn’t have…”

Her eyes reddened, tears glassing the rim like dew about to fall.

Maybe it was a boy’s pride still standing; she clamped her jaw and refused to cry, a brittle strength that, on a girl’s face, made the heart ache like a bruise.

“Guard Xia, let’s stop here for tonight,” Dixue said, palm landing on her shoulder like a steadying branch. “Lingwei will come care for you later.”

“Butterfly Snow… President…”

“We’ll hunt the traitor,” Dixue said, the promise ringing like steel struck on stone. “Rest early. Don’t carry the whole mountain.”

“Huh? But he’s with the Four—”

“I don’t care which Princess owns him. He dies.”

“Th-thank… you.”

Xia Jiajun stared wide-eyed at Dixue, and in that startled light she understood why Her Highness had fallen for this girl, like a moth to a steadfast flame.

“Little Moon, Maria, let’s go,” Dixue said, voice easing like dusk.

“Mm, LittleSnow…”

Hand in hand, Yue Liuyi steadied the silver-haired girl whose steps faltered like willow leaves in wind, and together they slipped out of the ward, quiet as moonlight leaving a window.