“How is there a place like this under the institute, like a maze buried under tree roots!”

Bernadette charged ahead like a fox at dusk, and Yue Liuyi trailed close like a moon-shadow, the two girls drifting through a dim tunnel.

The greenhouse door had slammed shut like a gate of ice, for no reason they understood.

Cornered like fish in a drying pond, they could only head into the underground passage.

Bernadette figured the tunnel had to be an emergency fire route, a straight vein under stone that would open to sky soon.

Yet from their first step down the stairs, time unspooled like damp twine.

Twenty minutes in the dark, and not one exit sign flickered like a star.

All they could see were rough road and walls, like scraped bark, while emergency lights glowed like tired fireflies within an arm’s reach.

The air hung wet with water and mold, a sodden curtain whose smell pressed down like rain-heavy clouds.

“Weird—where’s the exit,” she cried, like a bird beating at a cage.

“We should be past the school by now, so where does this path flow like a river?”

Anxious as a drum in her chest, Bernadette gripped the flashlight like a lone candle.

Without it she’d have turned back like a spooked deer.

“My father said Linluo City’s underbelly keeps old subways and mine shafts, like fossil ribs.”

“Maybe this is part of the subway, like a bone left in the dark.”

By now Yue Liuyi knew this wasn’t any emergency route, but an abandoned vein underground, like a dried riverbed they’d wandered into.

“Subway or not,” Bernadette said, breath fogging like winter, “let’s just go back.”

Worn thin by the tunnel’s endlessness like a stretched night, she suggested retreat with a voice like a frayed string.

“Yeah; if the air thins ahead like high mountains, it gets dangerous.”

Getting stuck in the greenhouse was dull as stale tea, but it beat a road to nowhere like a blind burrow.

So they turned around like fish flipping upstream, retracing their steps along the same cold stones.

But as they walked, a fork rose from the dark like a sudden cliff.

“H-how is there an intersection,” Bernadette stammered, her words scattering like dropped beads.

It was a cross with three mouths, a trident of paths, each one black as a hunting lion’s throat.

“I remember we came on a single road,” Yue said, frown tight as a knot.

“D-damn it, I—I remember the same,” Bernadette said, her voice shaking like leaves in wind.

She slid a hand into her pocket like a hedgehog curling in, and flipped her phone’s standby switch with a click like flint.

As expected, there was no signal, no carrier, only silence like a dead sea.

Yue Liuyi pulled out her phone too, and nothing answered but darkness, like a covered well.

“Ugh,” Bernadette breathed, the sound small as a moth against glass.

Much as they hated to admit it, the shape of truth settled like fog—

They were lost, adrift like boats with no star.

Bernadette dropped to her knees like a puppet with cut strings, dust puffing up like moths.

“H-help, somebody,” she wailed, the cry splashing against stone like thrown water.

“Bernadette, the ground’s cold,” Yue said softly, words like a shawl of warm wool.

“It’s all your fault, all your fault, all your fault,” Bernadette snapped, blame flying like thorns.

“I’m Sis Kiki’s only sister, so why did you butt in, like a sudden branch in the path?”

She shoved Yue Liuyi’s offered hand away like brushing a nettle, and her headband snapped off, hair falling like a dark waterfall.

Only then did Yue notice Bernadette’s hair, loose as night silk, and it struck her as quietly pretty like a shy moon.

“Bernadette,” Yue said, her voice gentle as rain on eaves.

“Are we going to die here,” Bernadette sobbed, tears pattering like spring rain.

“If they find my corpse, Sis Kiki will be broken-hearted, like a lute with snapped strings.”

“N-no, we won’t,” Yue answered, certainty held like a lantern under wind.

“How do you know we won’t,” Bernadette shot back, panic clawing like briars.

“We could die here, like seeds buried under snow.”

“N-not that,” Yue said, steadying her breath like settling dust.

“I know wayfinding magic, like a sparrow that never loses the hedge.”

“R-reindeer magic,” Bernadette blinked, confusion tilting like a sparrow.

“Not Santa’s reindeer,” Yue said with a wry smile like a sliver of moon.

“Wayfinding—I should find an exit, if you walk behind me, like geese in a line.”

At the words wayfinding magic, Bernadette’s crying stopped like a tide ebbing, though her red-rimmed gaze clung to Yue like dew to grass.

“C-can we really get out,” she asked, suspicion coiled like a snake.

“You’re not lying to trap me here and keep Sis Kiki all to yourself, like a magpie hoarding shiny things?”

“Don’t say that after you led me into getting lost,” Yue huffed, exasperation puffing like steam.

“Oh… right,” Bernadette muttered, scratching her hair like ruffling feathers, and she stood up like a reed straightening.

“Ready; please follow me,” Yue said, palm lifting like a lotus opening.

She called up her proud magic—the Stellar Moon Compass—like stars cupped in a shallow bowl.

The Stellar Moon Compass carries a wayfinding art, like a hunter’s nose under starlight.

It reads the flow of life-force like a river, and maps nearby places as symbols on tiny planets.

Back when she and LittleSnow were trapped in the Elven Forest, Yue used it to slip past pursuing elves like mist through trees.

She got out, like dawn breaking through fog.

So Yue Liuyi felt no panic, calm pooled like a quiet lake.

But then even her Stellar Moon Compass failed, its light shivering like a candle in a draft.

The little planets on her palm refused to bloom into symbols, staying blank like winter seeds.

Only one small planet flickered with a faint tree icon, a sprout of lines like a ghost in fog.

The tree was rigid, its huge branches and leaves filling the whole planet like roots choking stone.

After a pale yellow flash like lightning behind clouds, that planet and tree both dulled into gray, like ash after fire.

“Gray,” Yue whispered, the word heavy as wet clay.

She stared at the tiny planet, questions clustering like ravens.

In her compass’s code, each color whispers danger like wind through pines.

Green means safe like meadows, and blue is ordinary like open sky.

Yellow is urgent like a storm front, and red is dire like blood.

But gray was a color Yue Liuyi had never seen, a blank note like snow over tracks.

“Can you do this or not,” Bernadette pressed, impatience tapping like rain.

“You said an exit—did you find one, like a door cut into rock?”

“I don’t know if that spot is an exit,” Yue said, thoughts circling like kites.

“But right now it’s the only direction, like the lone path under moonlight.”

“There,” Bernadette echoed, her voice a thin thread like spider silk.

“Mm,” Yue nodded, eyes fixed on the icon like a needle on a compass.

She didn’t know why, but a nameless tug pulled at her like a tide.