Blood rain sprayed from the hole ripped in the prison wall, a storm-burst that flung chunks of meat and stray organs.

By the time ministers roused by the alarms arrived, the prison’s heart lay wrecked, like a battlefield trampled by wild horses.

Hundreds of bodies lay heaped into a small hill.

Each head looked like a watermelon crushed by a blunt blow.

Scarlet ran in rivers across the black tiles, painting night in red.

Whoosh—! A razor wind carried the crack of something breaking.

Only after finishing the last prisoner who couldn’t fight did Nana Shi turn.

Her black dress had dried into a sullen dark red, flecked with gore like leaf-litter after rain.

Her bare lower legs, once ivory, were painted with blood.

The Black Great Axe she wielded rested carelessly at her side, a thunderhead in iron.

One woman, one weapon—violence made beautiful.

Drip...

A bead of blood slid off her brow, traced her cheek, and fell into the red pool at her feet like a crimson tear.

She cut a glance at the ministers behind her; her voice was flat, emotion stilled like a sealed lake.

"You came too late."

Silence pressed down like a lead sky.

The air tightened, a vise closing on their throats.

Hundreds of prisoners, the continent’s headache, had been butchered tonight by their king.

Not a single soldier deployed.

Were they sure she was human?

How could any woman do this?

Inside and outside were two worlds.

The blast-torn wall stood like a clean chalk line.

On Nana Shi’s side lay severed heads and rivers of blood—an ink scroll of hell.

On the ministers’ side, the lawn lay calm under the moon, brocade gleaming like frost.

Hell and heaven.

Strife and peace.

The scene hit like a hammer and refused to fit.

Hearts thumped like trapped birds against bone.

Even knowing the culprit, seeing it made disbelief roost in their chests.

"Your Majesty..."

Footsteps, neat as drumbeats, rose from behind the ministers, pulling scattered thoughts back to earth.

Soldiers marched up, boots a single rhythm on stone.

"Report. All breaches in the prison are sealed. City guard deployment is complete. No suspicious individuals found."

The lead soldier saluted, his voice crisp as steel.

"Seal this gap as well. Then tally the remaining prisoners and the dead again. I want no omissions."

Nana Shi didn’t spare him a second glance.

She walked out from the prison’s shadow; pale moonlight banded her like cold water, and a faint wickedness clung to her like mist.

"Yes." The soldiers moved at once, wind rising along her sides like a drawn breath.

"Y-Your Majesty..." Once the nearby soldiers rushed inside, the ministers on the lawn faced Nana Shi.

Fear crawled like cold ants; heads dropped low, eyes fled her gaze.

Nana ignored them.

She lifted Heavens Sunder and headed for her quarters, alone as a blade leaving its scabbard.

No one saw her for the next few days.

The guards at her door said that after returning from the southern prison, she stayed inside, unseen.

No one knew what had changed within her.

The ministers of Chronos City fretted, their hearts beating like storm drums.

Had Nana Shi given any sign, they might have breathed.

But no words, no meetings—only the pressure of weather turning, a stormbank rolling in.

While they lived in dread, Nana slipped out a window and left the city, quiet as a cat at midnight.

She went to find a portal to that isolated pocket space.

"Mm... as expected of Nana—reckless wherever she pleases."

The black-clad woman forced to open the pocket-space portal watched Nana walk in, face expressionless; even so, the corner of her mouth twitched.

"What, no black cloak over your face today?"

Nana’s gaze swept her.

She was still lovely, that faint smile always on her lips—a smile Nana had never liked.

"I’ve been cooped up in the lab. It’s stuffy. And no one else is here; masked or not, it’s the same."

Dressed down in casual clothes, the now-uncloaked Yan Xiao flashed a sly grin.

Half-joking, she asked, "Don’t tell me you came to admire my true face?"

"Don’t flatter yourself."

Nana’s reply was quick, her words cutting in before Yan Xiao had finished speaking.

"I came because I suddenly wanted to see Nesting Phoenix."

Standing in the pocket space, Nana lowered her eyes.

After a beat, she added, "Seeing your real face here is pure accident."

It was the truth.

Though rarely unmasked, Yan Xiao wanted to tease this steel-straight woman.

But she felt Nana’s mood was off.

With a small sigh, Yan Xiao raised the containment pod that held Nesting Phoenix.

"Here, your precious Nesting Phoenix."

Yan Xiao puffed her cheeks like a sulking child, eyes sliding sideways to Nana, while her hands danced over a floating screen.

Nana didn’t see it.

From the moment the huge pod rose, her gaze was caught by the girl inside, body suspended in nutrient fluid like a sleeping swan.

The girl looked seventeen, maybe nineteen.

Naked as new snow.

Her face was exquisite; her long jade throat gleamed; below it, a sheet of white.

Because light never touched her skin, that white lacked blood’s warmth, trading it for a fragile, sickly beauty.

A soft ache flickered through Nana before action.

Her palm pressed to the glass, and her thoughts blurred like mist.

Faces of women wheeled through her mind, then fused, clarified, and became the face before her eyes.

When had she last met Nesting Phoenix?

Six months?

Longer?

It should have been a face more familiar than her own.

Yet, somehow, it felt a shade strange.

Had she changed?

Or had Nana simply never looked closely before?

Confusion rippled, then stilled; calm returned like a lake after wind.

No matter what, Nesting Phoenix was Seven.

Even changed, Nana would adapt.

"You don’t have to stare so hard, Nana. The Nesting Phoenix before you is still that Seven."

Yan Xiao’s voice carried a breezy warmth.

"Because you piggybacked my tech to enter her mindscape and treat her, there’s bound to be a tiny mismatch. But it won’t affect the results."

She added, "So don’t let strange ideas grow."

"Ah... is that so?"

Nana exhaled, a breath loosening like a knot undone.

"Thanks."

"Huh?"

For a few seconds, time seemed to freeze in the pocket space.

Behind Nana, Yan Xiao wore the look of someone seeing a ghost at noon.

"What, did something happen?"

Nana turned, watching her with a slightly odd expression.

"No... it’s just... it’s been so long since I heard you say thank you. I’m a little shocked."

Nana’s thought was dry as desert wind: Has this woman fried her brain, shut in a lab all these years? Lately she keeps saying the weirdest things.

"Ah, right. Since you’re here, I don’t need to get Xiao Yi to contact you."

Yan Xiao moved to the workbench, fingers tapping a virtual screen like rain.

A matching screen bloomed in the air before Nana.

"And this is...?"

"Heh-heh-heh. This is what Xiao Yi and I hammered out these last few days. Watch closely, Nana."

Yan Xiao bragged as her ten fingers flew.

"I heard someone made quite a mess in the southern prison of Chronos City. You still haven’t caught that culprit?"

"What, your showcase is a dossier of my failure?"

Nana’s tone stayed even, but her voice cooled like shade.

"Of course not. Don’t always paint me as the villain, Nana."

Yan Xiao’s finger hit Enter, and a small window popped open on Nana’s screen.

Inside, a wicked, intricate sigil unfurled like a serpent’s spine.

"This is a finished schematic of a high-tier sigil we simulated using the markings on those two remaining corpses—thanks to Yi-chan’s math."

"The diagram may not match exactly, but the data led us to one useful conclusion."

"Such as?"

"All low-tier and mid-tier sigils might be fabricated through the use of high-tier sigils."

Yan Xiao, as usual, dropped a bomb.

"The evidence is that each sigil contains the same thread of Law-essence. And that essence shares the same signature across them all."