The wind howled like knives, and gravel lifted in a gray spray; the sky crouched low, a black lid of cloud threatening to crush the earth.

The cause was one furious White Cat, a storm in fur; under its cold glare, the tentacled horror finally sensed it had offended a mountain. Pity—it was dim and tongueless, and after losing every limb, it only shivered like a leaf in hail.

The White Cat looked majestic, but it forgot one thing; with the tendrils severed, Caro and the others were still dropping from the high smoke like autumn fruit, limp from the fumes.

Luck softened the fall. Caro landed on a severed tendril, a slack cushion in a field of thorns; Augustine fell like a meteor toward the White Cat—who caught him with a flick, sparing the ground a crater. As for Bai, she’d fallen far; the White Cat paused, tail swishing like a metronome, then decided dragon blood was a steel umbrella—she wouldn’t die—and chose laziness over rescue.

“Lord Ouyang, your prediction hit like an arrow,” Collin whispered from behind a boulder, peering through a crack like a mouse at a cat; “those folks really met disaster, stalked by calamity.”

Then doubt pricked him like a thorn. Ouyang could end that horror with one finger, a candle to a hurricane—so why retreat? No, in Ouyang’s words, he was just passing through, just background.

Collin drew a breath to ask, but his face twisted like wet paper; he pointed up with a trembling hand. “My lord… up… above…”

Ouyang raised his head. Something fell like a hammer from the anvil of sky.

A breath later, Ouyang shoved Bai’s weight off like rolling a warm quilt; in the scramble, his hand skimmed her skin—smooth and springy, like water on silk.

“You enjoy that?” Bai’s voice was winter-clear; her hollow eyes fixed on him like two dry wells. Heat pricked Ouyang first, then words; still, his face stayed calm as stone. “Sure. That’s normal—any normal male reacts like that in a storm like this.”

The Jade Rabbit rolled its eyes like two moons. If it were Augustine, that kid would blush scarlet, bow like a reed, and apologize forever—not be as shameless as Ouyang.

“Want to keep touching?” Bai blinked once, a frost petal falling, noticing his hand still resting on her shoulder.

Usually, even his thick skin wouldn’t cash a cheap favor; but Bai was the exception, a thorn in his heart. She’d “killed” him twice. Tonight his creed was simple: only a fool leaves free meat on the fire.

“Yeah. It feels great. I could play with this arm for a year,” he said, each word a deliberate pebble dropped in a pond.

Collin covered his face like hiding from lightning. Even the Void Church’s Void Messenger was like this; the pressure on his soul felt like a mountain on reeds.

Bai didn’t slap him like a summer storm. She closed her eyes, voice drifting like cold mist. “I… I think it feels good too… you can… let you touch…”

She opened her eyes; a thread of color bled into those empty wells, like dawn edging night. “About the past… could you stop hating me?”

Back then, she’d “killed” Ouyang twice; if he hadn’t stepped beyond mortal shores, he would have been ash. He’d plotted a thousand roads of revenge, a whole book—Nine Hundred Ninety-Nine Ways for Bai to Die. Her one sentence now tangled his heart like vines.

When she first hatched, she carried inherited memory like a map with no roads; sensing danger from Ouyang, she struck first like lightning. After “killing” him, she wandered human towns like a stray star.

She learned death’s teeth are cold. Without Ouyang cracking her shell, she would have withered inside it. She knew death was a night with no dawn, so she knew how wrong she’d been. If she could, she wanted peace. It was his hand that broke the shell and brought her to light.

Her first sight of the world was Ouyang, a face above an egg’s horizon. She had no parents, no kin; she watched children laugh in warm arms, weep into safe shoulders. She watched friends chase each other like swallows in spring.

She alone drifted like a leaf down a dark river, not knowing where the banks were. In those nights, she thought of Ouyang—the first person she saw, the one she personally “killed.” If she hadn’t killed him, would he be family? Would she still wander crossroads without a sign?

She was naive and strong, a storm with a child’s heart; she saved many, strangled disasters in their cradles. Yet what she received wasn’t the warmth she imagined.

People named her monster, a half-human half-dragon omen; they scattered from their savior like birds before a hawk. Some cursed and drove her from their gates. Others praised her with honeyed tongues and knives behind their backs.

She didn’t know a girl shouldn’t undress in front of men, much less strangers. A young woman couldn’t bear to watch; she taught Bai the simple rules, a lantern in fog. Soon after, the woman was murdered. She’d blocked a wealthy merchant who wanted to use Bai’s innocence for flesh and coin, so he sent killers like dogs. Rage turned Bai into a flood; she erased that town like chalk in rain. The memory, though, wouldn’t wash out.

“I refuse,” Ouyang said, hand slipping from her shoulder like shade from a sundial. “You ‘killed’ me twice. That ledger doesn’t close with one sigh. I’ll pay you back until my heart feels light.”

The first line dimmed the color in Bai’s eyes like a cloud crossing sun; the next brought the hue back, a stubborn dawn.

Ouyang fished a white mage robe from his spatial ring, a swan on his palm, and tossed it to her. “Put it on. A girl… should dress properly.”

Unease came first, then action; her gaze made his chest flutter like a moth. He turned away, hiding from something he couldn’t name.

“Is this… concern?” Bai slipped into the robe, the cloth settling like calm snow. She leaned in, head near his shoulder, voice barely a feather.

Ouyang’s face twitched like a line tugged by a fish. “No. It’s not concern, you dumb dragon girl. Dress decent… so I can take revenge right.”

“Oh.” She drew back like a tide, as if she believed him. Fear didn’t touch her face; instead, a small light warmed there, like an ember cupped in hands.

Off to the side, the Jade Rabbit whispered to Collin like a gossiping sparrow. “See that, human kid? That’s classic tsundere—clearly—”

“Rabbit, shut up!”

Ouyang lunged like a gust, grabbed its ears, and spun it clockwise ten times, then counterclockwise ten; the Jade Rabbit shot skyward like a fired sling.

“Lord Ouyang, I was wrong…” drifted down like a falling leaf.

After a while, the fumes thinned like fog in sun; Caro, Augustine, and Bai could walk straight again. Augustine punched the air, testing his strength like a smith testing steel.

“Captain, I’m almost back. We can move,” he said, breath steady as drums.

He drove a fist forward, clean as a spear. In that blink, something dropped from high like a stone. He tried to pull back, but too late; his punch met the Jade Rabbit’s face.

Bang. The Jade Rabbit streaked away like a shooting star—and fell neatly into the tentacled horror’s open maw. The mouth shut; gurgle. It swallowed.

“Bad luck… hasn’t wrapped up?” Ouyang muttered, right eyelid twitching like a drum. He felt a tug in the air and looked up. The crow winged back, cawing a harsh “wah,” a black omen on black wind. “That crow did it on purpose, didn’t it?”

Across the field, the horror shuddered; after swallowing the Jade Rabbit, it swelled with new force. Tendrils sprouted like weeds, and pink skin went iron-black; its black arms whipped the air like storm snakes.

“I’ll protect you,” Bai said, stepping in front of Ouyang like a wall. Memory stung first, then instinct; she only remembered “killing” him twice and, by reflex, erased his strength in her mind, slotting him into logistics and shadows.

If someone who’d touched Ouyang could think that, Augustine and Caro doubted even less. Meanwhile, the White Cat crouched on Augustine’s head like a crown and, with a sly paw, raised a middle claw at Ouyang.