“Sister Leticia, hang in there.” The voice was childlike, like a bell in morning mist. Leticia turned; beside Xi stood her younger sister. Worry clouded Xian’s face, a tide that hadn’t ebbed; she’d grown taller in a year, yet that familiar look stayed like a winter leaf that wouldn’t fall.

“Second Miss… why are you here?” Her breath trembled like cold glass.

Xi didn’t answer. Her fingers brushed the holy-light spear lodged in Leticia’s chest, a touch light as dew. The dazzling lance unraveled into a rain of light and drifted away like fireflies.

“Big Sis is amazing. Now Sister Leticia’s all better,” Xian chimed, eyes bright like stars in shallow water.

Better?

Leticia stared at her chest. The hole was gone, the flesh knit smooth like ice refreezing. If not for blood and ripped cloth, she’d think it a dream, a mirage over heat-hazed sands. That spear had been an archangel’s power cast into form, a sun hammered into steel—yet Xi’s gentle touch had turned it to rain.

Shock nipped at her like frost. In a single year, Xi felt different—familiar as a childhood lane, yet strange as fog over it. The Eldest Miss was who she remembered, and still, something in her was off-beat, a reed pipe playing a new note. Leticia couldn’t find where that discord began, like a current under still water.

“Young Lady, please save Sister Snow…” Fear surged first, thought trailing like a kite string. This wasn’t the hour for wonder. Change or not, Snow’s life came first, as urgent as a storm at sea.

Leticia gulped air, each breath a rasp of wind over stone, and spilled Snow’s situation, including that strange reaction from moments ago.

“A wand white as jade?” Xi’s eyes turned pensive, like clouds banking before rain, and Leticia felt a spark of hope kindle like a lamp. From Xi’s face, she likely knew what had seized Snow.

“Xian, stay here with Leticia. I’ll find Snow.” Xi tapped Xian’s head, a feather’s touch, then took one step that rippled like water—she vanished.

In the white world, angels flew like drifting seeds, yet every direction was a horizon that never came. There was no up or down, no east or west; even breath lost its way like a gull in fog.

Blood-red sword rain scoured the air. Angelic bodies turned to pulp like crushed petals; scarlet bled across the blank, a sunset staining snowfields.

“Careless of me. I looked away, and you butchered my men.” The archangel unfurled four wings like carved marble and looked down from a cold height. When he’d been dragged into this strange space, he hadn’t cared; with two-winged angels circling like a net and his might anchoring the storm, the foe couldn’t flee. So he’d watched as if at a play.

In a blink, that rain of crimson blades culled his ranks like harvest. No matter the end, once he returned to the Divine Realm, punishment would fall like thunder. His lapse had put his men in peril. And the root of it all was the thing before him, reeking of evil like pitch aflame.

“Holy Verdict!”

A giant sun rose above the archangel, blazing like a forge. Its light poured over the space like noon over a desert. “Heresy, vanish beneath holy light!”

Scorching. A heat she had never known surged like dry wind from a furnace. The phantom sun made Snow feel she would steam away like dew. The glare pried her eyes shut; blood on her skin hissed to nothing like rain on iron. Her hair clumped with dried blood; her clothes clung like wet bark; her skin felt stiff as shell.

“So hot…” She raised one arm to shield her eyes; the motion was a leaf fighting gale. She tried to look, but the light stabbed like needles. Drowsiness washed in, heavy as noon in cicada season. Heat fogged her mind; thoughts turned to paste, a pot bubbling over.

Thwick. A light-arrow punched through her right arm, a thorn of dawn. Then something slammed into her, a wave against rock; her mind went blank, a candle snuffed.

“Am I going to die?” In the chaos, that lone thought surfaced like a bubble from deep water. The world had gone pitch-black, a night without moon; no blinding light, no blistering heat.

Or rather, she couldn’t feel them anymore, like numb fingers in winter.

“Heretic, I’ll offer your head to my fallen brothers! Go beg the Goddess for mercy!” The archangel’s voice swaggered across the dark like a brass horn. Snow’s world stayed black. With each beat, his voice thinned like a receding tide. In the end, only dead silence remained, a winter well frozen to the stone.

Holy Verdict—an ultimate craft of illusion, fire, and light. The blaze blinds the eyes like noon on ice; the sun’s heat exhausts the flesh like summer drought; the mind sinks into a cage of mirage, a spiderweb made of song.

In theory, Snow was lost in that phantom maze. But she opened her eyes—both pupils like twin shards of winter glass. Under that cold gaze, the phantom sun above the archangel shattered, a mirror exploding. The crack of breaking glass pierced like sleet, and the angels who’d lived through the blood rain stared, mouths open like statues finding breath.

“Impossible. Holy Light stands with the Goddess. How could the Sun of Judgment break? Illusion—it must be illusion!” One angel trembled like a string in wind. That sun was a projection of the Divine Realm’s Sun of Judgment; the archangel had cast the Divine Realm’s sun into this place like a reflection on water. Even as a reflection, no one had ever heard of it being broken, not in all the long years like sand through glass.

Snow’s twin pupils stayed cold, a lake under ice. Black energy surfaced around her, writhing like ink in water. It wove over her skin, stitching a black princess gown like night spun into silk. The blood on her face vanished like breath on glass; her chestnut hair floated with an eerie life, strands lifting like reeds in a ghost wind.

Regal. Magnificent. Serene. She looked first like a noble princess, a moon in dark velvet.

The white wand slipped from her hand and hovered, a pearl in still air. In her right hand, black energy condensed into a reaper’s scythe, a crescent of night. A huge black bow bloomed at her back like a shadowed butterfly. Black stockings sheathed her long legs like ink over porcelain; between hem and stocking, a sliver of pale skin flashed like snow at dusk.

“Demon… this is your true face?” The archangel took three involuntary steps back, retreat cut into marble. His face grew solemn, the scorn burned away like chaff.

‘Snow’ stayed ice-calm. A long black chain leashed the scythe’s end, snaking like a river of iron, and the chain coiled around her right arm like a serpent.

Snap.

An angel was there, then he was two halves, cleanly parted by ‘Snow’s’ black scythe, a night wind through silk. Their angel heart stayed intact, a gem under ash; in theory, they could revive in the Divine Realm. Yet those cleaved by that black blade didn’t turn to rain of light. From their wounds, black matter spread like oil on water. In seconds, a white-winged angel was devoured and turned, fallen like a star gone dark.

Pale-violet skin, crimson pupils, wings black as ravens. Every angel struck by ‘Snow’ rotted into a fallen, like blossoms turning to ash. The enemy’s number swelled like a storm front.

“Stand down! All of you, back. You’re no match for that demon.” The archangel knew only he could contest her now; sending two-winged fodder would just feed the dark, like moths to flame.

Whoosh. The archangel drew the sword at his waist and raised it high, a mast cutting sky. “The Goddess stands with me!” Light burst from him, blinding as a star; for a breath, he was a blazing fireball, and heat flooded every corner of the white space like noon over salt flats.

“Sun of Judgment, pierce this endless space and punish the heretic before me!”

The Sun of Judgment—the Divine Realm’s sun. Legend says it formed when an eighteen-winged angel fell, a mountain breaking into sky. That angel, beyond words, is honored as the King of the Gods. Long ago, the mighty God-King led an army into a mysterious land, a sea beyond the map. No one knows what it was, for no one returned; perhaps only ancient beings remember, like stones that remember tides.

And the sun above—the Sun of Judgment—is the God-King’s angel heart, a core like a molten world. The God-King abides with the Divine Realm, like a mountain with its shadow.

The Sun of Judgment seemed to answer his call. A phantom sun wrapped the archangel like a cocoon, and light burst again, a waterfall of white. “Great King of the Gods, I, Archangel Ular, offer myself as sacrifice. Please awaken from the river of time!”

The phantom sun grew real, flesh to flame. It turned into a colossal eyeball, an orb spraying endless light like a lighthouse from creation. Where holy light fell, all was his dominion, borders traced like gold leaf.

In an instant, stars bloomed like frost; rivers of constellations crossed and braided. An ancient voice whispered, wind in a temple forest. No one could understand; they only knew it praised, it sang, it prayed, like monks chanting to dawn.

“Hymn of the World!”

For once, ‘Snow’s’ icebound face flickered, a ripple under glass. She snatched the white wand into her left hand and, with its power, barely raised a shield, a thin shell like soap film. But that eyeball-like sun was slowly opening. If it opened fully, some vast being would wake like a mountain rising from sea.

Crack…

Crack…

The eye kept opening. The white space laced with fractures like ice on a thawing river. It couldn’t bear the weight. If that eye opened wide, the white space would collapse completely, a porcelain bowl dashed to stone. The force wasn’t aimed at this realm, yet its god-surpassing pressure shattered it by mere presence.

“God-King of the Divine Realm, Ulaficales… I miscalculated.” ‘Snow’s’ icy face twisted, a hairline in jade, and her cool voice fell low, like midnight rain.

“I didn’t think that guy never truly fell. That’s the biggest miscalculation.”