One sword cleaved across the sky, tearing the firmament like a shard of blazing noon.

Fei, a girl soft as dew at first glance, unleashed that stunning cut in silence, like frost hiding a blade. She rode Amelie’s power, yet the line of that strike meant she’d studied the Nine Hells Sword Art like a monk tracing sutras by candlelight.

“Beautiful!” Augustine shouted from below, his voice like a clap of thunder rolling off stone. The sword that split the heavens hit like a sunrise breaking cloud.

When the glare faded, a pair of vast emerald wings unfurled, a cocoon of jade leaves. The wings wrapped Saya tight, and Amelie’s sky-splitting cut left not a scratch, like rain sliding off lacquered bark.

Irina pressed her hands together, lips murmuring like wind in pines. A wash of green, spring-sap bright, slid over her pupils like moss over a rock.

“Lain, now—cover Irina, buy her time!” Augustine’s words snapped like a bowstring, quick as a hawk’s dive.

Three pitch-black portals irised open beside Lain with a whoosh, like wells punched through night. Undead poured out in waves, bone and smoke surging like tide toward Saya, their rush a drumbeat. Their teamwork moved like gears meshing, smooth as water finding a riverbed.

Kooson the Two-Faced Walker had a most vexing gift: mimicry, a mirror rippling like a lake in wind. He’d once mimicked Ouyang’s palace stones and Ouyang’s cold, clean methods, like a shadow copying a lantern’s sway. The power Irina contracted from Kooson was also mimicry; give her time to parse a thing, and she could become that thing, like clay taking a stamp.

A tree, for instance—let her read it to the roots, and she’d turn into that trunk and crown, bark and breath, leaf and limb. A person too—finish the parsing, and she’d wear their face and carry their power, like a mask that moved with the skin.

That mimicry wasn’t almighty, just as Ouyang’s Black Wings were a theory written in stormlight. In theory, he could curse anything—flip life and death like flipping a coin, trade night and day like turning a page, even curse himself unending like a mountain that never erodes. But theory is cloud, not rain.

Put Ouyang in front of Kooson, and Kooson couldn’t parse him at all, like eyes blinded by lightning. Irina, who only held the contracted echo, had even less grip on that depth, like a cup trying to hold the sea. Among the Demon Kings, it wasn’t just Ouyang; Jue, so ancient his soul smelled of rust, Yulan, whose true body shouldn’t exist in this cosmic epoch, and Wutong, a being forged by a Tiered Being—those were knots Kooson’s mirror couldn’t untangle, stones beyond his chisel.

The fate woven into such beings ran beyond Kooson’s understanding, like constellations hidden by storm, so he couldn’t mimic what he couldn’t read. Eunice, Devila, even Amelie—those he could copy, like sketches done from life. The stronger the target, the longer the parsing, like a slow dawn. Finish the parse, and he could enter a Mimic Form, skin and breath remade like iron poured into a mold.

Say he finished parsing Devila—he could become Devila and wield her power, a mask that moved like flesh. It sounded bright as brass, but he only held the form for ten minutes, a candle guttering in wind. When the time ran out, he’d snap back, and to transform again he’d have to parse again, like winding a clock that keeps stopping.

In a fight, that made Kooson’s gift awkward as a sword with a loose hilt. No foe hands you time on a tray. Scheme once and you might complete a parse, but if they stall for ten minutes, you’re back to zero, like tide dragging footprints away. First time might be luck; no one gifts you a second dawn.

“Irina’s gift is unknown to them—we can make it bite like a hidden hook. If they know it, we’re in rough water.” Prince Pries of the Land of Light stood with clothes torn like old banners, royalty ragged as a beggar. He leaned against the wall like a tree in wind, eyes sweeping the dark like a lighthouse against squall.

The ethereal song still drifted, thin as mist over water—love turned grief, hatred born of love like thorns on a rose, a world’s elegy humming like rain on stone.

Undead that neared Saya crumbled into insects, bodies splintering like husks. Then those insects wheeled and flew back, a black snowstorm to devour the undead that hadn’t turned.

“Bad. Lain, stop the Grand Summoning. Keep this up and you’re feeding her fodder like throwing twigs into a bonfire.” As captain, Augustine’s command cut clean, a blade of ice.

Lain halted the spell at once. The ebon portals sealed like eyelids closing, slow as dusk. But what he’d already called forth flipped sides in a heartbeat, and became her claws and teeth, a swarm thick as smoke. The insects boiled back like locusts, a black river eating the ground.

Too many—far too many—like a storm cloud rolling low. The black gale came on, the insects hungry as wolves, teeth like hail on tin.

“No choice. Everyone—get behind me!” Augustine slung his bow behind him, raised both hands as if holding up the sky’s edge, a pillar under a sagging roof.

“All things… wither before the years!” His voice rang like a bell in a temple of snow.

The onrushing insects shriveled as they neared, bodies drying like leaves under a desert sun, then sifted to powder and drifted away like ash. Even knowing death, they pressed on like moths to a flame, wings burning in their own need.

“Human, remember this.” The voice of Anatasya flowed through Augustine’s mind like cold spring water over stone. “Time is balanced, like scales in a windless hall. When you speed another’s time, yours rewinds, and balance returns like tide. Reverse it and the law stands the same.

“Time’s punishment doesn’t strike you at once, like lightning waiting behind cloud. In calmer days, you can prepare and blunt it, wrap it in warding like silk. But if the balance demanded by your short-term accelerations or reversals exceeds what your lifetime can pay, the punishment falls at once, heavy as a hammer.

“Over-accelerate others, and your time winds back. If it winds back before your birth, you vanish, erased like chalk in rain. You’re cut from the world’s concept; no one remembers you, because you were never born.

“Over-rewind others, and your time races forward. You age in a blink like fruit left in sun, and die like a candle reaching its end.”

Anatasya’s words hammered in Augustine’s skull like a mantra, a curse-bead clicking between fingers.

I’m done for. The thought stabbed cold, like a shard of ice in his ribs. So many insects, like rain without end; if my time rewinds, I’ll fall back before birth, and I’ll be gone from their memories like smoke. He regretted it bitterly, regret sour as unripe fruit. Even using time reversal beat using acceleration.

If he reversed time, even if he died, it’d be of old age, bones cooling like autumn stones; his soul would go to the City of the Dead, a ferry across black water. But if he accelerated and the punishment struck, rewinding him before birth—would there even be a soul, a spark without tinder?

He wanted to cancel the acceleration, heart tight as a clenched fist, but he couldn’t abandon the comrades behind him like footprints left to tide. What do I do? If I rewind to before birth, teacher and friends won’t recall me, like a name lost to wind. Who could save me?

As Augustine wrestled with that dread, emerald wings blossomed like spring from stone. Irina had finished her parsing. Relief washed him like warm rain, and he stopped the acceleration, letting time settle like dust.

The jade wings spread, and the sky of insects split into two currents like a river forking. Irina had copied Saya’s control, seizing half the swarm like a shepherd calling half a flock. Half the insects turned, and the two camps tore into each other, a cloud devouring itself.

“We did it… Augustine, Irina did it!” Caro’s smile broke like sunlight between leaves. Then she noticed Lain and the others wore odd faces, as if they’d seen a ghost.

She followed their gaze. An infant crouched on the ground, small as a bun in a steamer, surrounded by clothes pooled like a shed skin.

The baby stared around, eyes wide as moons. He looked at Lain, then at Pries, then at Caro, counting like a chick watching giants. “Why do you… all look taller?” The voice had changed like a flute gone reed, but Augustine could still speak.

“Captain… it’s not that we got taller. You got smaller.” Durak the blunt dwarf spoke straight as an arrow.

“I… got smaller?” Augustine glanced down at himself, shock rippling like cold over a lake.

“It’s over. I overused time, and the law punished me, sharp as winter. Friends, I’m out of fight.” Turned into a baby, he wasn’t crushed, his calm a lantern in fog. He hadn’t rewound before birth—that alone felt like escaping a cliff. In Miracle City, the Demon Kings had sky-reaching means like ladders into cloud; there’d be a cure. If he’d snapped back to before he was born, with no one remembering him, he wouldn’t even have tears left to cry.

“Sorry to say it, but I have to step off the field. Seniors, could you—”

Augustine looked for Agas and Dongze to carry him out like wind taking a leaf, but the two mysterious seniors had vanished, gone like smoke on a breeze. “Seniors? Seniors… where are you?”

“Augustine, danger!” Fei’s shout cut in like a bell. She darted in and scooped him up, a swallow catching a falling petal.

A heartbeat later, the place where he’d stood blew open with a thump, a pit yawning like a crater. A cow-sized insect heaved and roared inside, its mandibles clacking like knives.

Cradled in Fei’s arms, Augustine’s thoughts snapped clear, sharp as ice. Those two seniors had hung them out again; at the critical beat they always vanished, a trick like a street magician’s. A month without fights this fierce, no vanishing act—he’d let himself forget.

“Irina, don’t grind it out with Saya. Your transform lasts only ten minutes, a spark in wind. Hit her head-on now!” His orders came tight and quick, a drum in fog. “Durak, while Irina holds her gaze, cut arrays around us—etch the lines like plow furrows. Win or lose hangs on your array. Lain, drown Durak’s trail in black mist, a night to hide his hand…”

As a baby, Augustine couldn’t bellow like thunder, voice small as rain on leaves. He spoke low, and Fei carried his words like a courier hawk through the storm.