Azure Bird?

Neither Xia Zuo nor Jaster had heard that name, like a wind-bell chiming in a foreign storm. As for Xiao Bayat, he was a fresh sprout in spring frost, clueless about most of this.

In a space where countless phantom numbers floated like a shoal of silver fish, a hazy human outline slowly condensed, like dew beading on glass.

At last, a figure appeared among the storm of digits, a dream-thin person who felt out of step with this world’s light. It was a little girl, thirteen, maybe fourteen, with leaf-green hair and a green short-sleeved top; from the waist down, she vanished like mist over water.

“Azure Bird!”

The low voice rolled from the giant skull like thunder in a hollow gorge. It knew her name like a hunter knows a rival’s scent.

The skull began to thrash the moment Azure Bird appeared, chains clanking like winter iron, trying to wrench free. It had always been calm as stone, and now panic rattled its bones.

“Seven Sins—Gluttony.” The girl’s gaze was winter-cold as she looked upon the massive skull. From her phantasmal body flew a flock of tiny azure birds, like sparks from a green flame.

They were as unreal as she was, drifting like light through morning fog. A black-robed man dove to stop them, a blade rushing to cut rain, but his effort passed through empty air. The azure birds weren’t in his space. They slipped through him like wind through reeds.

Seeing the flock, the skull thrashed harder, like a trapped whale battering a net. This Azure Bird wasn’t the true body, and she wasn’t as dreadful as in the last epoch. But Azure Bird was still Azure Bird, like a lighthouse still bright even in fog.

The azure birds streaked for the skull. They didn’t attack as expected; they passed through bone like ripples through moonlight, and vanished as they neared the Mystic Priestess’s body. The flock’s target had always been the Mystic Priestess.

The instant a few birds dove into the Priestess and faded, the girl’s hazy form burst into green motes and blew away, like leaves in a night wind.

On the other side, everyone’s eyes followed that azure flight to the sleeping Mystic Priestess, like sailors tracking a star. From the moment the birds vanished into her, all gazes fixed on her, hungry to know what would wake within once they nested there.

Under those stares, the skull’s struggles turned savage, a river in flood. It sensed something.

The Mystic Priestess bound by black vines and caged inside the skull’s maw opened her eyes, slow as dawn lifting the dark.

She woke. The voidborn Mystic Priestess woke.

The skull went wild, a chained beast kicking up sparks. The black-robed men tried to run like shadows at cockcrow, yet Jaster—who had fought his way out of the Abyss of Trials—had expected that. He blocked them like a boulder in a mountain pass.

Seeing Jaster move, Xia Zuo reacted, too. He took another exit and held it, a door barred against night, refusing to let the black-robed men slip away.

Inside the skull’s cavernous mouth, as the Priestess woke, the black vines coiling her body snapped one by one, then thinned to black vapor and faded like smoke in rain. Rip. Rip. The sound of severed vines hissed through the air, while the skull’s roars boomed without rest, like surf smashing cliffs.

At last, as if it couldn’t bear the pain, the skull pried open its teeth, which had locked its jaw like a sealed gate. The Mystic Priestess stepped out from within.

She walked slowly, each step like a bell toll in fog. The skull writhed as if taking a mortal wound, in torment, as though an unseen force at her side was tearing its mouth apart like paper in a gale.

Black hair poured down her back like night-water. White ribbons tied two small locks that swayed on her shoulders like pendants. Her black-and-white priestess robes breathed without wind, tides moving under still moonlight.

“To drive this one this far… among all my foes, you’re not the worst.” Her voice was calm ice as she paced away from the skull, unhurried as drifting snow. When she gained some distance, she turned and looked up at that colossal skull with the poise of a queen on a high railing.

Once she left its jaws, the skull’s pain eased, the fury cooling like iron quenched. It no longer bellowed as before, yet it seemed weaker, its struggle spent. Earlier it had strained to break the chains; now it hung there like a netted beast that had given up the fight.

A weak rasp rumbled from the skull, so thin that even Xiao Bayat felt no threat, like thunder heard from a far valley. “Mystic Priestess… without Azure Bird, you could never have torn free from the dream. I am not reconciled!”

It truly wasn’t. It had trapped the Priestess in dream, and with her unable to command her body, killing her had been a matter of time, like ice melting under noon sun. It hadn’t expected she could reach through the dream and meddle with reality’s rules, laying a double seal upon it. That was tolerable; those seals wouldn’t hold it long. Meanwhile, the Priestess seemed lost in the dream, unable to find her way back. Time was on the skull’s side, a wide sea to cross at leisure.

Then the thing it least expected happened.

A bunch of kids—gnats in its eyes—shattered its plan like pebbles cracking glass. The instant Azure Bird appeared, it had already abandoned hope; only stubborn resentment still stirred, like ash after fire.

Azure Bird—within the Other Shore, even few knew her name, a ghost in the wires. The moment she learned of the skull, those in the “Origin” world would know as well, like ripples racing across a net.

The Mystic Priestess’s face went dark, a storm gathering over still water. For her, being dragged into dream by that skull was a stain, ink on silk. Worse, she needed Azure Bird to light a lighthouse so she could sail back across the sea of dreams. That gnawed at her pride. As the voidborn Mystic Priestess, rumored to bear the title of First Mystic Priestess, and with the Demon King’s Banquet drawing near, to commit such a blunder now was gall under the tongue.

“Since I’ve taken what’s valuable from you,” she said, voice cold as winter steel, “you no longer have a reason to exist.” Hearing that chill, Chloe and the others felt the cold climb their spines like icy ants. The Mystic Priestess was truly angry.

“You should leave… now. It’s been a long time since this one fought in earnest.”

In that instant, a black-and-white world bloomed behind her like ink spreading in water. At her feet, a vast black-and-white magic array unfurled, petals of shadow and light opening without end.

The three didn’t linger. Xia Zuo tore open a spatial gate to the outside, a slit of night in the air. Chloe grabbed Xiao Bayat and sprinted for it, feet drumming like rain. Jaster felt it most: that knife-edge sense from walking with death told him—danger.

It wasn’t just the underground palace that held the skull, but the whole space, like a stormfront swallowing a horizon. Even after they left what looked like the devourer’s lair and burst onto the surface, Jaster still felt it. The danger blanketed the world like a black snowfall.

“It’s not enough. We need to leave this world fast,” he said, wiping cold sweat as if scraping frost. “I’m guessing that Mystic Priestess plans to take the world down with it.”

Chloe balked, mood flipping like a cat in a bath. “Seriously? If this world gets destroyed, what about our summer homework? Do they count it as done, or since we didn’t destroy it ourselves, does it not count?”

Of all moments, Chloe worried about her homework.

“Senior, this isn’t the time. Staying alive matters more!” Xiao Bayat was speechless. At a time like this, homework? You can redo homework like weaving another basket; you only get one life.

He didn’t waste more words. Xiao Bayat pulled Chloe and ran, heels kicking up dust. Thanks to Xia Zuo’s precise spatial mark, a dark rift lay close by, like a tear in canvas. Through it, they could return to the world of Ladosgar. So much time had passed—the Academy had to have smelled something wrong. Reinforcements should be in that world by now.

Above ground, they fled for their lives beneath a sky like hammered steel. Below, in the underground world where the skull was bound, the air hummed like a taut string.

The voidborn Mystic Priestess, Liuli, seemed to pray, while a mesh of black and white spread out like frost-lace over glass.

Her mood was foul, a storm caged in her chest. The Demon King’s Banquet loomed. It would be the stage for the fifteen Demon Kings’ divine proxies—the Mystic Priestesses and Witches—to show their mettle. There would be rankings, or so they said. As the First Demon King’s proxy, Liuli’s aim was simple as a blade: the title of Chief Mystic Priestess.

Only by claiming that title, she felt, would she be worthy of serving as the First Demon King’s voice. Passing through this world, she had noticed something off—a ripple against the grain. Her vision, honed as the First Demon King’s proxy, ran deeper than most gods could fathom.

Here, she had found a legend breathing—Seven Sins. She’d seen Gluttony before, at Ouyang’s side; to find a Gluttony here as well was a red flag in a snow field.

Seven Sins were the most primal emotions given flesh—love and hate, weeping and laughter. Left to grow without leash, they became calamities, wildfire in tall grass.

She remembered the records in the library, pages like dry leaves. She decided to deal with this danger at once, a gardener cutting a poison vine. But when she reached for the blade, the foe struck first.

Humiliation. Pure humiliation, bitter as wormwood.

She was to be the Chief Mystic Priestess, yet she stumbled in the gutter. Worse, Azure Bird knew. As the controller of the Magi-Net’s nexus, Azure Bird had countless avatars. Where the Magi-Net stretched, she was there, like wind in every field. If Azure Bird knew, this misstep would be recorded like a blot of ink that never dries.

Most people didn’t have clearance to read those entries. But other Mystic Priestesses and Witches—the rivals—sure did. If she seized the Chief’s seat, it wouldn’t matter. But if she failed and this black history leaked…

“From ancient to now—outside past and future—vanishing at the world’s edge,” she prayed, her black-and-white robes stirring like waves, her hair a dark flame in wind. “When the sky is torn and the world’s lament resounds… in the corridor of fate, black and white cannot be found.”

“Offspring of the Void.”