It rained the whole way back, a gray curtain beating the road like drumskin.

When they left Wheat Town, it was a misty drizzle, a veil over fields and hedges. Later the rain thickened, a cold sheet shoved by the wind.

To keep the carriage from turning into a pond, Fulin and Reina each slid one window shut, glass catching beads like dew on bamboo.

Lightning flashed like a torn silk seam, and thunder rolled in, a bronze gong across the clouds.

Fulin didn’t duck like a scared child; she stared through the slatted blinds at the bruised sky, eyes drifting like leaves on a pond.

“Fulin, aren’t you scared?” Reina’s voice came soft, a bell under rain.

Guilt pricked Fulin first, a thorn under skin. Then she popped up, hands on hips, flat chest puffed like a sparrow. “Not scared~!”

“I figured… If you were scared, you wouldn’t have slipped into the convoy,” Reina said, lonely as rain on an empty step. “We wouldn’t have met, either.”

The tone tangled like ivy, praise or blame hidden in leaves. Fulin didn’t really get a girl’s heart; she just played cute, a kitten rolling. “Ehehe~”

“You.” Reina’s willow-slim brows arched, and she flicked Fulin’s forehead, a pebble on calm water.

Fulin crouched with both hands over her head, like a hedgehog under a branch. “Don’t hit meee.”

Seeing Fulin fear pain like a skittish rabbit, Reina felt a warm tide rise, a brazier in her chest on a damp night. She smiled, a petal lift.

She wondered, if she had a little sister, would she be like this—cute and obedient, yet troublesome like a sparrow knocking at dawn?

Reina watched Fulin for a long while, eyes like a pale-violet lake, still yet deep.

After a quarter hour rocked by wheels, the rain dulled to a whisper, like silk rubbed in the dark. Reina recalled Karl blocking their way, a stone in the stream.

“Fulin,” she asked, voice a thread through reeds, “when they surrounded you, weren’t you afraid?”

“Not at all~~ because Sis was right there.” Fulin answered bright as a lantern, leaning in like a kitten to a warm hand.

Her eyes shone like wet stars, and the sight tightened Reina’s heart, a string drawn on a qin. She hugged Fulin for a long breath, a quilt of arms.

Letting go, she remembered. “Then why did you say the bad big brother wouldn’t lose? Don’t you hate Lance?”

The sudden question iced Fulin’s back like rain down the neck. She rallied fast, mind a quick fox. “Because big brother is only bad to people, like teasing,” she said. “But he protects everyone for real.”

“Does he?” Reina leaned in, roses climbing in her gaze, a scent that wrapped tight. “Tell me how he protects them.”

When it turned to Lance, Reina changed like weather, or perhaps showed her true season; her eyes had pressure, a vine that twined and wouldn’t let go.

Fulin’s mind skipped like a stone. If someone got caught by a girl like this, would they ever get free? Or would the rose and its thorns keep them forever?

She refused to follow that thread, a hand pulling back from brambles. Because she herself was the one caught—or rather the mask she wore was: “Lance Morrison.”

She tried to stand in the shoes of those patrons who chose to help “Lance,” like seeing the road from their saddle. “No problem~~”

So, in a little girl’s voice yet with a bystander’s eyes, Fulin sketched what “Lance” had done this past month in George City, milestones like cairns along a trail.

When Reina finished listening, surprise widened in her pale-violet eyes, a dawn spilling over a ridge. “So that’s it… Lance has gotten complicated.”

To Fulin, it sounded like someone speaking of an old acquaintance, not a lover, yet vital as a root under stone.

She recalled Reina’s words during the confrontation with “Lance,” like echoes in a room next door. Fulin tugged at the skirted armor. “Sis, sis, I was in the next room back then. I heard you say the bad big brother also called you sis, and you wanted him to go back with you. Your hair looks alike, the two of you, like twin reeds. What are you two?”

“Well…” Bitter crossed Reina’s face, like tea steeped too long; words caught like fishbone.

Fulin changed angles, a swallow turning in rain. “Are you siblings? Are you his older sister?”

“No, we’re not.” Reina’s head dipped, lips painted pale like a petal after rain. Her voice shrank, stubborn as a knot in wood. “He and I are just… he and I are just…”

The wind eased and the rain petered out, like a curtain falling. The horse picked up, hooves tapping like sticks on a drum.

Silence stretched like a long road. Four hours slid by under wheels and dark.

“We’re here~~” Reina finally said, voice bright as a bell at dawn.

The carriage stopped outside George City, walls looming like wet stone. Reina lifted Fulin down like a mother cat with a kitten.

The sudden arrival of the “Rose” Knight put the soldiers on edge, spears tight as a thicket. Reina ignored them and crouched, eye to eye like mirrors in a spring.

“Be good when you’re back, okay~ Especially one week from now. Hide in the castle like a rabbit in brush. Don’t run around… Can you promise Sis?”

“Since Sis asked, I’ll… reluctantly agree.” Fulin puffed herself up, a sparrow pretending to be a hawk.

“Pfft~ Who taught you to talk like that?” Reina hid a laugh behind her hand, a fan flutter. She pinched Fulin’s little nose, a grape between fingers. “See you later~”

Watching Reina step back into the carriage, Fulin waved, a leaf to the wind. “Mm~ Bye, Sis.”

As the carriage dwindled down the road, a small emptiness opened in Fulin, a thorn of a rose lodged in the heart. You want to pull it, yet the bloom is so bright and soft, you can’t.

…

Fulin ignored the soldiers’ questions, their voices like crows after rain. She whistled in a thin note, and the big cat padded over, stripes flowing like shadowed grass.

In the soldiers’ eyes, the big cat had become the standard of the “Flame of Chaos” Knight, a banner with claws. When it drew near, they parted like reeds in current.

Fulin swung onto the big cat and didn’t head for the castle. She rode back out of George City, a dusky arrow loosed.

She aimed for the Eroded Plains before the sun could sink fully, that shallow marshland where Karl and Count George would fight in a week, a chessboard slick with water.

She needed to scout the field, to lay the last stones for a battle that would let her live quietly in Golden Bay City, like a teapot on a steady stove.

She reached the Eroded Plains just before the sun dropped, the horizon a blade of fire.

From afar it looked like a green plain under sunset, a quilt of fresh grass. Up close it was all water grass, slender blades hiding twenty centimeters of standing water, a mirror over mud.

It wasn’t the movie kind of bog that swallows boots whole; this mud had a hard crust, a lacquered shell. Unless you were a tin-can knight, you’d leave only shallow prints.

People could walk; horses couldn’t. And even people waded slow, water to the shins and grass to a grown man’s chest, a forest of blades gripping like hands.

As a battlefield, the Eroded Plains was wrong terrain, a trap masquerading as meadow.

But Fulin knew why both sides picked it. The plains were fed by a river; the flats were a sidebed of its course, a sleeping channel. When water rose, the Eroded Plains turned into a running river, a scouring broom for corpses and debris.

That sounded dangerous, like a flood in a narrow alley. But she’d checked the season: the river only woke to that height in mid-July. It was early June now. The choice was sound as a farmer’s calendar.

Yet if they fought as planned, Count George’s few hundred would drown in a human tide of ten thousand. Fulin could go full one-woman army, a scythe in wheat, but the price was her Blood Clan nature laid bare.

She couldn’t afford that, not with her mask stitched so tight.

So she needed a plan “Lance” could execute, a trick to let him, with a few hundred, break enemy knights and mages and men by the thousands—turning the board like a table flip.

Impossible at a glance, yet an old standby in the Three Kingdoms of ancient Xia, the firebug general’s winning script. Fire wouldn’t work on a wet plain, but the core was terrain, a river’s spine.

The truth was, she’d been out at night for two weeks with the big cat, mapping like a fox reading tracks. She’d noted the Eroded Plains drank from an upstream artery, the Snow River.

As the name says, Snow River comes down from the snow peaks between Maple City and Golden Bay City, a white thread from the mountains.

Downstream it braids and fans, canals calm enough for boats to pass side by side, a web that feeds Golden Bay City’s trade like roots feed a tree. One branch ran straight to the Eroded Plains.

Night fell, a black lacquer bowl overturned on the land.

Fulin rode the big cat north along that branch, whiskers and wind. Two hours later she reached the split, where the Snow River poured like a herd of stallions.

Standing on the bank, she felt the current’s force, a drumbeat through the ground, the river’s muscles flexing.

But the rock that formed the fork had been gnawed by water for years, a honeycomb under a crust. Break it right, and the whole fork would collapse like a rotten log.

With the fork gone, there’d be no governor on flow. The Eroded Plains would drown under a rush of river, a plain reborn as a fast channel, a dragon claiming its bed.

Fulin made up her mind, resolve settling like a stone in a bowl.

She invoked the Arcane Mage’s high-tier talent, the Arcane Art, a bell note in her blood.

Purple light rose around her, bright yet clear, like amethyst in spring water. Under her feet, a high-tier magic circle unfurled, a garden of geometric lines.

Casting in this state would triple the cost, a tollbooth at a bridge. But it let the caster decide form and timing, a hand on the clock’s arrow.

In other words, Fulin could cast a delayed spell that didn’t exist in Legend of Dawn’s skill tree, a swallow flying off and returning on cue.

An attack spell on delay was a time bomb buried under leaves, and Fulin needed exactly that.

She aimed at the rock spine across the water and cast a delayed “Return-to-Dust: Flame Burst,” a seed under stone.

On the night before the battle, in a week, when the time ripened like fruit, the explosion would shatter that rock, a hammer on glass.

The branch’s flow would slip its leash. A flood crest would build that same night, a mountain of water in a narrow bed.

Its impact on the Eroded Plains would show the next day, on the day of battle: Karl’s ten thousand would get swept clean by a sudden flood, ants on a leaf.

Count George’s few hundred could sit on side-by-side rafts, fishing lines in the foam, calm as monks in rain.

It was a stunning plan, a carp leaping the gate. But it was risky, with variables like birds in brush.

What if their ten thousand moved slow with baggage, like a snake heavy with eggs, and they arrived late? What then?

What if Karl stayed cautious, reading the weather like a farmer, and feared June rain might raise the river early? If it poured like tonight, would he refuse battle under that sky?

To make this work, she had a long list, pebbles to stack one by one. It would take time, like weaving a net at night.

Sleepless night stretched long, a black silk uncut.

Fulin lifted her eyes to the sky scrubbed clear by rain, stars like seeds scattered on black soil. She thought of Alice, perhaps in Maple City under the same night, a lantern in another window.

Was that lady looking up too, sharing this sky like a shared cup of tea?