“White Spirits”—that’s the Dark Spirit Empire’s slur for Celestials, a label like soot on snow, so the attackers’ identity loomed as sure as thunderheads.

“It’s the Shadowspirit Legion!” a soldier of the Seventh Legion cried, voice cracking like a snapped bowstring.

“Why are there so many humans aboard?” another asked, brows knotted like tangled reeds.

He swept the deck with a hawk’s glance, then planted a longsword that glowed with ill omen, like swamp-fire in night fog. “My name is Belius, captain of the Gaia Empire’s Special Operations Unit, a Daemon Knight in full honor. If you don’t want to die here, tell me where your master is.”

His voice carried like iron ringing in a tomb, each word pressing down like a mountain’s shadow. The name Daemon Knight rolled in like a black tide—one man strong enough to break a thousand spears—and the Seventh Legion shook, sweat beading cold as winter dew.

“You disgusting monster, don’t take another step!” Crick stepped forward like a rock against surf, or his men would’ve spilled secrets like grain from a cut sack.

“Reckless. Stupid.” Daemon Knight Belius lifted a brow, eyes like knives glinting in moonlight, and pinned Crick like an insect in frost.

“You monster…” The sword still rested on the deck like a sleeping serpent, yet that single hostile gaze wrapped Crick in cellar-ice, like standing at the lip of a whirlpool of death.

As Crick’s knees bent to the night’s dead silence, the Blazing Fire Knight, Lance, drew the Sirius Sword. He cut through fear like dawn through mist, standing tall when his comrades nearly crumbled before the wind.

“Was it you who fired those cannons?” Lance flicked his cloak like a banner in flame and stepped forward on tongues of fire.

“Oh!!! Sir Knight!” Relief burst from the Seventh Legion like rain after drought, cheers lifting like startled birds.

“You…” Belius’s eyes darkened like a stormbank, displeasure spreading as he lifted the black longsword from the deck, the blade drinking the starlight.

“You’re the Blazing Fire Knight?” he finally asked, words cool as winter rain.

“That’s right. I’m the Blazing Fire Knight,” Lance said, voice steady as a mountain’s root.

“Any last words?” Lance added, calm as a blade laid flat on a whetstone.

“Laughable,” the other scoffed, the sound a spark in dry tinder.

“If not, I’ll end your sins here,” Lance said, unbothered by scorn, and he roused his Battle Aura so the Sirius Sword flared like a newborn sun, flames unfurling like a crimson banner.

“Heh.” Daemon Knight Belius smiled, then lifted his sword, unleashing black Battle Aura that boiled like a moonless tide, equal to the blaze.

Just as steel and fire were set to clash, an ill-timed figure swept in like a silk sleeve through smoke.

“I am Shelika, third princess of the Dark Blood Clan,” she said, voice smooth as lacquer. “Escort me home with proper honor, and I’ll tell you where the ‘White Spirits’ on your ship are.”

Sensing the youth’s power leashed like a chained dragon, Shelika watched Lance with calm eyes, and waited for the answer like a drop of heavenly dew.

“You’re Shelika?” Belius spoke without respect or warmth, his tone flat as cold stone.

“Yes, I am. So—”

Before she finished, Belius slashed a streak of black sword-light, swift as a raven’s shadow. She blocked in haste, but without the Earth Mother’s blessing, even one strike from a Daemon Knight weighed on her arms like lead.

She wiped the blood from her arm like smearing rust from steel and snapped, “What are you doing?! I’m the third princess of the Dark Blood Clan, the queen’s third child. If you dare insult me again, you won’t bear the storm that follows!”

Daemon Knight Belius looked at her with a gaze hovering between pity and mockery, like a wolf bemused by a fallen peacock.

“How many years since you’ve gone home? Did your plan let the Gaia Empire obtain that kingdom, whole as an unbroken mirror?”

“T‑that… there was an accident. As long as you escort me back—”

Belius cut her off and slammed his sword to the deck, the thud like thunder underfoot. “If your plan had worked—if the Empire got a kingdom without a scratch—I might have considered it. But it’s too late now! And the majority in the Imperial Council no longer belongs to your Blood Clan. The Empire isn’t your pocket treasure anymore!”

“What did you say?” Shelika’s face went pale, shock ripping through her like lightning splitting a tree.

He glanced at her sudden collapse like a flower withering under frost, then at the Fire Knight, poised and still as a statue before a flame, then at the dull longsword in his hand, a borrowed tooth from a lesser beast. His words turned like wind shifting at sea. “If—”

“If you only want to return home, then help me cut down the Blazing Fire Knight, tell me where the ‘White Spirits’ are aboard, and I’ll grant your wish,” he promised, voice hard as hammered steel.

Shelika turned to face Lance, her silk whispering like reeds.

Crick stared at her, disbelief stark as daylight, then threw himself between them like a shield. “Sir Knight, is she the Dark Spirit spy you mentioned?!”

Lance didn’t answer. Shelika took one step, then a second, then a third, each footfall light as falling petals.

She didn’t strike as Belius had planned. She didn’t even pass Crick’s guard. After three steps, she sagged to the deck like a kite with cut string and broke into sobs.

“Why… why!” Shelika wept, her cry thin and piercing, like May’s endless drizzle, and the smoke-born ash drifted down with it like gray snow.

“Pathetic.” Daemon Knight Belius saw only weakness and shame, like mud on a banner. He stepped behind her, raised his sword like a black crescent, and brought it down—only for it to halt.

“Your opponent is me.” Lance caught the blow with the spine of the Sirius Sword, a quiet clang like ice meeting iron.

“Do you pity her, or did she tempt you?” Belius eyed the nick in his blade like rot in fine wood, stepped back a few paces, and took a fresh sword from a subordinate like drawing a new fang.

“Neither.” Lance advanced, his boots steady as drumbeats, and stopped before Belius like a wall of fire.

“Is it love then?” Belius’s smile curled like smoke, teasing words drifting light as ash.

“Of course not.” Flame boiled along Lance’s arm like molten river, heat shimmering in waves.

“Then what?”

“Because she’s useful to me.” With that, the Blazing Fire Knight attacked, cold and searing in one breath, his fire rolling in like a tide that scalds and freezes.

“Tsk!” Belius hadn’t expected power beyond an Earth Rank Knight; he fell back step by step like stones skipping from a flood.

One black sword after another melted and snapped in his grip, blades bowing to the blaze like reeds to a gale, until the warrior from the Dark Spirit Empire finally drew the greatsword from his back like a storm drawing its last thunderbolt.

“Didn’t think Doran would birth a Knight like you,” he said, voice ringing like a bell struck hard. “I admit I underestimated you. I’ll plant your gravestone here. Killing you will serve the Empire better than taking ‘White Spirits’ hostage!”

Lance met him evenly, like flame facing night. “Perfect. I’ll test something on you—”

“Let’s see if this Holy Relic of the Heavenly Spirit Empire can really kill a Dark Spirit like you!” Lance bared the weapon he’d ‘borrowed’ from the Thunderlight Knight, the relic gleaming like a shard of dawn.

“What? That’s Zulfiqar?!” Belius’s face changed like cloud-shadow over water.

“Take this—Secret Sword Blazing Fire!” Lance unleashed his trump card, and then, naturally—

A hard wind drove the flames like chariots, and the blaze burned the darkness to clean ash, leaving not a trace, like night pushed off the edge of the world.

“Did we… win?” The soldiers of the Seventh Legion panted like runners after a long climb, and with the Celestial refugees they stared from the shore at the Emerald Firmament and the other ships swallowed by fire, wonder and worry mingling like sun and storm.

“Yes. We won.” Lance’s answer was firm as bedrock, and he was sure every enemy had drowned in that sea of fire like sparks drowned by tide.

“But where do we go next?” Unlike Lance’s certainty, Violette’s voice drifted lost as a gull in fog. She didn’t look at the sea, but at the beach behind them, where mangroves found only in the Republic rooted in the flats, their leaves whispering in the sea-breeze, a sweet yet foreign susurrus.