The plateau wind that had been howling fell quiet, like a wolf curling its tail in the frost.

Lance saw the parchment in Yuna’s hands, and memory rose like steam from a hot spring—the moment they boarded the airship. Shelika had thrown herself over it as if it were a brazier in a blizzard. He’d thought it a spell scroll; it wasn’t.

Curiosity stirred like a fish beneath ice, then sank. Camp came first; fire and shelter trumped riddles on a cold night. He didn’t take the parchment. He asked, voice even as a flat stone, “What’s written on it?”

He was sure Yuna had read it before passing it along, like tasting tea before serving it.

As expected, “It’s a thank-you to you.” Her words floated like snowflakes into the firelight.

Lance blinked, more fog than flame inside. Insults, curses—fine. But gratitude? “Thankful for what?”

“For… this,” Yuna started, then the words knotted like reeds in wind. She lifted the parchment again and read by the campfire’s orange tongue, brow shadowed. Even after reading, understanding didn’t land like a bird; it hovered.

Lance remembered Alfred, the temp commander, had worn the same puzzled look reading it earlier. If it was dense and useless as mountain shale, then why chip at it now? The real road was the peaks ahead, not ink on skin.

“Tell me when we’re back in Maple City,” Lance said, voice like a tent flap closing against the night.

“Understood.” Yuna tucked the parchment away, like a seed sleeping in loam.

The highland night, cold and silent, slipped past like black water under ice.

Dawn came. The sun rose like a red coin from a sea of stone.

“What a view,” Lance said, standing on a cliff’s edge, eyes drinking that molten rim as if it were wine.

“You… like sunrises?” Yuna called while stowing gear, disbelief flickering like thin smoke.

“Guess so.” His answer was a shrug of wind.

He turned and found the Eternal War Armor crusted in rime, a statue dragged from a snow cave. He coaxed a tidy flame into his palm, then wind, and brushed frost from the plates like needles from a pine bough.

“Thanks for shielding us from the wind,” he said, the words warm as the fire he fed it.

Last night, the plateau had flipped its moods like a skyfish. Hail-laced snow at midnight, wind veering like a knife—if the Eternal War Armor hadn’t braced an arm against rock and squared its back to the storm, the two of them would’ve been drenched to the bone.

At his thanks, the Armor’s eye-lights flared once, a bead of light on steel. It felt like a nod in the dark—no need for thanks.

Lance smiled, a quick thaw across his face, then a crease of doubt. “You’re this considerate. How’d you end up abandoned in some basement like a forgotten drum?”

He remembered the dust packed on it when it first emerged. It must’ve sat idle even before the crate.

The Armor gave no answer. Silence pressed like snow.

He let it go, breath bright. “Forget it. Let’s move.”

The Armor’s eyes gleamed again, a child’s spark at the word “travel.”

Lance turned and saw Yuna ready, bundled but shivering before the dawn wind like grass before sleet. “Yuna, you don’t have to walk.”

He wove a big basket from slats and iron, skinned it with a tent’s windproof hide, then rigged two ropes. It hung off the Armor’s right side like an oversized satchel.

“Climb in,” Lance said, pointing at the makeshift carry.

“My apologies, for showing Master how useless I am…” Yuna curled inside, then poked out her head like a pup from a blanket—oddly cute, oddly funny.

“It’s fine. It’s freezing. Stay put and keep the hood on,” Lance said.

“Let’s go,” he told the Armor.

Lance took point, the Armor followed, and three shadows stitched a path into morning.

They climbed another three hours. The air thinned like watered wine. The sun climbed, the wind and snow fell away, and the world whitened until it was nothing but bone and glare, a dream above the clouds.

“So this is the Desolation Range…” Lance breathed, a sigh caught on cliffs.

“Hey, Yuna, look.” He called back, but only snores answered, soft as a sleeping fire.

He opened the satchel. Yuna slept easy inside, like a cat in a warm basket.

“Figures…” He wanted to laugh and swallow a sigh. He’d caught her dozing whenever his back was turned, like a sparrow stealing naps between gusts. This road was wearing her thin.

“Sleep. When we’re past this, we’ll live quiet…” Resolve flashed in his eyes like flint. He shut the cover.

“Let’s go, big guy. Toward our end—” He faced the pale vastness.

Beep-beep. The Armor’s eyes pulsed, mirroring his resolve like twin stars.

The journey stitched on.

Past tundra, up the high belt, over open snow—at last they slipped into a valley. Here, “valley” still meant high mountain, just a trough between taller spines.

Those higher peaks made walls. Between them lay a broad, flat, windless corridor, a riverbed of stone without a current.

They moved steady in that calm throat.

Yuna slept a long while, then woke with a start, words echoing off rock like pebbles. “Sorry, Master, I was… a bit tired.”

“No harm done,” Lance said, the warmth in his voice a small ember.

“It’s so quiet here,” she murmured, peering up at a slit of sky, a blue ribbon between white teeth.

“Yeah. Even the wind can’t get in,” Lance said, lifting his eyes to that blade of blue.

Then he heard it. A far-off rumble, faint as thunder behind a mountain.

“Yuna, you hear something weird?” Doubt pricked through his tone like a thorn.

“Weird? A kind of wind?” She heard it too, but her senses were a dull knife compared to his.

Unease rose in Lance like black water.

Seconds later, above that slit of sky—blue and cloud, serene as a painting—two black dots popped out of the clouds, then grew, falling like hawks. As they neared, his unease ballooned like stormcloud.

Bad! The word slammed through his mind like a bell.

“Run! Now!” He didn’t hesitate. He barked at the Armor and sprinted.

Beep— The Armor lagged a beat, then those long strides bit the ground and it thundered up beside him.

The shadows above closed in. Sunlight flashed off peak-snow and painted their hulls like blades—two warships of the Heavenly Spirit Empire.

He knew their shapes; he’d ridden and seen them. If they were here now, they weren’t giving him a lift.

Cannons unfolded from their bellies like iron fangs.

They were here to kill.

Tat-tat-tat, tat-tat-tat—!

Rotary cannons chattered like gossiping magpies, vomiting strings of spell-powder bullets that stitched the air toward them.

Lance ran and wove. He slipped past lines of fire like a fish between spears. He threw up a magic shield, a glass wave that bent killing arcs aside.

The Armor tanked the storm, body like a cliff before surf. It guarded the satchel and never slowed.

Man and machine bolted like wild horses loosed on a canyon track, racing death and shadow over that slit of sky.

The gap narrowed. The canyon pinched its stone lips. The ships couldn’t fit and had to climb.

The hail of fire thinned, stuttered, then stopped—like rain ending one drop at a time.

They’d slipped the net.

Danger eased. Their pace bled down, breath like steam.

But the ships didn’t quit. They only stopped the curtain of fire.

They tracked them, sure now of their prey. Two ropes unreeled—one front, one rear—from the two ships hanging like vultures.

Two squads of Celestial Spirit knights slid down, one ahead, one behind, sealing path and retreat like doors slamming.

Lance and the Armor had to stop. The knights didn’t rush. Their faces were stone masks, their auras heavy as winter. Each was Earth Tier. Their killing intent lay over Lance like an iron blanket.

Sweat pricked his scalp like needles. His heart stepped back, then back again.

He forced an easy stance, a laugh like dry leaves. “Hey. What’s this supposed to mean?”

The knights stood set, spears in the ground, no words given.

A cold draft scraped the valley. Lance kept the flippant tone, a reed bending instead of breaking. “This many of you. Throwing me a farewell party?”

Silence deepened, a dark lake under ice.

He kept talking, alone in the amphitheater of stone. “So many to see me off. The Empire thinks very highly of me, huh. Ha—ha.”

The laugh rang awkward, a cracked bell in a long minute.

Then a hulking knight stepped forward, different in the eyes and the weight of his breath, aura sharp and foul like a poisoned blade. His voice was clipped, official, a stamp on paper. “First time meeting. My name is Garris.”

Lance swallowed, throat dry as dust. He knew the name, ghost and echo. “You’re Lady Shadia’s knight?”

“Correct.”

“So she forgot to come see me off and sent you instead?” Lance tossed the line like a pebble skipping.

Garris gave a sound, half sneer, half pity, a cold chuckle like ice cracking. “My lady ordered me to kill you.”

“Why?” The word fell like a stone.

“Because you refused her invitation. You’re a threat. So I was sent to eliminate you,” he said, businesslike again, as if listing cargo.

“Why answer me?”

“So you can die understanding.” The sneer returned, a wolf showing teeth.

“I see…” Lance drew the Sirius Sword. Battle Aura flared like a blue flame along the blade, and his eyes went winter-cold.

Even with steel bared and aura lit, Garris didn’t advance. Neither did the others. Garris didn’t move a foot. “My lady said you might have some skill. She told us to be cautious.”

Lance grinned, thin as ice. “Afraid of the gift your lady gave me?”

He nodded at the Eternal War Armor beside him, steel giant breathing softly.

Garris laughed as if hearing a sky-sized joke. “Of course not.”

“I fear you’ll die without knowing how.” He smiled and snapped his fingers.

The crisp sound rang across the valley like a pebble dropping into a still pond.

Confusion rose in Lance, but instinct kicked like a horse. Above Garris and his squad, a killing intent slammed down, pure and razor-sharp.

He snapped his gaze up. On the ship, tiny lights glinted like stars. Lenses catching sun—sniper optics. The killing intent pointed where the light pointed.

He moved to undo the incarnation, to break the Dual Incarnation in the heartbeat he had—

Boom!!

Thunder cracked the valley. A single shot, a hammer striking the world.

A sniper round. It tore through the air and shattered his motion.

Lance clutched his side where it punched through, blood burning hot as spilled wine. He ground his teeth and glared at Garris. “You… coward…”

Garris frowned and pressed a finger to the communicator at his ear, voice clipped, annoyed thunder. “Why didn’t you hit the heart?”

His brow smoothed. He looked back at Lance, lips curled, voice cold as sleet. “Next shot goes for your head. Try dodging that.”

“Damn… you,” Lance hissed, words iron between teeth.

Inside, Fulin found no lever to pull. If Lance died here, she wouldn’t die, but if a deathblow landed, the record of the incarnation would vanish. Before, Fulin survived by undoing the Dual Incarnation in time, slipping the noose like smoke. This time, they weren’t giving her a breath.

One more shot anywhere, and “Lance” would be a body cooling on stone.

If “Lance” vanished, everything Fulin had built would fall like a sand tower.

Without this loud, bright skin called Lance, Fulin would never live quietly in plain sight again.

She would not allow it. Rage bubbled up, tar-black and bright with sparks, and she had no hand to stop it.

In that cornered instant, a terrible thought rose like a snake through grass.

If you won’t let me have peace, I’ll make you taste unrest without end…

The thought was revenge-born, twisted, a tunnel with no light.

If they fired in the next second, she’d make it real—

She would make all Nordland pay.

Yet just as darkness was washing over Lance’s eyes, a voice cut in like a blade of sunlight through cloud.

“I will not let you succeed!”

A dark gleam fell from the sky, like dusk dropping its curtain, and Shelika stepped in front of Lance like a blade of moonlight.

“What?!” Lance and Garris cried, their voices clashing like steel in a canyon.

But a sniper never stops for screams—the pinprick light on the distant airship winked again, like a cold star.

“Veil of Night!” Shelika knew this hunting method like a wolf knows tracks, so she raised a shield early, a night-silk dome unfurling.

Thunder rolled through the ravine, and her shield tilted the shot off-course like wind shearing a falcon; the miss slammed into stone and carved a grave-deep gouge in the rock face.

“Shelika, how did you—” Lance blurted, his heart tumbling like loose scree.

Garris’s voice crushed over his, face dark as a storm front. “Weren’t you in the interrogation room? How did you escape?” His words were knives thrown in shadow.

Shelika didn’t answer him; her own voice rang like a bell struck at dawn. “This one heard it! After the Blazing Fire Knight left, your master gave the kill order!”

“Hmph.” Garris laughed, cold and scornful, like frost on a blade.

“Then you die here too!” he howled, a jackal at midnight.

Almost at the same breath, the airship’s tiny light flickered again, a second fang poised; Shelika mirrored them, casting the advanced ward again—Veil of Night, a sable mantle swirling.

This time, the night couldn’t catch the bullet; it punched through her heart like ice through spring water.

A boom rolled across the gorge, and Shelika’s face went still as a frozen lake; then she collapsed into a pool of blood, a flower falling into red rain.

“Why!” Lance shouted, his voice breaking like a snapped bowstring.

He fell beside her, hands trembling like leaves in a gale. “Why would you do this?!”

“You know I can’t die!” he cried again, hope and anger knotting like thorns.

Even with his shouts ringing like bells, Shelika’s strength ebbed like tide at dusk, each breath a thinning thread.

On the brink, she spoke with a happiness soft as lantern light. “You finally… looked at me… for real…”

“Why run?! Why not do as I said? If you were going to die anyway, why die like this?!” His cry was rain on a stone shrine, helpless and hot.

Shelika only smiled, weak and warm as a hearth. “Because… you… want a peaceful life… right… so I…”

Her breath could no longer carry the words; it frayed like mist in sun. Her eyes dimmed like stars before dawn, all shapes blurring—except the knight boy, clear as a flame, his face so close it felt like an embrace.

It felt like that childhood dream, when a white-horse prince finally comes through the gate of morning.

Shelika gathered her last ember, lifted her hand, and touched the prince’s cheek, a feather brushing a bell.

“You… finally came…”

A long prayer took root and blossomed at last—she smiled, happy, at the edge of the night.

Lance laid Shelika from his arms to the ground, as gently as placing a flower on still water.

“Done saying your goodbyes?” Garris snapped, impatience cutting like sleet, while the sniper’s aim slid back onto Lance like a snake to prey.

“Yeah.” Lance’s calm was a deep well; the surface didn’t ripple.

“Then it ends.” Garris’s cruel smile opened like a coffin lid, a reaper’s verdict.

Yet with annihilation hanging like a moonless sky, Lance’s eyes lost their gloom; hope rose in them like a sunrise, fierce and gold. “I won’t let this end!”

He raised his right hand, index finger spearing the heavens, a lone man bracing against the gods like a mountain against storm.

The grandeur wasn’t for show; it was Fulin’s resolve burning like a brazier, and also the standard stance of the Dark Warrior’s ultimate art—Majesty Descends.

If the Dark Warrior’s talent, Dual Incarnation, takes an enemy’s full state and uses it like water drawn from a river, then Majesty Descends turns that stolen flow into numbers, forges it into steel, and gifts every strength back to the true body.

Yes—the true body.

It meant Fulin would temporarily bear Lance’s power, like a phoenix borrowing a dragon’s wind; she believed that was the cleanest end to this farce.

“Come!” Lance shouted, a torch to the sky.

Flames surged from his feet like a geyser of fire, wrapped him like a cocoon, and shot upward—then burst, a red sun blooming and going dark.

Garris blinked first in shock, then sneered like a wolf baring teeth. “Lost control and blew himself up, did he…”

Not so. The flames remained, falling like petals of ash; they pooled and hammered, reforging a golden body out of the fire like a statue cast in a furnace—

A girl stepped from the blaze, like Fulin grown into her future, every line bright as dawn on steel.

“Who are you?!” Garris’s scorn cracked into a gasp, part awe at her beauty like moon on snow, part fear at the force thrumming from her like thunder under earth.

Fulin gave no answer to wonder; she walked forward with quiet grace, footsteps like calm waves on black sand.

She took up the Sirius Sword, smile gentle yet sharp as a crescent blade; wind and flame curled to her like banners. “Are you ready to die, sinners?”