Cerise matched Shelika’s beauty, yet her figure was slimmer, a winter reed against Shelika’s storm-bent willow.

That slightness forged a different kind of allure—cool and pristine—an ice lily opening in a north wind, a frost-white crystal that kept touch at bay yet seized every gaze.

In temperament, Cerise stood as Shelika’s opposite, two moons on either side of a night sky.

Most people, on a first glance alone, took Cerise for a pure Blood Clan maiden, a snowfall unmarked by footprints.

Thanks to the memory echoes of the body’s former owner, Shelika knew better—like the taste of iron on the tongue after a bite too hard.

If Shelika hid tenderness inside cruelty, then Cerise hid cruelty inside spotless purity, a velvet glove wrapped over a blade; when it came to ends-over-means, almost no one surpassed her.

The former owner knew so much because Cerise was her political foe, a thorn veined in ice.

It wasn’t strange. Within the Dark Blood Clan, philosophies and backers split them into many currents, like rivers breaking around black rock.

Sixty years ago—Shelika didn’t know today’s map—the Dark Blood Clan also split over how to raise their standing in the Empire, into a conservative tide and a radical tide.

Cerise belonged to the conservatives, the steady hand that moved like winter sun.

Conservative meant aligning with the Shadowspirit Legion’s campaigns, earning merit to rise; safe, yet too reliant on Earth-dwellers and abyssal fiends—called, by rivals, the kowtow camp, like kneeling to drink brackish water.

The radicals were Queen-led, a wildfire that held most of the valley.

Radicals claimed the Dark Blood Clan could serve the Empire without leaning on others, a creed that flattered their pride; opponents named them the arrogance camp, a falcon staring down the plain.

As for the former Shelika, she backed neither banner; her heart was a quiet room between thunderstorms.

Even then, the Dark Blood Clan’s situation looked grim, a sky of low cloud that wouldn’t break.

In a way, faction battles drove the former Shelika to leave, and steered every choice after, like currents pulling a boat toward fog.

Before things soured, Cerise had been Shelika’s intimate friend; then conflicts piled like snow, and friendship turned to iron-cold enmity.

Politics is a bitter complexity, a cup that stains the tongue.

Its bitterness can rot long friendship into deep, enduring hate, a vine that strangles the old arbor.

Even if the former Shelika is gone, and Fulin bears no grudge, Shelika knew the other side wouldn’t think the same; old frost still bites.

Shelika watched the group warily, her gaze a blade on Cerise. Her voice carried a knot of feelings as she spoke. “Cerise, after sixty years… you’ve become a priest of the Crimson Temple.”

Heh heh… “Shelika, you’ve changed plenty too… You, the one who prized bloodline above all, took in some impure-blooded thing as your retainer, playing house—do you just love being ‘Elder Sister,’ heh heh…”

Shelika raised True Crimson Whirl, pointing its tip at Cerise like a scarlet needle in moonlight. Her voice cut cold. “So. Do you need something from me? If not, move aside. Or don’t blame me if I stop being polite.”

Heh heh… “Shelika, it seems you’ve changed more than I thought. In Doran for sixty years—what did you weather in that long winter?”

Shelika’s grip tightened on True Crimson Whirl’s hilt, knuckles pale as chalk. “Enough talk.”

Heh heh… “Don’t rush. For the sake of our old friendship, I’ll be direct.”

Cerise slid a graceful arm from her robe, moon-pale and smooth, and with a gentle motion aimed her well-kept fingertips at the girl hiding behind Shelika. “Hand me that Blood Clan girl. Let her become my thrall.”

At those words, Charlotte, who’d peeked out, shrank back fully behind Shelika, trembling like a fledgling under stormlight.

Shelika’s voice pressed low, a drum under velvet. “Must you do this?”

Not necessarily… Cerise—the pure ice lily—let her half-lidded eyes open, frost clearing into glass.

She studied Shelika—first the fine features, then lower, to the soft blush at her neck and shoulder, a petal warmed by breath. After a few seconds of almost-speaking, she murmured, light as falling snow. “I am your old friend, after all. If you come with me to the temple, if you’ll speak with me through the night, recalling our past like lanterns on a lake… then this becomes negotiable.”

Shelika held her gaze, an arrow drawn and stilled, for several seconds.

“I understand.” She lowered the sword, a measured concession in the dark.

Charlotte burst into tears on the spot, rain on silk. “Elder Sister, don’t! It’s Charlotte’s fault—it must be something Charlotte did wrong!”

She leaned out, pleading with both hands like willow branches. “Please don’t take Elder Sister away! Please!”

Cerise’s flawless face curved at the corner, a hand half-hiding a smile. Heh heh… “Impure bloodline or not, the feeling is sincere. Such a considerate little sister. Such moving sisterly love…”

Shelika stepped to Charlotte, bent slightly, brought her face close, her whisper warm as a hearth. “Charlotte, listen to me. Go back to the inn and wait for me, alright?”

“Elder Sister…” Charlotte searched her eyes, a deer in dawn mist, then lowered her head. “Alright. Charlotte understands…”

Heh heh…

So Shelika went alone, following the group into Temple Street, her shadow stretched like ink.

On the way, as if fearing she’d run, several acolytes watched her tightly, hawks around a hare.

In the Holy City’s Temple Street, the Crimson Temple rivaled the Earth Mother’s outer hall in grandeur; at night, its outer walls shone with rose-colored divinity, a deep crimson blaze that felt sacred and strange, like wine catching starlight.

Shelika looked up at the Crimson Temple, and a nameless tension rose in her chest, a taut string you can’t see.

Neither Shelika nor the Fulin inside her could explain it; the feeling was smoke from a hidden ember.

She followed them in.

A short corridor opened into the temple’s great hall, a cavern of red light and quiet.

Crimson Temple—true to its name—was dedicated to Margaret, Goddess of Blood, an altar like a frozen wave.

Margaret, the Blood Goddess, is the ancestral deity of all Blood Clan in the Dark Spirit Empire; those who choose her faith and accept her boon gain stronger bloodline power, a river pushed by moon-tide.

The Holy City’s Crimson Temple isn’t the main seat; that lies in the First City. This is but a branch, a crimson leaf on a larger tree.

Even so, it was no less grand—Blood Clan elders pour wealth into offerings to the Blood Goddess, and this branch gleamed with that devotion, gold like sunrise across lacquer.

The temple’s duties ran wide; inside was a small community of the Dark Blood Clan: chapels, blood banks, blood-made goods, blood adornments—commerce like veins pulsing through a body.

At night, lamps blazed, a firmament of tiny suns.

As Shelika entered, eyes turned, like reeds bending toward a breeze.

“Oh—it’s Lady Cerise!”

Her presence drew worshipful looks; in the Holy City’s Dark Blood circle, her prestige ran deep, a river under the ice.

Then gazes found Shelika, and their colors tangled, clouds crossing the moon.

“That’s…”

“The Queen’s third child. Shelika…”

“She… has returned…”