Ebra sat upright in the chair, but his calm was a painted lake over boiling springs.

The teacup rested to one side like a cooling moonstone, while his fingertip drummed a lazy beat on the wine-dark table.

Not just the table—the floor tiles, the ceiling, the curtains, the wall lamps, even the porcelain cup in his hand—everything in the parlor wore the same dried-blood red, like lacquer that never cured.

That tide of blood-red flooded his sight and crawled over his skin like cold ants.

Worst was the scarlet blood-phoenix hanging dead center on the hall wall—a phoenix soaring while gnawing its own tail, House Niefeng’s crest—like a thorn pressed into his eye.

He cursed the perverse crest, and cursed his own rotten luck, the way a traveler curses a sudden squall.

He had only taken the Commissioner’s seat of the Capital Constabulary last month, and his old superior had painted it sweet—easy oil, easy hours, a life like warm embers.

For a while it held true; few dared make trouble in the capital, and those who committed real blasphemy got sent to the Mage Tower’s battle mages, like storms handed to stormcatchers.

Who knew a month wouldn’t even pass before a mountain fell on his head.

The Sacred Arena—hundreds, guards and commoners alike—reduced to snot-and-tears by a large-scale mental spell, like wheat flattened by hail.

He got the call, sprinted over, and went blank at the scene; only a name on the Rankings could throw a net that wide.

If that powerhouse had killed, it’d be another office’s storm; but he’d killed no one, so it got stamped “public order” and tossed in Ebra’s lap like a hot coal.

Rotten luck—trouble that comes once in centuries, and I catch it like a stray arrow.

Worse—Ark Felix of House Niefeng got tangled in it too, like a fish in the wrong wave.

From the marks, Ebra could swear the powerhouse hadn’t targeted Ark; the poor bastard was just caught in the splash.

But the Niefeng matriarch wouldn’t see it that way. That domineering Crimson Blossom—who crushed the capital’s young nobles until they dimmed like stars before dawn—was barely past twenty and already a Saint; even old lions kept their claws in.

That red-haired woman had never known being pressed, only pressing; who’d dare touch her people—her most “beloved” little brother?

Sure enough, she sent out that maniac who sits near the top of the capital’s bounty slate—Silver.

As for the ending? By now, the whole capital knew; a living person got skewered out of the sky and nailed to Imperial Square like a banner.

Lucky, at least, the square wasn’t crowded.

Ebra, truth be told, had laughed into his sleeve; never mind he too belonged to the “bullied young nobles.”

Take Silver—no one could count her bloody cases; more than one village lay under her knife, her hands washed only by holy water, if at all. She stormed the capital later, skinned nobles alive with a butcher’s patience, and finally got subdued by the Crimson Blossom, who then shouldered every pressure and kept that monster breathing.

Subdued was subdued; washed clean was impossible. But under House Niefeng’s shadow—under that woman—the constables learned to turn one eye blind and the other bleary.

Still, grudges remained; during the old manhunt, more than a handful of their own died under her blade, a debt like iron frozen in winter.

So when she got speared from the clouds, the entire constabulary laughed like a blocked river finally breaking.

Now Ebra couldn’t laugh at all.

He hadn’t wanted to step into House Niefeng at all, but duty is a collar; so many were involved, even if they were nameless commoners. It happened at the Sacred Arena; as Commissioner, he had to put on a show for His Majesty, at least like ink on ice.

Clang—

A heavy metal fall snapped Ebra out of his drifting, like thunder cracking a frozen lake.

He jolted, vision dimming, and looked up into a shadow coming down like a stormfront.

Inside the shadow, a red glowed that made the bones feel winter.

Crimson Blossom.

Blood-red armor, a blood-red helm, blood-red hair, and eyes behind the heavy plating like fire cooled into ruby stone.

Even at a glance, the reek of blood rolled at him like a crashing tide.

He didn’t doubt the smell at all—this redhead might trail Silver in body count, but every life she took was an absolute powerhouse, names chiseled on the continent’s stones.

Crimson Blossom wasn’t self-styled; she carved it with a crimson spear and cemented it with blood.

The rumor was true—this maniac wore armor at home too, ready to kill at every bell—or be killed.

His heart hammered like fists on a drum; he swallowed with a dry click, pushed down the terror rising like cold fog, and dragged his lips open—only for her to cut him off.

“I’ll take responsibility.”

Her voice came out of the cold armor flat and buzzing, as if brushed by iron and brine, low, icy, hoarse—and beyond dispute.

It sounded like a spear scraping a blood-slicked stone altar.

Just the sound sent a chill through his hands and feet, dizziness swaying like a mast in gale.

“That black-haired boy, and—”

Her blood-red eyes pinned Ebra like a nail.

“the Hero King’s side—”

“I’ll handle it.”

“You’d better. Stay away.”

With those scarlet eyes on him, he felt like prey under an abyssal leviathan; darkness dropped, his breath stalled, and his head nodded by itself, like a reed before wind.

He left like a soul stepped out of him and walked, said nothing, and drifted past House Niefeng’s boundary like fog sliding off a hill.

Only outside did he shiver and feel his soul slam back into his ribs.

A gust hit; cold ran over him like water; his clothes were soaked in cold sweat, as if he’d been hauled from a river at night.

“H—how—” His hands shook, his face white as chalk. “How can she be this strong?!”

Even old Saint-tier powerhouses he’d visited with his father had never pressed him like that—never like sky on shoulders.

It was an ant staring up at a behemoth across a canyon; how could the gap be this vast?

He didn’t even dare glance back at the gate and the phoenix-devouring-its-tail crest hanging high.

A thought leapt up and iced his spine.

“Facing such a forceful Crimson Blossom, will the already-fading Hero King line… vanish for good this time?”

…

…

Nightfall.

A blue moon hung high, and the stars hid like embers under ash.

The capital’s strict curfew emptied the streets; silence lay like frost.

Imperial Square sprawled even grander for the lack of people, a dry sea of stone.

In its heart stood the golden statue of the founding emperor, Louis I; moonlight glazed it like milk, declaring imperial majesty like a lighthouse in a cold bay.

The statue soared three stories high, and beside it stood a sword of equal height, planted like a glacier.

The giant blade was half transparent, hilt up, tip down—driven through a woman with silver hair.

Silver was still trapped here.

The blade split her along the spine and parted her like a zipper of light, then plunged straight into the stone, nailing her to earth like a fallen star.

The wound hadn’t closed. Blood kept running, then clotted, then ran again, slowly lacquered into a shallow red basin around the statue, like a painter’s wash over stone.

Even a great beast would have died bleeding so; she hadn’t.

She still struggled, drawing the power of the silver sword into herself like a slow, stubborn tide.

The process dragged longer than she’d thought.

Slow, yes, but she could feel the giant sword’s power being threaded into her body, strand by strand. It might take days, like winter thawing a stream.

It didn’t daunt her. She had weathered every Misfortune—cruel and long—and survived, and paid him back a hundredfold, a thousandfold, ten thousandfold, a billion-fold, like a debt with interest that devoured the principal.

So she did not fear. To live, she could endure anything.

Yet it had been too long since she tasted pain like this; the strangeness brought back a long-lost cold, like stepping into a house left unheated for years.

It was a true cold—skin, blood, bone, every cell shivering like reeds under a winter wind.

Blue moonlight washed her profile and the blood around her, and her face flickered blue to red like a drowned lantern.

She drifted, light-headed; torn spine mended and tore again, a ceaseless thorn in her nerves. Moonlight, blood, stone—different textures, the same chill. Darkness, no one around; the world felt emptied until only she remained like a stranded island.

It all dovetailed with the black room in her memory—the little pitch-dark room that kept her twelve years, a coffin that breathed.

Nightfall dead and still. The desolate beast crouched at the bottom of her heart roared without sound—the cowardice and pain she thought she’d shed like old skin.

Terror crept over her face, and the past she thought buried swelled in without a splash, a tide that drowns without foam.

She was twelve.

She’d never seen the sun.

…

…

“No, no, no—”

The painful memory leapt like a fanged beast when she was weakest, and bit into a wound that had never healed.

Like waves, like a landslide, like a sudden storm, it swallowed Silver’s body and heart whole, dragging her down like a hook into a trench.

It pulled her back to that black room crowded with instruments—and her own dissected organs gleaming like wet fruit.

“Don’t—!”

Just as it was about to yank her all the way into that hell, a gentle voice brushed her ear and snapped the line.

“Don’t what?”

She knew that voice.

It was the black-haired boy who had speared her from the sky that morning.

Her eyes flew open, terror still wet in them, and in their glass she saw the boy’s face reflected.

He crouched beside her, smiling as he took in her pallid face, cold sweat beaded like dew on porcelain.

The smile was paper-thin, yet it overflowed with bottomless night.

He reached out and gently lifted sweat-damp silver strands, revealing those eyes, their pupils quivering like leaves in a cold wind.

“Bad dream?” the black-clad Demon King asked, his voice soft as falling ash.

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