“What rule is it? Can you say it?” Lucimia asked, her words dropping like pebbles into a still pond.

“...I can’t.” Yuna shook her head, like a willow under a quiet breeze.

“What happens if you say it?” Her curiosity flared like a moth at a lantern.

“That... I can’t say either...” Yuna’s voice shrank, soft as drifting snow.

“All right.” Lucimia nodded, letting the matter sink like dusk into water. She pivoted, quick as a swallow: “Yuna, what’s your ability?”

“...” Yuna fell silent, her quiet pooling like shadow in a corner.

“That’s off-limits too?” Lucimia’s mouth fell open, surprise fluttering like a startled sparrow.

Great. Three questions, three walls, like gates shut under moonlight.

“No.” Yuna tipped her head back, thought moving like slow clouds. “This seems allowed by the rule—if someone else discovers my ability, I can tell them.” Her pause hung like mist. “My ability is—reversing time.”

“Reversing time...” It matched what Lucimia had guessed, a seed sprouting the shape she’d pictured.

“So, is this a Blessing from the God of Time?”

“...No.” Yuna denied it, firm as stone in a stream.

“Huh? Not even that? Why? It looks clearly tied to time.” Lucimia’s eyes widened, her hand rose to her mouth, confusion curling like smoke.

“I... don’t know how to say it...” Yuna tucked up her legs, arms around her knees, like a fawn hiding in grass.

“Lucimia, sis. In books, have you ever seen a Dark Deity whose Authority Power is time?” Yuna asked back, her gaze steady as moonlight.

“Seems... no.”

Lucimia raked old-book memories like fingers through sand. Nothing surfaced about a Dark Deity with Authority Power of Time.

Could it be unrecorded, like her own thread cut from the tapestry?

Then why not call it the God of Time?

“Right, at the end I heard Elyssus speak. It said your ability was a Blessing.”

“That’s wrong... I’m certain it’s absolutely not a Blessing.” Yuna’s tone left no gap, like iron latching shut. “So, your parents shouldn’t have memory. You remember because of Authority Power...”

“Then, are you a Dark Deity? Or is it Authority Power?” Lucimia blurted, shock flicking like lightning behind clouds.

If it’s Authority Power, then it explains why she remembers—Authority Power stirred it, not some Exemption Blessing.

“Not... exactly.” Yuna shook her head, like dew scattering. “I don’t know how to say it. This ability might fade, or it might evolve...” Her uncertainty drifted like fog over a river.

Hearing that, Lucimia’s curiosity sprang back, a cat at a rustling curtain.

“What does that mean?”

“The rule... I can only go this far.” Her words closed like a fan, cool and spare.

“Okay.”

Lucimia didn’t press. She swallowed her restless questions like hot tea cooling, maybe this was knowledge buried under altar stones—Dark Deities, Authority Power, and Blessings.

“So in the last cycle, why were only you and I not replaced? Was it my Authority Power?”

“Lucimia, sis. That night, you held me as we slept, so I wasn’t...” Yuna skirted the rule, like stepping round a bell without ringing it, and nudged the answer toward Lucimia.

“You held you? Holding you kept you from being replaced like me?” Lucimia blinked, wonder bubbling like spring water—her Authority Power felt like a trick with hidden gears.

But Yuna couldn’t say more, the rule was a locked gate in fog.

“Right, why did you appear on day one this time? That’s about this cycle, so you can say that, right?”

Lucimia spun topics like a dancer turning, quick and light.

Yuna kept pace with her leaps, like two swallows on the same wind.

“Mm-hmm. I heard those people wanted to offer a dead pig. I said they were dumb pigs, and sacrificing to the Pig Dark Deity would make it angry.” Her words pecked sharp, like a sparrow’s beak.

Dumb pigs? Lucimia hadn’t expected Yuna to insult anyone; the image wouldn’t land, like a kite without wind.

Still, if the black-robed cultists offered a dead pig, she would be angry too, her temper flaring like red embers.

“I also said, as a priestess, you should let me take the role.” Yuna’s cheek tilted, mischief glinting like a fish scale.

“And then?”

“Then they got mad and said they’d sacrifice me first.” Her tone fell flat, like a knife on a stone.

“Ah...” Lucimia’s laughter rose, then she smothered it with a sleeve like snuffing a candle. Joking about sacrifices felt wrong, a chill under warm silk.

The first questions sat answered like folded letters, but once Lucimia’s ten-thousand-whys switch clicked, it spun like a waterwheel and wouldn’t stop.

She leaned in, her pretty face close as a flower to morning dew. She meant to ask more, but she noticed a faint blush on Yuna’s face, rose-petal soft, and saw that only bandages covered the essential places, pale as cloth under moonlight.

At this distance, Lucimia felt Yuna’s breath brush her skin, a small tide of warmth; the other girl would feel hers too, two breezes meeting at a reed bank.

Yuna realized how close Lucimia was and tilted her head, shy as a sparrow.

“What... is it?”

Lucimia’s next question paused. A flicker of playfulness woke in her, like a fox in bamboo.

Before learning she was a Dark Deity, before the octopus incident, she lived easy as a lazy fish in sunlit water—playful spirit, a pinch of clever mischief, little tricks to salt life.

Back in the first cycle, the night she first dreamed of the altar, she’d stuck out her tongue at the priestess, a cheeky face like a cat at a window, to test if the priestess could see her.

Back then, her heart was still placid as a temple pond.

Later, crisis stacked like storm clouds. The playfulness sank under waves, leaving only panic, dread, and fretful heat.

Now, in the second cycle, with a way to solve the octopus, she loosened like a knot undone; playfulness rose again like spring grass.

She chose silence and drew closer, inch by inch, like tide coming over sand.

“Lucimia, sis?”

Lucimia still didn’t speak. She slid one leg between Yuna’s, slow as a silk ribbon.

Yuna’s mouth parted. She scooted back in a small flurry, like a rabbit startled. “Lucimia, sis? What are you doing?”

Lucimia said nothing. She set both hands on Yuna’s shoulders and lowered herself, light as snowfall.

“Lucimia, sis?!” Panic bent Yuna’s voice oddly, like a reed under wind.

Her hands clamped around Lucimia’s wrists, pale fingers tight as vines.

Lucimia kept silent and pressed down a little more, a shadow easing closer.

Yuna couldn’t hold it. She blurted fast, words tumbling like beads: “Lucimia, sis, don’t come so close.”

“Why?” Lucimia finally spoke, a smile shading her tone like sun through leaves.

“Because... I haven’t bathed...” Yuna whispered, turning her pink face aside, shy as dawn.

“Hm? Heh-heh. What are you imagining?” Lucimia covered her mouth, laughter twinkling like chimes.

“...” Yuna said nothing. Lucimia withdrew, reset her posture, and hugged her knees, calm as a folded fan.

No anger. Her temper was a gentle stream.

Lucimia asked, curious as a child catching fireflies: “In previous cycles, were we... really close?”

“...Mm.” Yuna nodded, small and certain as a pebble.

No wonder.

No wonder Yuna yielded so easily—there was a foundation, old warmth like tea in clay.

She tucked away her playfulness. The wheel of whys kept turning; questions rose like stars.

“Right, Yuna, how did you get your ability? How do you use it?”

“About that.” Yuna cleared her throat, voice steadying like a lantern, and told what she could, slow as grains poured from a jar, to sate Lucimia’s curiosity.

Earlier, Lucimia had learned Yuna was abducted to Kalan Village when she was little. In that place, suffering piled like stones, and thoughts of ending it whispered like cold wind at midnight.

One day, she stood on a cliff, the brink cutting the sky like a blade. Her sight was normal then. She leaned out and glanced into the bottomless abyss—one look, and her heart thumped hard, drums in a storm.

She couldn’t stand being used as brute labor anymore—no, worse than labor. Labor had wages, a sliver of rights. She slept with pigs, her dignity trampled like straw.

Against that weight, ending it felt lighter, like stepping off a heavy cart.

With that thought, she gathered courage like twigs for a fire and leaped.

Her body spun in the air, a falling leaf without control. Misfortune stuck to her like burrs—she couldn’t even die cleanly.

On landing, the ground’s thin spike pierced her eyes, pain flaring bright for one heartbeat and vanishing, because her awareness scattered like ash.

But she didn’t die. In the next blink, she woke. She opened her eyes and stood again on the cliff, wind licking her cheeks like a cold cat.

Then rules surfaced in her mind, runes like frost. And her ability unveiled itself like moon from cloud.

The rules didn’t tell her how to use it.

She learned it through cycles repeating like a millwheel.

After waking, even knowing her ability, she jumped again. This time she didn’t reach the ground. She snapped back to the cliff, stunned, like a bird finding itself in the same tree.

She tried to sit and think. The instant she sat, she blinked—and she was standing again. Time folded like paper.

Loop after loop taught her the truth: it was her eyes.

As long as her eyes touched light, the ability fired on its own, a spring that released the moment sun kissed water.

Maybe heaven didn’t want her to toss her life away, a hand in mist turning her path. She chose to believe that. At last she eased, like a knot melting. She put on a black blindfold, a night ribbon, to keep light from triggering the power without control.

Soon after she gained her ability, Lucimia’s believers kidnapped her, rough hands like nets, and dragged her into the tangled path ahead.