Lucimia and Desty each led a horse, their boots biting into snow like stamps on white rice paper. Behind them, a half-dead man bumped along, Desty dragging him by the collar like a sack through frost.

The village elder saw them return and hurried over with a knot of people, breath steaming like kettles under eaves.

“Are you two alright? Want hot soup? Uh… can you drink it?”

“Did you catch the man?”

Seeing concern ripple and questions clatter like sleet on tiles, Lucimia glanced at Desty. Desty understood and hauled the mangled man forward, dropping him to the ground like wet timber.

Lucimia said to the elder, voice cool as a winter blade. “He’s the one who controlled the beasts and attacked the village. We caught him. He’s yours to deal with.”

Villagers leaned in, faces pale as frost. One look, and shock slammed them like a bucket of river ice. They saw his features and froze, eyes widening.

Lucimia noticed the shiver in the crowd, a small current under still water. “What is it?”

“This—this… isn’t this Abiao?!” The elder’s voice trembled like a reed in wind. “Bloodkin ladies, you didn’t… catch the wrong man, did you?”

“Yeah… Abiao’s always been a simple, honest lad,” someone said, memory glowing like a dwindling hearth. “He used to help everyone. How could he do this?”

Honest? Was he once that? Then somehow he learned hidden things, like wind whispering from a black ravine, and changed.

The elder filled the silence, words falling like slow snow. “Abiao’s the original owner of the cabin you’re staying in…”

At that, Lucimia let her gaze rest on the man, eyes as chill as ice under moonlight.

“You two… didn’t make a mistake?” The elder’s disbelief fluttered like a trapped moth.

Lucimia looked at his doubt and kept it simple. “Ask him yourself if you don’t believe.”

The elder’s eyes dropped to Abiao. His limbs were all broken, blood and snow marbling his body like red veining through white stone. His eyes stayed shut; only a thin winter breath showed life, a puff like smoke from a dying ember.

It was life, but barely—the kind that clings like frost to reeds.

The elder saw the lad he remembered, rough kindness warm as rice in calloused hands. He weighed his words, then asked, trembling, “Abiao… were those beasts brought here by you?”

Abiao heard and forced his head up, lids lifting like heavy doors. He looked at the elder’s weathered face, then at Lucimia standing like a night blade. He drew several deep breaths, each one a white cloud in the cold—

“Yes—” he coughed, voice cracking like thin ice. “Yes, I controlled them! I did it for everyone’s good! And—she is… uh! Woo-woo—”

He didn’t finish. Lucimia only narrowed her eyes, and the Fuzzy Orb slid along his neck like a shadow thread. It Devoured his speech; what remained was a muffled woo-woo, a broken reed in wind.

Abiao glared at Lucimia, eyes blood-red, swollen like berries ready to burst, as if he’d bite her down to bone.

Lucimia gave him one cold glance, then spoke to the villagers, words dropping like icicles. “That’s that. He admitted it.”

She clicked the reins and walked away, leaving neat prints in fresh snow like seals on paper.

Desty looked at the villagers, then at Lucimia. She sighed, a mist ribbon uncoiling, and followed.

“Lucimia…” Desty tried to speak, but her words froze, thin as icicles.

“…”

Lucimia didn’t answer. She kept walking, a knot of irritation gnawing like a thorn under skin. Her mood churned like wind over black water.

The man’s choice plucked a buried string. Abiao had been the honest lad, the helper through lean seasons. Then he learned secrets from nowhere, like a gull snatching a letter in storm seas, and his nature cracked.

Maybe he sought ways to fight the Dark Deity. Maybe he joined someone, a shadow circle, and fought in the dark. Every attempt failed. After losing everything, he chose the most hateful yet most helpless path—kill the villagers.

Kill the villagers, and the Dark Deity can’t absorb energy. Without energy, the Dark Deity can’t stir the waves.

And Nirael’s plan with hers was the same—kill innocent villagers, take their energy, and turn it against the Dark Deity, like fire stolen from frost.

Lucimia still didn’t know what a Dark Deity truly was. Was she one as well? Nirael said no. What about Ment? What about Elyssus? Surely they counted, didn’t they?

Sometimes she thought Nirael might be right. Maybe none of them were Dark Deities. Maybe “Dark Deity” was just a human name for those with special Authority Power, a mask carved by fear.

Where do these powers come from? From rules? Who wrote those rules? Who grants the Authority Power reward to the final victor, like a seal pressed at the end of a scroll?

“Dark Deity, huh…” A faint guess rose in her chest, smoke under snow.

She felt the man was right, and wrong. He had only that path, no other. She stopped him; yet—

“I’m saving people, too. I’m not wrong… whether killing the man who tried to cut off the Dark Deity’s energy, or killing innocent villagers here and elsewhere—I’m not wrong…”

“I want to find Yuna and bring her home. I want to stay forever with my family and the one I love, in a warm house bright with laughter, not freeze under this heavy snow. Everything I do is to pass the trial under the rules of the Temporal Authority. Yes, that’s it. Everything else has nothing to do with me.”

Her last life was hard as stone. Why must this one be hard too? To her, this is only an other world. Her heart belongs to the original world. Nirael wants to save this world; she doesn’t. She’s only helping Nirael along the way. Nirael will pay for the time-acceleration ability, coin for sand in the hourglass.

If she can live this stretch of life well, that’s enough.

Maybe the Temporal Authority will even send her back, like a tide turning.

In the end, Lucimia chose her former self again. Yet she wasn’t that old version who did neither wrong nor right. A thin change ran through her like a dark vein beneath snow.

Desty trailed behind. She couldn’t hear Lucimia’s murmurs, but instinct tapped her spine like cold rain. Lucimia had become a little terrifying.

——

After the two Bloodkin girls left, the village elder crouched, eyes dim as winter coals. He looked close at the drained Abiao.

“Abiao, tell me true. The beasts—did you really control them?”

Abiao nodded, a slow fall like a leaf in frost.

The elder and the villagers still couldn’t believe, hearts buzzing like winter flies.

“Abiao, you must be bewitched, right? By those… Dark Deities? Yes, Dark Deities. You were controlled, weren’t you?”

Abiao shook his head, stiff as frozen reeds by the river.

“Then… why did you do this?” The elder’s grief cracked like thawing ice. Two lines of tears slid; he covered his eyes with rough hands.

The villagers cried too, tears bright as cold dew on stone.

Seeing them cry, Abiao let out woo-woo sounds, urgent and raw. He used the only thing left—his head. First he nodded toward the people, then he jerked it toward the far edge of the village, like an arrow in snow.

He tried to tell them to run. The rat swarm was almost here. Don’t stay.

They didn’t understand. They thought it was pain twitching like nerves under ice. They lifted Abiao and carried him back to the village, silent as falling snow.

In the end, Abiao cried too, his tears mixing with red and white, like meltwater bleeding across a winter field.