Lucimia judged that Anliena, as an Investigator, would check who she was the moment her memories were purged, like a hawk confirming its shadow at dawn.

For an Investigator that’s the sharpest blade, and from there Anliena would hold a mountain‑high edge on the board.

At that thought, Lucimia chose to stage a script that flowed downhill like water, a river that needed only one net at the end.

She’d kill Anliena in the final act, seize Time Halt, and block the scapegoat gambit like shutting a gate on fleeing goats.

First, she picked seven designated targets, seven candles to snuff in a single night.

She wouldn’t swing the knife herself; she’d just tie each death to her wrist with a visible thread.

The three merchants would die by Rexi’s hand, a borrowed blade sliding through silk.

But who should be the fourth, and how to turn that page without a crease?

A neat trick flashed in her mind, like flint on dry tinder: she could forge a guilty man with her own hands.

She knew the dockworker was a reed in the wind, coerced, unpaid, no accomplice, too light for ten years on the scales.

So after Rexi cut down the three merchants like wheat, Lucimia found the dockworker in the fog by the piers.

She wore the mask of an Investigator and asked his cooperation, whispering a knife: the merchants were silenced, and he could be next.

He froze like a rabbit under a hawk’s shadow, and fear choked him blue.

Lucimia offered an umbrella in a storm—do as I say and you’ll be safe—and he nodded like a bobbing buoy.

She made him watch as she and Rexi entered the merchants’ place, two ghosts through a paper door.

She told him to report the case at three in the morning, a clock dripping like eaves.

But she forbade him to speak of their link, a silk thread around his throat—break it and he dies.

That way she could step around Luwens’s Duel‑questions like avoiding a tiger trap in tall grass.

From here the road was straight after fog, a line drawn with a ruler.

Rexi would kill the three merchants, and if Anliena heard and used it to smear Lucimia, the inked script would play as seen in memory.

If Anliena didn’t use it, Lucimia would crack thunder first and smear her anyway, a strike before clouds gathered.

To avoid getting pinned by a Duel herself, Lucimia had Rexi purge her memories, like tide washing footprints from sand.

With the memory wrong, no question could pierce it, arrows failing in a wall of mist.

Yet a thorn pricked—what if, after the purge, Anliena didn’t smear her; how would she still turn the wheel?

Simple, like setting two hourglasses out of sync: Rexi would prompt her, and also return to the guest room first, feigning the purge.

Lucimia would arrive later; Rexi would wipe her then, two footsteps staggered on a stone path.

On waking, the Investigator rule—don’t kill the innocent—would gleam like carved jade in her mind.

She’d think Investigators only kill the guilty, and suspect she was one, a mirror catching the sun.

Once she believed that, water would follow its channel, and she’d smear Anliena on her own.

To drive the nail in, Rexi went back early while Lucimia lagged, opening a gap like night between two lamps.

Lucimia would notice the mismatch between purge time and deaths, a warp in the cloth.

She’d assume she likely killed the merchants, then shake off the serial‑killer label with loud accusations, a drumbeat in a crowded street.

By then the script’s seals were stamped in red wax, and the dockworker danced on strings.

Lucimia would doubt Anliena in public, and Luwens would bring out Duel‑questions like drums on the field.

She had primed the dockworker: if something feels wrong, run like a river; if you refuse to answer, you won’t die.

She’d protect him like a shield, have him rush into the shop to take a hostage, and make demands under a swinging lamp.

She claimed she’d already spoken with the Enforcement Squad, their nods like helmets in a row, and they would agree.

Then he’d leave by carriage, and the mastermind would surface to silence him, a shark breaking water.

She’d coordinate with the squad and net the mastermind, the whole thing a lantern‑lit play with masks.

Afterwards, silver would clink like rain on tiles.

In short, she lied and lured him with a swaying light in the fog.

He did as told, and the river carried him; he ended up bolstering the instigator Lucimia in testimony, a pawn on record.

Trying to escape, he grabbed a child like a drowning man clutching reeds.

By procedure, Luwens’s men shot him down, a sparrow cut mid‑flight by thunder.

The dockworker’s blood stained Lucimia’s sleeve by design, a red thread she’d tied.

That made four candles dim, a quarter of the altar dark.

Anliena sensed the wrongness like cold wind under a door, and she demanded a Duel to question Lucimia.

Lucimia’s purged mind became a clean mirror; any answer she gave was true—she really didn’t know the dockworker.

Four were set like stones; the remaining three would rest on Rexi’s hand, a blade above a knot.

It wasn’t hard work; it only asked whether she dared cross the narrow bridge.

Lucimia told Rexi to kill the tavern server, and to be cruel, a spill of wine turning to blood.

That way Rexi’s own sins would weigh for ten years or even death, the scales groaning.

Then Rexi would poison herself, a bitter almond on the tongue, and die like a candle pinched out.

Before that, Lucimia would cut down the mastermind Anliena, a final stroke across silk.

That was Lucimia’s finished tapestry, threads tight on the loom.

As she’d predicted, whoever held the serial killer identity could harvest all in a single day, no cooldown shackles, one sun’s arc and seven heads.

With Duel victory sealed and Time Halt in her pocket like a cold star, Lucimia spared the hollow‑eyed Anliena one glance.

She let the chair scrape like winter wind and moved to leave.

Hearing the chair’s scrape, Anliena snapped up like a startled sparrow.

“W‑wait!” she blurted, her breath fogging like dawn on glass.

“What?” Rexi’s voice came out like the edge of a knife.

“A bet’s a bet, right? You’re not asking for another Duel to win it back, are you?” she tossed like dice across wood.

“No…” Anliena’s tone sagged like a wilted lotus beneath rain.

She knew a hundred Duels wouldn’t break the stone wall that was Lucimia.

Her scapegoat gambit lay torn like a ripped mask, and more Duels were cold stage lights.

“Then what do you want?” Lucimia asked, an arrow resting on the string.

“I… I…” Anliena fumbled, a fish gasping on wet boards with vines at her throat.

She wanted a favor, but the words stuck like thorns.

After losing, asking help felt like begging at a locked gate in winter.

Lucimia watched in silence for two heartbeats, a drum in a quiet hall, then spoke.

“You want me to save your father, don’t you?” Her words threaded the needle, silk drawn tight.

Anliena stiffened like ice cracking and answered slow, “Yes… we can resume our cooperation… whatever you need, I’ll try.”

“You can’t give me anything,” Lucimia said, a stone door closing without echo.

The harshness tasted like bitter tea, and Anliena’s heart shrank like a leaf in frost.

Money? Lucimia had coffers like a sealed vault; magic? Lucimia’s art stood like a mountain over a hill.

What else—seduction, a scented hook—woman or man, a perfumed snare in the reeds?

She didn’t know; all she could do was pray at a cold shrine for mercy, incense twisting like smoke.

So she rose and bowed her head, a shadow kneeling under a thin moon. “Please, save my father.”

Lucimia’s face stayed still as a frozen lake, neither yes nor no.

Rexi glanced at her, eyes rolling like marbles, fingers at her chin like a cat batting string.

“Is that how you ask for help?” she joked, tossing a spark into dry grass.

“Show some chest to prove sincerity, got it? Lucimia loves that—make her happy and she might help!”

Lucimia’s eyes flew wide like an owl at noon, then she stared at Rexi, stunned.

“When did I ever say I like that?” Her words cracked like ice.

“Uh… fine, I made it up,” Rexi chuckled, a thin sound like a sparrow.

“I just saw it in a book…” she added, scratching her cheek like brushing dust.

“A book? What book says that?” Lucimia’s brows knit like crossed twigs.

“Bring it here,” she said, ruler‑sharp, a teacher tapping the desk.

She frowned and fixed Rexi with a stern gaze, bamboo rod over stool, an adult lecturing a child.

Only this “adult” stood a head shorter than the “child,” a small pine shading a taller sapling.