Sin · 450 — Wounding the Heart of the One You Love!
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Ling stared at Sin Ling, shock rattling in her chest like a dropped bell, the playfulness in her heart folding shut like a fan edged with frost.
No one crosses another’s bottom line; hers was a dragon’s reverse scale, a scar sealed in an iron box, a stupid relic from her edgy teenage storm.
She could joke with Sin Ling, fake pain, even take a hit by choice, but not that taboo scale; Sin Ling had brushed it with a blade of ice.
“Extreme Magic Cannon—Full Output!”
Her hand shaped a pistol; her index finger leveled at Sin Ling’s brow, green orbs swarming to her fingertip like fireflies drawn to a spring.
The target was “herself,” yet she knew it wasn’t her strength; she’d end it with her strongest cannon, first-time unleashed, like lightning deciding a storm.
Ten seconds; her finger drowned in emerald light, the aura trembling like a taut bowstring, the magic humming with a predator’s breath.
Sin Ling wouldn’t wait in courtesy while Ling charged; she flipped open [Sin], a red-bound tome heavy as a brick, its one page sharp as a guillotine.
She watched Ling for a few seconds, counted the beats like a drummer, then declared [Punishment], voice cold as winter steel.
“I proclaim—[Punishment]: Slay the one who loves you.”
The timing struck true; the green cannon bucked loose, a needle-thin beam snapping from her fingertip with a zzzt, fast as a shooting star.
Sin Ling’s face held no fear, only a playful, dangerous curve, like a fox stepping through moonlight toward a snare it set itself.
When the beam hung one centimeter from her brow, Sin Ling’s face shimmered, flickered, then bloomed into a grown maiden—fire-red hair, passionate red eyes, a sunrise sharpened to a blade.
The beam struck the girl; she was pierced again, as if the world reprinted a wound, the light drilling through her like ice through river glass.
Blood rushed out in a fan of scarlet, spray staining the air like mist at dawn; even her red hair couldn’t rival that red, a rose crushed under thunder.
“A…li…cia…”
Ling stared dumbly at Alicia, the hand that fired shaking like a leaf in winter, her pupils filled with dread and disbelief, a storm trapped in glass.
“Alicia—sis!”
She pushed her body at full tilt, feet pounding like hooves, and caught Alicia as she fell, the chill on her skin numbing her palms like snow.
“Alicia—sis! Alicia—sis!”
No matter how she called, those eyelids stayed shut like doors barred against the wind, silence piling up like ash.
“No… no! Alicia’s in the [Script], isn’t she?!”
Hope sparked like a match in rain; she summoned the [Script], long offline, and flipped to the storage page, the portal as deep as a night well.
Her small hand reached into the bottomless space, sweeping like a net trawling dark water, searching for Alicia’s familiar touch like a shell she knew by heart.
……
It was pointless; no matter how she rummaged through that messy void, no matter how her magic mapped every corner like stars charting a sky, Alicia never touched her senses.
The answer was one blade, clean in the mind: a single word cut.
“I… killed Alicia—sis?”
Her slow brain laid out the bad truth like a card faced up; Alicia had been half-dead before, a breath away, but would revive when they returned.
Yet this time, pierced by her own beam, even revival would be a flicker in wind; the math of it said yes—she truly killed Alicia—sis.
“No… no, it’s not the end. There’s still a chance. That… that Perfect Restoration!”
Light welled in her hands like spring pouring from stone; she was rusty, but the spell still held, a familiar pattern threading through muscle memory.
Green light nudged the wound’s lips together like careful fingers, then stitched them shut, the inside knit anew—organs, muscle, skin—reborn in a breath.
Alicia’s eyelids trembled, a moth-wing flutter; relief washed Ling like warm rain—then snagged, sharp, as realization pricked her spine.
Alicia, fallen like an emptied shell, pushed herself upright with her own hands, then opened her eyes under Ling’s disbelief; her pupils bloomed gray, grave-dark and terrifying.
“Alicia… sis?”
Ling tried a call, a soft word cupped like a lantern; her fingers touched Alicia’s wrist, ice-cold and lifeless, a river frozen to the bone.
“Why did you kill me?”
Her voice flowed out cold, each syllable a shard; Ling’s ears felt rimed with frost, every sound biting like night wind.
“Alicia?”
Ling called again into that strange, hollow state, her heart a sparrow knocking at glass, and was answered by the same cold question.
“Why did you kill me?”
“It’s not—Alicia—sis, I didn’t mean to. It slipped loose. I couldn’t control it.”
“One ‘I didn’t mean it’—and you wash off the blood you put on me?”
“No… I’m not trying to dodge it. I know it’s my fault…”
“That’s what you call owning it?”
Alicia’s words struck Ling’s heart like a bell hit too hard; the Alicia before her felt foreign, an iceberg where a hearth should be, a stranger in a borrowed face.
