After Sin Ling vanished, the darkness around her peeled away with her, like ink poured off glass. Only then did Ling see the truth—pure, sight-swallowing black, no grasping tendrils, no stinging water.

Sin Ling had drifted through that tomb-still night, a silence cold as stone.

Then the space noticed Ling as a foreign thing and pushed her out, like a tide rolling back an alien shell. She didn’t resist. Staying here had no meaning—this place was only a wound to her.

Expelled, Ling lifted eyes as dull as extinguished lamps and looked at the Yanluo King. A faint spark of joy trembled on her face—was it because something she’d wanted to know had finally clicked?

"It seems you came back alive," Shiki Eiki said, her tone cool as iron. "Not bad. You’re still confused about ‘love,’ but you gained something. As agreed, where is that girl Alicia?"

Ling drove her body like a jammed automaton and pulled Alicia out of the Script, like lifting a figure from a painted scroll. The Alicia Sin Ling had played before was entirely fake; Sin Ling had used a little trick to hide the real one inside the Script.

Shiki Eiki barely glanced at Ling’s condition; truth be told, this was exactly what she’d planned for. She reached out and lifted Alicia. Petite, childlike Eiki cradling a statuesque, mature Alicia looked awkward, like a sparrow trying to carry a swan.

"Come with me. I might need a bit of your help later."

Ling nodded, a leaf going with the wind, and followed Shiki Eiki into an inner room, her footsteps soft as falling ash.

Eiki laid Alicia on a blue stone bed at the room’s center and stepped back. She produced a bottle filled with white mist, a dawn trapped in glass, and handed it to Ling.

"This bottle holds Alicia’s soul. It cost me no small effort to find. As the Yanluo King, I must keep some measure of justice. Fetching her soul for you already bends the scales, so I won’t inject it into her body for you. In a moment, just feed this to her and that’ll be enough. One more thing: human life and death belong to the natural order. Defying Heaven is foolish. Stop yelling ‘My fate is mine, not Heaven’s!’ The last guy who did that—surname Long—died for it. And remember…"

As she spoke, Shiki Eiki slipped into chatter, doctrine dripping like a steady drizzle. Ling didn’t hear a drop. Her gaze hooked to the bottle, to the pale fog Eiki called Alicia’s soul.

—Is this bottle really Alicia’s soul? Just this small vial, and Sin Ling died for it? Why? Why at all? Sin Ling said I held the strength of countless Yufan Lings, yet I still had to sacrifice someone for a fistful of mist. If I’d saved Alicia at the start, none of this would’ve happened. I had enough power then to do it. So… why couldn’t I escape fate? The questions churned like floodwater against a closed gate.

Doubt in power sprouted in her heart like a dark seed, and destiny pressed in like a net she couldn’t tear.

Thwack!

Shiki Eiki flicked Ling’s forehead, a pinch of anger shading her face like a storm cloud. "Are you even listening?!"

Ling didn’t have the mood or time to play the teary, silly child. She lifted her head and met Shiki Eiki’s eyes, steady as set stone. Eiki nodded, satisfied.

"Fine. I know none of you ever listen anyway. I’ll keep it short. Just pour this into Alicia’s mouth later. I’ll be right there, like a guardian stone. If anything goes wrong, I’ll step in."

With that safety net cast, Ling walked to Alicia’s side and set the bottle to her lips. The white mist stirred on its own and threaded in through Alicia’s mouth, like breath returning to a shell.

"Mm…"

As the last vapor vanished, Alicia’s body responded at once. Ling’s storm-dark mood eased like rain breaking over sunlit tiles.

Alicia slowly opened her eyes. The first thing she saw was Ling beside her. She forced a trembling hand—light as a leaf in the wind—to stroke Ling’s gold hair.

"Ling…"

Joy lasted barely a heartbeat. Alicia’s body jolted twice, thrice, and the color that had crept back into her face drained to chalk. Ling panicked and shook her, desperate to call her back, hope flickering then guttering like a candle in draft.

"Alicia—big sis! Alicia—big sis!"

Shiki Eiki cut in like a shadow and stopped Ling’s hands. She feared this little girl might jostle Alicia into never rising again, death thin as glass under rough fingers.

"Don’t move her. Normally, by this point Alicia should be back. If this is happening, only outside interference fits. But… what can reach the Underworld?" Her voice stayed straight as a blade.

She had barely finished speaking when fresh slashes opened on Alicia’s body, lines of pain spreading like cracks through ice.

Ling was frantic, yet she forced her mind to scour for the cause, thoughts sifting like sand through fingers.

In a blink, Aer’s words about the world’s invariance and the Script’s giant red letters flared into her mind like warning fire.

She didn’t want to believe it, but she had to swallow the ash-cold truth: only the so-called World Consciousness could reach into this place.

In that instant, Ling’s hatred for the world spiked to the limit, bursting past mere hate—an enmity that refused to share the same sky.

"Hey… Eiki," her voice low, like thunder wrapped in cloth, "can we change Alicia’s race?"

The question startled Eiki; her eyes widened like the cold moon. What did saving someone have to do with their race? She was puzzled, but she didn’t dismiss the thought.

"You want to turn her into Beastfolk? A Daemon? Or something else?"

Ling held the silence like a held breath, then let two soft words fall from her lips. "…Yokai."

Plain words, yet when they reached Shiki Eiki’s ears, terror spread across her face like ink in water. "Y-you… what did you just say?!"