She’d barely stepped through the iron gate that gaped like an iron maw; in a black men’s suit, Alicia flung her arms wide like stage wings, chanting lines as shiny and hollow as tin.

“My dearest Linglong! I’m here to rescue you! Are you alright?”

The lover’s part should’ve been Ling’s, but Zi, with a fox’s grin, swapped it to Xi. Two votes beat one like wind snuffing a candle. Xi didn’t mind. So she became the bound lover on the bed, Linglong in name and golden light, and echoed Alicia’s awkward cadence like a bell slightly off-key.

“Ah! My prince! You must leave, now! This place is—”

“As she says, Prince Eik—why not run? Is a face this fair worth your life?” The interruption slid down from the ceiling like a strip of night, only—

—why did the intruder look smaller, like a shadow shrunk by dawn?

A wrongness pricked Eik’s mind like a thorn. If the last intruder had been a nine-foot brute, this one had shrunk to a loli’s height. The black robe hung on that body like a storm cloak on a sapling.

“Mm? What’s wrong, Prince Eik, stunned by my grand entrance? No wonder—country bumpkins don’t even know a simple float spell.”

“Country bumpkin” struck like a spark on dry tinder. Alicia’s temper flared first; her blades flashed out with a winter hiss, the tips leveled at that small frame like twin moons.

On a real battlefield, no one wastes breath. On a stage, breath is all you have. Alicia couldn’t stall with words, yet the play couldn’t show a real duel under these lantern suns.

Zi, the planner and director and host and voice of the gods, chose the worst fix. The intruding “mage” dropped the wand like a dead branch, drew two short blades like some dual-wielding archer out of a game, and closed for a knife-dance. Now and then, harmless spells blossomed like fireworks without heat. Their acting locked together like gears; Alicia flowed through hard moves with a panther’s grace. Together they stitched a fight tight and thrilling as a drumroll.

Zi had watched the rehearsal, saw the effect land like rain on dust, and swore then and there: never again will a mage and a warrior fight on my stage.

Back to the theater: their fierce bout ended to cheers that rose like a tide. As stories decree and stars repeat, evil failed to triumph. The intruder fell. Alicia’s blade had slit the black robe with needle precision; beneath the dark shell, the real face gleamed—

—Ling.

“Heh, heh. To think I’d fall to you. So be it, so be it. I’ve grown tired. Let it end here.” Ling pressed both hands to the floor like setting a seal. Black smoke climbed from the stage like swamp fog, and for a heartbeat it felt like true sorcery.

“Soul—Bearing!”

The words made the smoke boil like a stormed sea. It surged, cloaking Alicia and Xi like a night tide. Ling’s body thinned into vapor and streamed into that shroud like a river into a cave.

It was a trick. Stagehands slid an invisibility charm over Ling and hustled her behind the curtain. Smoke misled the eye like heat haze over stone, so to the crowd it looked as if Ling had melted into mist.

The smoke sheathing Alicia bucked. A burst of light flared from her chest like lightning behind cloud. The haze blew away like chaff.

Like Ling, Alicia had been swapped by a neat little stand-in spell. Positions flipped like yin and yang. When the light settled, only Youxiang stood under the lamps, and Xi beside her wearing a golden wig like a halo.

Zi leaped out, voice clear as a bell and smooth as silk. “The former King Eik never foresaw the mage’s final, vile art—sorcery that touches the soul. Caught off guard, he and Linglong were both struck. Yet unlike Linglong, Eik wore at his throat an heirloom gem, a trinket thought to be mere ornament. It chose this moment to bare its fangs—magic canceled. So the king’s body suffered only a brush of change. His hair took a new shade, but his flesh remained firm. Linglong was different. As the only vessel left unsheltered, she bore the spell’s full weight. Her body became the cup for countless souls—the mage’s, and the souls the mage had borne before. A stronger ‘Mage’ is about to descend, and until that storm breaks, Linglong still remains.”

Weakness came first, like winter’s breath easing into a room. With what will she had left, Linglong beckoned Eik close. A body holding uncountable souls shook like a lantern in wind.

“My prince, I know what’s coming. The cold has already reached my heart. I can’t spare many words. I beg two things—first, go and found a new empire. Leave those cruel brothers. After I’m gone, I can’t bear to see you carry this weight alone.”

Grief hit Eik like a wave in the dark. He clutched her icy hands, nodding hard, every nod a hammer blow. Tears crowded his eyes like rain under eaves, trembling to fall, yet none slipped free. He wouldn’t let the last thing she saw be his flood.

Linglong’s lips had gone violet, her face pale as paper, yet at the end she set the world’s gentlest smile upon that winter mask.

“Good… good. If you’re happy, I can rest. Then… promise me one last thing—kill me.”

No shock showed on Eik’s face. He knew the girl’s marrow-deep stubbornness; the line was a blade he’d felt before. Surprise would’ve been a lie.

He bent, slow as a leaf dropping. He met Linglong’s half-lidded gaze, then closed his own. Their lips touched, two petals meeting on a cold branch.

On stage, Youxiang and Xi kissed. Was it acting, or feeling breaking through like spring grass? No one knew. Lian stood aside, dazed, watching their mouths meet like tide and shore. Her heart kicked once, hard, like thunder behind hills.

“Why are you crying?” Alicia’s whisper brushed her ear like warm wind.

Only then did Lian notice the tear-track cooling on her skin like a silver thread.

Why tears?

Jealousy? No. Not that sting, not that salt. What rose first was pity—no, kinship, sorrow recognizing sorrow, a mirror in the river. And the pity wasn’t for Xi, nor for Youxiang. It fell, soft and heavy, for Linglong.

As if she’d lived through Linglong’s winter, Lian grieved that very winter.

Strange, right? Lian knew it was strange. She understood nothing, and no one could.

She worked a smile onto her face, awkward as a blossom in frost. She turned to Alicia, who was watching her with worry bright as candlelight, and didn’t mind how the two tear lines twisted that smile.

“It’s nothing, sis. These are happy tears, shed because the play landed like spring rain.”