—At least... safe now... right?
Cough, cough, cough! The sleeping Elfe hacked like a rusted bell at midnight, her body jolting like a street hit by a cold gust.
The sudden turn sent panic through Amelia like a flock of startled sparrows.
“Elfe! What’s wrong?!”
Her hands clamped onto Elfe’s shoulders on pure instinct. Porcelain-soft skin met her fingertips, a fragile warning not to squeeze.
Amelia ignored it. She shook Elfe hard, like trying to rouse someone drowning in a black lake. A little hurt didn’t matter.
It was a foolish hope, a lantern in rain.
Elfe’s body tipped fully into wrongness. Heat and cold surged in waves under Amelia’s touch, like fever-fire and winter-ice trading places.
Her breath hitched. Elfe’s fingers raked at her own chest, clothing tearing like paper in a storm.
She didn’t stop. She dug harder, as if something under the skin had turned to thorns.
Her legs kicked and scraped, drums on a floorboard sea. Her hands gripped the exposed skin of her chest. Her face twisted, a mask carved by pain.
In moments, her thrashing legs smeared red. Even blunt nails painted her chest raw, bright as crushed berries, with faint lines of blood.
The pain didn’t ebb. Her face still wrote agony, stroke after stroke.
Amelia’s mind scattered like leaves in a gale. She had seen mana rampage before.
People either burst like blown glass, or bled from every orifice like a cracked fountain. Quick ends, brutal, never this lingering torment.
“Report to the Queen! We’ve found the cause of the Princess’s condition!”
The casters had known from the start something was wrong. Guilt pinned them like insects under glass.
Not all of them were soft in the head. The shortest one bolted for the archives, a fox slipping from the huddle.
Luck favored him like sun through clouds. He found the records in moments.
“The Princess had much of her blood sucked by [DATA DELETED]. The circle’s control still worked a little, so it couldn’t drain her mana.”
“So her scant blood now carries mana above her cap. Mana concentration soared like a flood over a dam. In short, excess mana triggered a rampage!”
He said a river of words but no bridge to save her. Amelia’s eyes went winter-cold, fury simmering like thunder.
“Just tell me how to save her. Spare me the useless crap!”
The Queen’s bite stunned him. It was the first time he’d heard her spit a word that cut past etiquette.
“I’ll look! I’ll look now!”
He dove back into the pages. His hands flickered like sparrows over water, until his gaze snagged on a line.
“Oh! The Princess only needs to use mana! Lowering the amount will halt the rampage!”
Amelia’s stare iced over further, anger piling like storm clouds.
“You think she can use mana right now?!”
The line choked him. Sensible on paper, stupid in practice—an umbrella with holes in a downpour.
“Keep looking!”
“Yes!”
Pages rustled like rain on eaves. The other men rushed in to help, elbows clashing like oars in a narrow boat.
Each wanted to find the cure, chasing the ghost of making amends.
It backfired. A book one person could skim in minutes took ten, torn between hands like a net in rough surf.
The Princess and that poor book were the sorriest souls in the room.
“Will this really work? Aren’t you afraid they won’t come to you?”
Alicia’s question barely stirred Ling. The two of them perched on a tree, leaves whispering like small secrets.
Alicia wanted an inn, a warm roof and still water. Ling refused, dragging her back instead, to a trunk one step beyond Amelia’s patrol line.
Just far enough to watch the tide without being dragged by it. If she failed to save Elfe, she’d dive in again.
Ling’s mouth said she didn’t care about Elfe. Her body betrayed her, a bamboo shoot bending toward rain. That tsundere lapse suited Alicia just fine.
“Don’t worry. They’ll definitely come find us... probably.” Her last word fell small, like a pebble into deep water.
She could open the Script and see it clear as daylight. She didn’t.
Not pride. Not invincibility. Just fear, a shadow that grew teeth.
Fear—when did it start? Maybe when she saw Alicia’s name branded by fire-red letters: Death.
After that, her fingers wouldn’t touch the cover.
At most she’d sulk and peek, because the Script could preview—or rather, query—the future. A divine tool in anyone else’s hand.
In Ling’s, it felt like a blade humming at her throat.
She wouldn’t use the Script because she feared the path it boxed her into. Maybe it was all in her head.
But she felt it: follow the Script, and the road turned to tragedy—death, maybe. Or separation, a winter with no spring.
Who could say? She didn’t dare pry into the future again.
If she couldn’t change the future written in [black text], what about the [red text]—events stamped at a hundred percent, the kind we call inevitable.
