Who knows—like fog over a ravine, the answer keeps its distance.

Fear knotted like a wet rope in Ling’s chest; she didn’t dare pry at the future again.

She feared she couldn’t change the future the [black text] had set, ink dried like iron on a cold tablet.

And the [red text] was worse, a blood-red seal that meant 100% certainty, the stones we call inevitable events.

Some people might warm to a fixed future, like a hearth that promises fire in five or six winters.

If they knew a promotion waited after five or six years, their drive would gutter like a candle protected by glass.

Why struggle, they’d think, as the hourglass sifts grain by grain; just wait, and the grindstone will turn by itself.

It sounds sweet, like syrup on snow, doesn’t it? No—it curdled on Ling’s tongue.

She had no taste for such endings; disgust pricked like thorns under silk.

She wanted the unknown, a wild sea without a map, where joy rose like dawn over an empty horizon.

…Really?

A thin laugh scraped like a blade on ice. Of course that was a lie, drifting like smoke from the first line.

I said it already—she wasn’t using the [Script] because fear gnawed like a rat in the walls.

What if she opened it and saw another chain of [red text], letters written in blood like claw-marks on bone?

Before a thing called Fate, she felt as helpless as a moth beating a lantern.

If she learned a bad thing would happen with absolute certainty, her heart would drop like a stone through dark water.

Why would that be defeat? Because the loss blooms inside first, a frost that withers the field before sunrise.

The moment she believed it must happen, she lost—lost to Fate, a tide that doesn’t heed a single reed.

So Ling made the most cautious retreat, like a turtle drawing into its shell: don’t use the [Script].

She didn’t know how long that shell would hold, and the lie tasted like cold tea.

Even so, she felt Fate’s hand at her throat, fingers like iron vines tightening in shadow.

But luck, thin as dew, was that she “didn’t know”; feigned ignorance is a quilt warmer than truth before you wake.

“What are you thinking?”

Alicia’s call dropped into her ear like a pebble into a pond, and Ling fled her brambled thoughts.

“Mm… nothing. And don’t sneak a hand at my belly, you bad sister.”

The topic ended with a soft cut, like a curtain drawn at dusk, and Alicia saw no seam.

Relief settled over Ling like a sparrow settling on a branch, light and quick.

—Let me play the clown under the footlights a little longer.

“What do you mean there’s no way?! You swore you had one!”

Anger flooded Amelia like wildfire in dry grass; she surged forward and hauled the man up like a hooked fish.

She stood a head taller, lifting him was easy as wind lifts a leaf, though it wasn’t the playful upsy-daisy he favored.

He kicked and writhed like a netted carp, but before the strongest Queen, it was foam against a cliff.

“You said you had a method! Huh? Think of something and save her!”

“N-not… Your Majesty… this isn’t a thing you can save like plucking a peach.”

His crushed throat rasped like sand on a drum, and even breathing was a mountain; still, his will to live clung like burrs.

“Trash!”

Veins rose on her hand like blue rivers, but she didn’t crush; with a single sweep, she flung him like a broken spear.

Her skirt flared like a black wave, and something small flew free, striking the floor with a clear ding-dang, like ice on stone.

In the quiet room, that chime rang out like a bellbird, and the Queen’s gaze snapped to it and stuck like frost.

It was a piece of night, a stranger of obsidian shape, a thing Ling had left behind like a shadow.

—Call her?

The thought rose like a bubble and popped; the Elven Queen’s pride stood like a mountain, and would not bow to a fresh enemy.

“Cough, cough!”

Elfe’s coughing shook the air like thin glass, and Amelia’s resolve cracked like thawing ice.

Daughter or dignity?

Two ends of a scale hung in her chest like twin moons; choose one, and the other would fall into the sea.

She didn’t know which to pick, and Elfe’s pain etched itself like knife-scratches, counting down the dwindling sand.

The pressure fell unseen like heavy snow, and Amelia’s mind went white, a field with no tracks.

When she blinked, the night-colored device sat in her palm like a cold stone from a river.

—Did instinct choose my daughter for me?

The thought gave weight like a hand on the scale; the pan with “daughter” dipped as if filled with rain.

—There’s a button here. Do I press it?

The notion came unbidden like a bird at the window; seeing the black device made it tap again.

Perhaps she forgot the word “dignity,” a banner taken down in a storm; only “daughter” burned like a lamp in a shrine.

Beep—

The sound knifed her ear like a reed flute gone sour; her finger had touched the button, yet why was it so harsh?

A wrongness pricked like a thorn; she lifted her hand to press again, like a swimmer reaching for a rope.

Boom!!!

The ceiling fell without warning, like a cliff shearing into the sea, and the sky turned to dust.

Smoke spread like a gray tide; the men froze like carved wood, and the Queen stood agape like a statue missing its breath.

“Ugly sound. How does the mighty Elven Queen not know a pager? You have to speak into the thing.”

The sneer drifted with the dust like chaff in wind; words that would usually spark fire didn’t strike today.

“Save her!”

“Save who?”

“Elfe!”

“In whose name?”

The Elven Queen leaned forward like a pine in wind and patted her chest, a drumbeat over a cliff.

“In the name of the Game!”

Silence pooled like ink.

The Queen’s gaze held steady, pupils shining with prayer like stars in a winter pond.

“In the name of the Elven Queen!”

Silence breathed again, slow as fog over fields.

Her head dipped, and her voice shook like a reed in rain.

“In the name of… a mother.”

“Understood~”