“[Great Fireball]!”

The ribbon around her wrist flickered with a soft light. It spun up a massive fireball and hurled it. The frog-faced brute lit like dry kindling; the heat crisped its skin to charcoal in a heartbeat.

Ling’s attack followed close as a shadow. She lifted her Scythe. The gear along its haft made a full turn. The blade sprang forward like a coiled spring and yanked the creature’s head clean off.

She didn’t dare look; fear pressed cold against her ribs, afraid the scene would scar her mind.

“Hey, sis, you notice it? The nearer we get to that Great Rift, the more things rush in to die. Did the dragons spot us?”

A kilometer out, you’d only see a stray mongrel dragon or two. They’d bluster in and get themselves killed. Now they come in clumps, working in teams, like a party queued up to raid a wild boss.

Alicia took the chance to practice a few spells, so she didn’t mind.

“Little sis, if that’s the case, we should be thrilled. Saves us the trouble of chasing the big ones.”

Yet Ling’s brow knit. It wasn’t that simple. Her Scythe cracked back and sliced the sneaking thing clean at the waist.

“Anyway, Ling, you…”

“What about me?”

“Why does a little girl like you use such a… such a brutal weapon? It never makes a clean cut. It always tears off chunks. Don’t you find it gross?”

Ling glanced at her Scythe. Fresh meat still clung to the blade like ragged petals. Yeah, pretty gross.

—But it’s too cool to resist!!!

Power didn’t interest her; she’d never met anything stronger than her fists. Weapons were for style, full stop.

She drew the Scythe close to her chest and smiled sugar-sweet, a picture at odds with a scythe-toting waif.

“Not gross. Super~ cool~.”

Alicia had no comeback. How did this kid ignore the stink of blood and the mess of meat?

She sighed inside, tipped her head up, kept her eyes off the twisted corpses, and walked on.

“Sis! Don’t go! Stop!”

Two steps later, Ling’s shout froze Alicia’s feet. She glanced back, puzzled.

“Why stop?”

Ling put a finger to her lips. Shh. Then she pointed at the sky.

Alicia followed the line of her finger. Nothing. Just an endless blue vault, hardly a cloud in sight, sun bright as a blade.

She looked down at the little one. Ling’s face had turned grave, all play wiped clean.

In the next heartbeat, Ling dashed in and pressed Alicia to the ground. They fell belly to belly, breath mingling with dust.

Alicia opened her mouth to ask what madness this was—but Ling’s face stopped her. It was a hunter’s face, eyes fixed, muscles quiet.

“Found you~.”

Found what?

The question barely formed before Ling answered with motion. She lifted her upper body, gaze locked on empty air. Her pupils tracked shapes that weren’t there, like she could see the unseen.

Her right hand rose; her left arm cinched Alicia tight. A moment later, joy lit the girl’s face.

“Got you~.”

Her fingers closed, not into a full fist. The hollow between them filled with something invisible, like air gone solid.

At that instant, Alicia heard a low dragon’s call roll overhead. She looked up—and saw only that same clear sky, the firmament blank as glass.

Confusion swarmed her mind like bees, but the question never made it out. A strange force hooked both of them and drew them upward, as if the sky reached down and reeled them in. Weirdness flooded her head; there was no room left to think.

Their posture was wrong too. Ling’s body still felt gravity dragging her down. But her right hand, stretched above, gripped an unseen line and held them aloft.

“Enough! What a pain!”

She shouted at the vault of heaven. Green spheres budded in the air. In a blink, the orbs speared into beams and punched straight through the “sky.”

Yes—punched through. The formless dome shuddered like flesh, and gold-red blood poured out in a bright sheet.

The sky bled, and Ling’s hold failed. They stopped climbing and dropped, both of them, from high above. They’d fallen from ten thousand meters before; Alicia’s nerves stayed calm. She just stared, blank, at Ling holding her as they fell.

Boom—!!

The “sky” crashed to the ground and carved a crater. Dust surged up to do its one true job, smothering whatever lay in the pit.

Another breath. Then Ling and Alicia fell to the same spot, plunging into that thick, choking haze.