“Lady Goddess, you saved our people; that debt is carved into bone and blood. We’ll repay it with our lives. Guiding you is nothing. If not for our elders lying wounded…”

Hearing the child’s earnest tremor, Aphelia turned, moonlight pouring over her cheek, toward Lilo. Before she could speak, Lilo flicked her hand like brushing off dust on the wind.

“It’s not on us. The ones who caught them did the dirty work. I already cleaned up those gutter rats. The Crimson Dragon Clan doesn’t stoop that low, even if the Abyssal Progeny hit like storm-iron.”

Lilo shot Aphelia a sideways glare, then went back to her dinner by the fire. Sparks rose like fireflies as she opened a communication spell, stepped aside, and began reporting to her clan.

“Yes, Lady Goddess…”

“Hold it. I’m not a goddess. Don’t call me that again. Call me Aphelia, or call me sister.”

“But you are, aren’t you? You look exactly like the goddess on the mural. You saved our people, just like the prophecy.” The dusky, still-soft-skinned girl widened her eyes like dark pools and spoke with a shy, bruised stubbornness.

“A mural?”

Aphelia’s brow knit, a shadow running across her face. Ever since she gained that pure white Aether, blurred memories kept drifting like fog—crystal blossoms shining like dawn, and that familiar white figure, distant as the moon.

Whenever she reached for more, a mist rose like a wall of thorns. She couldn’t push through, as if some power had laid a maze on her mind.

So the girl’s words hit like a pebble in a lake. What kind of mural would record her image? Or was it someone almost the same—who was that phantom twin?

The girl didn’t notice Aphelia’s ripple. She bit her finger like a little animal thinking hard, tilted her small face to the starlight, studied Aphelia’s fine features, and nodded as if a knot finally loosened.

“Is the mural… in the Abyss? With your people?”

“People? Natalie has no people.”

Her little face fell like a petal in rain. She was still a child, yet wore loss like an old scar. Aphelia’s heart softened, a tide slipping past stone, but she remembered her own tangled road and let out a helpless sigh like wind through pines.

She stroked the girl’s hair, gentle as a feather, whispered a few soothing words, then rose and walked toward Lilo.

By now, Violet had recovered enough to take the perimeter. Her shadow moved from tree to tree like a silent hawk, sparing Aphelia the awkward heat that flared whenever Lilo was near.

There was no real awkwardness—only Aphelia’s guilty flutter, a thief’s heartbeat behind her ribs.

Aphelia stepped up. Lilo cut the link, and before Aphelia could speak, her voice fell like a blade.

“You want me to swap her out, right? Too bad. Master Merlin gave this order himself. In the Demon World, only the Demon King can change it. And even if you tried, you won’t find anyone who knows the Abyss like that girl.”

“I’m no saint. But the Demon World is huge. Don’t tell me you can’t hire someone who knows the Abyss. At worst, someone who’s familiar enough. I’m not after something ordinary…”

Before the last word cooled, Lilo drove her fist into the trunk beside them. Bark cracked like ice. She stepped in, a storm front rolling close. Their faces came near enough that breath brushed skin, and her red pupils blazed like coals. Aphelia flinched back a step until her shoulder kissed the tree.

“Of course I know what you’re after: the World Will, right?”

“You don’t even care about your own life. What else are you pretending to care about? That girl? I’ll tell you this—if you die, her people lose their standing in the Crimson Dragon Clan. After that, the wind turns cold. I won’t promise what happens.”

Lilo’s tone wore frost. Aphelia’s eyes narrowed, a cat beneath a lantern.

“Is that a threat?”

Lilo’s answer was a smile, bright as a knife’s flash. She didn’t get angry—she leaned in, slow as a tide.

Under the jeweled night, her crimson hair streamed like flame. Warmth pressed to Aphelia’s lips, sudden as spilled wine. The kiss stole her words, and she could only take the heat, breath trapped like a bird in a net.

When they broke, both were panting, chests rising like bellows. Aphelia shoved Lilo back, dragged in a deep breath, and stared as if the stars themselves had shifted.

“Why?”

“If you’re sprinting toward death, pay your flirt-debt first.” Lilo’s eyes glinted, smug as a fox. “You don’t care about your life, talking about walking into the Abyss.”

She wiped her lips with two fingers, then pointed toward the girl by the fire, carefully packing like a busy swallow.

“No matter what you think, her life already sits in the Crimson Dragon Clan’s hand. Take her into the Abyss and give yourself an extra shield…”

“Or go in and die, and I’ll finish off her people.”

Aphelia sighed, a long ribbon of breath. The words were harsh as winter, but underneath lay worry warm as ember. Lilo wore cruelty like a mask and knew Aphelia would refuse—so she played the heavy.

“What’s the point, Lilo… I’m a True God now. Have a little faith, will you?”

“No deal. You’re taking her down.” Lilo’s head shook like a bell, her red eyes steady as spears. “She’s a descendant of a tribe closest to the World Will within the Abyss. What’s death to us is breakfast to her.”

Aphelia had no line to play. Silence hung like mist between trees. Then she let out a breath and yielded.

“Fine. I’ll take her. Satisfied, Lilo?”

The tension melted from Lilo’s face like frost under sun. A cunning smile curled, and she stepped in again. Aphelia drifted back by reflex, a leaf on a gust.

“Don’t be so tense. I’m not going to eat you.” Lilo’s laugh was warm as firelight. She crooked a finger, beckoning.

“Come. I’ll show you why I insist.”

They returned to the fire. The girl never noticed the sultry scene that had just ended. She only saw her goddess’s flushed cheeks and kept packing, hands moving like sparrows among twigs.

“Natalie, would you show your goddess-sister what you showed us that day?”

Lilo crouched, smiling like spring water.

Such a gentle mask—Aphelia slanted her gaze, thinking how fast that face could change.

“Ah, Lady Lilo, is it really okay?”

Natalie set down her bundle, glanced at Aphelia, then at Lilo, voice timid as a fawn.

Aphelia drew breath to answer. Lilo’s look cut across like a lash. Aphelia only nodded and stood behind her, quiet as a shadow.

“See? Your Lady Goddess already agreed. Relax—that thing won’t be let out.”

With no objection left, the girl stopped resisting. She tidied the last items, set them behind the two like stones in a cairn, then walked alone into a patch of shadow.

A strange tongue poured from Natalie’s lips, syllables like wet earth and midnight bells. A flushed red bloomed under her brown skin like wine soaking silk. From the small frame in the shade, a powerful rhythm began to hammer.

Thump. Thump.

The heartbeat didn’t fit that child’s body. Aphelia’s eyes widened, then the white tide of Aether unfurled from her palm. A crystal blossom gleamed there, petals like frozen starlight.

“Easy,” Lilo said, voice a cool stream. “She’s tougher than iron. You’re about to see why Abyssal Progeny, at the Abyss’s first descent, drove back Demonic Knights—how a handful matched a whole knightly host.”

Cold gathered in Lilo’s gaze like winter on glass. She smirked at the girl in the dark, red sparks flickering around her like embers in wind. Though Aphelia stood beside her, she still caught it—the quick flicker of feeling in those red eyes, gone like a firefly.

“What’s happening? I feel a surge of life…” Violet dropped from a branch and landed smooth as a cat. Fresh blood traced her arm like living ink, roused to a fierce rush.

She saw the girl in the shadow, and she froze like a statue.

The roaring life she felt was flooding from that small figure in the dark.

As the eerie chant ended, the brown-skinned girl began to change. Black Arcane Power wrapped her like night water. Her small frame vaulted past years in a heartbeat, swelling into a full, powerful body. Her short white hair cascaded to her waist like a fall of snow. Runes lit her skin like crawling lightning, and at her brow, a pair of sharp horns grew, clean as polished bone.

The child in shadow stood now as a young woman at her peak, a blade honed by war. Even Aphelia’s Aether sight couldn’t catch the instant it happened; it slipped like a fish under ice.

But the woman before them was shaped for battle. Her muscles weren’t grotesque; they were sleek and sure, lines of strength circling grace. Wild charm prowled her silhouette like a panther under moonlight.