Stini opened her eyes and saw nothing, like a starless well swallowing light.

She carried Moon Goddess Mu’en’s blessing, Dark Vision, yet saw nothing, like a lantern drowned in ink.

Only a void of darkness, a winter night with no wind.

She tried to scream, but no sound rose, as if frost sealed her throat.

“Ah, you’re awake. Hold on.”

Someone snapped her eyelids wide and stuffed in something round, wet, and soft, like peeled grapes pressed into sockets. Then the other eye.

“Okay. Try now?”

Stini realized her eyeballs could move. She closed, then opened, and saw a warped palace, amber gloom like old resin, the color of dried blood, and severed heads stacked into a pyramid like a mockery of a mountain.

And a little farther off, a girl sketching and scrawling—Nivifar.

“You still can’t talk, right? Hold on.”

Nivifar came over, bent down, and slipped below Stini’s field of view, like a shadow sliding under a door. Stini couldn’t turn her head, couldn’t see.

But she felt it. At first, it was as if a red‑hot awl drove in from her back, spearing her spine like a brand through bone, burning her organs to cinders; she longed to scream, but silence clamped her like iron.

Then her voice returned, yet pain swelled worse, like a tide of blades, and she couldn’t even groan.

Her whole body hurt; bones ground to grit like mortar under a pestle, and when muscle seized, the shards bit nerves like icy teeth.

Her chest was hollowed out, organs drawn away like nets hauled empty, leaving only muscle scraping muscle, a phantom ache like cold wind through an empty house.

Her brain throbbed as if kneaded, crushed, and squeezed flat, pressure popping pulp like overripe fruit.

Stini shook and howled, mouth gaped in a silent wail; spit and tears burst forth like a broken dam.

“You must hate me,” Nivifar said, a curl of the mouth caught between a sneer and a wince, like a blade that cut both ways.

Stini’s tears slicked her lashes like wet feathers; she couldn’t see clearly.

“Anyway, hate me. We should be enemies. We should be—yes—enemies by nature.”

The first shock passed, leaving pain heavy as water. It still smothered her, but gaps of thought opened like cracks in ice.

She could speak. What to say?

Curse her—so it was you who betrayed us?

Mock her—so what?

Prod her—Andor will come save me?

Stini’s first words slipped free like a bird startled from a branch.

“W‑would that make it easier for you, little Nivi?” she said, every syllable dragging like a chain.

“…Maybe. It’s not as good as I imagined anyway.” Nivifar let out a sigh like steam fading.

“Don’t you want to ask why?”

“I don’t want to know.” Stini’s voice sank low, like a bell struck under water.

“Heroes are always like this—saint’s sickness?”

Nivifar sighed again, a breeze through a cold room.

Stini forced her cramping lids wide and met her sister’s eyes, like a moth holding to a candle.

“I’m just an idiot, lying to myself. I want everyone to be happy.”

“At the cost of your own misery, right? You even hope the enemy finds bliss. Honestly, it’s lucky I never became a Hero.”

“Then what are you jealous of?”

“Of what I don’t have—roles, places, a seat at the table—even when I know they’re rotten gifts.”

“…Stop.”

She wasn’t begging for her life; she was praying for her sister’s joy, like setting a lantern down a river and hoping it finds the sea.

Compared to other people’s lives, her own was tiny—but no, Stini wasn’t that brainless; she just clung to the belief she wouldn’t die, wouldn’t break, so she could hand down pity from a high place.

She wasn’t a saint; she never had the spirit to throw herself on the pyre.

She was just dull to danger, dull to malice, dull even to pain, like a thick coat that numbs winter.

“Little Nivi, you won’t be happy.”

Stini’s voice trembled with tears, like someone the whole world had thrown away.

“Don’t use that voice. The one the world tossed is me. No—maybe I tossed the world.” Nivifar stepped before her, body inked in black demonic sigils like a night sky with no stars, barely a strip of skin left; pity rested on her face like a thin veil. “But I’m already here. I killed Andor. I crippled the Hero. Who could forgive me?”

“It’ll be fine. It will—”

“Ha. Only you can hold an enemy’s sorrow, a killer’s tragedy, a villain’s grief, like water in open hands.”

“Little Nivi, you think you’re wrong too.”

“Of course. But what if I’m wrong, what if I’m evil? So what?”

“…”

“From the start, I decided this: the world owes me nothing. But I want more, far more than it gave, so I have to take it. If that’s evil, I’ll answer to evil like a name called in the dark.”

“You can still turn back.”

“There’s no way back. The devil once foretold you’d say this, so I killed a lot of people,” Nivifar said, pointing to the pile of heads, a hill made of silence. “They won’t forgive me. Their kin, their lovers, their friends won’t forgive me. They’ll call me evil, so I can only do evil. The road behind is ash.”

“…The devil taught you?”

“Yes. The devil’s too clever; who else sees that deep?” Nivifar’s tone carried a barb, like a hook under silk.

Stini had nothing more.

She couldn’t refute it. Must be enemies—that was Nivifar’s grim wish, not Stini’s soft hope.

She knew Nivifar was grieving, but she couldn’t save her, like trying to pull someone from a river of night.

The whole world was declaring war on the traitor, and Nivifar charged to meet it; light and dark collided like thunder and tide, clean cuts, bright borders.

The wish to save Nivifar would betray everyone’s hopes, and the hand she offered would be slapped away by Nivifar herself. In plain words, hated inside and out.

One Hero was small under the millennia’s wheel, like an ant before a cart.

Saving the world was easier than saving one girl in despair. So Stini kept silent, like snow falling in a closed room.

“Will you regret it?” Stini asked, her last struggle like a candle guttering.

“I thought about that…” Nivifar scratched her cheek, then pretended to study the layered magic circles drawn in blood on the floor, rings like dried crimson ripples. “Maybe. But regret’s useless. I can’t kneel and beg the dead to forgive me. They won’t. Useless.”

“…” It was true. Stini admitted it in silence, like a nod to the night. There was no way back.

“If it’s useless, I won’t apologize. Maybe someone kills me, but I still won’t apologize. I won’t hand out the cheap thrill of ‘serves Nivifar right.’ Rest easy. I’ll live like a villain. People can just hate me. No need to wrestle with knots. Keep it simple. Call it compensation.”

“I don’t need that kind of compensation!”

“But others do. Stini, your philosophy sits on a high shelf. Most people need a straight road: ‘villain’ leads to ‘hunt and slay.’ Only a Hero has time for the switchbacks.”

Nivifar smiled faintly, as if a light flickered in memory.

“—Andor said that. When we were complaining about Heroes together. A shame—he’s dead.”

Killed by my own hands, Nivifar added, hoping to catch anger, hate, any spark of enmity in Stini’s eyes. Reality let her down.

Stini looked as before, on the verge of tears, with no malice, only grief and pity folded inside like paper cranes.

“He won’t die.”

“Why?”

“He will not die.” Stini said it like a vow carved in stone.

“Did Andor promise you something? ‘After we defeat every Demon King, we’ll marry’? Or ‘even dead, I’ll crawl back to see you’?”

“No.”

“Then why so sure? Why don’t you hate me?” Nivifar’s confusion hung like fog.

“Because I trust him.”

“Ha.”

Nivifar laughed once, like emptying her lungs into cold air. From Stini’s words she felt the weight of trust, a stone on the chest, unbelievable and heavy.

It pressed her breath thin; it stung her eyes like smoke.

Why can Stini say it so openly, so rightfully, with no shade of shame?

Nivifar didn’t even know what her own heart was doing; it felt heavy, like a river stone tied with twine. Another word with Stini, and her heart might crack.

“Anyway, you can’t do anything with the little time you have left. Hate me. Make it easier for both of us.”

“Will you kill me?”

“I will.”

“Are you leaving now?”

“I’ve got a few things left.”

“Then goodbye, my sister. I hope next time, we can play and be happy.”

Nivifar’s back paused at the word sister, a step caught like a breath. Then she answered:

“Goodbye, my sister. Next time I see you will be the day you die.”