I’ve always felt most plots were the author pleasing themself, pretty as incense smoke curling, but they don’t sit on the bones of logic.

Take plot kills, death flags, heroines flinging themselves into arms—stage-bright drama, lanterns blazing, but not granite-real.

Lately, though, Head tripped me more than once. Anna suddenly joins the Hero Squad; Raven and our side land in danger together; we just happen to catch Nivifar’s rampage; I just happen to have a fix; she just happens to accept my “darkness”; and we just happen to gain a superior thrall. After tasting that thunderclap of “dramatic change,” I got jumpy as a cat in wind, unsure what counts as “real.”

Right now I even feel a blond, blue-eyed girl falling from the sky would be normal—yeah, that’s a fever in the brain, like heat rippling off a road.

I once stepped onto that omniscient, omnipotent peak, where the Great Ones stand like mountains above cloud. I thought even fallen a tier, I’d still grasp what Head could pull off.

Turns out…I forgot, like fog swallowing a trail at dawn.

Bound in a mortal body, a mortal soul, a mortal rank, I can’t see a Great One whole. Even if I once saw it, the mind drops it like snow melting on a sleeve.

I can’t picture Head’s true reach now, and that’s a thorny thing. It’s like banners facing off, and my chief of staff vanishes like a lamp gone out, right when we must set our shields.

Still, it’s not hopeless. Head, hair cut short, isn’t the all-knowing force she was. I still recall the script I wrote in that god-sight—aside from a few jump-scares, the map still runs like a river.

With that settled, I keep feeding mana, stoking the furnace like a night watchman.

“If Stini hadn’t stomped the gas, we wouldn’t be in this hive…”

Yeah. Maki will get here in five minutes, sand slipping through a glass. If Stini hadn’t hung the armored truck on the roof like a carp on a line, then wasted time prying it free, we’d have skipped Maki and driven straight to the Heretic Inquisition.

“Left foot brake, right foot gas. Remember, okay?” Yin on the left, yang on the right.

“Mhm, got it!” Bright as a bell.

I doubt it. You said it just as cheerfully before you drove the truck onto the rooftop like a kite snagged in a tree.

A beginner knows the theory, but no muscle memory; the blade’s not tempered, the rice not steamed through, and it costs thought-time.

Good for me—I need a rookie’s recklessness. If we hit someone, we can plead clumsy, like rain washing chalk lines, and shave a few years off.

To keep magitech experiments from wrecking half a block, the magitech workshop uses impact-hardened materials, an anvil dressed as walls. Princess Golia and Anna are sweating to pry off the shards that wedged the truck like bones in a throat.

How’d it come down from the roof? Do you need to ask? The truck’s whole pitch is “sturdy”—one good kick and it dropped like a ripe persimmon.

“Can we really save Raven? We’re tripping over trouble before we even leave.” Nivifar spoke while tuning the weapon system, fingers plucking wires like zither strings, sparks fireflies in dusk.

“It’s always been like this. Don’t worry.” We wear our rain hat and walk through the storm.

“Yeah—terrible bodies, terrible odds. That’s our road.” Stini is still learning the wheel, a small boat in a gray sea.

“But this time your wounds aren’t blade cuts. It’s your whole bodies…” Like pots shattered and badly glued, lines of gold still thin.

Stini lifted a palm to Nivifar, a fan closing. “Stop, little Nivi. It’s done. Don’t stir that ash.”

My whole body was broken once; even drowning in HolyWater, I didn’t mend clean, like frost that lingers in shade.

Stini once had half her bones pulled by Nivifar. The new frame only just grew in—soft as bamboo shoots, velvet on young antlers.

It’s worse than all the last times stacked like storm clouds.

“No, I mean I’ll go with Princess Golia and Miss Naiche to rescue Miss Raven. Stini and Andor, you two don’t need to fight.” Nivifar’s voice stayed winter-calm, a chilled blade over still water.

Could you at least sound a little guilty? We said don’t mind it, but you don’t have to not mind it at all… A hint of shame would be a cherry petal on tea.

“Hearing it like that… you’ve got a point.” Stini cupped her small chin, thinking, like a cat considering a fish, moon caught in a bowl.

“I want to slack too, take a vacation by the Endless Western Sea with gulls riding foam—but no.” The wish is a kite, duty the stone.

Resolve first, then words. I said, iron in the breath: “Stini and I have to go—at least one of us.” Two candles, one must burn.

“Why?”

“Because ‘Hero’ is just the ticket at the gate. You and I are the leads this time. The others? Nivifar just leveled a city; Naiche’s a normal adventurer—none of that screams ‘Hero.’ As for Her Highness…” The stage needs the right masks, or the door won’t open.

“What about Gloria?”

Stini gave up practicing, chatting full-on now, like setting the oar aside. I also dropped the plan to drive off before Maki arrived, folding it like a paper crane.

“We say ‘princess’ so often we forget the weight. Behind her stands the Colonna Empire like a dragon-banner. As the third princess, she bears a nation’s stance like a mountain on her back.”

I think of how Vega once wore my face and did unspeakable things to girls. Their factions came for me like hornets from a nest—those were mud-heavy days… best not stir that pot.

“After we rescue Raven, everyone will know we stand against the Heretic Inquisition. No great power will cross the orthodox Inquisition. So if Princess Golia publicly supports us, it’ll grind the Colonna Empire like millstones. I don’t want her at odds with her own blood.”

Truth is, I fear more that after we finally find Raven, Princess Golia gets yanked by Colonna’s strings and cuts Raven down—lightning from a clear sky.

But Princess Golia insisted on coming, a reed bending but unbroken.

After the Nivifar subjugation, at that celebration that ended like sour wine, she shooed Anna away and tugged me into a lantern-dim corner, ink in the air.

She confessed: she’s a weapon, not a human; the Colonna Empire’s orders sit first on her scale.

She said the Heretic Inquisition is wrong this time, and I’m right—compass needle steady.

She said it was her own will, her own thought, bud opening to sun.

She said to give her the outermost, most dangerous tasks, because she won’t die, and she doesn’t know when she might rebel—a knife carried in its own hand.

She said adventuring with us is fun, wind in the sleeves, river laughing at rocks.

In a tender, stiff, but rare and steady voice, she said: “I don’t want Raven to die.”

Almost like a human—shadow warming, clay near breath.

She isn’t human yet, no human soul, but maybe she’s close to that shore. I’ll try to trust her once, bridge nearly spanning the river.

Those who walk the earth can’t pierce the fog ahead. Those who see the road can’t move their feet. I live on the “now” square of the board; sometimes you throw the dice.

“…Still, if she has to come, Raven should thank Her Highness.” A red thread tied, a debt knotted.

Stini burst into tears, moved, dew falling off leaves. Cute—except not the time; your floodgates open at a tap!

“So touching!”

“For that reason, I didn’t tell Elina at all. Her background’s messier than Princess Golia’s—add the Helena Kingdom to the Universal Church—hey, wait, where are you going!”

Stini hopped off the truck and ran at Gloria, arms wide, eyes shining. Behind her I could almost see a facehugger latch on—why a facehugger!

Maybe the aura was too fierce. Gloria, back to Stini, sprang into a fighting stance on instinct, like a hedgehog bristling under thunder.

But that hug was never meant to bloom; frost cut the bud.

I straightened my collar, fretting over which cool entrance to use—actor behind the curtain, crane shaking its feathers. The coat’s fine, but tux with a cape would be cooler; raven wings at night—next time I’ll buy one.

A punch without mana, only raw force. It landed first, and only then did the room feel the gale, like thunder arriving before lightning.

The Godspeed Realm strike hit the center of Gloria’s guard. Under absolute power, her posture collapsed; force ran from arm to chest; even the magitech-hardened wall couldn’t stop her, avalanche carving a chute.

Then that killing intent turned to Stini, a hawk’s shadow falling.

Arms open for a hug, bare as spring, she met an iron fist like winter hail.

A chest-center hit would shatter a normal ribcage like porcelain; shards would spear the organs; you’d bleed out in three heartbeats.

So he held back, a tiger sheathing claws.

So he stepped out of the Godspeed Realm, slowing the arrow mid-flight.

So he didn’t hit Stini. The iron fist met a steel Greatsword, bell-clang and sparks.

“Andor…” Maki murmured the name, drew back his stance, and stood like an iron pillar.

Unmoving as a mountain of steel.