This is as far as we go! The mana leak’s a bleeding wound.

We sat at the heart of the war, where the Heretic Inquisition and the Truth Seekers Assembly clashed like two storm fronts.

We swerved past a giant Construct, the Iron Colossus—Type III, sixty meters tall, its hill-sized foot shadowing us like a falling cliff.

Stini snapped the wheel. The armored car spun a full one-eighty, then shot straight back and slammed into the colossus’s foot like a battering ram.

From full speed to dead stop in a breath, and every heart flared with the urge to deck Stini, a spark in a powder keg.

Luck—crooked and gold—saved us in the next heartbeat, like a lantern lit on a gale-dark road.

The Iron Colossus took a High-tier Divine Art to the head—Hammer of Chastisement—and toppled back like a felled mountain.

If we’d kept driving, we’d have been meat under a hundred tons of iron, flattened like dough under a rolling pin.

The engine died with a sigh, and no matter how Stini begged or cursed, it wouldn’t catch, like a frozen river that wouldn’t melt.

We’re almost out of ammo! What now?

Nivifar’s weapon systems weren’t miracles. A surprise strike worked once, like thunder before rain, but it couldn’t stop every charging Heretic Inquisitor or Arcane Engineer.

Through a small window, Anna slid the scythe haft like a needle through silk. Her Trickcraft knocked for the third time, and the Heretic Inquisitor folded like a dropped puppet.

Stini finally gave up, a clenched jaw loosening like frost under dawn.

Damn it. We’d broken the outer ring when their Inquisitors blinked, but the Arcane Engineers guarding the Hall of Truth’s inner circle had spotted a rampaging armored car. Their eyes and warding spells hooked us like nets in a river.

The Heretic Inquisition hurled obstructive Divine Arts, snares like vines. If we didn’t leave now, both sides would rake us with fire like two scythes crossing in a field.

We’d thought about flying the Heretic Inquisition’s banner, a borrowed moon in someone else’s sky. The road would open, but the debts after would be iron chains.

Trouble piled like snowdrifts. Think. Think. Think!

Then I’ll go.

Gloria, who had sat so straight with no job to hold, finally spoke, her voice a bell in fog.

I’ll throw the car. Over there. She pointed toward the Hall of Truth, like a spear aimed at a fortress gate.

You that strong? Doubt rose in me like smoke, because Gloria’s origin, the Demon Slaying Sword, held only Sharpness and Stability.

No strength domain. No simple brute force.

I am. Her lead-gray eyes were an empty lake, still as stone.

But you’re not—

Done. Princess, I’m begging you. I’ll cast Silken Ease and Iron Fortification. Everyone brace for impact like sailors before a black wave.

I had more to say, but the Hero—our captain—had spoken, a flag unfurled in a gale. At a moment like this, undermining her felt like breaking a bridge in a flood.

Gloria rose. As she passed me, I whispered, a leaf caught in a stream.

Are you sure?

She tilted her head, nodded like a quiet bell, said something soft, then stepped out and shut the door, a lid closed over a cauldron.

Heretic Inquisitors flung Divine Arts at her. Arcane Engineers cast spells like nets and thorns. Gloria ignored them, like rain tapping on iron that won’t rust.

She lifted one side of the armored car. You could feel her strain—ropes pulled taut—against binding Divine Arts and weakening spells. Even a Hero’s resistance bends like bamboo in a storm.

Gloria was stronger than most, stronger even than me under War God Unparalleled. But for a fighter, strength serves technique, the bow serves the arrow.

You can cleave stone with a blade like lightning; that doesn’t mean you can carry the boulder like a mule under a mountain.

Fifty tons is beyond human hands. Beyond throwing. Beyond every barbell and boast.

Yet the armored car rose, inch by inch, like a sunrise prying open night.

Gloria, what price did you pay? The question burned in me like incense at a shrine.

Heat blossomed at the car’s center, a red coal swelling. The frame rated for five thousand degrees began to soften, melt, and warp like wax near a lamp.

In a blink, the armored car flew, hurled like a comet. Inertia pinned us to our seats. My mouth wouldn’t close. I couldn’t even turn to see Gloria, as if ropes bound my neck.

She didn’t say, I’m fine, or I’ll catch up, the easy, breezy leaves people toss into wind.

She said, Don’t worry. I won’t rebel.

She knew what I feared. She honored the warning like a seal pressed in warm lacquer. She accepted the question like tea poured and set aside.

When a sacrifice was needed, a place opened like a stone altar. She stepped onto it with calm feet.

Acceptance—this word came like a reed flute. But what did she accept?

I knew Gloria was not human. No human soul. No human heart. Only logic linking right and wrong, like gears that never rust.

Maybe she made the cleanest calculation. The Colonna royal house could force her to do what she judged “wrong.” So she chose the path with the highest success rate, the brightest end, a bridge in flood waters.

She accepted nothing. Not warmth. Not prayer. Not the knife of doubt.

Her conclusions were pure logic. Even if it meant self-scrap. Personality erased. Gloria Colonna fading from this world like a candle under rain.

She counted it all, then offered herself, white as rice in a bowl.

It felt off to me, like an unpaid debt tugging at a sleeve, a hook under the skin.

Ah. The sound cracked out of me like a twig underfoot.

I understood. It was trust—beautiful, bright, like a crystal kite lifting in the sun. I’d thought it had nothing to do with me, a star I couldn’t touch.

When it came, I couldn’t bear it. Like a crystal statue you fear to drop, a fragile moon cupped in both hands.

No. Wrong.

I tore up every thought I’d just made, like burning paper charms.

The car’s flight curved from rise to fall, a hawk dropping on prey.

I shut my mouth. My teeth clacked together, chadon, like two stones, biting down as if to tear fate in half.

I’m no saint. I’m not that lovely. Not a lantern lit in a temple.

I just treat her as human. As a comrade. As someone who understands. As mine.

What’s mine—no one takes. Not gods. Not kings. Not war.

Only that.

Gloria burned. Flame poured from her everywhere, a forest fire racing over a hillside. Her skin went full crimson, and when it cracked, jets of fire five or six meters long roared out like dragon breath.

Mana went feral—turbulence bucking like a wild river—melting circuits the way Constructs fail under overload. That frenzy only comes when you feed a pre-set self-destruct, a ritual of ash and sparks.

She held on until the car smashed into the Hall of Truth’s wall, like a battering ram kissing an ancient gate.

Her mana operation forced a halt. Crimson cooled to ash gray. She didn’t go berserk and shatter, which was luck, a coin landing edge-up.

But in this war, she had no strength left to fight. Not today. Not under this sky.

Lichibela Cavatt took off her glasses and rubbed eyes stung by mana’s glow, like a moth singed by a lantern.

Assistant to Nagash, head of the Truth Seekers Assembly. An Arcane Engineer who earned her advanced certification at sixteen, a blade honed early.

Gloria wasn’t like typical Constructs. She had flesh, a body of blood and breath, but her mana flow mirrored a Construct, rivulets turning gears.

Nagash’s arcane tech, fused with the Colonna Empire’s craft—cross-running mana and recirculation—wove through her. This wasn’t a human circuit. Even Lichibela saw it, like script carved in stone.

She’d studied under one of the world’s finest Arcane Engineers, Nagash, since she was thirteen, and never returned to the palace. No regret, only a steady flame.

She loved arcane magic, loved every scholar in the Truth Seekers Assembly. Loved the stern warmth, a winter hearth in a marble hall.

Now Lichibela stood as one of the few masters left in the world, a mountain among hills.

She taught a girl who took the road halfway, a student half-self-taught, like a robin learning to fly in a storm.

Look! That’s my team!

Raven lowered the glasses that showed the Observation Eye’s reflections. The Eye floated above the Hall of Truth, seeing the battle below like a hawk.

She was giddy as a child, her joy a spring bubbling over stone.

See? I told you! They came!

Raven, quiet down. I know. Lichibela’s tone was cool, a knife in a drawer.

This girl wasn’t the prodigy the teacher spoke of, no comet trail in a night sky.

Raven couldn’t read Gloria’s mana flow, couldn’t see what it meant. She only worried: Did Gloria use a spell that hurts the body? How bad is it? Petals, not roots.

She didn’t grasp the soul of arcane craft, its beauty that grabs the heart like thunder over a lake. To her, it was a tool, a wrench in a kit.

Lichibela couldn’t accept that. An engineer without spirit is a bell without sound.

But the teacher, before leaving, said it again and again: Raven is hope and future—for the Truth Seekers Assembly, and for the world.

Lichibela still didn’t believe. Nothing sparkling. She wanted to learn everything and carried half of it, a basket with holes.

If Raven ever said, I’m not unable to build Constructs—I just refuse to stoop to it, then she’d be truly hopeless, a tree refusing to root.

Every minute of an Arcane Engineer is precious, like dew on a blade at dawn. They create value, coin, labor—castles from gears.

For the engineer herself, a breath can bring inspiration, a lightning strike to split a problem.

With Nagash gone from the Hall of Truth, Lichibela was the leader in practice, a lantern bearer on a windy pass. Tasks ate her rest like ants.

Even so, she pressed down the itch to run out there and do. She taught Raven patiently, like a gardener with one stubborn seed.

Teaching Raven was the most important task, the keystone in an arch.

Why her? Why did the teacher choose this girl? The question rose again, a bubble under water.

Lichibela bit her pen, anger sharp as a chili, but her strength was pitiful. The pen didn’t even dent, no tooth marks, no proof.

All right. Break’s over. You were right; your friends came. That means our time is a candle burning low. Learn the rest of the method now.

She lifted Nagash’s notebook and dictated, forcing Raven to write the keys, letters like knots tied tight.

Her fingers trembled on the page, a reed swaying in wind.

She didn’t want to hand her own and her teacher’s crystal—wisdom and sweat—to someone she didn’t accept, a jewel to a stranger.

But this was the teacher’s final wish, an incense stick set before a portrait.

Her voice slowed, sorrow a mist settling.

News of Nagash’s death had come like a blade of ice. As mental warfare, the Heretic Inquisition trumpeted it first, drumbeats on hollow walls.

She knew it was inevitable, the fate Nagash chose like a silent vow, yet the shock almost made her faint, a boat rocked by sudden wave. Pain brought more wandering.

Was letting Nagash die truly right? She asked the empty air and got no answer, only a road held to the plan, sliding toward ruin like a sled on ice.

You don’t need to understand now. You have time. First, memorize. You can study later. The Assembly’s other ciphers unlock with this method, so learn it like a prayer.

After today, only you’ll know how the cipher breathes.

Raven lifted her head, hearing the words behind the words like a shadow in flame.

You want me to memorize… you won’t leave with me?

No. I have to guard the Hall of Truth, like a gatekeeper at twilight.

Ah—my captain’s a Hero. If Lili tells her how bad it is here, maybe—

I’m Lichibela. Don’t call me Lili!

Her roar shook even her own bones, thunder in a small room.

Only the teacher would call her Lili, a name warm as tea. Raven’s voice tugged open old doors—working together, messing up together, laughing in a lab until tears fell.

But now Lichibela refused to remember. She’d pretend to forget, and carry those memories like pocket stones into death, casual and silent.

When I was little, a Divine Healer said death wipes everything. Nothing remains—only void, only a cold, clear sky.

Doubt pooled cold in Liqibella’s chest, a low mist. After all, a Divine Healer hasn’t died—what if death is another door?

If awareness lingers after the last breath, she’d seek Teacher Nagash, like a homing swallow. Then she’d share her memories with him, bright pebbles laid upon a shrine.

As in Kavat Palace, chin lifted like a proud banner, she accepted his invitation while pretending reluctance.

Teacher Nagash always ran madcap experiments in a tangled storm, several at once, needing her sharp hands to catch and record the numbers.

“Sorry. I lost my composure. Let’s keep studying.”

Guilt pricked like a grain of sand. Liqibella adjusted her glasses and saw Raven curled small, a startled kitten. She apologized to Raven; her voice slowed and softened, like rain on silk.

Her affection and her reverence braided together, all tied to Teacher Nagash like red threads to a post.

Raven had brushed her tender nerves without malice; the sting was jealousy, a green vine twining tight. Realizing it, her heart settled, like silt falling in clear water.

Even so, she still hadn’t seen the hope Nagash spoke of, no lighthouse on her horizon.

Yet she believed in her teacher with iron steadiness, enough to step into death for him like a lantern offered to night.