Lilith remembered, a hair before kissing the cobbles, that she could fly. Little White Dragon tightened both hands around Astrolabe resting in her right palm. Two smooth gusts cradled the falling white-haired girl, buoyed Little White Dragon’s belly, and set Lilith down, steady as a leaf.
Lilith, heart still hammering from a brush with disaster, patted her chest like quieting a startled bird. She exhaled long, slid Astrolabe back behind her, drew two deep breaths. Only when the drumbeat in her ribs calmed did she lift her head and take in the scene like opening a window.
Lilith seemed to have dropped into a narrow alley wedged between two houses. Junk and uncleaned trash clogged it like a bramble thicket. Eaves lowered like heavy eyelids; the ground gloom pooled like wet ink. She wondered if Nidhogg would vanish outright in here like smoke.
Lilith pressed a hand to the wall, testing the stone’s skin. The Little White Dragon’s pale fingers came away filmed in gray. She stared at the clean patch she’d wiped, a small moon on a dusty sky. The dust wasn’t thick; it hadn’t sat long. Someone had been here not long ago. And the amber glow filtering through the heap, so unlike the cold light common on the Spuiset Wasteland, whispered of other minds in Morris like warm lamplight in winter.
Morris isn’t the dead city people say it is.
At that thought, excitement fluttered up like a sparrow. Little White Dragon pawed at the mountain of clutter, clawed open a narrow gap, and dove headfirst. Her tail snagged; she fought it for a while like a fish in reeds. In the end, she wriggled free just fine—only to plant hard on the ground and complete the face-first landing she’d skipped during free fall.
She remembered how Typhon, out hunting with her, once joked she’d master the ultimate art of tripping face-first on flat ground. Turns out, she wasn’t wrong.
Free fall and Lilith were like a tank and stolen aggro—the tank will lose it, and she will hit face-first.
Her nose smarted scarlet; Little White Dragon rubbed it and swiped away a tear at her eye’s corner. She shouldered along the wall out of the dark alley, forgetting her hand was still caked in dust. In one stroke, she smeared herself into a soot-streaked cat.
The soot-striped kitten stepped onto Morris’s street. A waft hit her—hmm—something with the vibe of a classic JRPG town, like nostalgia baked warm.
She had come out from between two homes like slipping between book spines. On her left, the place looked like an old, shabby room. Fresh trash lay tossed at the doorway like tidewrack. Two clotheslines strung across the small yard, with hangers bearing a scatter of underwear and a quilt, waved like surrender flags. Even without stepping inside, the air sang of sloppiness, a stale, lived-in fog. And on the door hung a big cardboard sword, splashed with cheap paint. One look at the thing, worn to a wisp, and Lilith could sketch a whole childhood. A boy dreamed of becoming a Hero, failed for a thousand little reasons, and sagged into a defeated adult.
Beside it stood a very different house, like a sister who kept herself neat. Built of the same plain stone, with age showing in cracks at the corner, yet the whole carried a careful grace. Lilith, no expert in aesthetics, couldn’t name it. Maybe the yard helped—no clotheslines; instead, two flower beds of… mushrooms? Five-colored caps that, from a distance, could pass for blooms and lanterns. The walls looked wiped clean too. Same stone bricks, but somehow brighter, as if someone tended them daily like polishing jade.
She eyed the paperboard flowers on that door, then the sword next door, and her Little White Dragon brain spun up a brand-new tale like mist making pictures.
Legend says: in a border town lived a pair of childhood sweethearts. The boy vowed young to be a Hero, but setbacks piled until his spirit went dim; he holed up at home, a full-time NEET. The girl kept caring, kept training behind him, hoping one day to adventure together even if he’d given up. One day, a stranger came to town and sought out the gloomy boy. She produced a small box, set it before his Hero-hungry eyes, and murmured, “Sign a contract with me, and become a magical girl.”
Stop!
Lilith smacked her own forehead like swatting a stubborn thought. How did the plot swerve there? And why was she turning into some strange white mochi mascot? She had zero interest in getting chased down and chopped for soup.
Alright, focus—eyes on the blacksmith’s in the distance, a hearth like a heart.
She swept her gaze across the street like a broom through dust. Within her view were a grocer, a blacksmith, a potion shop, and a house with a purpose she couldn’t read—alchemical, maybe. A cauldron big as a bath sat out front; surely not a hotpot restaurant.
This one little street felt crowded with hidden tigers. Little White Dragon half expected someone to shout, “The Demon King is here!” A Holy Sword would drop from the sky. The NEET boy would transform, grab the blade, and sprint off to fight like a comet.
Then again, in this world the Hero is her. So none of that fantasy is happening.
She shook off the whirl of daydreams like rain off feathers and decided to roam a bit.
Maybe she’d fallen at the wrong hour. Morris’s street lay empty; if not for light in a few windows and faint voices, she’d have thought she’d walked into a true dead city. She guessed she’d arrived during rest time. She had yelled earlier, maybe startled a few, but by the time she wrestled through the junk they’d slid back into bed. Even a Vampire needs sleep.
Priority now: find a place to crash—like seeking harbor—or stumble straight into Morris’s government. In a city this big, finding the center might be a real headache, a maze with no sun.
She sighed and set off, wandering down the street like a cloud drifting.
